Go away, Chad.
Remember how Biden was going to appoint an anti-choice fanatic to a federal judgeship in a deal with McConnell, and we were so disappointed in his surrender to the Republicans? Good news!
The White House dropped plans Friday to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer backed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for a federal judgeship in Kentucky.
I guess all those Democratic voters saying this was a really stupid deal, and that you can’t trust McConnell had an effect, right? Or maybe someone told him that the optics on this one were really bad.
Nope, neither.
The decision to back off the nomination of Chad Meredith came amid a split between McConnell and Republican Sen. Rand Paul, his fellow Kentuckian, over the selection.
Republicans are the only ones with any choice or agency in our government. I’m impressed at how Democrats can look bad even in victory.
According to at least one report, even some Republicans are surprised at how little Democrats push back against Republicans.
The analogy here is that while the Republicans are the school shooter, the Democratic party are the police in Uvalde. Our best bet for preventing further atrocities committed by Republicans is to focus largely on completely replacing the Democratic party with people who will do what their constituents actually want. “Blue no matter who” gets us here, centrism and compromise gets us here, neoliberalism gets us here, “electibility” gets us here. It’s time to grow up and move past all that noise and start electing progressives.
You should probably save the victory lap for when Biden doesn’t let Rand Paul* pick his favorite shithead for the position, as a personal favor or gesture of friendship/congeniality.
*Rather than Mitch McConnell.
Sorry, I should’ve written “collegiality.” Not much of a difference though.
There was no deal.
There was never a deal.
Biden was going to nominate a forced-birther judge for nothing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/us/politics/biden-mcconnell-judge-abortion.html
What the hell did anybody expect? Just as I told you in advance, Biden is actually a Republican and doesn’t want any of the policies in the Democratic platform to happen, nor does he want to undo anything the Republicans have done. The party is riddled with traitors and it is long past time to vote third party insofar as voting can actually have any effects at all, and the people responsible for turning the Democratic Party into such a fraud are the Democratic Leadership Council, which in essence means: the Clintons and their cronies (including Joe Biden). If you were dumb enough to support any of them at any point — and this means all the people who swore Biden had changed his mind about abortion and that he could be moved left after the election, who are particularly idiotic and contemptable — you have no right to complain about the direction things are headed. This was as predictable as early as 1995 as the Republicans turning full-on Nazi was by 2000.
Who wants to bet the next “veto” comes from the Senate Parliamentarian? It’s about time we heard from her again.
Too bad the KY state constitution forbids dueling, or there could be a Rand P, Moscow Mitch duel for who gets to select a judge.
Hand grenades at two paces.
That article doesn’t say they backed off because of Paul vs McConnell, just that that dispute was also happening at the same time. There was tons of pressure, and rightfully so, from other Democrats and progressives, and that almost certainly was a big part of it, and likely the driving force, behind the scuttling of the deal.
The media loves to frame things to make Democrats and progressives look bad. I see this as a progressive victory — getting a bad deal scuttled. And I see this as vindication that progressive pressure can work, at least some of the time.
@iiandyiiii:
But that’s exactly what it does say:
(bolding mine)
I don’t see any ambiguity there — the “therefore” derives from Rand Paul’s refusal to cooperate with his fellow Kentuckian.
If it were, neither the article linked in the OP nor the NYT article I linked to mentioned it. I’m not saying that it’s impossible; just that the media did not report it as being a factor, and the WH itself claimed otherwise.
Also: there was no deal to be scuttled.
WH spokespeople say what they say for politics — that’s the job. Maybe it’s to make McConnell blame Paul, or some other reason (or maybe even a slim chance that it’s actually 100% the truth!).
I see this as a progressive victory. Progressive pressure yielded positive results. All that calling and writing to Congresspeople and Senators paid off. And maybe it will work next time too. I refuse to see this as yet another progressive loss, which is how the media seems to spin nearly everything, all the time. This was the correct outcome.
