WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2024
Al Sharpton's sound advice: The state of New York's 3rd congressional district is found on the North Shore of Long Island and a long way from ancient Troy.
The leading authority on the district thumbnails it as shown:
New York's 3rd congressional district
New York's 3rd congressional district is a congressional district for the United States House of Representatives in the State of New York. The seat is currently vacant, having last been held by Republican George Santos until he was expelled on December 1, 2023. A special election was held on February 13, 2024 to fill the vacancy. The election was called for Democrat Tom Suozzi by the Associated Press about an hour after the polls closed.
It was one of 18 districts that would have voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election had they existed in their current configuration while being won or held by a Republican in 2022.
NY-03 is the wealthiest congressional district in New York, and in 2022 was the fourth-wealthiest nationally. From January 2023 to December 2023, of the 14 districts covering New York City, it was also one of only two districts (along with New York's 11th) represented by a Republican.
The district includes part of the North Shore of Long Island. It expands across northern Nassau County and into far northeastern Queens...
As best we can tell, this district did exist in its current configuration when it voted for Candidate Biden in 2020.
According to that leading authority, Candidate Biden won the district by ten points over Donald J. Trump. (On today's Morning Joe, they kept saying that he won the district that year by eight points.)
Yesterday, Tom Suozzi won the district by eight points over a somewhat improbable Republican candidate—a candidate who was little known before this year's campaign. Back in the 2020 House elections, Suozzi won the district over George Santos by a more comfortable thirteen points.
In 2022, Suozzi relinquished his seat in the House in order to run for governor. In that way, a path was opened for the highly peculiar Candidate Santos to find his way into the House of Representatives.
Yesterday, Suozzi won the district again. Turnout was relatively low. Roughly 170,000 votes were cast, as compared to 270,000 votes in the 2022 House election and 370,000 votes back in 2020.
Suozzi won the district again; the analysts lustily cheered. That said, we'll stand today with Reverend Sharpton, who cautioned blue tribe viewers on today's Morning Joe, saying we shouldn't be "overjoyed" by yesterday's win.
Perhaps correctly, Joe Scarborough attributed Suozzi's win to the GOP's abandonment of the Senate border bill—an abandonment the party performed in service to Donald J. Trump.
It may well be that the demise of the border bill tipped the scales in a way which helped Suozzi emerge. That said, this is a district whose demographics and electoral history say that the Democratic candidate should have won—even perhaps that he should have won by something more than eight points.
In fairness, a win is a win—and a loss would have seemed like a blue tribe disaster. Intriguingly, Suozzi swung so hard on border issues as election day approached that Hannah Knowles was reporting this on Monday morning in the Washington Post:
Immigration heats up N.Y. special election, testing Democrats’ tougher talk
GOP candidate Mazi Pilip has made repeat appearances at a playground across the street from white tents—set up to house a thousand migrants bused in from the southern border, whom she calls a threat to public safety. Republicans have spent almost all of their TV budget for her battleground U.S. House race on immigration ads, broadcasting grainy footage of an assault on police officers and warning of an “invasion.”
Many Democrats have long denounced such dire descriptions as fearmongering, or sidestepped debates about the border. But their nominee in Tuesday’s special election, Tom Suozzi, recently said he takes no issue with Republicans’ use of the word “invasion.” And he is taking the fight to his rival on what he agrees is a catastrophe, reflecting a broader tactical shift Democrats are making in this year’s elections.
“It’s a very serious problem with people crossing our border in a very unvetted, chaotic fashion, and it needs to be addressed,” Suozzi said at a recent news conference focused on the issue. He assailed Pilip and other Republicans’ opposition to a bipartisan border deal that collapsed spectacularly in Congress...
Possibly following Sharpton's lead from early last week, Suozzi said he takes no issue with the use of the term "invasion." At this link, you can see Suozzi's specific statement quoted by an interest group which disapproves of his stance:
Democrats’ Hard Right Turn on the Border
[...]
The [recent border bill] legislation was touted by Biden as “the toughest set of reforms to secure the border ever.” Many Democrats have followed the president’s shift in tone: Former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, running for a seat in Congress in a closely contested special election in New York, told reporters this week that he supported the bill. But he went even further rhetorically, declining to criticize his GOP opponent’s description of the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as an “invasion.”
