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December 01, 2021 07:17 AM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 49 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.”

–William Penn

Comments

49 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread

    1. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. The GOP and the religious nuts made their intentions quite clear ever since the 1980 GOP platform embraced the sanctity over the fertilized egg of the rights of the woman.

      As much as I detest what they are doing, I can’t help but admire that because of their singleness of purpose and their willingness to do ANYTHING to achieve their objective (e.g., embracing Donald Trump who brought them over the finish line), they are finally getting that for which they’ve worked.

      Thank you, Jill Stein…..

      1. Thank you Jill Stein and Ralph Nader.  If we'd had eight years of Al Gore and four of Hillary, we would be well on the way to solving the climate crisis.  And abortion would be legal, safe and rare.

        1. Al Gore as President would also have brought us much further along towards slowing human-caused climate change. And we wouldn’t have invaded the wrong country and killed a half million people, and and….

          However, the Supreme Court decision to stop recounting ballots, and various ballot shenanigans by the Florida GOP, were at least an equal factor in Gore’s loss as the Nader votes.

          1. Not even close, kw.  Without Nader, Gore would have clearly won Florida.   The court acted only after Nader threw the election into the twilight zone.   While I don’t forgive the jilliots, their blame is much less clear than the infamy of the Naderites.

            Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Nader got 97,421.
            Credit Nader if you lose Roe as well as the climate.
            By comparison, you would have needed nearly all the Jilliot votes to elect Hillary. Trumpstink came to us courtesy of the FBI and James Comey.

              1. We should have known that Sinema was a narcissistic high-maintenance diva even back then when she a Greenie.

                But I think you missed V.'s point.

                1. Did not!

                  Manchin and Sinema are killing Biden's agenda, just as effectively as third parties. More effectively, I guess, as they are pretending to be Democrats.

                  M&S sadly lend credence to the assertions of Nader and Stein, that the Democratic Party is corrupted by Corporate interests.

                  1. Chill, Park Hill, chill….

                    We knew what we were getting with Manchin. (Sinema turned out to be something of a surprise although as I said above, we should have known she was a nut case.)

                    If it would make you any happier, Manchin can resign tomorrow and replaced by a Republican. Or better yet, he should switch sides, make McConnell majority leader, and the Dems could run against the obstruction Republicans next year. 

                    As for Biden's agenda, the so-called Human Infrastructure was really a modified version of the left's agenda which Biden has – correctly, IMHO – endorsed and will sign if the left can get it across the finish line. (I say correctly because much of the left fell in line and voted for Biden last year and – to put it bluntly – he owed them this.)

                    Biden did get his cabinet confirmed (with the unfortunate exception of Neera Tanden). He got his COVID relief bill passed. He got the infrastructure bill passed with bipartisan support. And he is getting judicial appointments confirmed … thanks to S&M.

                    M&S (S&M) are what they are. They were built into the equation when the Dems were celebrating the "take over" of the Senate last January.

                     

            1. So what’s your solution? Outlaw 3rd parties? Ranked choice voting? Run more appealing Democratic candidates? ( Gore, and Hillary, too, were everything Presidential in background, experience, gravitas – everything except charisma)  More appealing policies? Improve messaging and outreach? Keep pushiing back on the coordinated voter suppression laws being debated in many states?

              Pass the Freedom to Vote and John Lewis Voting Rights Acts? That would be my solution, along with the last 5 on the list. 
               

              1. Rachel Bitecofer points out that the Republican Party deals with the electorate as it exists, not as ideal policy-analyzing or even self-serving strategists.

                I do think that Republicans benefit from the low-interest and low-info aspects of the electorate. The strategy to aggressively drive turnout of their base works very well in our present environment. They succeed based on strong Party loyalty and extremely smart messaging to specific audiences.

                1. "I do think that Republicans benefit from the low-interest and low-info aspects of the electorate"

                  You mean they prey on the stupid and the frightened which is absolutely true. And none of them have done it as well as Trump.

                   

              2. Ranked choice voting?

                DING, DING, DING

                Yes, ranked choice voting. But until then, people should not be stupid and should recognized that we have a duo-cracy and sometimes we need to vote strategically.

