One can only live in fear if one listens to Republicans and watches their campaign ads. Republicans consistently decouple gun control from crime. Criminality is a real problem, but Willie Horton is not waiting around every corner. I have lived in Philadelphia for over 16 years and have not been...
legislatures
Since around age sixteen, I have had friends and adults in my life who have said to me more than once, ‘no, no, I don’t do politics.’ Well, to those who angrily rebuffed me—I say—you may not do politics, but politics is doing you. From local legislatures and school boards...
Again, the invasion and war crimes in Ukraine demonstrate how the GOP is habitually wrong. Whether it be something as serious as our southern neighbors trying to escape the same types of violence and death in El Salvador and Honduras—like women and children in Ukraine, or if a green M&M...
The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races are going to be decided on Tuesday, November 2. Although Republicans Glenn Youngkin and Jack Ciattarrelli are playing hide the Trump, Democrats Terry McAuliffe and Phil Murphy lead in the polls; McAuliffe narrowly and Murphy, reportedly, with a lead from six to twenty-nine...
“Slammer Time” may be on the horizon. It won’t be about the DoJ looking backward or forward, but looking inward to do something historical to maintain democracy. Because a malign GOP is going to try it again. The blueprint was there for a while before it was committed to paper...
Beetle-Juice Three Times. Thank Jeebus that cheesehead is not banned from primary and secondary schools in Wisconsin. Because nothing says “Freedom” and “Liberty” like being the language police. If you talk about “spirit murdering” and “action civics” they might even exist. Better to be “un-woke”, because you might develop an “unconscious-bias”. Darn...
There is a saying in playground basketball games, no harm, no foul. That may be fine for Sidney Deane and Billy Hoyle, but the United States’ sanctity is a different story. Saying that democracy is at stake seems to elicit two feelings, one, that Democrats are hyperbolic or Republicans are...
It is usually a minefield of critical backlash, and what about(s), when you compare the oppression of Jews to the descendants of enslaved Africans in America, but I am going to wade onto the battlefield. What I am not going to do is use the comparison of the holocaust and...
I don’t know if this statement has been diarized, my apologies, but it bears repeating often, so if anyone missed it. The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards The Bolding is mine Introduction We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have...
Once Senator Mitch McConnell staked out the politically uncompromising GOP opposition to ‘everything’ Democrats proffered, during the Obama administration, the redline was drawn. Slowly but surely, the so-called moderate Republicans like; Susan Collins, Rob Portman, and John Thune have repeatedly torn their knickers on the fence. Collins, for example, agreed...
The addition of the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act was a turning point in terms of minority representation. Redistricting is the process of drawing electoral district lines every ten years intended to bring about racially proportional representation. While its purpose was to give weight to minority votes, it...
Like ALEC writing legislation for a lazy GOP, Heritage Action is providing the same “song sheets” for state legislatures trying to suppress voting rights. Heritage Action says it wrote “8 key provisions” in Georgia voter suppression law, “19 provisions” in Texas House bill & “3 provisions” of Iowa law. Dark...
Previous guy always expects the loyalty of mob silence Omertà, even when he throws everyone under the bus, it’s part of his personality disorder. The real goal for his relative silence might be the return to social media when Facebook reconsiders their suspension. He has a Parler account but doesn’t use...
Only Republicans would encourage running over demonstrators by indemnifying and pitting RWNJs and their vehicles against peaceful crowds. Because who knew that the “unintentional” weaponizing of personal vehicles was possible when pretending you’re driving a Tesla into a crowd of demonstrators. “Five states besides Florida introduced similar bills this year, granting some...
Received this e-mail today from U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D. VA): We've all seen the headlines about Republican state legislatures passing outrageous voter suppression laws that roll back mail-in voting and even make it a crime to hand out water bottles at polling places. But while other states are attacking...
Previous guy colluded with Russia, led a Capitol insurrection, and is not rotting in a prison cell. But if it happens, could there be enough secessionist nut-logs ready and willing to bust him out. “I think this blending of the far-right militia movement with overt secessionism is something I think we’re...
By way of a baffling and contradictory threat in explaining his position, Senator Mitch McConnell, in his best southern drawl, warned “Co-cola” to not be “stupid.” Addressing a gaggle of reporters in Kentucky, McConnell said, “It’s quite stupid to jump in the middle of a highly controversial issue,” he went...
It really isn’t much of a surprise that the 2020 Trump Campaign organization used about every trick to defraud his supporters, especially the poorer and more naïve ones. The New York Times has a story about small time Trump contributors who thought they were making a single donation through their...
Of all the hundreds of voting suppression bills popping up across the country right now, one of the most nefarious is Georgia’s recently passed law that, among other things, makes it a misdemeanor to give water to voters waiting in line. Language was added to an existing law banning voter gifts that...
In the 2020 election, we witnessed Yuge ™ Republican angst over mail-in ballots. They were an invitation to fraud, they said. There’s no way to know if the votes were legal, they said. It gave an unfair advantage to minorities and poor people, they said (as though that were a...
A brief note on a diary that I wrote yesterday arguing that Democrats should embrace the fact that many Trump election lawsuits were dismissed for lack of “legal standing”: Democrats should embrace the “standing” dismissals because what the courts, vitally, are saying is that you Republican plaintiffs don’t matter. You are...
The urban-suburban-exurban voting shows the shift in the south like elsewhere for a cosmopolitan American electorate. Stacey Abrams may have saved America. x I have been kindly asked to clarify that this is my view and not my employer's — G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) January 6, 2021 Gaslighting beginning early....
Even after getting past 6 January, the new Congress until the next election will have GOP members willing to repeat the same Trumpian foolishness. As Raffensperger’s response to Trump underscored, individuals who carried out duties faithfully — including some GOP senators who will count Biden electors and state legislatures that...
