berlinerbaer

Follow. The. Money. Seriously, everyone hates money in politics but people mistakenly think they have no means to stop it. Call out Manchin's ties to the Koch network. Call out Sinema's meeting with big donors where she gloated about killing $15 minimum wage. You might find it hypocritical for Biden to call out money in politics, but I think the fact that he just raised a record BILLION DOLLARS gives him the biggest megaphone in which to do it. "Look. I raised more money than everyone else. I've been raising money for 40 years and let me tell you, folks. It can be a good thing or a bad thing. I want to get bridges built. These other guys are paid to make sure that won't happen." As far as the rest of us go, boycotts and protest are both great ideas. There should be billboards in downtown Phoenix ripping Sinema. Investigate the Manchin family's multiple conflicts of interest. You find corporate donors and organize boycotts against those donors. Even if it is a small fraction who participate, it's the negative publicity that does the most damage. Some of us forget the spine that Democrats suddenly grew in early 2017 once they found out what the base thought of their initial efforts to work with Trump. It's easy to forget because it didn't last long.

What exactly does this guy have for Texas Republicans to want to vote for him over Paxton? A Trump endorsement? Maybe, but it's not like Paxton is a never Trumper. Is it not being under indictment? GOP voters clearly don't give a shit about that. This seems like when that young Kennedy challenged Markey for his Massachusetts senate seat last year.

This race will be within 5 points just like they always are in FL. Donations won't be futile.

His donors. I agree, but keep the other voting rights provisions (early voting, paper backups, and mail-in ballots). It isn't hard to find the most controversial parts of H.R./S 1. They are the ones involving money: campaign finance and donor disclosure. The number of Democratic Senators secretly opposed to these provisions is probably greater than one. Luckily, Democrats have proven that they can fight on roughly equal footing as Republicans in terms of fundraising lately. Whatever. It will never even come up for a vote without filibuster reform. Manchin is just teasing us with talk about the John Lewis VRA.

Both of them are just doing what their donors want. They're not misguided, outdated, or aloof, at least not solely. They are corrupt. This needs to be called out.

Fuck Stanford

Here is Fauci's quote, in the article you linked. He was right then. His position hasn't changed. You just misunderstood.

This. The base is itching to vote and everyone else is like whatever. As districts lean further toward one side, the percentage of that side composed of hungry partisans is probably larger than it is for the other side, leading to more lopsided victories. So far, two red districts swung 13 points more red and two blue districts swung 11 points more blue, on average. All in all, it looks to be a fairly neutral political environment. I think the last generic ballot poll I saw was D+5. Unfortunately, redistricting alone should be enough for the GOP to net a small majority in the House in 2022 if things stay mostly as they are right now. I will say that 131k isn't bad for special election turnout. That's the best of the cycle and almost double the dogshit TX-6 numbers last month.

Axios agrees

LOL I rarely neg but when I do it's for blatantly disingenuous declarations of one's "independence".

The ability to carry out independent biochemical processes should be the metric by which we classify biological entities as living or not,. Viruses are unable to perform any metabolic process, let alone replicate, in the absence of the host cell's biochemical machinery. Therefore, IMO they are not alive.

In fairness, that WAS yesterday...

Oh, and the GOP in the AZ state senate is pulling this stunt with a bare 16-14 majority. 31-29 majority in the State House. Clearly, there are no Kinzingers or Collinses in that bunch.

Yeah, this audit is too much of a shit show for it not to hurt the Arizona GOP. This is a state that is trending blue with the speed of Colorado or Virginia. These assholes can't stop what's coming. Georgia, Florida, and Texas are different stories, unfortunately. I'm afraid tactics such as these will be far more effective at allowing the GOP to maintain their grip on power in these places.

There will be substantial blowback from the left and the center, although I don't think the right will just declare mission accomplished either. There will be much at stake on both sides, legislatively speaking, at both the state and federal level. I don't think the Republicans could ever ban it nationwide, but they will be able to turn out the base by claiming the Dems will legalize it without restrictions. Some kind of grand bargain will become the next legislative unicorn, kind of like immigration reform, for many future Democratic presidents to run on.

