U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life

I wish Mr. Presley well but I'm not sure it's a good time for Brandons

His approval rating's up too.

Garland did the right thing

oh, i agree! i guess my post heavily implies that it was wrong. no, i think garland had to do it. i guess i'm just looking ahead to trump's 2024 campaign and how he'll be able to fend off any mentions of maralago classified documents with 'joe biden does it too'. but if anything is ever going to bring him down for real, it wasn't likely to be handling of classified docs anyway, and i doubt many voters care too much about it in the first place.

I don't watch CNN, but a friend told me Tapper, Blitzer, etc. were salivating even as they repeated the two cases are TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

My guess is the Average Person doesn't care, regarding this discovery and Trump's as part of the venality that comes with working in the Oval Office. If they hate Trump, it's not because he purloined documents.

Nettleton is just about 10 miles from here so Presley is Local Boy Done Good. He's the only Democrat left here who has anything resembling a statewide office, though it's only the top 1/3 of the state. His story is full of dramatic personal bits. His uncle was Lee County Sheriff, killed in a shootout with a kidnapper in 2001. He (Brandon) got a grip on bad eating habits and lost like 200 lbs. in the aughts, which is why he looks so different in some old photos. He's enormously popular around here because he's the one state official visibly working to benefit individuals rather than business interests -- refusing utility rate hikes, making actual huge dents in spam/telemarketing calls (I get about 1/100th of the calls I used to), and the biggest thing, he spent the last 10 years getting rural Northern Mississippi fibered up for broadband. I won't say he did it singlehandedly but he was the public face of the movement, getting a bill passed that allowed rural electric utilities to create ISP spinoffs and helping them navigate the red tape for federal funding for fiber installation. It was as big a deal as the TVA getting electricity to MS homes in the 1930s imo, and the work is just about done. My broadband bill keeps going down every year because there's actual competition.

I don't know if a Dem can win statewide office in MS -- if Brandon Presley can't, I don't think it can be done.

Let's go Brandon!

i wish him well.

i find the biden documents scandal dispiriting. it not only makes it impossible to prosecute trump for the document theft, it makes it harder to hold him to any kind of account for january 6. just looks really bad for democrats

Eh whatever. Yes, to the right it becomes part of the canon of Democratic scandals/hyopcrisies. Rational people can tell the difference. And most people didn't care much about Trump having documents and won't care much about Biden. It's not like confidential documents at Mar a Lago were ever going to be a tipping point.

it makes it look like the fbi raid was political

it doesn't make it impossible to prosecute Trump, it makes it impossible to prosecute Trump in the court of public opinion. Garland's already proven willing to do something unprecedented in his investigation of Trump, and he seems not very likely to let public perception guide what he's doing.

it certainly gives some obvious talking points to draw comparisons with Trump, but it's not clear how a completely separate case makes it impossible to prosecute. Maybe they both broke the law!

In other words, what Neanderthal said

they should prosecute them both, sentence them to the same cell, and then livestream it.

^^^

Trump calling Jack Smith an "unfair Savage" LOL

I'm a Document Purloiner, Get Me Out of Here!

feel like it should be more of an odd couple sitcom type scenario where theyre roommates going about their days in an apartment together

i find the biden documents scandal dispiriting. it not only makes it impossible to prosecute trump for the document theft, it makes it harder to hold him to any kind of account for january 6. just looks really bad for democrats

Yep, you're exactly the kind of person who would react this way. Have you considered sending an application in to CNN?

Didn’t give a shit about Trump’s documents, don’t care about these. It really makes life easier.

Giving people money: it works.

new paper: the 2021 Child Tax Credit — which from July to Dec 2021 gave qualifying families up to $3,600 per child in auto monthly payments — not only appeared to “reduced child poverty by half” it also notably “improved the mental health of adults in the lowest-income families.” pic.twitter.com/Pl4lNV4mGX

— talmon joseph smith (@talmonsmith) January 11, 2023

Normal non-addicted humans cannot be expected to tell the difference between different flavors of outrage. They will see #bOtHsIdEs and conclude #bOtHsIdEs.

As long as the #bOtHsIdEs talking point is out there, it is salient. I wish it wasn't, but it is.

Trump committing a clear and obvious federal crime did not move the needle at all I don't think this will either

Trump-endorsed nominees did very poorly in the most recent election, not sure how much of that is due to the document thing, Trump in general, or the shittiness of the candidates themselves. Beyond that, I don't really know what we are hoping for in terms of public opinion. If we are saying that committing obvious crimes didn't move the needle with the DOJ, that is provably false.

I suspect it was the plenitude of the accusations against Trump's, the public's general revulsion toward Trump which hasn't waned since 2020, and the shitty evilness of the candidates that turned the midterms.

what do you mean? do people think there is any chance the DOJ is actually going to do something?

Trump barely won in 2016, cost the Republican Party electorally in a big way in 2018, lost badly in 2020, staged a violent coup to steal the presidency immediately afterward, cost the Republican Party electorally in a big way in 2022, and yet the prevailing theory in this thread is that he's a viable candidate in 2024 and could even win, because...everybody else in America is dumber than the posters here? Am I interpreting that right?

