Where Are We Runnin’? - American Politics Thread, May 2022

Depends how big his email list is I imagine

whoa

I read in the news that this "Up-and-Comer" lost his "primary." Alas, perhaps he was just too repressed to advance in today's hot political climate.
My best, Kelly@TheOnion pic.twitter.com/uDwV6xBadX

— Stan Kelly (@KartoonistKelly) May 18, 2022

Here we go again...

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is barred from receiving Holy Communion over her support for abortion rights.

Cordileone said in a letter to the California Democrat that she won't be admitted to Holy Communion at Mass. The archbishop said Pelosi ignored his warning in April to either repudiate her advocacy for abortion rights or refrain from using her religion to justify her stance.

I thought this had been settled by the Vatican

Meanwhile, banning contraception continues its march to becoming a mainstream Republican idea.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/birth-control-ban-abortion_n_6287a89ae4b01a50ab579e39?ier

this is a short thing on msnbc about christian nationalism. watch one minute in, though. paula white. it's from jan 6. many of you have already seen it, no doubt. but please watch one minute in. this, to me, is really what a TON (it is never all, it will never be all) of white evangelicals are really like. paula white is a very upstanding citizen and her clothes are probably new and she will attend some dinner party tonight and behave more or less "properly", and all that - but when it comes down to it, she wants everyone that is not a evangelical christian to die and go to hell, she wants everyone that is not cishet to burn eternally, and she wants it to happen as soon as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx8tsompfiM

xp shit, sorry tipsy mothra. to try to connect this to what you just posted, i'll add, "oh yeah, and they want aaaaaaaall the white evangelical babies that can possibly be born to live, even if it means turning their country into handmaiden's tale.

i don't watch msnbc (or any other channel) and don't know Mehdi Hasan, i don't know if he's good or not -- he seems good to me, i'm glad he did this segment. i really wish there were more big ol' white cishet americans leading the charge on this. i understand why they're not, because if you're white in this country and you grew up in and around church, you are in an elite club with special protections, and that's true whether you were evangelical or not

watch at 5:55 - this is where it's leading. they will spill blood on the ground, and then they will say that it was will of jesus, all the way to their very last breath, you better believe it.

Yeah, to me the most alarming things I've read have been from people who are either evangelicals themselves or have spent many years closely observing/writing about the movement — people like David French, who I disagree with on lots of things, but who wrote this a month or two ago: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-seeds-of-political-violence-are?s=r

Like, people who actually know this territory well are sending up flares saying, Christian nationalism is headed for bloodshed. At this point I can't really see how it's not. They're primed for it.

Moreover, if Christians know anything about the far right, they know it’s vicious. Silence is the safe course. For all the (legitimate) talk of cancel culture from the left, many Christians self-censor out of fear of the right. They know Michael Flynn is dangerous, but saying so out loud carries a cost. So they remain silent. They stay in their anti-left lane.

The proper response to fear and fanaticism is reason and faith. It’s demonstrating by word and deed that the response even to the worst forms of extremism on the left is not to stampede to extremism on the other side. But we have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

seriously, watch that clip at 5:55. there are thousands of people in that room cheering him on, and many, many more watching at home.

as the host notes, if an imam said anything 1/1000000000000000000000th as inflammatory, you know what would happen

and it is definitely NOT just that one guy. that guy is just a successful version of all the other people that are trying to be that guy. it's fucked up

has anyone here ever been part of a Christian service where they openly talk about the other denominations, politics, and how their name (and Jesus') is being defined and represented by some of the most extreme, dangerous people in the country?

(I'm not sure there's a more dangerous LARGE group of people in the U.S. then white evangelical christians. there are always people out of their mind on an individual level and in relatively small groups. I'm talking millions, tens of millions of people here)

i see discussions of it online sometimes, christianity today articles where they carefully, politely, minimally, and sporadically, mention this giant group of extremist goons that now represent Christianity. is this ever brought up during a sermon? I can only speak to my evangelical experience, which was a long time ago now, was already horrific, and has (as I always expected) only gotten worse and more extreme as time passes. Is there any Christian movement to make clear where they stand on things like White Christian Nationalism? Or rather, since there are always small movements and groups of people who do the right thing -- is there any movement that has been remotely successful to speak out against the largest and loudest voice of Christians, white evangelicals?

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — "Thou shalt not kill" was not the message at a Castle Rock Church on Thursday night when it hosted a right-wing extremist group's election fraud meeting.

linked in that piece above, at least a normal-ass news station frames things like this this way. small comfort tbh

MAGA Christian nationalism is concentrated in the churches most removed from elite American culture, including from elite Evangelicalism.

The world-famous Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church was in cahoots with the original fascists and Nazis, too. The just can't seem to get their fill of 'em.

Wtf is "elite american culture"?

Non-flyover country

Too bad I had to unfollow the account on Twitter that was posting all that stuff about the Alioto-Opus Die connection because they felt compelled to post some fairly overt copaganda re the Young Thug case.

576 officers lost their lives in the line of duty in 2021. 

We passed a Senate resolution designating this week as National Police Week to honor the officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities. One small way to recognize their courage.

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) May 21, 2022

I don’t know if “on a respirator in the COVID ward” counts as in the line of duty?