“People are concerned people are coming across the border in such a chaotic fashion. I don’t take issue with the language, the description,” Suozzi said on a call with reporters. “It’s a very serious problem of people crossing our border in a very unvetted, chaotic fashion, and it needs to be addressed.”
That's where Suozzi chose to go in his search for a win in this district. For ourselves, we don't disagree with his decision to brush away fights about the language in favor of a headlong pursuit of the merits of the actual policy matter.
Our analysts cheered Suozzi's win; we cheered right along with them. On the other hand, this week's new ABC News / Ipsos survey was even more chastening than previous surveys had been:
Overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term: POLL
An overwhelming majority of Americans think President Joe Biden is too old to serve another term, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.
According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, 86% of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president...
Sixty-two percent of Americans think Trump, who is 77, is too old to serve as president.
[...]
The new poll comes on the heels of last week's report from special counsel Robert Hur, which recommended that Biden should not face charges over his handling of classified documents while out of office but did cast doubt on his mental fitness. Vice President Kamala Harris called the report "politically motivated."
Eighty-six percent is an extremely large number. That number is being aggressively bruited on Fox. but it's generally being ignored on our blue tribe's channel.
In what way does any of this relate to anything which occurs in the western world's first great poem, The Iliad? Also, how does any of this connect to Yevtushenko's somewhat unlikely claim?
"No people are uninteresting."
No people are uninteresting? Depending on what Yevtushenko is taken to have meant, it might be thought that the Soviet-era Russian poet was facing a difficult sell.
We plan to return to such questions tomorrow, on our way to a year-long look at the armies currently in the field during our red nation's ongoing siege of the Biden White House.
According to the first great work of European literature, Troy fell, at long last, after a brutal ten-year siege. Last night, on the Fox News Channel, we watched some amazingly unimpressive figures as they continued that channel's ongoing siege of the Biden White House.
As we watched those figures conduct that siege, we saw some of the least impressive "public discussions" ever seen on the planet. That said, their favored candidate is ahead in the polls, and recent videotape of President Biden has been especially concerning.
Such tape is played all the time on Fox. Red tribe viewers see such tape on that red tribe channel.
We liberals are spared from that assignment by our many friends at MSNBC. As of last Thursday night, we blue tribe denizens were being described as that channel's "beloved viewers."
At MSNBC, friends don't let friends contemplate troubling videotape. So it goes in one part of our information war.
That said, our lives as people—our human nature—are sitting right there for all to see in the pages of The Iliad. As we denizens of our blue tribe members seek a way to win this fall, might we possibly see ourselves a bit more clearly if we travel back to that earliest poem—to that earliest portrait of that Bronze Age war?
In Robert Fagles' translation of The Iliad, Nestor, the seasoned charioteer, "always gave the best advice." Sound advice has always been needed, and it's still needed today.
An aged driver was providing that type of advice inside the hollow ships which had arrived near the towering walls of Troy. In the hands of Professor Fagles, he seems like a thoroughly recognizable contemporary person.
He always gave the best advice! Did the person called Reverend Sharpton possibly do so today? And if we lose the race in November, how will we understand our own blue tribe's substantial challenge then?
Tomorrow: With apologies for the subject matter:
May the gods who hold the halls of Olympus give you
Priam's city to plunder, then safe passage home.
Just set my daughter free, my dear one . . . Here,
accept these gifts, this ransom.
Bob Moore and Bill Post have died.
ReplyDeleteAt one time, The Dems were the party of the poor; the Reps were the party of the rich. Yet, this ultra rich district is reliably Dem. Why?
ReplyDeleteBecause the majority have a college degree or better, fuckface.
DeleteWe are still the party of the poor. We're not the ones handing out tax cuts to billionaires.
DeleteI mean, “reliably Dem?”’ It elected Peter King (Republican) 10 times, ending in 2013, and George fricking Santos. Look at its history prior to 1993 (kings first year): there’s a pretty consistent swing back and forth between R and D.
DeleteGuess who represents the poorest House district in New York and indeed in the US, David? Ritchie Torres, a Democrat.
