BURNPIT: U.S. Politics, August 2022

...which isn't even included with your salsa and guacamole purchase! Can you believe it?

Also I can buy a tub of salsa for half that price at my sorta pricey local grocery.

The Boeberts seem to be angling for the slot formerly occupied by the Palins.

Oz really can't do anything without looking like a fool at this point.

wait til he starts wearing ben davis shirts

raw asparagus in salsa… the food of the gods

Oil prices tumbled Monday after China’s central bank unexpectedly cut rates after data showed economic activity slowed broadly in July, including consumer spending and factory output, reigniting concerns of a global downturn.

Signs of further cooling in the world’s second-largest economy, already under strain from China’s zero-covid policy and a real estate crisis, alarmed energy markets. The prospect of lower demand sent oil prices sliding 3.2 percent — pushing West Texas Intermediate crude to $89 a barrel.

we've got joe biden to thank for this

Dr. Oz is such a remarkably awful candidate, I get those same vibes as when Trump first ran where you get the sense that it was a publicity stunt and he never really had a plan for what he would do should he actually win the nomination, but he doesn't have the pure venom to keep people interested nor does he really seem to want to go all-out for a statewide race. if he continues to poll this poorly I can see him just checking out entirely.

strong "dog chasing a car what happens if he catches it" vibes

Rudy has been informed he is a target of the Georgia investigation.

Yeah, no shit.

I posted this on the Trump thread, but I guess at this point news of Sidney Powell and team getting hacked voting data in multiple states is NBD.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2022/08/15/sidney-powell-coffee-county-sullivan-strickler/

It’s the 50-state strategy. Try to cheat in every single state

The last two times Democrats suffered catastrophic midterm losses, an early warning of the coming earthquake came out of the Pacific Northwest.

This year, the indication from Washington state suggests something very different: a more middle-of-the-road outcome in the general election, instead of the red wave Republicans have been hoping to build.

Poor Democratic results in Washington’s August all-party primaries reflected the broader malaise that hit the party statewide and nationally in 2010 and 2014, and Republicans’ troubles in November 2018 were obvious in the August primary returns that year. Now, the 2022 primary vote out of Washington is the latest new data point — along with a number of promising Senate polls and a slight lead for Democrats in the average generic House ballot polling — suggesting Democrats’ performance in November may not be as catastrophic as previous midterm elections when their party held the White House.

This year, the aggregate Democratic vote across the state’s House primaries was more than 5 percentage points worse than Democrats’ performance in the 2018 “blue wave” year. But it was also more than 5 percentage points better than Democrats performed in either 2010 or 2014, two Republican wave years.

The party vote shares in Washington primaries have been a reliable indicator of general election outcomes there over the past decade — and while Washington leans more toward Democrats than the U.S. as a whole, swings in the states’ margins over the past decade have largely mirrored the rest of the country, according to a POLITICO analysis of the results.

“Nationally, we expected the low approval rating of Joe Biden to create a Republican wave,” said Alex Hays, a Washington-based Republican consultant. “In Washington state, the election results were closer to neutral.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/16/democrats-midterms-hopes-washington-00052049

Strikes me as whistling past the graveyard, as much as I hope it's not.

between the dismantling of Roe v Wade, Trump's many federal crimes, and the GOP's explicit promise to never let Dems win again once they regain control I'm thinking Biden's approval rating may not figure into the midterms too much

besides you do have gas prices declining and the Dems did, somehow, pass a massive climate bill, so it might start ticking up

My guess at this point is that they win the senate and lose the house, but with a very small gop majority and because the gop house caucus is ungovernable and insane the effectiveness with which they work is reduced. They’ll still impeach biden though.

This is an outlier so far but would be very nice

#NEW Florida Senate General Election Poll:

Demings (D) 48% (+4)
Rubio (R-inc) 44%

University of North Florida (8/8-8/12)

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) August 16, 2022

So is this: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/08/16/nikki-fried-up-against-charlie-crist-unf-poll-florida-governor-race-democratic-primary/10306971002/

more analysis of the washington primary results, a little less positive than the politico piece: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/08/16/what_washington_states_primaries_predict_for_the_midterms.html

neanderthal and alfred (and other floridians) what do you think about the senate race? i don't know anything at all about Demings, so my opinions are only about Rubio. he seems like a continuing national embarrassment to me, but does he actually still have a strong base of support in FL?