I think the abortion issue probably had more to do with it than anything but yes in general the Republican party has gotten really fucking weird lately and some of their candidates have been straight up garbage. the January 6 thing might move the needle some but mishandling classified docs just doesn't strike me as something people actually care about. they're gonna try to manufacture another Benghazi. that's all.

lol, not to bring down the gas range thread, but the inevitable outcome is that Biden will be impeached and Trump will win reelection.

(I mean, I don't believe that, but that's the kind of up is down reality we are often dealing with.)

Biden’s going to be impeached three times just so Trump doesn’t have the record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYp28tEAVvs

Biden should just accuse trump's deep state fbi for planting then.

multi-xps Because the primaries favor whoever wins the biggest chunk of the base and because of the strong anti-democratic bias of the electoral college in the general election, Trump still has a real chance to win in 2024 just as he won in 2016, with millions fewer total votes.

exactly, as tight of a spot as the Republican party seems to be in right now the system is massively rigged in their favor and will probably only get worse

lost badly in 2020

if Trump had done slightly better in like two states he would have won the election

I know it's fun to do the Eeyore "Trump's base will never" etc etc grousing, but as far as legal outcomes go, none of that is going to matter. Yes, optics are a thing, but Garland already did one thing that has probably gotten him death threats in even appointing a special counsel to investigate Trump's security breaches.

he's not going to say "well the Justice Department referred me potential criminal charges, and my special counsel also wants to bring charges, but lol Fox News says whatabout Biden, so class dismissed". there might not be any charges, but it won't be for that reason.

xpost nah, he'd have needed to take three of Michigan/Georgia/Wisconsin/Pennsylvania/Arizona, and two of those five he won by more than a percentage point.

election wasn't exactly a blowout, no (much like Trump's win wasn't), but he wasn't a whisper away from winning, either. everybody just panicked when early returns favored him even though Nate Silver literally warned everybody that would happen.

we can do this "every good thing is actually bad and Trump is inevitable hail the lizard people" thing again though if every body likes

but he wasn't a whisper away from winning, either. everybody just panicked when early returns favored him even though Nate Silver literally warned everybody that would happen.

― fentanyl young (Neanderthal), Thursday, January 12, 2023 3:48 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

its was like 30k votes across three states, sort of thing that different weather couldve swung

Also in the middle of a pandemic that had killed what 750k people?

Definitely not a gimme but if he’s heads up with Biden in 2024 it’s a coin flip, again.

(Especially if the Fed manages to cause a painful recession.)

Xxpost The only states Biden won by less than 20,000 were Georgia and Arizona, next closest was Wisconsin at around 22,000. He loses all three of those, it's 269-269, House legislature hands it to Trump

need I remind us that there's a big diff between saying if this one thing happened and these three things happened, like... it's like saying "if not for the three home runs we hit, we would have lost 3-2".

you dont need to remind us of anything

fuck off, joe

you don't have copyright on snark itt

thats a really close election and "these three things" are of course not discrete but rather highly correlated

The Snark tuner?

Snark Hunt

i think if you take 100 people in a room, put 51 on one side (biden) and 47 on the other (trump), and let the other 2 pick their noses, the 2020 election seems like it was pretty close. we're so accustomed to razor-thin margins that 2020 looks like a decisive victory. just a couple months ago, herschel walker, one of the least qualified major political candidates in u.s. history and a national laughingstock, nearly won anyway. examples abound of this stuff.

i hope i don't come across as a 'hail the lizard people' kind of person. but i do think it is folly to count out trump almost exactly 2 years after the GOP response to the failed coup was to kiss his ring and purge almost all members who didn't agree. just last week, the same people who supported his failed coup showed that they're running the house for the next 2 years. for a group of people that is making so many obvious mistakes that everyone hates and aren't supported by the majority of americans, they're getting a lot of second chances.

more importantly, as others have mentioned, the GOP have structural electoral advantages that have not gone away.

also, i still remember 2015/16, and iirc just about every smart person in the room thought it was a complete joke that trump could win, and many even became angry and belittled people who thought it was remotely possible. so many people were completely wrong about that election -- not just in predicting a Clinton victory, but in all but guaranteeing a Clinton victory.

it seems like there's been an uptick of personal attacks here recently, which i think is kind of disappointing. i'm not exempt, i think i have fallen into that a few times before -- and felt awful about it later and resolved to try to be better (key, i think). i think it would be a good idea to try to empathize a little more with those we disagree with. i don't really like the shooshing and belittling of viewpoints which essentially amount to the narcissism of small differences.

also, Milo, in hyper-tribalized America where several big states reliably vote red or blue and no incumbent had lost since 1992, where we couldn't unseat a warmonger in 2004 who everybody hated, 306-232 is a pretty good result, no matter how much bigger we'd have wanted it. had Biden managed to run in 2016 and beat Trump 306-232, that'd have been a fairly shitty win (not to mention how shitty the ACTUAL result was).

the pandemic helped, no doubt, but things beyond each candidate's control always influences the election somewhat. some years it's economy, other years it's death, sometimes both.

trying to prognosticate next year's election now before we know if Biden/Trump will even a) still be alive, b) both running c) that there's not a surprise invasion by a dinosaur between now and then is fruitless. no matter which side of the coin you're on.

joe you're literally suggesting the weather could have swung 40,000 votes, so maybe stfu and sit this one out