All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tami]

Exactly.



Ossoff lost in 2017, Abrams in 2018. Biden lost in 1987 and 2007.

"Some spend their lives in the shade of olive trees. Some change the world, even in defeat."

Beto O'Rourke hasn't changed the world, even in defeat.



Far more people voted for Biden in TX and FL than HRC in 2016. The Pandemic voter turnout was high for both parties, and the GOP win margin in TX and FL is not very intimidating to me. If the GOP ran numbers like that in Dem bastions like CA and NY, I'd be spooked.



Manchin will enjoy his 15mns of fame but he voted to Impeach Trump, which means he's not Tulsi Gabbard.

But here's the thing, all the optics with Manchin and the centrist Dems were all done with the expectation and calculation post-election (which is when Manchin was allowed to step into the spotlight in a way he didn't before) that the Dems wouldn't get a majority with GA. Literally nobody thought it would happen. Because GA runoffs have historically gone the Dems' way once...and to get both seats in a runoff in a red district is a bigger improbability than Trump winning 2016. So the Dems now exist in an entirely different world. Who knows what might happen.

At the very least, Biden can get his cabinet approved. If Breyer steps down and retires in the next few months (and let's be real, he should...RBG didn't when she had the chance and that stung), Biden can get a "living constitution" SCOTUS on the bench. Stuff can be done on climate change, the environment and immigration. Pandemic checks and so on.

I was thinking of running in a local election (decided not to) where I didn't stand a chance of winning. My County leader told me that I should do it anyway, if I want to, because the more experience running the better chance you have of winning in the future. A friend of mine has been trying to win a local election for at least 6 years. This year, he finally won the election.

It doesn't work for everyone, and there are some who win first time, but it is encouraged to keep trying and trying.

[Kirby101]

My word choice was deliberate, considering Trump.

HA! Okay, though that word is a bit taboo these days. But an appropriate spoonerism.

[Kirby101]

That’s not what we are talking about. You can fight in every state, you can’t employ the same strategy in every state. Abrams understands the issues in Georgia and the infrastructure intimately and directly combatted that. A state like Texas is so big you would need like 5 Abrams who understood the key pockets where Dems could win and what would drive turn out without being too jarring and a turn off.

Part of the 50 State strategy is to have local Democratic offices in every State and every district, run by local Democrats. You say the 50 State strategy won't work, and then describe what should be done, which is the 50 State strategy.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I was thinking of running in a local election (decided not to) where I didn't stand a chance of winning. My County leader told me that I should do it anyway, if I want to, because the more experience running the better chance you have of winning in the future. A friend of mine has been trying to win a local election for at least 6 years. This year, he finally won the election.

It doesn't work for everyone, and there are some who win first time, but it is encouraged to keep trying and trying.

I mean if you watch the show The Queen's Gambit, even Beth Harmon who won at everything at first, suffered defeats eventually.

I definitely think you should try again next chance you get.

[Kirby101]

Here is a quick question. i know there will be BS legal battles. But when do the two new GA senators take their seats?

As soon as the GA SOS certifies them.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Chuck Schumer has taken to trying out "Senate Majority Leader" out loud.

Some words from our Fearless Leader:

[Amadeus Arkham]

President-elect Biden has released a statement on the Georgia results:

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Referring to McConnell as Minority Leader in that statement has to sting.

[Joker]

I mean if you watch the show The Queen's Gambit, even Beth Harmon who won at everything at first, suffered defeats eventually.

That show is fantasy. It's Harry Potter but chess. You're on a real role this morning with the politics but as fantasy entertainment analogies.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That show is fantasy. It's Harry Potter but chess. You're on a real role this morning with the politics but as fantasy entertainment analogies.

Okay, Bobby Fischer also lost, Garry Kasparov also lost. They lost at the start and faced setbacks and defeat.

Roger Federer in Tennis has also faced defeats, as has Nadal.