DeleteNotice how when rich people have a politician they don't like he's immediately removed, but when we don' t like a politician we have to be told change is gradual....
DeleteThere are two significant dates that show the neoliberal turn in the Democratic party:
Delete1979 - Jimmy Carter elected with Council of Foreign Relations staffing most of his cabinet, the political class of the wealthy taking over an entire branch of government with the blue tribe flag above them.
1982 - Washington Post publishes Charles Peters "A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto" which declares an end to mass political power from grassroots, and anticipates the closed doors to movement politics in the Clinton era to one of hypermanic stock growth bubble frenzy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/09/05/a-neo-liberals-manifesto/21cf41ca-e60e-404e-9a66-124592c9f70d/
This economic philosophy says making money solves every other problem. So patronizing and tokenizing lip service on gender and race is enough for neoliberal politics (really just conservative politics wearing a suit). A few of our politicians are women and Black, not all of them let's not be ridiculous. But we'll pretend that they're leading the party so people don't wonder why the government isn't acting in their interests.
America is culturally ready to have something like a social democracy with affordable/free college but it's not politically ready to summon the will to enact it, because a politician's main job right now is to fundraise and not rock the boat too much.
The oligarchy is starting to lose some of these fights where people are most organized. People are working from home if they can demand it, they aren't letting Amazon warehouses abuse their workforce and things like this. I'm hopeful we can continue to see people go through a realization where the hard left has been learning to get into politics and give up constant rioting, to move to the center-left basically. This put the Biden office and held off Trump but it's nowhere close to a solution, it's just a holding action.
Right now, the centrists are panicking and falling into old routines of appeasing people on nationalism. The whole thing about how much to bomb Iran in response is really a nationalist ego pissing contest, same with the border, a pissing contest. We have the resources to take care of people and instead we're creating ghettos and homeless camps.
So the Democratic party didn't give up on working people and it's bringing them into the party, but it's trying to do so with old addictions to centers of power like nationalist fears. And this surprise surprise doesn't really quiet down fear at all if you're agreeing everyone needs to fear an invasion.
So really America is trying to purge itself of this vampire class sucking our potential out of us with our own fears used against us. The investor class who want to tell the parties what they're allowed to do and what legislation to pass or not pass, want us to be too distracted to solve problems. They have an interest in making problems look impossible to solve.
1977* not 1979
DeleteI stop reading when I see the word neoliberal. It is a meaningless term applied to Democrats that someone doesn't like, but who is doing the disliking? Is it someone pretending to be progressive but arguing in favor of right wing talking points? That happened a lot with the Bernie Bros, especially when talking about Hillary, who was not ever any kind of neoliberal, centrist, but was a feminist with stands on issues to the left of Obama, who worked tirelessly for the things I care about and voted in favor of things I support, such as science funding, the space program, and sane education policies (not like Arne Duncan). That's why these long essays about how neoliberals are ruining Democratic politics, I am suspicious that we are being played by someone who doesn't have actual Democratic concerns at heart.
DeleteThird-party candidates (Jill Stein, Bernie) are part of why Hillary lost. Our country would be in a far better position had she won and Trump been tossed on the trash heap of history, where he belongs. The fringe left that merged with the right (accepting money from Russia, repeating right wing memes and talking points, attacking from the supposed left but allied with Trump) in 2016, has nothing to say in this year's election. They are not on Biden's side and that makes them useless in rescuing our country from disaster and challenges that Trump would fail, just as he did covid.
Beware of these types of arguments. Just because they call rich people the vampire class doesn't mean they are on our team or would be good for our country. They may be as much trolls on those farms (see the Mueller Report for documentation) as the poor souls writing the one-liners here.
Funny that Jimmy Carter, after he left office, has done far more for our country than Bernie Sanders, who had a single accomplishment as a senator, lost multiple times as a spoiler candidate for president, isn't a Democrat when the chips are down, and is older than Biden (and always was). I admire Carter's lifetime of public service.