@ 1.Kome : “It’s time to grow up and move past all that noise and start electing progressives.”
Okay. How?
Seriously, how do you get that to happen?
Do you mean as Democratic party congressfolks in which case the Democratics have to be persuaded to elect them via internal battles and the Democratic progressive candidates then need to win?
Or do you mean as a third separate party of progressives that is NOT the Democratic party and how exactly does that happen in the current political system?
If the Democratic party splits – and is divided into separate progressive and centrist parties competing against each other who do you think wins and how? Hint :Likely neither of them.
Biden in a heroic struggle against the forces of darkness?
https://youtu.be/bsve9wB_sEA
Is it ageist? Yes, but others of the same age (Chomsky et al) are far more energetic in their resistance.
Also, Mr Herbert is going all in! Only one will walk out.
It’s pretty obvious that MSM is controlled by wealthy conservatives, and their constant narratives of weak Dems, challenges for Dems, blah, blah, blah.
Funny how all the criminals are white male members of the GOP, but sure, let’s bash Dems rather than focusing on the fact that multiple GOP senators should be getting charged and prosecuted for sedition.
Or the multiple members of SCOTUS who should be impeached.
Oh no, Biden made an informal agreement to consider a particularly awful choice for nomination. I’m not thrilled that an anti choice candidate was a possibility, but clearly that is nothing compared to the male supremacy + theocracy bullshit decisions that are being issued by this corrupted SCOTUS, which was only possibly due to the GOP.
Well, that’s what McConnell says. I trust what he says approximately 0% of the time, (Then again, by the same token, I guess I can’t trust him to honor a deal either.)
Well, seizing defeat from the jaws of victory is what the Dems do best. They knew the SCOTUS likely decision for MONTHS and literally had no plan. The Democrats need to grow a pair, ideally BEFORE they lose elections, not after. Al Gore is the poster child for this sort of thing.
@1 “Blue no matter who” is the reason the Senate is 50-50, Reps-Dems, not 90-10, Reps-Dems. Well, 50-49-f*cking Joe Manchin.
Voting third party is how we got Dolt 45 in the first place. Because the purists were too pure and high and mighty to suck it up, hold their noses and vote for Hillary. I don’t even like her and I still voted for her because for all her multitudinous faults, she wouldn’t have put the three cultists on the Supreme Court bench. The outcome of the 2016 election is why we are all now busy losing all personal autonomy and all our rights. Except the gun ones.
And while I am in 100% agreement with AOC (“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that her fellow party members need to stop fundraising off the repeal of Roe and actually do something.”) has she done anything other than tweet about it? Dems are so busy pointing fingers at each other and trying to make money off of this that they’ve completely skipped past the DO SOMETHING part. And for the record, I didn’t want Bernie or Hillary. I wanted Warren. Because she actually gets things done and fights back.
https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/cfpb
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/at-hearing-warren-blasts-federal-regulators-for-lack-of-bank-merger-oversight
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-to-sec-chair-at-hearing-regulators-need-to-step-up-to-address-cryptos-regulatory-gaps-and-ensure-an-inclusive-financial-system
https://nypost.com/2021/12/04/biden-letting-lefty-elizabeth-warren-call-the-fin-reg-shots/
Honestly, if The Post hates you, you must be doing something right.
And as far as Larry Summers is concerned, OVERRATED is probably the best word to describe him. I can’t help but wonder if we would have had as many financial meltdowns if Slick Willie had dumped the useless and misogynist Summers and kept Brooksley Born instead of the other way around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-22/warren-keeps-up-criticism-of-powell-s-stance-on-bank-regulation
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/15/warren-asks-bank-regulator-to-reject-td-deal-after-customer-abuse-report.html
This is the sort of thing I look for in elected officials. Not tweets that go nowhere and do nothing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/08/nevertheless-she-persisted-becomes-new-battle-cry-after-mcconnell-silences-elizabeth-warren/
While I have voted third party in presidential elections in the past, I did so knowing that my state was NEVER going to vote red. (And it didn’t. Al Gore carried my state by a margin of 25 points and was the projected winner by something like 6pm. on election day for my state. Republican candidates don’t even bother with my state because there is literally no way the whole state will flip red anytime soon. The last time my state voted red was for the RayGun, regrettably. And it was a squeaker, only a 2% margin. I was too young to vote in that one.)
