DL Open Thread: Monday, December 6, 2021
Bloody Rethug Primary Set For Georgia:
The looming Republican primary opens a new front in the Georgia GOP’s civil war, which traces back to Trump’s loss in Georgia in November.
Those divisions played a role in the twin defeats of both of the state’s Republican senators, Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, two months later in January runoff elections.
Adding to the high stakes: The winner will face Democrat Stacey Abrams, who announced last week that she’ll challenge Kemp, to whom she narrowly lost in 2018. A campaign featuring Abrams and Perdue would place Abrams’ signature issue — voting rights — as well as Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud at center stage.
Trump recruited Perdue to run against Kemp after the governor refused to help block his state’s election results — multiple recounts showed Georgia was won by President Joe Biden.
That, of course, wasn’t the lead story in Politico. This was: “Dems Plot Escape From Biden’s Polling Woes”.
How Rethugs Fought And Won The War Against Roe v Wade:
Decades of political organizing by abortion opponents have transformed the Republican Party into a force for remaking courts, and a separate revolution in law schools has created the intellectual foundation to make it possible.
The political fruits of those efforts were on display Wednesday in the form of a clear conservative majority on the court, including three appointments by President Donald Trump. But the argument made to the justices by Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart was tailored to appeal not to politics but a legal revolution that prized the original intent of the nation’s founders.
“Evangelicals developed a strategy, stuck with it, and it paid off,” said Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition and a campaign adviser to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. “The significance of this moment for that constituency is that they bet on a long-term, historical, multi-decade transformation of the federal courts in a way that would no longer be hostile to their values.”
“We do have a majority of justices on the court right now who are explicitly committed to originalism,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, which supported Trump’s nominations to the court. “There is always the next generation of judges coming up.”
We know that many of those who pass for Democrats are too weak to fight for anything other than corporate tax breaks. They’ll pay lip service in support of Roe v Wade while taking meetings with Big Pharma. New Democrats, please.
A Dog-Bites-Man Story You Will Enjoy:
Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden.
In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who’s been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR’s methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: “It’s back down to around 5.5 times higher.”
The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.
Wilmington City Council To Consider Term Limits. Well, sort-of. And the proposal is so complicated it’s unlikely to pass. Plus, challengers have been enjoying increased success in knocking off incumbents, even in Wilmington:
Darby’s proposal would still allow someone to serve 36 years on Wilmington City Council, but they would be limited to three terms as a district representative, three terms as an at-large candidate, and three terms as Council President. Each term is four years.
“We are trying to avoid having career politicians for part-time, local positions. We are really looking for term limits to really change the intent of what politics should look like in Wilmington. This is an act of civic duty, this is not a career.”
I like Shane Darby a lot. But I’ve never supported term limits, not even in Dover. And grassroots movements are identifying, supporting, and electing new candidates more than ever before. I think this proposal is unnecessary. And DOA. Especially since:
The addition of term limits would require legislative support in Dover before it could be law.
What do you want to talk about?
Omicron is MAGA in action as it spreads through Merica killing off the covidiot rubes…how special.