DeleteCarter ran as a political outsider and was not himself wealthy. How did he suddenly become the candidate of wealth and privilege? His decade was the Gordon Gecko "Greed is Good" period in our history, with day traders around every corner and cocaine-fueled schemes rampant. Carter didn't do that, he inherited it with office. Only a 12 year old doesn't know what those times were like. Blaming Democrats and calling them the party of wealth is pure propaganda that only an idiot would buy.
Here's something I learned from the pro-Palestinian trolls: "You're being ahistorical."
Carter and Reagan deregulated the finance system, while pursuing material self-interest in foreign policy. He did not govern from down home apple pie values, he offshored jobs.
Delete3:06 PM
DeleteNobody is impressed you can stop reading. I can do that too.
Pissing contests are normal human behavior.
DeleteThis seems like a good thing to read:
Deletehttps://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/dereg-timeline-2009-07.pdf
Carter's intention was not the kind of deregulation you are claiming, but an attempt to bring money market accounts under FDIC regulation so that people would not lose their deposits and similarly broaden regulatory control in an unstable market. Blaming Carter for financial meltdown is grossly unfair.
Those of you who think any president can prevent the offshoring of jobs are not realistic. Even Trump with his big promises could not keep jobs here. Presidents can and do create new jobs. That is what Biden has done an outstanding job of during his term, and again, Trump was crap at it, even before covid.
Let me quote your website back to you:
DeleteEven while
Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, was in the White House, a subtle but important shift in U.S. politics
occurred – a shift away from the core constituency of the Democratic party (labor, women, racial
minorities, and environmentalists) – and toward employer interests.
https://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/inequality-policy-2009-10.pdf
Carter was on the ground floor of recognizing foreign manufacturing boom but jacked up interest rates to trigger layoffs at home. He appointed Paul Volcker who said the American standard of living "has to decline."
Reagan is remembered as the bane of unions but Carter did his part.
I see, Carter is your scapegoat.
DeleteLet's use simple logic.
DeleteIf Jimmy Carter can't be criticized for his own political appointments then who can be?
It's not like this is old news. Paul Volcker was resurrected recently to call for 10 percent unemployment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/business/economy/powell-fed-inflation-volcker.html
ReplyDeleteI just want to sell more beautiful abstract paintings of my genius son, for a few more million dollars. Is this so wrong?
Don't hate me for it, please. I love children and I love ice-cream. I am Morby.
I know you are just trolling, but Hunter Biden's paintings are good and I can see why people buy them, aside from their value as investments. That value increases, by the way, every time some idiot troll mentions them on the internet.
DeleteYou're flattering yourself, 1:14 PM.
DeleteHow so? I didn't paint any paintings.
DeleteGenuine.
Delete12:37,
DeleteLOL. As if it wasn't photos of the painter's penis which makes you excited. Who, exactly, do you think you're fooling?
Did I mention Biden is old today? Yes, yes I did.
ReplyDeleteTo do list: mention that Biden is old.
Suozzi won, but Biden is old. More to come…
ReplyDelete“this is a district whose demographics and electoral history say that the Democratic candidate should have won”
ReplyDeletePeter King was elected 10 fricking times, as recently as 2013, and then Santos. Prior to 1993, King’s first election, it seems to have switched back and forth. So I dispute Somerby’s take.
"It was one of 18 districts that would have voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election had they existed in their current configuration while being won or held by a Republican in 2022."
ReplyDeleteThen Somerby says:
"As best we can tell, this district did exist in its current configuration when it voted for Candidate Biden in 2020. "
Then the sentence Somerby quoted must refer to one or more of the other 17 districts mentioned along with this one. There is no contradiction and the meaning is clear. The districts are mentioned because they would have voted for Joe Biden had they been configured as they now are.
"Turnout was relatively low. Roughly 170,000 votes were cast, as compared to 270,000 votes in the 2022 House election and 370,000 votes back in 2020."
ReplyDelete1. Midterms produce lower turnout than presidential election years.
2. There was a major snowstorm that decreased turnout yesterday.
3. Some commentators are saying that we shouldn't get too excited about the results because Democrats are more likely to use mail-in ballots whereas Republicans tend to vote in person, which means the snowstorm affected Republicans more than Democrats, widening the margin of victory.
4. That means Suozzi's take on immigration may have had less of an impact on voting than Somerby suggests. (Yes, others are suggesting it too, and they may be similarly mistaken.)
