US Politics, May 2023: May 1 never happened

America's first wife guy President

At least he doesn't call her Mommy. Or does he?

McCarthy was so wrong, there is a single thing in this bill for a Democrat. Can you guess which “Democrat”? That’s right…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-28/manchin-gets-mountain-valley-pipeline-side-deal-into-debt-bill

PHOENIX -- Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy Republican businessperson who was seen as the likeliest establishment candidate for a crucial Arizona Senate contest, said Thursday that she won't run for the seat now held by independent Kyrsten Sinema.

This pretty much clears the way for Kari Lake to get the nomination.

Most annoying Senate race ever.

Sounds like the IRS reduction is now $20B not $10B, although the idea is that current funding won't change, it will expire in 8 years instead of 10.

if Kari Lake runs as the republican candidate, Kyrsten Sinema as the independent, and Ruben Gallego as the democrat in the Arizona Senate race, that seems like a disaster to me

what's wrong with Gallego

nothing, I like him! I'm just thinking in a three-way race Sinema and Gallego will split the democratic vote allowing Kari Lake to win

I've seen people speculate that Sinema's standing with democrats is so bad that she won't take away a significant number of votes, but I have no idea how true that is.

I don't think that's true, she won her last election and we're talking about Arizona democrats here, I think if it's a three-way race Kari Lake is likely to win

polling supports the idea that sinema is HUGELY unpopular with AZ dems, but how it all plays out in a 3-way race is not particularly clear. it wouldn't even take her getting to double digits to throw the outcome into a very gray area.

Lake got 1,271,000 votes to Hobbs' 1,288,000 votes in the last gubernatorial election. She has a lot of support in the state. It just seems like a split vote could easily get her elected

Lake is so crazy I think a lot of "moderate Republicans" might actually go for Sinema

Arizona is an outlier in republican politics, maybe I'll give it that, I'm not sure, but how do you explain the last election for governor? Lake is crazy but they voted for her. Maybe her craziness is becoming more apparent to them, but I still think there will be more democrats that go for Sinema than republicans

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/arizona/

you can just look at the polling rather than speculate, recent polling has it at gallego 42, lake 35, synema 14

ok, polls, yeah that's the ticket

Or just doompost your way through it, whatever floats your boat

senate polling was extremely accurate in 2022 if you throw out all the garbage the Rs threw in just before the election but whatever, just some data 4 u

I don't mean to be harsh, and we don't even know if she's running yet, but she came very close to winning the race for governor in 2022 (within less than one point)

is your concern that she's more crazy than the average republican, or that she's more popular than the average republican?

Respect to the data but that polling doesn’t seem to say a lot. The question there is when it comes to a runoff will Sinema voters go for Lake or Gallego? I’m sure they’ll normalize Lake’s batshittery while smearing Gallego, those Sinema loyalists don’t seem too scrupulous to begin with.

Guess that of moots the point about splitting the vote…I’ll shut up now.

arizona does not have runoffs, winner of plurality of vote wins the election

A third party former Democrat pulling enough of the vote to throw the election is a legitimate concern.

Kari Lake did a lot worse than every other Republican governor running for the last decade. Including the (equally?) psychotic Jan Brewer

governor *in Arizona

And yeah there's definitely the possibility Gallego will lose, but it's better than a Sinema vs Lake contest

Around 200k unemployed people exist between the ages of 49 and 54. Some portion have dependents or disabilities.

There are 500k homeless people between the ages of 16 and 49. Almost none of them were eligible for SNAP before.

This is an *expansion* of SNAP. https://t.co/joXnCucRQi

— Galen Metzger🪬📈🇺🇦 (@GalenMetzger1) May 28, 2023

The SNAP changes are nominally extending work requirements to ages 50 to 54. In reality, especially as the new rule is implemented, this is just an indiscriminate cull of a bunch of 50 to 54 year olds from SNAP who won't realize there are new forms they need to fill out.

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) May 28, 2023

Florida had *already* exempted homeless people from work requirements.

By dumping them in the Atlantic.

is your concern that she's more crazy than the average republican, or that she's more popular than the average republican?

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, May 28, 2023

my concern is that she's as popular as the average republican and they don't care if she's crazy, they are going to vote for her

And yeah there's definitely the possibility Gallego will lose, but it's better than a Sinema vs Lake contest

― symsymsym, Sunday, May 28, 2023

no, if Gallego loses it's going to be to Lake, not Sinema

they're saying it's better that Gallego is running than just having it be Sinema vs Lake

I'm glad he's thrown his hat in the ring.

I hope either Sinema or Lake won't run, neither of them have declared yet

Lake seems eager for power. I expect she'll run. Sinema loves the limelight and being in the Senate has gratified that in spades, but if she knows ahead of time she's going to be soundly trounced and badly repudiated there's a chance she'll decide to step away rather than go to all the trouble of campaigning like she cares. She seems like a person who doesn't like going to a lot of trouble if she's not being celebrated.

Her best play is to figure out statistically and persuasively which one of them she hurts more by staying in, then selling her services to the other side to try to swing the election for them. She either gets paid off or a sweet gig somewhere or funding for her new nonprofit, whatever.

Her best play is to figure out statistically and persuasively which one of them she hurts more by staying in, then selling her services to the other side to try to swing the election for them.

That's the kind of thing that could get a person recorded without their knowledge, right up to the moment the federal marshals kick in the motel room door.

Sounds like a job for Walker: Texas Ranger (Special Assignment: Arizona)

they're saying it's better that Gallego is running than just having it be Sinema vs Lake

yes, thank you. obv any human endeavour would be better without Sinema

Big news from WH backgrounder on the deal: It's a $20b IRS cut, not $10b

But strong implication from WH officials that they'll just pull money forward from later years of the IRA appropriation. They say no changes to enforcement or modernization in near term.

— Jim Tankersley (@jimtankersley) May 28, 2023

Sounds familiar

Sassy!

Biden: One of the things that I heard some of you saying is why doesn't Biden say what a good deal it is? You think that's going to help get it passed? No. That's why you guys don't bargain very well. pic.twitter.com/q4xRKedQGy

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 29, 2023

to be fair, in the short term, his (and mccarthy's) problem appears to be getting it past ultra rightist cranks on the rules committee.

McCarthy's already on to more achievable goals:

Kevin McCarthy told Hugh Hewitt that the next goal for Republicans is to "eliminate the wokeism" pic.twitter.com/cEdaysT3OM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2023

This seems good:

Question: How much confidence do you have in the speaker right now?
Bishop: None. Zero. pic.twitter.com/c4oYvmcOjp

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 30, 2023

Time for a Mencken quote:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the population alarmed (and thus clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with a whole series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

"wokeism" = new hobgoblin

Wokeism-Leninism

The news from Minnesota these days, from Tennessee it's like looking at another planet.

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura (I) joins Gov. Tim Walz (D) as he signs a bill legalizing marijuana:

"Prohibition will end today on cannabis ... a plant made by God. [Gov. Walz and the Legislature], thank you."

"Jimi Hendrix is looking down on Minnesota smiling today." pic.twitter.com/9ZMiMxBIYi

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) May 30, 2023