Michael Jordan and Lebron also faced setbacks and defeats.

I can go on and on.

The point is that you mustn't give up hope on turning red states blue. Or give up trying. That a setback in FL and TX in 2020 isn't a given or lasting thing. Anything can happen.

And entertainment and so on can shed light on a lasting truth.

Did you know that in the 1960s there was a movie called ADVISE AND CONSENT about DC Politics by the director Otto Preminger. Preminger wanted to cast Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a Senator from GA in a small role in the final scene. Dr. King initially agreed to it only to turn it down after backlash and protest.

But here we are now, decades later, an African-American senator from GA, a Dem, a pastor who preached at King's pew, going to Washington. The first African-American senator sent to Congress by GA in history.

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[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Lynn Wachtmann, who served almost three decades in Buckeye State politics before finally being done in by term limits. Among Wachtmann’s more infamous moments were arguing that state law should trump federal environmental law when he was pushing for more water to be drained from Lake Erie (which coincidentally would benefit his former co-workers at Culligan Water Conditioning and Maumee Valley Bottlers Incorporated), and he said environmentalists were “fearmongering” and “spreading misinformation” about his ideas. He was known even more, however, for being a social conservative, including the time he pushed for legislation to create a $5000 fine for any sex-education teacher who taught students about any birth control method other than abstinence. Wachtmann also tried banning abortion if a fetal heartbeat could be detected (i.e. an unconstitutional 6 week abortion ban) on two separate occasions, and during debate over the bill, admitted he intended to ban all abortion. If that’s not enough, he also voted to defund Ohio Planned Parenthood clinics in 2012, and during debate over that bill, made the level-headed statement that Democrats are “abhorrent, crazy people intent on killing every baby they can.” He has been out of politics now for about four years, and Ohio is better for it.

In both 2016, and 2017, on this date, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Debbie Riddle, an eight-term member of the Texas House of Representatives who has been a known nutter,since 2003, during national debate over George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education policy, she declared the idea came from a unique place, "It comes from Moscow. From Russia. Straight out of the pit of hell.” Now, for a few years, Debbie Riddle then was relatively reserved when it came to hyperbolic statements until Barack Obama got elected president, and the frequency of her doing so, particularly bigoted ones skyrocketed, which I’m sure has no correlation, whatsoever. In March 2009, Riddle again drew attention when she was taking testimony from a witness on the floor of the Texas House to discuss Texas’ HB 789, arguing that we live in a “color-blind” society and whether a person was “purple or green” it didn’t matter. She of course then spent much of 2010 trying to get legislation similar to Arizona’s SB 1070 anti-immigration law passed to legalize racial profiling, so you’ve got to think maybe she was being disingenuous during that prior debate about our nation being “color blind”. She has appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 where she tried pushing Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert’s ridiculous “anchor babies” theory, making an utter fool of herself when she claimed she had received word that it was true from “former FBI agents”, but when pressed, could not name a single person to defend the idiotic conspiracy theory. It was also totally not racist in September of 2012 when Debbie Riddle got on Facebook and told Abdul Pasha, a Pakistani-American law student attending law School at the South Texas College of Law that because he felt American soldiers should be given sensitivity training to help them in interacting with Afghani citizens while serving Afghanistan, to take his opinion and “go back to Afghanistan” (where he’s not from),and where as she put it, it’s “like the Stone Age”. A few months later, in January 2013, she also was arguing against the Voting Rights Act, and in favor of stricter Voter ID Laws that were being pushed for in Texas that disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, by pushing the myth of widespread “voter fraud”. In February 2015, she introduced two separate pieces of legislation that would criminalize the use of a public restroom by a transgendered person who entered the “incorrect” or “opposite birth sex” bathroom, and would actually make it a felony for business owners to not follow along with this transphobic policy. While when pressed for comment about her bills, she refused to do so, a few weeks earlier on social media, Riddle foreshadowed the legislation, saying, she would pass a law that “will protect women & children from going into a ladies restroom & finding a man who feels like he is a woman that day.” With such a long, wide career of bigotry towards minorities, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community from this one lunatic, we're proud to report that Debbie Riddle proved too insane for even Texas Republicans in 2016, and was defeated in the primary election for her seat in the Texas House of Representatives.

