Why? Because everything that can possibly happen, anything of any sort, will dampen the Red Wave. Why is that? Because Democrats are unorganized, weak, lack knowledge about how the electoral process works, and more self centered than ideology centered. Not all Democrats, but plenty of them.
But that’s just me talking. All I have to offer is experience in campaigns since the 1970s. What you really want to do is listen to Rachel Maddow, who has a whole staff and a big brain. She says different. I hope she is right and I am wrong. (For the record, we rarely disagree.)
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qduJjDJnQfo
Highly qualified Robert Bork was taken down with attacks on is character, even getting his video rental records. Had liberals let that thru, then Obama would have appointed his successor in 2012 when Bork died. Instead you have Kavanaugh replacing Anthony Kennedy who was named after Bork(and Ginsburg) nomination failed.
I’m confused. I thought it was “Blue Wave” versus “Toxic Red Tide.”
I was wondering that too. If Greg is refusing to accept the Red State/Blue State category I applaud. Until 2000, the networks would move the colors around from year to year.
It’s possible he has conceded Republicans will do well.
I’m pretty sure that Greg wrote “red” when he meant “blue”. The post above makes more sense that way, particularly in light of his disagreement with Rachel Maddow, who seems to think the Kavanaugh vote will fuel the expected blue wave. That also seems to be somewhat more in line with some of his previous posts, where he seems to doubt whether such a blue wave will actually materialize.
Yeah, there has been a fairly recent increase in the enthusiasm gap for dems, but the size of that gap has been closed by repubs over the course of the hearings. OTOH, dems are expected to increase that gap again driven by anger over beerboy’s confirmation. That’s the Conventional Wisdom anyway. What it all means is mysterious to me, but one thing I’m fairly certain about is that things will continue to get uglier as confidence in all three branches of government slides– perhaps accelerating.
“…as confidence in all three branches of government slides– perhaps accelerating.”
oa
“If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell. He stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar, congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more.”
“Alongside the erosion of an independent judiciary as a check on executive power, other hallmarks of illiberal democracy are the neutralization of a free press and the steady diminution of basic human rights. On these issues, often described as the guardrails of democracy against authoritarian encroachment, the Trump administration either has won or seems poised to win significant gains for illiberalism. Upon his appointment as chancellor, Hitler immediately created a new Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels, who remained one of his closest political advisers.
In Trump’s presidency, those functions have effectively been privatized in the form of Fox News and Sean Hannity. Fox faithfully trumpets the “alternative facts” of the Trump version of events, and in turn Trump frequently finds inspiration for his tweets and fantasy-filled statements from his daily monitoring of Fox commentators and his late-night phone calls with Hannity. The result is the creation of a “Trump bubble” for his base to inhabit that is unrecognizable to viewers of PBS, CNN, and MSNBC and readers of The Washington Post and The New York Times. The highly critical free media not only provide no effective check on Trump’s ability to be a serial liar without political penalty; on the contrary, they provide yet another enemy around which to mobilize the grievances and resentments of his base. A free press does not have to be repressed when it can be rendered irrelevant and even exploited for political gain.”
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/
“The Kavanaugh saga has tainted all three branches of government with Trumpist corruption: a Senate majority that will turn a blind eye to the most serious of allegations, a Justice Department that will acquiesce to sham investigations designed to exonerate political allies, and a Supreme Court tainted by the presence of a partisan hatchet man, before whom no left-leaning person or organization could possibly obtain a fair hearing. Sometimes, when democracies die, they do so in grand gestures. But often there is no single event that heralds the end of the rule of law, but a slow, imperceptible erosion of the safeguards against political abuse of state power.
“Any sense of civic obligation among Republicans is quickly fading: the idea that the opposition has rights, that judges and elected officials serve all of the American people and not simply their own party’s base, that the judiciary does not exist as a partisan fiefdom to further one side’s ideological agenda. In its place is a growing adherence to reflexive Trumpism. No objection the opposition could have is legitimate, because no opposition is legitimate. Those who support Trump are good, and those who oppose him are bad.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-guardrails-fall/572242/
The “information” provided by gulls like MikeN and Locus gives as a closeup of the rampant idiocy within the “Trump bubble.” Anything, no matter how farfetched, that supports an understanding that defies reality, is credulously swallowed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/05/christine-blasey-ford-rightwing-conspiracy-theorists-burst-your-bubble
“gravedigger of American democracy”
Hey um, this American democracy thingy, the author seems to wish to defend , when did it start in the form the author wishes to defend? To the nearest decade will do?
Oh lookee. The high court has a website.
Wonder who the beaks are?
http://www.hcourt.gov.au/justices/about-the-justices
Never heard of any of em ( excepting the ones who became GG ) and I reckon no-one else has either.
Being a final appeals beak dosnt have to be a great big song and dance. It’s just a fricken job that needs to be done competently.
Lots of jobs need to be done competently with lots riding on their competence but the workers are typically anonomous and certainly not well known names.
A fucking bus driver has a shitloads of responsibility and must be hugely competent but no one gives a shit about them getting employed and blogging about it.
Why do yanks make such a fucking song and dance about everything?
Hey, um…
If you look at it in relative terms, the point at which you want to compare and contrast historical trends is the American Civil War. You don’t know how nasty it’s getting here.
Tell you what. Wait until the toxic blob that’s blooming here gloops on down to Oz, sits on your face, and blows fascist farts down your tube holes. Then tell me if it matters or not.
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