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Tuco

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Posts posted by Tuco

  1. As I see it, there's 5 ways out:
    1. McCarthy stands aside willingly
    2. McCarthy makes a deal with the Dems
    3. McCarthy makes a deal with the holdouts
    4. Plurality vote
    5. McCarthy voters get sick of this and move en masse to a backup choice (Scalise?)



    I think #1 would appear to happen before #5. In other words, I could see a bunch of Republicans telling McCarthy to stand aside “willingly” or they would pull their votes. As bad as it looks for McCarthy now, if he starts losing by 30 or 40 votes it would be colossally ugly. If he were to withdraw now, maybe he has a shot in two months after the next revolt. If he publicly loses a bigger chunk of the caucus, I don’t see that ever happening, especially since his unwillingness to stand aside would certainly be remembered.
  2. No. I said somebody should tell them a deal is to be had- to make them an offer and see where the offers lands and how.

    The best way to divide them is to make them suspicious at an individual level of being left off the boat. 
    For example - Jordan needs the McCarthy people and McCarthy needs Jordan himself. So I suggested an offer to McCarthy’s people that requires a Democrat Judiciary chair.  Why? Because:

    1) it’s a nonstarter 
    2) that’s the job Jordan wants and has been promised

    It seems like that would tend to bring Jordan to heel rather than divide.
  3. 17 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Well, there has been a continuum. For some, W was the breaking point.  For others, Palin and the naked nativisim and racism exposed in the 2000 election ...

    2000 or 2008.  For all W's faults, I don't recall him hitting the racism/nativism button more than your average Republican.  Sure, after 9/11, the Republicans led the way on anti-Muslim/anti-foreign/anti-brown.  But W won the Muslim vote in 2000.  

    I saw 2008 as a turning point for Republicans.  Brownback didn't win the nomination, but he definitely demonstrated the willingness to say that shit out loud, and he wasn't boo'ed off the stage. Then Palin.  Then McCain having to push back on a voter who thought Obama was a secret Muslim.  

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  4. Channel surfing and ran across the end of American Psycho. Christian Bale channels his inner Donald Jr 20+ years ago.



    The book mentions Trump a few times. I wouldn’t say Bateman was in any way based on Trump, but he was the embodiment of the perverse, soulless, status-driven vanity for which Trump was the 80s poster child.
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  5. 1 hour ago, YGIFS said:

    csb/ In 2018, the American Enterprise Institute (radical left think tank based in D.C.) ...

    Maybe I am missing sarcasm here, but the AEI is neocon central and closely aligned with Republicans and aggressive conservative foreign policy.  Paul Wolfowitz is currently a senior fellow there because these stupid fucks still think the Iraq war was a good idea. Lynne Cheney was cashing their checks while Dick was the most powerful vice president in history.  I know there are plenty of people who try to paint neocon as being liberal, but it's not.  It's just a Republican obfuscation to avoid blame for W's foreign policy.  It's bullshit. It's like saying the Nazis were socialists because it was in their name. 

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  6. Are there 5-6 sane GOP Reps who can prevent bullshit?  Who are they?

    In a 215/220 House you would only need 3 flips or 6 no votes.

    While I really dislike the dude, Don Bacon (NE-2, Omaha) would be a likely target. NE-2 went Biden in 2020. While Bacon voted against the Trump impeachment, he said he thought Trump’s actions were wrong, but not illegal. (Bullshit, but at least acknowledging it wasn’t a perfect call.). He said he would probably not support Trump in a primary.

    I could absolutely see him supporting an investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal. He’s a former Air Force general.
  7. While Dems should be celebrating the overall results, there is the sobering truth that they barely won many races in which the GOP put up some of the worst candidates they could find. If the less-horrible candidate has won the GOP primary, this could be a different result.
    the point being that the Dems shouldn’t take these results as approval from the US public.

    I agree that this seems like a temporary pause in a generally bleak path. Two things that make me feel better about it: 1) the culture warfare that is at the heart of the Republican brand always loses impact as time goes on. In ten years, the swing vote will not give a shit about pronouns or CRT. It becomes normalized in the culture and it loses its value as a political issue. 2) more importantly, the kids are alright. They are the motherfucking cavalry. More of them will get the right to vote. More of them will exercise that right. And they are overwhelmingly voting blue. We just need to hold the line for another cycle or two.
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  8. 16 hours ago, PhillyD said:

    Is there anything to prevent a coalition of moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats from voting for a particular candidate to be speaker?

