DL Open Thread Friday, May 14, 2021

Sorry for the delay, we had some issues with WordPress.

Joe Biden’s statement of support for Israel did not sit well with some progressives in Congress, so the media is celebrating their chance to dust off the “Democrats in disarray” headlines. Here’s a challenge for you: Find me an American who cares more about this than the destruction of the country by the Last Guy and his GQP minions. Good luck.

To that end, the media has downplayed this story about Trump’s abysmal polling numbers in key districts, rather significant considering the media is pretending that Trump’s popularity has not diminished since his Twitter ban. But then, that’s just the media playing along with GQP leadership, which withheld the information from their own candidates. But yeah, I’m supposed to quake in fear that they’re going to win back the government next year.

One of the things destroying democracy is the primary system used by both major parties, which has saddled us with ever-nuttier Republican office-holders who can’t find their ass with both hands. Alaska is testing a better method.

Under the reform, rather than both parties holding separate primary elections, all candidates will instead compete in a single, nonpartisan primary in which all voters can participate and select their preferred candidate. Then the top four finishers will advance to the general election, where voters will have the option to rank them. Whoever earns a majority of votes wins. (If no candidate earns a majority after first choices are counted, the race is decided by an “instant runoff”––whereby the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first have their second-place votes counted instead, and so on, until a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.)

Most people don’t want to hear about the Last Guy anymore, so all the stories confirming what we already suspected aren’t getting the play they deserve, either. Wednesday the acting defense secretary on Jan. 6, Christoper Miller, confirmed that three hours passed between insurrectionists broaching the Capitol and the deployment of National Guard troops. Extra credit question: How much time would have elapsed had the protesters been Black?

The floor’s yours.