The focus here this weekend has been on the seditious actions being taken by at least a dozen Republican senators in spite of Moscow Mitch’s begging them not to challenge the purely ceremonial counting the electoral college votes. But in fairness we have to acknowledge that some GOP senators have...
Trump just got some more coal in his Christmas stocking, delivered by a judge he appointed to the 7th Circuit. Trump campaign suffers another legal setback in Wisconsin case President Donald Trump’s ineffectual bid to persuade the courts to overturn his defeat at the polls last month suffered another defeat...
Politico says Trump has told his political aides to monitor statements by Republicans that oppose his efforts to hold onto the Presidency with an eye toward supporting primary challengers in 2022 and maybe beyond. High on the list would likely be the governors and other Republican state office holders in Georgia...
Aside from the usual caveats, Trump continues to act seditious. The GOP is plunging into open warfare over President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory — with President Trump taunting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and threatening primary challenges against other Republicans, House lawmakers egging on senators to contest the counting of...
Desperation and unhingery on the way to the bunker. “Shoo fly don’t bother me”. x Inside the White House, Trump is lashing out, and everyone is in the blast zone. At this point, if officials aren't in the “use DHS or the military to impound voting machines” camp, the president...
First things first: elect Warnock and Ossoff Much like urging Georgia Republicans to write in Trump on their ballots, there likely is an unintended consequence in Democrats’ failure to flip statehouse seats. The damage has been done at so many levels as noble efforts to fight gerrymandering in places like North...
Stories do have consequences, and following Trump’s American Carnage, truth will out in the larger American narrative. This James Fallows essay is worth reading, made important by the trial balloon of making Andrew Cuomo the AG nominee. For Biden personally, as president, the best thing he can do for most of...
Why bother counting the votes after Dixville Notch weighs in. Dick Nixon won both Ohio and Florida in 1960 and lost to Kennedy. But you do you Donald, it’s still 1-52 in failed legal challenges. x The President of the United States literally wants to overturn certified election results and a significant fraction of...
Out of 249 Congressional Republicans, only 27 acknowledge Biden’s win, measuring their fear and/or loyalty to Trump. Thus around 10% can answer truthfully, aside from Trump wanting their RINO names. Trump seems to work harder when he loses regardless of GOP cowardice. Their complicit silence now comes as Trump continues to mount...
Biden has enough electors. Now all Trump has to do besides trying to compel GOP governors to overturn their elections is bribe some “faithless electors”. …the hidden mechanics of electing a U.S. president have drawn new scrutiny this year as President Donald Trump continues to deny Biden’s victory and pursues...
“It has all gone too far,” Trump continues to raise money off a highly confused grift, and still remains unindicted. x Edison County must be where Trump has been keeping his secret healthcare plan.And his tax returns.And his dignity. https://t.co/sXbbKt7o0x— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) November 30, 2020 x New: Trump has...
Trump’s doing nothing about the continuing rise in Covid cases, and is spending his time at golf and continuing to sow chaos on the path to the bunker. Meanwhile the derangement spreads to Newt Gingrich. x The more data comes out on vote anomalies that clearly are not legitimate the...
Failing in Michigan, Trump seems to have moved on to Pennsylvania with the same stunt, meant largely to excite state-level resistance by RWNJs pressuring political institutions in the hope of faithless electors. Because the 12th Amendment seems one of the last ploys remaining to steal the election. x There are...
We’re not humoring Trump’s father Fred with a Potemkin executive desk to humor delusional derangement. It has always been deadly serious. Whatever his bluff, call it. Trump is leveraging some negotiated pardon that even includes the NY state charges. Flight from the country to evade prosecution could still be the only option. Trump’s...
As we watch Rudy Giuliani’s last marble circle the sanitarium shower drain where they hose down the real hard-luck patients, it’s important to note that his lurid side show is just that — a bad-faith effort to convince idiots that there’s actually something to Donald Trump’s protracted loser tantrum. But it’s...
Did Trump actually call the two Wayne County canvassers to try to reverse their reversal. Autogolpe Trump's widespread effort to delay or undermine certification includes no-take-backsies. Now Rudy saying lots of people from Camden came to Philly to vote. “It happens all the time. It's about as common as people getting...
The lawfare against the ACA now being heard in SCOTUS now resembles the attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Scorched earth and total lawfare, total landscaping. Schrödinger's ballots. Sources close to Trump described his unsupported accusations as a desperate way to save face x Memo to my...
It hasn’t been called yet, but the signs are there and Biden-Harris will speak to the nation tonight. At this writing the swing state margin of victory is less than 2016, but that should change much like the overall plurality is historically high. Trump could try to corrupt the elector...
Idiocracy declared victory at 2 am. Didn’t happen. Trump and the GOP want the courts to intervene before counting is finished. Voting is done, counting’s not finished. At this writing Wisconsin and Maine are now in the Biden column. Biden leads in Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator says on @NBCNews: “All...
Apparently, with four days left, time has run out for the 2016-style October Surprise. Only a major terror attack(s) could make a shift in what looks to be a trending Biden victory. There’s plenty of spookery in how Giuliani and Bannon developed the pre-impeachment attempts to sway the 2020 election. Lots...
In 2010, while Democrats completely focused on national races, the GOP—along with dark money from the Koch brothers and others—poured millions into the state legislative races. As a result, Democrats lost 21 legislative chambers with devastating consequences. States were turned into conservative meth labs that went after women’s rights, healthcare, education funding, and...
At WaPo, Phillip Bump throws more cold water on our optimism, but we all need to be confronted with the probabilities. Try Bump’s interactive tools to convince yourself of the quantitative realities. There will be Senate-flipping and a Biden landslide, but there still and always remain possible bad news. James Carville...