Republicans. Foiled again by not mail-in ballots.
DeleteOops. Typo. Republicans foiled again by mail in ballots.
DeleteRepublicans foiled again by their refusal to use mail in ballots. FTFY
Delete"The new poll comes on the heels of last week's report from special counsel Robert Hur, which recommended that Biden should not face charges over his handling of classified documents while out of office but did cast doubt on his mental fitness."
ReplyDeleteJon Stewart on The Daily Show handled this complaint about Biden's so-called memory problems, by displaying the memory problems of Trump and his children (Don Jr, Eric & Ivanka) under official questioning. It is very funny and shows how seriously (or not) we should be taking Hur's report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpBPm0b9deQ
"but it's generally being ignored on our blue tribe's channel."
ReplyDeleteWhich is our blue tribe channel again? Is it PBS or is it CNN or is it MSNBC? I forget.
CSPAN -- we get the Democratic voter line, the Republicans get the Republican line and the Independent line (because they call in on whichever line they want and lie about their political affiliations).
DeleteApparently, you can call in to that show without any ID. Hell, you need an ID just to buy a loaf of bread by CSPAN just lets people say what they want!
"According to the first great work of European literature, Troy fell, at long last, after a brutal ten-year siege. Last night, on the Fox News Channel, we watched some amazingly unimpressive figures as they continued that channel's ongoing siege of the Biden White House."
ReplyDelete1. That first great work of literature was FICTION. If Troy existed, then it was historical fiction. There is no historical basis for anything Homer wrote, especially not names of people, conversations, who coveted whose sex slave.
2. There is no foundation for Somerby's use of the Trojan War as a metaphor for this election. No one today stole anyone else's woman. There is no honor on Trump's side (is he Greek or Trojan?). Both putative presidential candidates are incumbents. The White House is not under siege (that happened to the Capitol at the end of Trump's term).
3. Trump has a challenger, Nikki Haley. Where does she fit in Homer's legend? Was there another chapter that has been lost in time?
4. War language is inappropriate and seems to encourage the violent tone on the right, one that has resulted in shootings, attacks, and thousands of threats on public servants, intelligence agents, and political figures. For example, Nikki Haley keeps being swatted at her home. That language equating politics with war thus seems very misguided of Somerby.
So this is a really stupid, sexist, and potentially harmful way of framing this year's election.
Alexander was real.
DeleteNot the one from the Iliad.
DeleteParis is real.
Delete"Such tape is played all the time on Fox. Red tribe viewers see such tape on that red tribe channel. "
ReplyDeleteTape of Trump is played all the time too, not the flattering parts but his endless fumbles. MAGAs explain them away, as Somerby did yesterday.
No one is trying to hide Biden in a closet. He is what he is, and yes, he is old. Democrats are not trying to make Biden look artificially younger (and desperate) by dying his hair or spraying chemicals on his face to simulate a tan, or using makeup. None of that fools anyone but it does make a person look ridiculous to those who are not true believers.
Somerby never says what he thinks we should do about Biden -- give him less airtime? But then no one would hear about Biden's accomplishments and rumors would start that he is ill. That is far worse than being old.
Jon Stewart says that Democrats should be emphasizing Biden's achievements and showing him leading the people he works with, but he has already done that. The press would rather talk about how old Biden is, not his trips to Ukraine and the Middle East, not his leadership with Congress. Old is all the NY Times can talk about, for example. Somerby used to note such things, when the attacks were against Gore. When they shifted to Hillary (emails 24/7 and Benghazi) and now to Biden, he doesn't notice or doesn't care. In fact, today he is arguing AGAIN for Fox, as he points out what is obvious to everyone, Biden is old.
The question is, does it matter? Is Biden impaired? Obviously not. Is Biden better than Trump? Obviously yes. What does Biden stand for? It is all there in his speeches and his campaign materials, but Somerby could discuss that. What does Trump stand for? Putin and Russia -- Somerby could discuss that, but he won't.
