There is this bitter dynamic where I listen to some words from old time establishment Democrats, name of James Carville, and have that instinct of going with those Progressive and DSA aligned insurgent politicos. And to hear the insurgent wing of the Democrats, represented by the Majority Report cast and Emily Vigeland and Sam Seder — and now I just have the urge to go for the Establishment picks in these fights.

And yeah, there is a “cool kid’s table” vibe on the Majority Report’s for its cultural positioning. I scratch my head as Sam Seder described the tv show Friends, belittling it in terms of a product meant to place between advertisements — while at the moment he is in Hollywood on some project, and where I do not know how the show he has a voice role on — Bob’s Burgers — fits into this fight against consumerist and corporate media programming. And they have this continued habit of to bouncing about in this way. My leading irritation, though, is a gratuitous mockery of Joseph Biden for daring to appear publicly somewhere and get cheered from the party faithful. They cast their lot, I guess — if it means a ything, Carville hates Biden as much as they do — but his commentary is less gratuitous.

My sense with the Michigan Senate race is the candidate I would have wanted just got squeezed out — and I am curious how it would play out of the were the pick Schumer tapped and marshal forward as the Establishment against El-sayed or if she was the one on the left flank (endorsed by Elizabeth Warren) going against Stevens. The total effect right now, then, is staring at the complaint that we have Obama giving a soft endorsement of Haley Stevens in allowing his appearances on advertisements. Well, it makes sense — Obama is the most popular member of the Establishment amongst the Democratic electorate, and El-Sayed — not as much as a few of the actual DSA candidates but him to some extent — is at a war with them. What is annoying with the AIPAC ad deluge then is — the messages they relay is fine. And Why not point at where she sat in the Obama administration? It is politically salable — you just have to scale past it. Maybe the deluge is irritating to Said’s backers, and maybe an innocuousness is parcel to the problem — they don’t dare mention Israel.

The limits of “Vote Blue no matter Who” gets strained for whoever wins. But some things pester me. A secret of Mamdani’s success is he is paying attention and selling himself and his administration to his right flank of his city — people don’t like being revolutionaries, and the guy is “filling the potholes”. We will see how many of the dsa candidates get there as they move into bigger politics then safe districts — and if the likes of AOC (who pre-endorsed Jeffries as Speaker!) master the rhetorical push without selling out. On that score, Said — my reluctant (highly hypothetical) pick, despite being annoyed by his backers — … tends to fall off. My big problem is the view that comes out after the primary expressed by the lot of them — if she wins, it is a demonstration of a democracy deficiency. Somehow.

A dash indifferent in the inter-mural Democratic Party sparring. James Carville is entitled to have opinions, and if at first his barking at the victories of a few dsa candidates, I then hear some casual snottiness from co-hosts of the Majority Report — reminiscing on taking a bold stand in not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and I am happy for them in escaping the matrix but see there the emblem that snatches a play for Peoria. Carville for his part has a quot e nation from Ilhan Omar of generic “white men scare me” to “if you want to run, don’t do it as a Democrat, caucusing will be fine” — oh, don’t taunt the party. Yeah, but we proceed to his longer rant and slide into the contradictions — “try winning somewhere other than Brooklyn or Seattle!”. Which. She did. And also notable is he is upset that some of those candidates won there. But, the Carville line is when they do this, then he will respect you all.

The bigger problem with Carville comes as he does the “here’s a little history lesson on the elections of the 21st century.” Fully expect the sarcastic selling on Bill Clinton, for 2000 and “the only reason Florida could stop the vote count” to that “what don’t you like about Peace and prosperity?” question on Nader and his voters — but where I don’t understand the man is in an unexplained because he figures it to be self-evident on 2016 which is that “Bernie Sanders” cost Hillary the election. (A reprise of Nader, I guess) Bernie Sanders who — did that full faith effort to win the president and earn Carville’s respect. He did not succeed, but you can’t blame the guy for trying. Given that he was not running in the general or endorsing anyone but Hillary Clinton, I don’t understand. If you want spot some less than enthusiastic attitudes on Hillary, I can do so on (Carville’s choice) Hillary Clinton with Obama in 2008 who — also kept campaigning in the primary fiercely and more personally than Sanders did with her past the point she had a chance.

A curious matter. Carville spent 2023 beating the drum, understandably, for Biden to step aside for re-election, citing that he’s old and knows what it is like to be old. