DL Open Thread: Saturday, September 3, 2022
Happy Arden Fair Day!
Sen. McConnell Is–Mitcher Lonely:
Not even Peter Thiel will return his calls:
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s grand vision for a Republican sweep in the midterm elections is not going according to plan. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that billionaire Peter Thiel, who funded the insurgent primary campaigns of J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, rejected McConnell’s request for a cash injection in the Arizona general. The news came just days after the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to McConnell, abandoned $8 million in ad buys it had reserved in Arizona.
Shortly after Vance won his primary in early May, McConnell reportedly called Thiel to inform him of the SLF’s funding problems and to ask for additional support. But according to the Post, that request was rebuffed, even though Thiel has long-standing personal relationships with both candidates and previously poured $15 million each into the super PACs backing their respective primary campaigns.
During more recent conversations about the Arizona race, McConnell alleged that the Ohio race has proven to be more costly than the SLF had planned––the super PAC has already poured more than $26.7 million into the race, according to data from AdImpact cited by CBS––and needed Thiel to “come in, in a big way, in Arizona,” proposing that Thiel match the SLF’s spending, according to the Post. McConnell and the SLF also reportedly gave Thiel the option to personally take over the canceled ad reservations that it had lined up for Masters. Both options were apparently rejected by Thiel, who expressed concern that such arrangements might be weaponized as Democratic talking points. Instead, Thiel reportedly plans on supporting Masters’s beleaguered campaign by hosting additional fundraisers.
The latest FiveThirtyEight polling data puts Masters almost eight points behind Democratic incumbent senator Mark Kelly, while the race between Vance and Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Party’s Senate nominee in Ohio, is in a dead heat.
The Empty Classified Folders. We do know that the records were, at best, haphazardly kept, if they were kept at all:
The new detail is tantalizing for a host of reasons, including that the separation of classified documents from their folders is something the National Archives has previously described as being “of most significant concern.”
We know very little about what this means right now, though, and experts say it doesn’t necessarily mean the documents are missing, as some Trump critics theorized. What it does seem to reinforce is how sloppily classified information was handled.
MAGAts Can Dish It Out. Can’t Take It:
“Biden risks backlash” from people who routinely call him a communist groomer pedophile hitler is, to be sure, an unsurprising development–Rick Wilson.
Biden’s Masterstroke?:
And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.
They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.
They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.
Biden violated the rules of the extremists’ game that say Republicans get to use Democrats as punching bags and Democrats must never punch back. Biden did.
About fucking time. Namby-pamby Democrats–GTFO.
RIP: Barbara Ehrenreich. She fought against injustice her entire life:
The news that Ehrenreich had died on 1 September was released by her son, Ben Ehrenreich, on Friday. He accompanied the announcement with a comment redolent of his mother’s spirit: “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”
Ehrenreich battled over a half a century as a writer committed to resisting injustice and giving a voice to those who were typically unheard.
In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, her 2001 bestseller, she wrote an immersive experience of living as a low-waged worker in Key West, Florida.
The book helped spread awareness of an economy in which it was necessary to work two or three jobs to survive, and acted as a catalyst of the minimum wage movement.
Later, she used her name and energy to try to give low-income and other disadvantaged groups a direct voice to tell their own stories.
She founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project which supports independent journalists to write about their lives including in poor rural areas of the US.
She, my friends, was a Great American.
Carney’s Cronies Peddle Their Medicare Myths. I’m sorry. As soon as I see that Claire DeMatteis is an author on a piece, I simply can’t read it with an uncritical mind. She and Carney deserve each other.
What do you want to talk about?
And yet the NYT and CNN report on the backlash breathlessly as if the 20-30% of voters who are violent extremists MAGA represent “real America”.
It’s my 48th birthday today so I hope you’ll indulge me. R.I.P. to a real one… genuine people’s champion.
“When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you. She has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
As stated I loved Biden’s speech, as noted by others it’s about damn time. Like many others I didn’t know he had it in him. As for the Magats and “backlash” they hate anyone whose not white, Christian and ever further right already. As the great philosopher once said: F*ck them too!
Biden’s MAGA speech is an example of how the bully pulpit should be used. The speech freed Dem mid-term candidates to call out their opponents as MAGA extremists. It is diabolically clever in that Republicans have to either own the MAGA label or deny it.
I read Friday’s News Journal front page story on the Primaries with interest. Sad to say the writer made no mention whatsoever Sussex County. She ignored the 6th Senate Democratic Primary as well as the Republican 4th RD, County Council and Row Office races. Hello News Journal–Sussex Countians now have even less to read in your newspaper.
On the other hand, the local paper of record- The Cape Gazette published a two-page rundown of all the county and statewide primary races. Every candidate responded to the paper’s request for information and most gave details. Well, not EVERY candidate. One candidate failed to respond, which the paper noted. Democratic Auditor candidate Lydia York. How disappointing. I guess she has a poor campaign organization or mayne doesn’t care about Sussex
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Y’know, I can spot a troll when I see ’em.
Wrote the first one off to misplaced priorities.
If anything, Lydia York has spent TOO much time in Sussex.
As your fellow Sussex Countian Mitch Crane SHOULD have (but probably hasn’t) learned, is you can’t win a Democratic Primary in Sussex County.
As far as I’m concerned, Lydia should spend all her time in NCC and Wilmington thru the primary rather than trying to flip the few Suxco undecideds to her column.
So, someone who writes something you do not agree with is suddenly a troll?
I have been opining on this site for a long time.
As to the Auditor race, I believe Lydia York would make a fine auditor. I am just concerned by her invisibility. If the campaign’s decision is to write off the 7,000 plus Democratic Primary voters in Sussex, that is their decision. Not responding to a newspaper planning on an election edition is dumb politics.
As to Crane’s run for Insurance Commissioner, this year will see a much lower turnout in Wilmington. The heavily contested mayoral race in 2012 resulted in an extremely high turnout in the city. There are no contested Primaries in Wilmington this year. If this had been the case in 2012, the Wilmington turnout would be closer to 8,000 voters and not the 14,000 who voted. Crane would have won.
In any event, most Sussex County Democrats were looking for an alternative to the incumbent. Lydia York looked like a good choice. Doe she NOT want votes outside on New Castle County?
Uh, yes there ARE contested primaries in Wilmington this year. Darby vs. Nnamdi, Taylor vs. Bolden.
And all over NCC in certain RD’s.
You know that York has spent a lot of time in Sussex. And Mitch spent almost NO time in NCC and Wilmington, and it cost his lazy lyin’ ass.
Pretty much 5/7 of primary voters will come from NCC and Wilmington. York should be there. Because that’s where the votes are.
‘So-and-so lost the Democratic Primary b/c they didn’t spend enough time in Suxco.’ Said nobody ever.
Was she in Arden on Saturday? Who else was?
Thanks for being a commenter since 2018.
Seconded.
There are.two primaries in Wilmington, 1st rd, the highest turnout district in the state and an active 2nd rd primary
I assume that, given enough street money, McGuiness will do just fine there.
Bullseye!
Not for nothing… on next week’s PATRONS ONLY Primary Pregame Podcast… we discuss SD 6.
John Silvo Berlusconi Bucchioni
v.
Dr Russclifford Huxtable
Others make more substantial observations, rest assured. Consider a patronage. Drops Friday 08:00.