WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2022
This too is human nature: We weren't there last night, but Dana Milbank was.
He was in Scottsdale, at the Arizona GOP's presumptive victory party. Kari Lake still might win that state's gubernatorial race, but she was trailing slightly last night, and Blake Masters seemed to be losing his Senate race.
Milbank reports what happened:
MILBANK (11/8/22): Instead, Arizona’s MAGA Republican leaders brought fury and fanaticism on election night.
They eschewed basic decency. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told the crowd, joking about the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull—just as GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake did a week earlier. The crowd laughed.
They stoked paranoia. “By attending this event you have increased your chance of an FBI raid by about 50 percent,” the emcee, Benny Johnson, said.
They hurled insults every which way. “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose.” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match.” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper.” Democrats are “lunatics.”
At a time that typically calls for magnanimity and reconciliation, they instead cried out for vengeance. When Anthony Fauci’s name was invoked, they chanted “Lock him up!” They vowed to be a “nightmare to Joe Biden” and to impeach his aides. “Sorry libs,” sneered the emcee. “Sucks to suck.”
"They hurled insults every which way"—tormented, gender-based insults. For members of our human race, gender has typically been very hard, pretty much all over the globe.
This is part of human nature too! Dylan described such angry, lost souls way back long ago:
I pity the poor immigrant
Who tramples through the mud
Who fills his mouth with laughing
But builds his town with blood
Whose visions in the final end
Must shatter like the glass
I pity the poor immigrant
When his gladness comes to pass.
We assume that Milbank's reporting is accurate.
Blue tribers shouldn't want to emulate such angry lost souls. Tomorrow, we may return to Kevin Drum's recent list.
Milbank quotes Lake herself: Finally, the star appeared, offering the fruits of her wisdom:
MILBANK: A few minutes after 10 p.m. local time, Kari Lake took the stage with a fresh stream of invective: “Corruption.” “Cheaters and crooks.” “BS and garbage.” “Incompetent people running the show in Arizona.” “Propagandists.” “Fake media.” “Incompetency.”
This too is part of human nature. How is it best approached?
ReplyDelete"They hurled insults every which way"
Hmm. Sorry, but aren't at least some of them -- "lost child", "lunatics" -- pretty much the same insults you enjoy hurling, dear?
...does it mean that you, dear Bob, have eschewed basic decency? Tsk. Oh dear. That'd be very sad indeed...
You beat me to it.
DeleteLike Bob, Cecelia is in
Deletecrybaby mode today. Such
is generally the way with
wounded bullies. Suddenly
Her hero’s own invective
becomes an issue. But since
She throws in here with a
degenerate slob who
communicates on the level
of cartoons from Hustler,
you can only marvel at her
lack of self awareness.
Anonymouse 4:10pm, I’m not in crying mode over the election. There will be other ones and in the meantime, I still live in the best country in the world.
DeleteI’m responding to the crying over what was said in the Arizona GOP after-election party.
Aside for one comment, that stuff was about as inflammatory as a junior high put-down session.
You guys are much much better at it.
Agreed. Why would anyone listen to a word a Republican says? Are they hoping this will finally be the time a Republican makes a good faith statement?
DeleteIf so, they need to give up that fantasy, yesterday.
Well, genius, you just read my post and responded.
DeleteThe next good faith statement by a Republican, will be the first.
DeleteThe cruel line about Pelosi is completely out of line .
ReplyDeleteSome of the rest of the “bon mots” were childish and bitter. None of these were out of place in this political party- party setting.
There is quite a difference from bashing Garland s masculinity, from calling a party and it’s members, racist, murderous, and fascist.
The latter comprises the official DNC talking points.
Ironically, but invariably, those same “talking points” are also shared by the “journalist” sent to cover the event.
Your remark about official DNC talking points is stupid. No one is saying that Kari Lake's garbage is official RNC talking points, so why go there? It makes you sound as childish as Lake.
DeleteThat was the point. DNC official talking points are far more gratuitously pejorative and hateful than anything Bob mentioned at the after- party.
DeleteAs to mean and puerile, we both know there were plenty of personal potshots towards Republicans at DNC state after-parties that went beyond calling someone a “little man” or a “furry”.
What a stupid thing to whine over.
When you make attributions, such as "DNC talking points", it behooves you to actually quote the aforementioned talking points. Just to make sure that you're not inventing them.
DeleteThe Republican Party aren't murderers. At least, not directly (Benghazi).
DeleteIlya, tyrants end democracy, and that our democracy is at risk depending upon who takes over the House and/or Senate is the DNC talking point.
DeleteSo are allusions to violence and preventing people of color from voting.
Racists and fascists do those things and that rhetoric is the DNC’s and we see it here every day.
That it’s hyperbolic and laughable is beside the point. It’s a hell of a lot different from calling Garland a girly man or Beto a furry.
Cecelia -- certainly democracy was in some peril on Jan 6, 2020. So, it's not completely unreasonable to point out that perpetual election deniers do put our democracy at risk.
DeleteDemocrats shouldn't be calling Republicans "murderous".
DeleteMaybe not all Republicans, but when Republicans call for muder and their followers hear that call and visit 82 year old men in the week hours to hit them with a hammer, what else are you going to call them?
DeleteRepublicans condone political violence up to and including murder. Look at the Republicans who call the 1/6 insurrectionists "political prisoners". People were killed on 1/6. Look at the Republicans who urge using Democrats for target practice, including Boebert and MTG posing with guns and the Republican adds showing Pelosi's face over a bullseye target.