This. Assumptions that a splintering of the Republican party will turn out well for Dems are misguided and dangerous. Most of us rightly thought it was a bad idea when Justin Amash floated his third party run for president last summer. Luckily, he eventually figured it out too. The surest way to defeat Team A is to join Team B, not to start Team C. People think this will divide the conservative vote into pro and anti-Trump. Instead, it will divide the anti-Trump votes into conservative and liberal. The Dems need to make this upcoming election about issues and not another Trump referendum. They cannot link arms with the anti-Trumper Republicans. The Dems need to paint them as people who voted to repeal the ACA, voted against Biden's Covid stimulus and (likely) infrastructure, and whose failed policies set the stage for Trump's rise to power in the first place.

I'd buy an argument that the national party didn't want to make this into a race since they knew voter enthusiasm was minimal, although I'd point out that a single tweet from Biden (fuck, where was Beto?) would have sent Sanchez to the runoff. No need to endorse anyone. Just remind people to vote. An extra 1500 blue votes would have done it. I'd rather not focus on the national party anyway, as I'm most concerned about Dem voter enthusiasm, or lack thereof. The fact is that the national party wasn't needed to win elections for Democrats during the Trump era. Add to the fact that it's more difficult for the Democratic party to manufacture enthusiasm among its supporters than it is for Republicans, and I'm not convinced things are just going to work themselves out in 2022. You can't just look at the win column. Democrats outperformed across the board in 2017, even if they came up short in flipping some deeply red districts left vacant by Trump appointees. Tom Price won GA-6 by 23 points in 2016. Ossoff came short by only 4 points a year later. Kansas, Montana, the VA elections, and of course Alabama Senate. Not all wins, but the trend was obvious. 2009 was a similar story for the Republicans. They lost close races trying to fill vacancies of Obama appointees, but those races shouldn't have been close on paper. It didn't take long for them to start winning.

Option 2 should have happened. It would have been valuable for party leadership and activists to learn, early on and unequivocally, that their base has a motivation problem. Instead, this election gets swept under the rug, excuses are made, and we don't hear anything until Virginia later this year.

Dems collectively beaten in votes by almost 2 to 1. Total turnout only 23% of November numbers, and only 31% of 2018 turnout. So those new Democratic suburban high propensity voters who were supposed to turn out failed to turn out. We have our first data point showing that one of our key assumptions of the post-Trump electoral landscape may be flawed. Either those voters who switched allegiance the last few years aren't dying to head to the polls, or they didn't switch after all. Meanwhile, this bullshit was posted on DailyKos yesterday. Idiots.

Jana Lynne Sanchez (the leading Dem) is currently in 3rd place, where she trails #2, Jake Ellzey, by 366 votes. Only 9% of Tarrant county precincts are left to report. Pretending these precincts are identical to the ones that already reported in Tarrant County, there are 4723 votes still left to count. She is pulling 15.7% of the vote there currently while Ellzey is getting 8.1%. Assuming the remainder break the same way, she'll net another 741 votes compared to 382 for Ellzey. This will put her behind Ellzey by 8 votes. She needs to hope those final precincts are in populous areas of Fort Worth or the Dems are going to be locked out of the runoff.

Tomorrow's the last day to vote in the Texas 6th special. 24 candidates in all. Pubs are beating Dems collectively almost 2 to 1 in fundraising. On each side, the frontrunner in the polls does not lead the party in fundraising.

No fences is a dead give-away for Trumpland.

If anything, it's good for filibuster reform. Biden is basically buying his vote.

Got stuck with the first Moderna this afternoon. My arm is sore but that's it so far. The lady that stuck me was a pro. It was the least painful shot I've ever gotten, which might just be because I was happy as shit to get it. Overall I was impressed with the city of Houston's operation.

I didn't know jungle primaries were a thing in Texas. R support will likely coalesce around Ms. Wright, ensuring she moves on. There is some real risk that a D gets left out if there isn't a well-known local name.