On this date in 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Michael “Duke” Lowrie, a candidate in a 2017 special election for District 8 of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He also made a run for the same seat back in 2011, but only got 43% of the vote against Jeff Thompson. As the primary approached for that special election, and Lowrie was the only candidate on the ballot, someone noticed that on Lowrie’s Facebook page as recently as 2015, he was posting about how Islam is a “false religion”, how Americans should “run all Muslims out of business and anyone who employs them”, citing a conspiracy theory based around a poorly understood ISIS propaganda campaign, and telling people if they were offended to “unfriend him and seek the friendship of the Islamist”. When the media started asking questions about that, wouldn’t you know it, Lowrie doubled down on his post (And what would you expect from a proud Trump supporter who self-identifies as a “deplorable”?), and that led to three other Republican candidates hopping into the race. From that point, Lowrie had to win on his own merits, and his fanaticism about overturning Roe v. Wade, treating the 2nd Amendment as absolute, and refusing to work with Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards at all because he believes in “no compromise” was not enough to overcome his flagrant bigotry, and he only got 15% of the vote in the GOP Primary, finishing third.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled George Faught, a former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives who served District 14 for five terms in that body from 2006 through 2018, with the missing gap in the middle being from 2013-2014 after he lost an unsuccessful bid for Congress to Markwayne Mullin back in the GOP Primary for Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District in 2012. Faught’s shenanigans included support for “English Only” legislation, bills to allow religious expression (specifically, the Christian kind) in schools, anti-Sharia Law measure that was in no way constitutional or necessary, Oklahoma’s version of the “Birther Bill”, to require presidential candidates provide a copy of their birth certificates, a highly unconstitutional bill that would allow the state from re-issuing medical licenses to any physician who might perform an abortion, which is still a constitutionally protected procedure for women to have performed on them, a bill to allow a statue of the Ten Commandments to be constructed and displayed at the Oklahoma State Capitol, as well as a measure to allow church members to use the “Stand Your Ground” defense to kill anyone they feel is threatening them while they are at church services. Now, that list has Faught’s fingerprints on some out-there, loony legislative ideas. But his last extreme piece of idiocy on display was HB 1549, which would have prohibited abortions based on a mother seeking it because of a diagnosis of Down’s syndrome or other genetic abnormality in the fetus during gestation, without any exceptions for rape or incest. During debate on the bill, when Democrats challenged Faught on the measure, he began claiming that rape and incest could be a part of “God’s will”. And, Faught didn’t back down after the heated exchange at the state capitol, posting online in his belief that, “Life, no matter how it is conceived, is valuable and something to be protected. Let me be clear, God never approves of rape or incest. However, even in the worst circumstances, God can bring beauty from ashes. Between being an anti-choice lunatic to the extent that he would try and claim rapes were a secretly a part of the Almighty’s plan, as well as Faught’s vote against giving teacher’s a pay raise after a state-wide strike in 2018… he was ousted in the GOP Primary for his seat in the Oklahoma state legislature, and has not returned to politics.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Referring to McConnell as Minority Leader in that statement has to sting.

I wonder if that really matters to him. Moscow Mitch accomplished his main goal, that being to stack the courts with right wing ideologues, especially on the Supreme Court which now has a 6-3 conservative lean, and could likely stay that way for quite a long time. Presidents, senators and congressmen come and go, but judicial appointments, especially on SCOTUS are practically forever.

[PaulBullion]

Attorney General Merrick Garland.

[Joker]

The point is

I understood the point.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Attorney General Merrick Garland.

OOOOOOOOOH! I just LOVE the sound of that!