Which is higher, the number of cops who died of covid or the number of people who died of covid because the cops refused to wear masks

Looking like the worst cycle for Blue Dogs since 2010: Schrader, Cuellar, Bourdeaux at risk in primaries. Crist, Murphy, Cooper retiring. Golden, Gonzalez, O'Halleran, Spanberger at risk in general. That's almost half of the 19 Blue Dogs. https://t.co/DdbAFi3HhC

— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) May 24, 2022

And when they lose they’ll blame “Defund the Police”

JUST IN: A federal appeals court has ruled that the 14th Amendment's bar on insurrectionists holding office may be applied to current/future political candidates. https://t.co/RPuI4duUSu

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 24, 2022

O rly

Not sure I would call Bourdeaux a blue dog. It's unfortunate that Lucy McBath is running against her in the primary since her district was rejiggered by the legislature.

xp don't worry, we're going to get a new (to us) definition of what insurrection actually is very soon

anyone who votes by mail

the patriots of arkansas have decided that sarah huckabee sanders did such a good job for trump that she should be their governor as well. they have seen her on television

she will continue her father's grand and honorable legacy

the good people of arkansas are sick of politics being treated like a television show. with their support of sarah sanders, combined with elevation of NFL superstar herschel walker by the proud people of Georgia, there is no real issue involving the lives of hundreds of millions of people that they cannot solve!

politics: actually very funny

she will continue her father's grand and honorable legacy

It's a common mistake, but her father is not Colonel Sanders

Pareene’s substack post today is so otmfm in a bigger picture way. It begins “believers in American institutions, and the people who control those institutions, should know that they are forging a generation of Americans with no faith in them.”

I feel like most of us have been saying the same for such a loooooooong time. I do understand most “it’s ALWAYS been terrible, just not for YOU” response takes. Still,my current imagination for a fracture into many much worse socio-political results feels so fucking imminently real. And also a feeling that the remains of a wave have now crept up the shallow slope of the beach as far as they will go. The water is now going in a bunch of directions in different places, sometimes lolling in eddies, but the froth in the channels is going back to the sea at an increasing pace. It tugs at the calmer waters to drag it, and us, helplessly along.

i've got this theory about donald trump. i don't even think he WANTS to be president!!

I think it's authentically good news that Trump's hand-picked election stealers got stomped in Georgia GOP primaries for gov and sec of state

^ this ... I'm thrilled that my creepy ex-congressman Jody Hice left his safe seat to get thumped by Raffensperger in the secretary of state race

Herschel Walker was always a lock to win the GOP primary, but I don't think he's going to be an effective candidate against Warnock in the general ... Herschel rallied here in Athens on Monday, with the living mummy of Vince Dooley speaking, and apparently less than 100 people showed up

lmao: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/25/trump-expressed-support-hanging-pence-capitol-riot-jan-6-00035117

Beto doubling down on running for statewide office in Texas with gun control front and center is the exact opposite of any consultant-approved "popularist" approach to electoral politics so let's see how it goes for the dude

Idealist take: He really means it and Texas voters are more open than you think to hearing that message to someone who conveys it with authenticity
Cynical take: He knows he's gonna lose but it's a good career/financial move to become a highly popular option for out-of-state donors a la Randy Bryce or Amy McGrath (though he obviously has a better shot than McGrath ever did)

Beto caved on 'critical race theory' immediately so I tend to think it's genuine (buoyed by the knowledge that he's going to lose by 20 so fuck it let's be legends etc., no need for triangulation on such a core issue to Democratic voters)

it'll be good to have a dem in a high profile race in a red state who isn't afraid to speak out on this issue. he'll get fawning media coverage, which might influence other attention whores to follow his lead!

Maybe Beto won't win but if he fires up the Democratic base it could lead to Paxton losing the AG race

I think it's authentically good news that Trump's hand-picked election stealers got stomped in Georgia GOP primaries for gov and sec of state

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

it's definitely good news. i wonder how much of it has to do with the attention put on trump's blatant tampering in the GA election results? (one of those millions of things he very obviously did that somehow never resulted in any sort of negative consequence for him) if that's the case, it's a good sign that when voters learn that their elected officials can tamper with results and are in fact being asked to do so by the president, they are still capable of identifying someone who is very obvious corrupt and not voting for them.

after years and years of lowering the bar for republican voters, it's good to see the GA voters did the right thing. i just worry about all of the other "stop the steal" elections taking place all over the country, almost all in places that didn't have such high-profile shenanigans as GA. stuff like this:

This is happening tomorrow: the election commission in Wisconsin is voting on its new chair, and it may end up being a Trump fake elector, who’d then oversee 2022 and the lead-up to 2024 https://t.co/XfE0oyD7gH

— Taniel (@Taniel) May 24, 2022

trenchant, maybe, but not inaccurate

I don't think congressional Democrats understand that voters see them as the cops standing around outside the school.

— Jonathan Larsen (@jtlarsen) May 26, 2022

If we can get 52 cops instead of 50, we might be able to really do something

nah, wait for 60 cops

NEW at @CookPolitical: 12 House rating changes, all but two in Republicans' direction. Full analysis: https://t.co/Fkh8IivsZD pic.twitter.com/i29BwrmCLA

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 26, 2022

NEW at @CookPolitical: we're revising our November House outlook to a GOP gain of 20-35 seats. Full ratings: https://t.co/mAdCOtLpRZ pic.twitter.com/BxLPfP8FYO

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 26, 2022

20-35 seat swing toward the GOP is expected. currently it's 225 Democrats, 210 Republicans. a 20 seat swing puts it at 205D-23R, a 35 seat swing bings it to 190D - 245R.

a lot can change between now and november. but it also requires any sort of confidence in the democratic party, which (from my perspective) has just completely disappeared