    I was wondering the same.  I could imagine a situation where the Freedom Caucus blocks McCarthy and then ten Republicans going to Pelosi and saying "we want this moderate Republican to be speaker.  Will your caucus support him?"
    I could also see Pelosi telling them to piss off just to watch the Republicans fight. 

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  9. According to that article, Detrumpis is waiting until how Nevada and Arizona senate races shake out. We know masters lost, if Laxalt loses too and the Georgia race no longer decides control or the senate, little Ron won’t waste his time. I’ll go a step further and say if Laxalt loses, Trump will be more likely to announce his presidential run on Tuesday because everyone will think Walker is toast anyway without the GOP being able to win back senate control by capturing his seat.

    Yeah, that last paragraph was the most interesting part of the article.

    The Walker runoff sets up an interesting play for DeSantis. His most compelling argument in 2024 is that nominating Trump in 2024 is a losing proposition for the GOP, up and down the ballot. If Oz and Walker go 0-2, that helps his argument. A Trump-led GOP is a party that loses winnable elections. DeSantis and any Republican who is wrestling with Trump for control of the GOP have a vested interest in having Walker lose. If the Senate isn’t in play, that could take priority to a slimmer Dem majority.
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  10. What meaningful legislation can be passed with a slim D majority in the House and a castrated emperor Manchin?  Can we pass federal voting rights?
    Or would it be better politically long term to lose the House and let the Rs conduct shitshow investigations that put in full view for the middle how out of touch these fucks are with reality and maybe even gift us Biden impeachment hearings?

    What a Dem majority gets you is the ability to bring a vote on popular bills that Republicans oppose. Think insulin price caps. It forces them to go on the record.

    The costs are unfulfilled expectations. If the Dems have the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, much of their base expects to pass everything on the wishlist. They don’t want excuses about thin majorities, filibusters, or the Supreme Court.

    I don’t think McCarthy will get an impeachment vote with a 5 seat majority. Too many purple districts Republicans who won’t play ball on Hunter’s laptop. The question is whether he’d hold the hearings knowing there is no end game. Can you imagine the testimonies?
  11. Isn't it hard to calculate turnout for college campuses? I assume at least some students vote from their permanent home address.

    Good point. Knocking doors in Nebraska, it was always fun when the app indicated one registered Dem, age 19, and you would have to ask the parents (Republicans ) to make sure little Jimmy got the mail in ballot application.
  12. Like I trust any pollster after another garbage attempt to poll the election failed miserably 

    What is your take on polling? To me, it looks like you were able to get a pretty good read on this election by reviewing the polls, analyzing them for validity, and figuring out which analysts to trusts. While that certainly equates to not trusting all polls at face value, the polling is still at the heart of it.
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  13. That's what it started looking like to me by yesterday morning.  With Rs going 0-2 in the last runoff when they actually had a chance to win the Senate, I can't see their enthusiasm/turnout being better this time.  Although I guess there will also be some dampening affect for Ds knowing that they'll have the Senate no matter what.

    To put it differently, I think Republicans will show up to vote for Republican control of the Senate. They won’t show up to elect Walker over Warnock. A 50D/49R going into the race changes the election to one about the man rather than the party. And that’s not much of a contest.
  14. Just two days ago I posted about the power base of the republican party taking the hatchet to Trump in favor of De Santis. That post was rightfully met with a lot of skepticism given the Houdini acts Trump has performed over the last several years. 
    However if you’ve noticed, in the last two days we’ve seen Fox rip Trump, and positive support coalesce around De Santis. This was no accident. The entire plan is being carefully executed. It will be interesting to watch the Trumpers and how they respond to the attacks. The war has begun.  It needs a catchy name. 

    Nobody was questioning whether the Republican power brokers wanted to sideline Trump. The question is whether they could do so without getting hurt at the polls and whether they had the resolve to risk it. That resolve has faltered many times in the last six years. Maybe this time will be different.
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  15. The same line was said about boomers when they were hippies. Racist assholes begat racist assholes children. 

    Except that we don’t have de jure segregation, we don’t have the draft, we don’t arrest people for being gay, marijuana is legal in many states…
    The issues changes and so do the parties. It’s a weird kind of progress, but it’s still progress.
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  16. Cool thing about Washington state part 879:
    I am a professional engineer in multiple states including Nebraska and Texas. I recently got a license in Washington. Washington is the first state I’ve been licensed in that has sent a questionnaire/survey about building code changes the leg was looking to adopt. Rather than just blindly following whatever code changes are adopted nationally with additions/removals driven by lobbyists and special interest groups, they are asking for feedback from the people who use the codes on a regular basis. It’s a pretty simple thing that becomes obvious when you shift your perspective to serving the public.

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