Hey, did you hear that people have noticed that Biden is old? Where is Somerby's media analysis today? He apparently thinks we should all watch more Fox, so we can all see how old Biden is. Why don't the Democrats tell Biden to be younger? I don't know, do you? BECAUSE IT IS NOT FUCKING POSSIBLE TO GET YOUNGER WHEN TIME RUNS IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.
Hey, I'm old too. Go figure! Even my cat got a day older today.
After a generation of telling voters that movement politics don't work, the Democratic elites are kowtowing to a hard-right movement that defines America as a victim of the masses of brown people at our gates.
ReplyDeleteEven if Trump lost, he still won.
“Kowtowing”? To the far right? That’s a new one.
Deleteplease please vote for us please we could deport some mexicans would you like that? we could bomb iraq again. what do you want white american voter? what makes you happy?
DeleteI see. Representing one’s voters is now kowtowing to the hard right.
DeleteThe whole thrust of the “Democrats lost the white working class” vote, at this blog and elsewhere, is that liberals are too damn liberal and need to reel it back in.
DeleteWe might be able to define our own Democratic agenda and talk about Democratic issues here if there weren't so damned many trolls, including head-troll Somerby.
DeleteThe media and politicians define the agenda without popular pressure from below. They're running on autopilot.
Delete@3:29 PM
DeleteWhen was it different?
It's actually more difficult to do it now, with "democratized media", hated by Bob. So, it's a bit more obvious now. But not substantially different.
There are two major strategies to organize democracy in the US. The first is to start a grassroots local pressure group or candidate. The second is to change campaign finance law to lower the prohibitive gate of advertising costs on the election to the voters.
DeletePressure groups, candidate schools and campaign finance laws are the basics for democracy, before you even talk about which party is better, you have to have those in place. The same way you need books and professors to have a university, you need organs of democracy to be a democracy. So I don't get my hands too full of the daily crap of liberal versus conservative. I want democracy to be built right now, with before we even get to that conversation.
The long-term view is necessary to judge the short term. So if we are supposed to care about each other and have a democracy, we should be doing more than token opposition to bad stuff like genocide, mass debts, and capitalist greed while we have some energy because if we don't do that then the culture war wins and we all have to do red vs blue politics forever. Does that sound like a rational society?
In the post-modern tradition they talk about "suppressed narratives" and stories about regular people are suppressed in the media. The Associated Press recently reported that America has 800,000 prison slaves. Did any TV news pick that story up? I honestly couldn't say it made a blip on anyone's radar.
Donald Trump just hired people to pretend to be union workers and he could still win. That's the power of fraud the media are willing to go along with to keep people bamboozled dumb consumers.
Have either of you ever worked for a candidate? Have you tried calling a candidate's office? Have you written a letter to your representatives at any level?
DeleteHave you ever read an analysis of the concerns of reps elected in swing districts and seen how worried they are about taking certain political positions because it might affect their reelection? That is ground up pressure, pressure from below. And they are right to worry because voter do notice what their reps do and vote accordingly,
For example, here in CO, Lauren Boebert behaved so badly that she lost her support in a district that is more Republican and Independent than Democrats (Rifle CO, a rural area of ranches and small towns). Her race was so close in 2022 that she nearly lost to a Democrat whose main virtue was being sane. Then she switched to a different district (after her divorce) that is more solidly Republican but no one can stand her there and she is likely to lose her primary. That is ALL popular pressure from below. It doesn't matter what the media or her MAGA friends in the House think or say or do, she is losing because her constituents dislike her intensely.
So tell me agan that the people don't matter. It's all rigged by corporations or media or some large controlling entity that you cannot name and doesn't have any influence but you are sure matters. Tell me how they are going to keep poor Lauren, who did everything they told her to, in her job when the voters want nothing to do with her.
If Colorado had a small-donor matching campaign the people like Boebert wouldn't just lose they would be chased away for good basically. Not recycled into someone else's problem. If Frisch's election donations were matched 5-to-1, that would be 11 million dollars to run on. That is roughly the entire net worth of Boebert.
DeleteYour standard for victory, "a sane candidate barely winning an election he overwhelmingly wins with grassroots voters" is a sign that while occasionally people do fight back, their punches are wasted on constantly pushing back with less power than their opponents.
