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April 26, 2018 07:17 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 44 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.”

–Will Rogers

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44 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

  1. WOTD: "The New Lynching Museum"

    The sculpture by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto Bamfo is dramatic and powerful. Instead of removing statues to the Confederacy, I think we should simply add context by placing copies or new versions of the lynching sculpture at the foot of all the statues commemorating Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis.

    These memorials to the Confederacy were installed 30 or 60 years AFTER the end of the Civil War with the rise of Jim Crow laws, lynch mobs and the KKK. The meaning of the statues is an attempt to re-write history. Adding the lynching statues would re-re-write the meaning of these memorials.

    Dontcha love post-modernism?

    1. I read three different articles about this memorial yesterday, and viewed several pictures.

      This is an incredible memorial.  Powerful.  Striking.  I can’t imagine anyone seeing this and not being moved and awestruck. 

      These are also the important untold American stories that deserve remembrance and reflection.

      I’ve never once been in Alabama, but if I ever go this will be a place I will stop.

      1. The New York Times Editorial Board has a few choice words regarding Trump's hiring practices:

        At this point you have to ask: Just what do job postings for the Trump administration look like? Surely they must stipulate that relevant experience isn’t a plus, but that a flexible notion of ethics is. They must demand references who can recount specific instances of demonstrated incompetence. How else to explain the sheer number of poorly prepared or careless or sticky-fingered officials crammed into this careening clown-car of an administration?

  3. Secretly Taped Audio Reveals Democratic Leadership Pressuring Progressive to Leave Race

    Hoyer bluntly told Tillemann that it wasn’t his imagination, and that mobilizing support for one Democratic candidate over another in a primary isn’t unusual. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., chair of the DCCC, has a “policy that early on, we’d try to agree on a candidate who we thought could win the general and give the candidate all the help we could give them,” Hoyer told Tillemann matter-of-factly.

    “Yeah, I’m for Crow,” Hoyer explained. “I am for Crow because a judgment was made very early on. I didn’t know Crow. I didn’t participate in the decision. But a decision was made early on by the Colorado delegation,” he said, referencing the three House Democrats elected from Colorado. [emphasis mine]

    “So your position is, a decision was made very early on before voters had a say, and that’s fine because the DCCC knows better than the voters of the 6th Congressional District, and we should line up behind that candidate,” asked Tillemann during the conversation.

    “That’s certainly a consequence of our decision,” responded Hoyer.

    1. The Democratic Corporatist Campaign Committee and Polis, Perlmutter and DeGette should be ashamed. A real political blog might follow up on this story. CPols won’t. This explains perfectly my complaint that CO Dems are policy cowards and are preventing the state from turning blue. 

        1. Agree.

          Colorado has never been able to free itself from the shackles of the government subsidized resource extraction and agricultural industries.               

          There was only one, 4 year period when the first floor of the Capitol was NOT run by the O&G industry. The annals of Democratic party legislative history are well stocked with corporatists. Dick Lamm, Stan Matsunaka, Wes McKinley, Jim Isgar, Michael Bennet, and on and on. Big money employs whomever they choose.

          Big money still runs this show, Zap, so….soldier on, brother. Don't let the slings and arrows of outrageous bloggers daunt you…👍

           

          and to your point, may I recommend “the Nine Nations of North America”, by Joel Garreau. It is an interesting read about how our political and economic deliniations don’t make much sense.

      3. You might want to start seeing Dr. Ronny Jackson . . . 

        . . . or, maybe stop seeing Dr. Ronny Jackson.

        One of those.

        PS. Good news, he’s available again!

      4. Just checking. Would you rather the DCCC and existing elected officials NOT weigh in at all?

        Because if they don't have the right to express their opinions and spend their money in the primary, they will assess candidate strengths and fit for the district as they consider chances for winning in the general, and make their decisions about support at that point.

        1. I prefer democracy, which, for me, means letting people run and voters choose.  I'm OK with having a system that I think works but sometimes produces outcomes I'm unhappy with.  Of course, that's one of the main reasons I left the Democratic Party.  I felt that the sorts of leftist candidates I prefer were always going to be the ones moved aside for more centrist candidates.

          I haven't seen stories laying out the reverse.  Perhaps that's just me missing them, or, perhaps, it's because it doesn't happen.  I don't know which.

          1. You're not wrong. The DCCC does not trust the judgment of voters. And they like to put their big fat thumbs on the scale for "centrist", i.e. corporate-friendly nominees.

            The DCCC does this pre-primary, pre-assembly, and then feeds the narrative that anyone unhappy with the heavy  thumbs is a "purist" whose voice really should be silenced. We have plenty of those voices on this blog, as well.

            At the national level, we still have superdelegates in the DNC, in spite of the window dressing by the "Unity Commission". So far, the Unity Commission has just churned out words. Superdelegates still have their positions. Lobbyists can still be superdelegates. There has so far, been a lot of fancy talk, but no rules rollback from the Wasserman-Schultz rules to the Obama rules.

            The rules committee of the DNC is voting now on a rules change. We will see how deep the commitment to small-d democracy is in the Big DNC….or the DCC.

    2. And this is a problem because???

      There are districts where progressives are appropriate candidates. CO-1 and CO-2 jump to mind. But one size does not fit all.

      The National party should recruit candidates who fit the district. And encourage those who do not to run elsewhere.

      1. Democratic Leaders Reject Calls to Support Medicare for All

        Pelosi is not alone in her rejection of Medicare for All. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., House Democratic Party Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., DNC Chair Tom Perez and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., are also holdouts against the bill.