                I myself being a good card-carrying DLC-type had made peace in my mind with the prospect of possibly having to hold my nose and vote for Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders in the winter of 2020.

              3. Messaging is everything. VA went red last month because the Dems, with their continuing focus on Trump, missed the electorate’s shift towards wanting parents to have more say in school curricula. 

                Like it or not, stuff like socialism, defund the police with the resultant crime wave (the far right wing message, not mine), critical race theory, has not generated good answers from you Dems.

                Someone posted this week that many economists have downplayed inflation. But the far right wing messaging is Biden is hurting the economy. Earlier this week, the Wash Post had an article about how people in one city in California are dealing with higher prices hitting their pocketbooks. I doubt many will care what economists say, even if the economists are right.

                A year ago, the Mitsch-Busch campaign in the 3rd District followed all the rules about gatherings, maskings, social distancing, no door-to-door canvassing, etc. Boebert said “screw the rules.” Guess who got elected?

                 

                1. You must have missed the memo…..

                  According to AOC, McAuliffe and the others lost because they didn't invite her (and the rest of the Squad) to campaign in Virginia.

                2. Fixed it for you:

                  missed the electorate’s shift towards wanting REPUBLICAN parents to have more say in school curricula. 

                  Weird, right? Are you saying that's what the electorate wanted?

                3. This is not new, CHB. “Conservatives” have been wanting more say in curricula since public education began in America. 
                  They have been  and are “listened to” x at board meetings, and PTA meetings. They’ve had their say, and they’ve mostly had their way. I grew up in the 60s, hearing that the brave (white) pioneers bravely overcame the savage Indian menace in their inevitable Manifest Destiny westward push.

                  I was taught that there were these minor glitches in American democracy like slavery or denying the vote to women, but these were “in the past”. America was the gloriously exceptional country, and we were fighting in Vietnam or on the streets of Selma ( if it was mentioned at all) because the Red Communists wanted to take all that exceptional freedom away from us.

                  Then, the pendulum swung the other way. Fueled by the Civil Rights movement, the antiwar movement, the feminist movement, and all the other forces for social change, American education came to see its mission was to educate and empower young minds to think for themselves. “Believe as you please, but be able to explain and show evidence” became the force informing school standards. That’s where the law stands now. Parents can usually “opt out” their kids from controversial lessons, or they can “opt out” into a whole new school- but they’ll pay a price, literally or figuratively, in convenience, in qualified instructors, in other ways.

                  These modern John Birchers with their threats and their bought candidates, might succeed in pushing the pendulum back to a white supremacist version of history, segregated schools where COVID picks off some teachers and students every year because “freedom” to go maskless is valued above actual lives. 
                  But the pendulum always swings back. 

                   

                   

      2. Did you mean to write , “The 1980 GOP platform embraced the sanctity of the fertilized egg of  over the rights of the woman”? 
         

        Other than that, agree with your premise, and it’s good to see that you are still housing Jill Stein in your head rent-free, when everyone else has long forgotten her.

      3. Yes, the religious zealots have had their "singleness of purpose." Once Roe and Casey are gone, one way or another, the next battle will be national "personhood." Meaning the unsuccessful effort by Missouri state senators back in June to not fund IUDs, or the morning after pill, in Missouri Medicaid, is just the beginning.

        Efforts in other states are already underway to ban mail order abortion pills. I haven't seen yet how the zealots would avoid violating the privacy of the US mails. But if there's a way, they'll find it.

    2. Given the success Republicans have had stacking the Court system, the short game requires working in the legislative arena. That means more effective electioneering.

      The Democratic Party has been particularly bad at playing the game.

      Although to be fair, we don’t have a wealthy left-wing-o-sphere on our side like Fox News. There are just so many billionaires funding RW think tanks and fascists; here’s a shoutout to the Claremont institute, famous for Eastman, but also for creating a network of “patriotic sherrifs.”

      1. "The short game requires working in the legislative arena"

        Yeah, that's going to work out well, too. Outside of Illinois, Maryland, and New York, the Blue States have decided that we want fair districts when it comes to redistricting.

        The Red States want and are drawing red districts.