Beyond just replacing Republicans with a sane person there's a better goal. I'm aware of the candidate school model of the the working families party of New York elected entire slates of candidates, they actually do things the government should do and aren't just political mercenaries.
But what campaign finance does it is evens out those barriers to entry in politics so we aren't doing so much politics and getting demoralized when the politicians lose their nerve and don't do things for us. There's a 200% average advantage in fundraising if you come from a wealthy family. Lauren Boebert, asked for $22,259 to spend on travel and got it. Can you find that money tomorrow? I can't.
So campaign finance reform is necessary for America to actually be a democracy, even if it has democratic impulses from time to time.
She used her travel allowance to pay $12,000 in back taxes, then reimbursed her campaign when she was found out. Rumor is Ted Cruz backed her candidacy. I don’t think campain reform is a magical solution. We still need voter vigilance and organization.
Deletecampaign finance reform
DeletePublicly-funded election campaigns.
DeleteThe guy with a billion dollars has the same one vote and the same amount of money gong to a candidate as someone without a penny of wealth.
As it should be.
I wouldn’t trust a penniless candidate not to take bribes.
DeleteSuozzi won. How this is bad news for Biden, whose age continues to be a problem. — Somerby, echoing the New York Times
ReplyDeleteAgree @2:17. Suozzi is only the latest of a string of special elections that have been won by Democrats. Whether it is a trend or not, it cannot be good for Republicans.
DeleteThese elites are happy to lose arguments as long as they can do so gracefully. Throw asylum seekers under the bus, throw Palestine under the bus, hell, Democrats have even e toyed with abortion restrictions. Everything is for sale. We're all for sale.
ReplyDeleteAmerica needs more people who don't take shit from racists and try to integrate the country across the tribal lines.
Keep trying. I’m sure you can attack Democrats from both sides.
DeleteLiberals are losing to a corrupt gameshow judge named Donald for the second time, and if I sit and watch this happen without saying my opinion, that's the only way you'll feel I'm loyal enough to be listened to.
DeleteImagine if the readers of this blog spent half the time being hall monitors of a comment section on creating organizing and educating on issues that matter.
DeleteImagine if you weren't here @3:01. No one likes you and I think I hear your mother calling you to dinner.
DeleteThe much vaunted values of democracy dying in darkness melts away at your desire to purge the unbeliever from the cult.
DeleteThe biggest threat to democracy is Donald Jessica Trump. Why don't you go visit right wing websites and convince them that their cult needs help?
DeleteThese "Biden = old" assholes either want to elect Trump or they want a different candidate than Biden on the left. Here is the problem with that. Biden has done such a good job in office that he has earned another term. There is no specific reason to fear for Biden's health right now. His functioning has been fine according to objective evidence -- his performance in office. That is why those who acknowledge that he is very old, nevertheless back him for another term.
ReplyDeleteThere are several good analyses of other candidates and whether they would present as cohesive a front against Trump. None of the alternatives can do it, no matter how enthusiastic their various supporters may be. There are not enough behind any single alternative to justify abandoning Biden, whose additional virtue has been that he can and did unite the left behind him in order to toss Trump out of office. Even Kevin Drum would rather stick with Biden.
That makes these endless polls showing that people have noticed Biden's age annoyingly useless, as is Somerby's carping today. If Trump were just another Republican, we all might take a chance on a different, younger Democrat, but Trump is too big a threat to let slide back into office.
They can hear loud and clear when we think Biden is old, but we're not allowed to be heard when we want affordable healthcare. Why is that?
DeleteWe have affordable healthcare. We want Trump out of office. Why can't YOU hear us when we say that?
DeleteJoe Biden is the best president in history. If the American people don't like him, we should get rig of this lousy people and get us a brand-new one. I am Aorby.
ReplyDeleteThe American people DO like Biden and they say they will vote for him in many surveys where they also say he is too old. That's why Somerby and Fox are not quoting the surveys that matter, about whether they would vote for Biden ahead of Trump. Democrats say yes, Republicans say no (no surprise there) but polls are equally sampling the two and not necessarily modeling the proportion of Democrats to Republicans in various places, nor the swing votes trending toward Biden and Democrats among Indpendents and undecided voters. If the polls are under-sampling women, then they are not assessing the abortion issue voters accurately.