        Progressives issue ‘statement of principles’ on abortion rights after Democratic leaders hint at softer stance

        A coalition of pro-abortion-rights and progressive groups is uniting behind a “statement of principles” to push back against Democratic leaders who say they would welcome antiabortion candidates in 2018. It’s the latest response to an issue that has repeatedly sparked infighting among progressives since the start of the year, with a new round of recriminations after Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said there was “no litmus test” to run as a Democrat.

        Progressives to Democratic campaign committee: Stop attacking us

        Three grassroots groups say the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is trying to push candidates toward “moderation” when they believe progressive policies will win elections.

        In one instance, the DCCC took the rare step of releasing damaging opposition research against a Democrat, Laura Moser, branding her a “Washington insider” as she runs in a hotly contested primary in Texas.

        Progressive Dems might feel hated upon.

          1. Do you have any evidence that Lujan has changed his positions or tactics as head of the DCCC since those events ocurred?  If so, I'd be happy to hear that.  Otherwise, "hey that was a year ago" isn't an argument, it's just an irrelevant fact.

        2. Now wasn't Moser the one who compared dental surgery without anesthesia favorably to living in Texas. Might not be a good fit for a Texas congressional district.

    1. There is always the risk that this guy could get elected if nominated. But encouraging the GOP to nominate Todd Akin and Roy Moore had happy endings for the Democrats.

        1. Gee, breaking news. Do you have ANY indication the Democratic apparatus spent time or money encouraging nomination of Trump? I read moderately broadly among liberal and general news sites, and I haven't heard of anyone progressive or Democrat investing in Trump.

          1. Well, there's the book Amy Chozick published a minute ago.

            From early on, the Clinton camp saw Trump as an enemy to encourage, Chozick writes. During the campaign, as had been previously reported, there was an effort to elevate Trump into a so-called Pied Piper in order to tie him to the mainstream of the Republican Party.

            “An agenda for an upcoming campaign meeting sent by [Campaign Manager] Robby Mook’s office asked, ‘How do we maximize Trump?’” Chozick writes, describing a time when the GOP primary was still crowded.

            Even as Trump surged in the polls, the Clinton camp still saw him as a danger to stronger candidates rather than such a candidate in his own right, Chozick reports, so that in August 2015, “when the main GOP debate came on, everyone pushed their pizza crust aside and stared transfixed at the TV set… [Campaign Manager] Robby [Mook] salivated when the debate came back on and Trump started to speak. ‘Shhhhh,’ Robby said, practically pressing his nose up to the TV. ‘I’ve gahtz to get me some Trump.’ Robby thought Rubio would be the nominee. Podesta was bullish on Kasich. Bill and Hillary, still stuck in the 1990s, feared the Bush surname most of all.”

            If, ask Chozick says, the agenda for a meeting says "How do we maximize Trump?" I expect they're trying to do that.  There was plenty of reporting that the campaign wanted to elevate so-called "pied piper" candidates like Trump.  Now, they may never have done that, but it strikes me that they felt, as did almost anyone watching the election (including me), that Trump couldn't close the deal.

            1. Keep in mind that the Democratic nominee received almost 3,000,000 more votes than Trump. And but for those Useful Idiots who voted for Jill Stein In Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, she would won the Electoral College vote too.

              1. R&R, you keep repeating this. Is it really your position that there was no voter suppression, that there was no Russian propaganda or voter database interference, and that only the Jill Stein voters are responsible for Clinton's defeat?

                  1. Precisely, Davie.

                    I'm old enough to remember the 1980 election when the left was disillusioned with Jimmy Carter. Many sat out the general election and gave us Ronald Reagan following by Bush, Sr. Many of my friends are dead today because of HIV/AIDS.  Elections have consequences.

                    I also remember 2000 when the left was disillusioned with Al Gore and thought that they could keep their purity by voting for Ralph Nader. Two wars and eight years later, how did that work out?

                    And in 2016, the left was once again disillusioned with "her e-mails," Goldman-Sachs, and that Nasty Woman's centrist positions. So many of them maintained their purity and voted for Jill Stein. It matter in at least 3 states. And now we get live with the consequences of that decision for two and half (or six and half) more years.

                    They may be stupid and morally reprehensible but you have to give some credit to the RWNJs and the christian conservatives. They held their noses in 2016 and voted for Trump, and a result they got their tax cuts, Gorsuch and whatever RWNJ replaces Anthony Kennedy.

                     

                    1. But you didn't answer my question- do you truly believe stein voters were more of a factor than voter suppression and Russian tageted propaganda?

                       

    1. He would be a pro-economic growth candidate. Look at the other side of the coin. Those 29 lives were sacrificed to provide jobs for thousands of other coal miners.

  8. Reply to MJ's posting above…..

    Since there was no way to post a reply and answer your questions, I answer them here:

    Yes, I do truly believe that the Stein fools were a bigger factor because, as Davie put it, it was one factor over which the electorate in this country had some degree of control.

    Do I believe that the Russians interfered?  Yes, I do.

    Do I believe that there is some degree of voter suppression? Probably also true but that also depends on how you define "voter suppression." I'm not sure that you and I would agree on a definition of voter suppression. But I suspect that even under a definition that you and I might agree on, it happens.

    But can I or anyone else quantify how many votes the Democratic ticket lost because of Russian interference? No, I cannot and neither can you.

    I can tell you that there were 31,072 useful idiots who wasted their votes on Jill Stein's ego trip in Wisconsin while HRC lost the popular vote to Trump by 22,748. Would you like the numbers in Pennsylvania and Michigan too?

    1. I would like those numbers, RandR.  Yes, the Useful Jilliots put Trump in the white house, just as they did George Bush.

      They weren't the only cause, but they were the final and indefensible factor.

       

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