Electability counts.
You either have to make peace with the reality of a less than ideal candidate or else you get nothing. Because the American voting system is a winner takes all system, not a parliamentary one. Until we actually get ranked voting, that’s the way it’s going to be.
@15
That is simply not true. That is a fiction created by the Clinton campaign to shift blame from her incompetence at courting centrist and moderate voters. More Sanders supporters showed up to vote for Clinton than, for example, Clinton supporters who voted for Obama in 2008. Progressives showed up to vote against Trump, but Clinton had zero fucking appeal to those who actually occupy either the center or the left-of-center.
No matter how many times you try to blame progressives for 2016, that doesn’t make it true. And there’s plenty of data on voter behavior to show what happened. Clinton lost despite progressives voting motivated by harm reduction, not because progressives didn’t engage in harm reduction.
It counts so much that Clinton, the most electable candidate, lost. Badly. Humiliatingly. And deservedly… as tragic as that was for non-white people like me.
Democrats win when they court progressives, not when they only have progressives voting for them out of fear of Republicans. That’s how Obama – who was a milquetoast right-of-center candidate – won twice by sizeable margins. He lied his ass off about his progressive values, but he courted progressives aggressively, and it paid off. Biden won by lying his ass off about how progressive he is.
@ ^ kome : You say get progressives elected which yes I’d love to see as well but,, again, HOW? I notice you’ve ignored my questions for you in #11.
No. That is simply false. She actually won the popular vote and was the choice of a majority of Americans to become POTUS by 48.6% in her favour versus Trump’s 46.1%. and she got 65,853,514 votes to Trump’s 62,984,828 votes.
Source : Wikipedia 2016 Presidential eelction page. : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election
Plus see also :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-10/us-election-was-closer-than-you-think/8012392
The problem is the Electoral College withis incredibly biased against the more populous Democratic (Free) states and heavily biased towards the Undemocratic Repug slave states. Voters in Wyoming have over three and a half times the voting power those in California have for instance. See :
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-the-electoral-college_b_12891764
Instead of attacking the Democratic party for not winning big enough in a rigged system that’s biased against them why not focus your righteous fury on the EC and make sure it is abolishe dand tehUASA goes toa one vote one value system that puts the Bible Bigots Belt in its proper perspective among other necessary reforms like having preferential voting?
It also needs pointing out that HRC would’ve won even with the EC but for the interventions of FBI’s Comey with the emails, Julian Assange’s wikileaks again hightlightingthe nothingberger that was the emails thing and, yes, the Berniebros who aided and abetted the Murdoch media decades long campaign of lies and slurs against Clinton that undermined her campaign – which, okay also wasn’t helped by some of her choices as well.
Plenty of blame to go around.. Likewise, there is plenty of credit where Obama and Biden’s wins go too given the role moderates and centrists played in helping them get elected too. Don’t ignore their contributions just because you dislike them and remember if courting progessives was what mattered then Bernie would have been the nominee for 2020 or even 2008. He wasn’t. Maybe ifhe or Warren could have been had either one decided to drop out earlier or not run to begin with and support the other instead but, moot point now. Disunity is political death.
Do you really think Trump deserved to become POTUS more than HRC? I absolutely don’t.
Anyhow, 2016 is now history so where do you go from here? What good does attacking the Democratic party now do and how does that help get progressives elected?
Gavin Newsom is taking up some of the slack from president Biden.
He pretty much destroyed De Santis. This is the kind of elected reoresentatives USA needs. I hope we are seeing a new generation taking over after the usual suspects.