DeleteNo one involved in polling or elections considers the polls to be a way of predicting election outcomes. They haven't been good at that for quite a while now, going back to when Hillary was considered a shoe-in and before, when Obama beat expectations.
Genuine.
DeleteWe should get rig of the Penn statute.
DeleteWe should get rid of all the statutes and build Joe Biden's equestrian statues on their places.
DeleteBiden rides bikes not horses.
DeleteBiden rides Corvettes.
DeleteReplace every Confederate statue with one of James Baldwin. This is the centrist/ moderate position.
DeleteNot James Baldwin. Barack Obama.
Delete"He always gave the best advice! Did the person called Reverend Sharpton possibly do so today? And if we lose the race in November, how will we understand our own blue tribe's substantial challenge then?"
ReplyDeleteIs Sharpton giving the best advice? Because Sharpton talks about an aggressive stance on immigration and so did Suozzi, Somerby hints that the Democrats should push that too in our "information war" against the Trojans? Greeks? Trump? Well, it might have made sense if the Greeks in Somerby's meandering thoughts are actually immigrants invading our country -- there is another ugly analogy from Somerby's Fox-addled elderly brain!
Here is where Somerby goes wrong:
1. Biden's stance on immigration and border issues has already been aggressive. He has been dealing with a major increase in border crossing attempts due to events in other places, not because he is "soft" on immigration, as Trump and Fox claim. Somerby should not buy Fox propaganda.
2. The problems in NYC are NOT due to border control failures but because Abbott in TX has been shipping legal asylum seekers to blue cities in order to create problems for blue state mayors. This is akin to Trump trying to create chaos on the border in order to embarrass Biden (with Sharpton & Somerby's help this past wee).
3. What more could Democrats do than their major compromise bill, giving Republicans everything they wanted, which was torpedoed by Trump? Biden has no control over that.
4. Biden has been discussing border issues as part of his campaign. Somerby might know that if he watched more blue cable news, since they won't be showing that on Fox.
5. Democrats may agree that the border is a problem, but that doesn't mean we want harsh enforcement of the type Trump implemented. Democrats want humane solutions, not a crackdown. And Democrats want more funding for border problems. Border solutions take a different shape for Democrats than for Republicans, even if concern is strong for both.
6. Democrats are terrified by Trump's threat of camps and deportations. It seems like a step toward totalitarian control justified by a non-issue, and it won't be confined solely to illegal aliens or undocumented immigrants but will be widened to harrassment of people with brown skin or foreign-sounding names. How do we know? That is what has happened in the past when INS overstepped its bounds. Using police to enforce immigration, in particular, is something Democratic activists have fought against in the past, due to abuses and negative consequences for communities and police.
Somerby has made no attempt to discuss any of this in an intelligent manner. He has pasted up scare stories about migrants attacking people on the street instead. There is no space between how Somerby discusses this and how Fox does, and that is not how any liberal I know would approach the topic.
Suggesting that if Biden doesn't go 24/7 focus on scary immigrants, he will lose the election, strikes me as fatuous. It is as if he is saying that if Biden doesn't do this, we'll all be sorry and Trump will be elected. Of course there will be a post mortem, no matter who wins or loses. But in bridge we call after-the-face analysis "resulting" and it is challenging to know when a result occurred because of an unforeseen or unavoidable factor (as Comey's meddling was for Hllary), or because of something that could have been done differently. In 9 months, current events will be different and people may have grown tired (or less scared) by Trump's bombast about the border. We may be voting for Biden because he negotiated peace in Gaza or because he announced a settlement in Ukraine and the border will be irrelevant. Meanwhile, adjusting our campaign tactics to match those of Trump seems like something that would NEVER be a good idea, no matter how scared Somerby is of Latinos in a city he doesn't even inhabit.
The second amendment is evil.
ReplyDeleteFirst rule of gun ownership:
DeleteIf you think you need to bring a gun out in public to protect yourself, stay the fuck home.
Now, let's make it a law.
Somerby's posts are moving closer and closer to David in Cal's when it comes to desperation and just plain trolling.
ReplyDelete