Who is running for what (statewide) ?

Who is running for what (statewide) ?

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Via Celia's blog: The two latest people to announce their intention to announce that they are running for something are Ciro Poppiti and Jeff Cragg.
Poppiti, a lawyer who is the New Castle County register of wills, has designs on joining the Democratic field for lieutenant governor... Poppiti was not ready to make it official on Tuesday, but he acknowledged he could have an announcement shortly. "I feel like the baton is coming to me," Poppiti said.
Is the Dem baton invested with greater magic than the Republican watermelon of doom? I guess we'll see.
Cragg, the Republican candidate for governor in 2012, is said to be looking at insurance commissioner, although it would mean a primary. George Parish, a Republican who used to be the Sussex County clerk of the peace, is already running.
Wednesday Open Thread [8.12.15]

Wednesday Open Thread [8.12.15]

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“When you’re dealing, and that’s what I am, I’m a dealer, you don’t go in with plans. You go in with a certain flexibility. And you sort of wheel and deal.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the New York Times, on his presidential campaign not releasing any policy proposals. That's not going to fly for long among Republican base voters. Trump will have to be stridently anti-choice, anti-Obamacare, pro-war, pro-theocracy in order to win the nomination. So far, he's got the anti-black, anti-brown people and anti-woman thing down. But that's not enough. And I still want to know how he is going to make Mexico pay for the Huge Wall in such a way that they will enjoy it.
Tuesday Open Thread [8.11.15]

Tuesday Open Thread [8.11.15]

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Joan Walsh on the innate sexism of conservatives.
So many in the media are shocked at the rise of Trump and the piggishness he represents. I can’t understand why. From the dawn of the Obama administration some of us have experienced the surge of racism and misogyny personally. Within days of Obama’s inauguration, I had former House Majority Leader Dick Armey tell me on “Hardball,” after I’d criticized Rush Limbaugh, “I’m so damn glad you can never be my wife, because I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day.” A lot of folks on the left were outraged; on the right, they laughed and cheered Armey. One of those who laughed was Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, a debate moderator along with Kelly Thursday night. On conservative Mike Gallagher’s radio show, Wallace said he found feminist anger over Armey’s insult “pretty funny.”
Walsh cites other examples, such as personally being the recipient of misogynistic swipes from GOP and conservative stalwarts such as Gordon Liddy and John Kasich. My mother was a diehard Hillary supporter in 2008, while I was a diehard Obama supporter, and she said to me that Hillary's loss proved that sexism was more prevalent than racism in our society. I disagreed with him, at least to the point that it explained while more liberal Democratic voters chose Obama over Clinton. But we can now see that those who are racist against blacks, bigoted against gays, are also sexist against women. And most of those voters make up the GOP base. This reality has always been true, but the media refuse to acknowledge. And now they are being forced to by Donald Trump's unexplained resilience in the polls after his racism and sexism was exposed. Jeb Bush says that Donald Trump is a threat to the GOP Brand. That is not true. Exposing the truth about the GOP voter is a threat to the GOP Brand.
Monday Open Thread [8.10.15]

Monday Open Thread [8.10.15]

Jonathan Chait has a perceptive summation the Trump threat to the GOP's 2016 prospects:
"...The significance of his performance lies in his deadly serious threat to run a third-party campaign, siphoning off the immigrant-haters and amorphously angry blue-collar whites the actual nominee will need for himself. The intense barrage of pointed questions displayed how seriously Roger Ailes takes Trump's threat to hijack the GOP for his own end. It failed to reckon with the other threat: that the Republican plan to drive Trump from their party might instead work all too well."
Why Does The Republican Establishment Expect Trump To Apologize To Megyn Kelly?

Why Does The Republican Establishment Expect Trump To Apologize To Megyn Kelly?

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I've come to accept that the Republican establishments only chance of getting rid of Donald Trump is to get him to self implode - since not one of these professed leaders will ever take him on. The best they can do is lob a few personal attacks at him, tsk tsk his tone, and (dare I say it?) point out how un-PC he is. What they don't do is call out his policy or the substance of his comments. When Trump made his remarks about Mexican immigrants and the GOP feigned outrage he said, "The crime is raging and it’s violent. And if you talk about it, it’s racist.” Ooh, that line is straight out of the Republican playbook. In GOPland, being called a racist is a gazillion times worse than being a racist. When Trump said, “He’s (John McCain) not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” the Republican establishment thought, "Ah ha! Now we've got him!" What they ignored was the fact that Republicans are quite comfortable in not supporting all the troops. Swiftboating and booing a gay serviceman is a-okay with them. Which brings us to Trump's remarks about Megyn Kelly.