Didn’t he basically run his last re-election campaign promising to be a check on Trump?

I still think Rubio has a chance b/c Cuban conservatives will swallow their considerable contempt (and it's there -- they think he's a coward and a fool) to avoid voting for a Black woman socialist; but that outlier UNF poll shows Demings catching up.

She has thankfully stopped running this ad:

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

And how beatable is DeSantis? He barely won election in the first place, but all of his psychotic bullshit has made him genuinely popular, right?

With the Dems' Senate chances improving weekly, who knows? The usual midterm patterns may not manifest. xpost

And how beatable is DeSantis? He barely won election in the first place, but all of his psychotic bullshit has made him genuinely popular, right?

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, August 16, 2022

idk -- Don't Say Gay's effects we're seeing this week already as kids return to school.

Did y'all know we professors have to send our syllabi to Tallahassee now?

Didn’t he basically run his last re-election campaign promising to be a check on Trump?

― Western® with Bacon Flavor

yeah, exactly! that's why i have no idea what he has going for him. i don't understand what accomplishments he's pointing to. he's had 12 years to do something!

He shares responsibility for re-introducing "widdle" into the popular lexicon.

16% of Black renters have either been evicted or threatened with eviction in the past year

A majority of Black renters do not have enough saved to cover one month of expenses

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/09/1112895439/eviction-affordable-housing

xpost knows exactly what he's doing

Be sure to tell everyone that this is a law now, because of Democrats, since a lot of people don’t pay attention.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/16/biden-signs-inflation-reduction-act-00052233

This pics shows him definitely NOT wearing a mask during the signing... which they WH said he'd be doing for ten days after his wife's positive diagnosis

https://www.axios.com/2022/08/16/biden-reconciliation-inflation-reduction-act

It would surprise me if he's still contagious.

I noticed he took his mask off before his address. But we're the only ones noticing this shit anymore. I thought he'd get zinged for the omicron surges in spring and summer, but, yeah, nope. Apparently no one cares enough.

Thanks, Obama https://t.co/5KZfiXIGgd

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 16, 2022

Theory: Fetterman social media strategy is taking over the Democratic Party like the Venom virus

— Populism Updates (@PopulismUpdates) August 16, 2022

Cheney: Two years ago. I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would've required that I go along with president trump's lie about the 2020 election.. That was a path I could not and
would not take. pic.twitter.com/vRq0Fdz4x1

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2022

https://media.makeameme.org/created/if-you-strike-turht6.jpg

She's going to raise so much money from stupid people to get 348 votes in the 2024 primary.

Would make more sense to run as a 3rd party wrecker in the general

make more sense for who?

Theoretically a third-party Cheney candidacy would deliver a few thousand never-trumper GOP votes, and perhaps a few dozen conservadems (Manchinites?).

Because all normal humans understand that there is no hope at all for any third-party candidate, these would be people who feel that casting a "principled" protest vote is more important than affecting the result.

If this tiny number of votes happened to be correctly distributed, it could make a difference, probably in favor of Democrats. But it's not likely. Most voters are partisan, even if they have to hold their nose.

I don't know, in 2020 Joe Biden needed every single anti-Trump vote to win. I think Liz Cheney running as an independent in 2024 would benefit the GOP.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/08/cheney-2024-all-mimsey-were-the-borogroves

I guess the spoiler question comes down to (a) whether you think the hypothetical third party is likely to peel more votes away from Biden or from Trump, and (b) how many votes you think each is getting to begin with. If the spoiler is mostly picking up anti-Trump Republicans who just can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, that's great for Biden. If they're peeling off anti-Trump Republicans who actually did make the jump last time, that's bad for Biden. But how many any of any of those people actually exist?

(To be clear, I don't think Cheney gets more than 348 votes as a third-party candidate either.)

xpost Ha.. I love the comments section on that, riffing that it was DeSantis who tipped off the DOJ on the Mar-a-Lago docs

y'all are assuming she doesn't just switch parties and make the 35-40 of the most obnoxious columnists/ pundits alive wet their pants

Friedman for one

so Dick's daughter would jump parties in this scenario to help elect Trump?

Too bad Yang already started his new party, he could throw something together with Cheney and Evan McMullin.

(i'm mostly joking but hey stranger things have happened. obviously can't see her doing this unless Biden doesn't/ can't run and the primary becomes a free for all)

xpost