  1. December 1, 1955: An African-American seamstress named Rosa Parks refuses to give her seat up to a white man. As a result, she’ arrested for violation of Montgomery, Alabama’s segregation laws. Her arrest would lead to a bus boycott in that city and Rosa Parks would become an icon of the American Civil Rights Movement.

  2. If you don’t subscribe to Morning Shots  by Charlie Sykes you missed a good one today! Here’s the takeaway:

    wrote about this on Monday, and discussed on our “secret podcast” yesterday with Mona Charen. Like so many other GOP “leaders” McCarthy is under the impression that he can emasculate his way to power. 

    He imagines that he can surrender his testicles, put them in a lock box, and somehow re-attach them when he comes to power.

    Who’s going to tell him?

  3. Chris Cuomo shitcanned from CCN

    Word on the street is the unemployed Cuomo brothers are planing on opening a by the slice pizza shop in Hoboken.

    Stay tuned for further details.

     

    1. As of early this morning, Chris was "suspended" to allow CNN to investigate just how much help he was giving his brother.  Not yet fired.

      Realizing the lack of oversight isn't going to go away no matter what happens to Cuomo, I'm guessing CNN will "re-assign" him to something with no potential for compromised coverage.  Does CNN have a bureau in Kyiv or Kiev, Ukraine?

       

  4. From Talking Points Memo:

    COVID Miscellany #5

    Josh Marshall

    Not a terribly surprising stat but still noteworthy. Yale New Haven Hospital reports that 90% of their hospitalized COVID patients in recent months have been unvaccinated. What makes this so striking is that Connecticut is a super-highly vaccinated state. Among Connecticut residents over the age of 12, 83% are fully vaccinated and 94% have had at least one shot. In other words, there aren’t that many unvaccinated people in Connecticut to make up the 90%.

    1. The next few weeks should see a dramatic increase in the demise of RWNJs whose political and cultural proclivities put them at substantial risk.

      They WILL NOT get vaccinated…

      Many will die.

      1. Well, the numbers are not precise due to various lag times, but in Colorado these days the statistics on a "normalized" population between vaccinated (70.7% of population w/ at least 1 dose, 63.4% fully vaccinated) and un-vaccinated:

         * week's Running average of new daily cases:  vac 195/1000000, unv 702/100000 (3.6 x)

         * week's Running average of new hospitalizations:  vac 5/100000, unv 52/100000 (10.3 x)

         * Month's total of deaths among cases in  October: vac 42/million, unv 443/million (10.7 x)

         

        So very roughly, among the un-vaccinated getting a confirmed case of COVID, 7.4% get hospitalized, 1.6% of the cases die.  Overall count of deaths in October …824.  Works out to about 80 vaccinated, 744 not vaccinated in that month.

  5. Here’s bait for Negev: 

    Another school shooting.( in Michigan this time).  Dad bought the 9mm Sig Sauer gun Friday; Tuesday, the kid brought the gun to school and shot at his fellow students, killing 4. 

    What kind of reasonable gun laws would have prevented this tragedy? I can think of a few: mandating smart locks and locked safes to prevent unauthorized use; charging dad with aiding and abetting; requiring insurance of guns like cars.

    1. Was there any doubt about what he was saying? 

      In transcripts, was his statement reported as pronounced?

      Biden's pronunciation has virtually NOTHING to do with a Democratic messaging problem.

      1. “Biden’s pronunciation has virtually NOTHING to do with a Democratic messaging problem”

        Correct. Here’s a guy who talked openly about his stuttering problem as a kid, movingly spoke with a kid in New Hampshire who had a similar problem and got over 50% of the popular vote last year.

        1. It's not a stuttering problem when he mispronounces the omicron variant repeatedly over several days. (Is his staff too afraid to point out his mistake?)  This simply adds to the general public's view that he, and the Dems, are ineffective.  Maybe you've noticed the free fall of his popularity.  (Hint: it ain't near 50%.)  Inability to communicate effectively (and I'm not talking about his stuttering) won't help us win in 2022 or 2024.

  6. Good News — Chariots a’comin’!

    Stacey Abrams is running for governor in Georgia!

    Why wife and I just sent a love note via Act Blue.

    You Go, Girl!

    yesyesyesyes

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