Republicans earned this label.
Yes, Cecelia, well I remember when the DNC started telling candidates that they would honor elections only if they won. And the riot the DNC led on the Capital the mutilated cops, that was terrible. And the DNC when they told there losing President not to engage in the peaceful transfer of power, and when most of the Democrats went up on the hill attempting to block a Presidential election that they had lost and that had been extensively litigated.
DeleteYou are deeply full of shit,, lady
Oh, please. The RNC didn’t instruct Trump to not honor the election.
DeleteThe DNC calling Republicans a threat to democracy didn’t start with Trump.
Countering the ACA was a threat to democracy. The Tea Party protesters were a threat to democracy. The Bush Admin was a threat to democracy.
We know that no one sane listens to that. There’s footage of CNN performance artists on Tuesday bemoaning the fact that “Democracy” did not show up at all on their election polling questions about public concerns.
It’s just what the DNC does, along with calling opponents racists.
“Remember, War Room was taken off Twitter because of comments I made about, wait for it, [FBI director] Christopher Wray and Anthony Fauci that their day was coming... they took the War Room account off Twitter. Paybacks across the board on all that, a big move,” Mr Bannon said.
DeleteRemind me, again, why the GOP doesn't support the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Delete“Countering the ACA was a threat to Democracy” said nobody ever. Trump has consistently portrayed the Jan 6 rioters as non violent political prisoners, this had been challenged by almost
Deletenone of the Republican office
holders who were also going to
the hill to block Biden’s election
that day. Which was most of them.
Once again, Cecelia has a full
of shit problem.
Anonymouse 12:30pm, you have a straw man problem.
DeleteBeing a bad loser is not part of human nature. It violates sportsmanship rules in every game and contest on our planet. No culture condones it. Somerby is an ass.
ReplyDeleteAnonymouse 10:57pm, the fact that cultures have had to address (to the point of condemning) the impulse to strike out verbally or otherwise in the face of loss, means that it is not an unusual inclination within the scope of human character. Far from it. It’s universal.
DeleteThat doesn’t mean it’s a part of our nature that can’t be controlled. That is always the expectation.
It is part of our culture and human nature to think that it should be controlled and not indulged.
DeleteDylan was not describing Kari Lake and her ilk.
ReplyDeleteBob just really likes that song. I’m not
Deletesure he at all gets what Dylan was
trying to say, but fine.
Who is this strange person who kidnapped Somerby and chose to talk about Republicans spewing hate, which has been nonstop since the first days of Gingrich and Limbaugh?
ReplyDeleteWell, he used to write about it
Deleteback then.
Instead of trying to excuse Trump,
ReplyDeleteBob is at last giving some attention to
the miserable souls who made him
possible. It would nice if this became
a trend not only in his own work but
in other people’s. Alas, it might drive away
what’s left of his readership.
"“Imagine being a Republican, and realizing only now — after previously losing the House, Senate, and the presidency, after his losing the popular vote twice, two impeachments and multiple criminal offenses, topped off with a Clorox injection chaser — that you have a ‘Trump problem.'”
ReplyDelete— George Conway, on Twitter.
Dana Millbank = low hanging fruit.
ReplyDeleteIt’s like sending Jesse Watters to cover a post- election party for Democrats.
DeleteYou’re going to get all the sense of perspective of a guy walking in with a knife in his pocket.
Cecelia the crybaby attacks the
Deletemessenger.
anonymous e 12:33pm, Dana Millbank and Jesse Watters are very much the same.
DeleteThe only difference is that one of them doesn’t call himself a journalist.
Somerby was one of the idiot centrists who predicted a red wave, just because the Republicans were talking about it. Here is what Digby has to say about that, quoting Markos at Daily Kos:
ReplyDelete"Those of us who argued this wasn’t a wave year weren’t riding hopium to our decisions. We weren’t even looking much at polling. Rather, there was hard data to point to: Democratic overperformance in six House special elections after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and gangbuster voter registration numbers. There was no sign of a drop-off in Democratic performance. The nonpartisan pollsters all showed Democrats highly competitive in both the national House picture and in key Senate and governor races.
As I write this control of the House hasn’t been decided, but when the prognosticators had assumed 20-40 seat Republican pickups, it’s a victory that we still don’t know who will control the House in January … and there’s a good chance it might still be Democrats!
Still, it was one thing for Republicans to push their wave narrative and another for the media to stupidly play along with it. But too many Democrats fell for the doom and gloom and fed into it. And they didn’t just assume Republican talking points, they all knew that things would be different had Democrats just done that thing that they cared about. We saw this from both the party’s left and centrist wings, stupidly assuming they knew better than what the data showed, because “the narrative.”
https://digbysblog.net/2022/11/09/lets-talk-about-that-messaging-problem-mkay/
Somerby should be eating crow today, not quoting Bob Dylan.
I don’t know why Bob should be eating crow. He only did what a million other Democrats did, fear that the House and Senate would be lost and wonder how his party can pick up more Independents
DeleteYour hindsight is 20/20, of course.
Yeah. The fool thought baby-killing and socialism were radical Left ideas, when the reality is they are American as apple pie and baseball.
Deletehttps://babylonbee.com/news/babies-alive-because-of-dobbs-ruling-apologize-to-republicans-for-disappointing-midterms
Delete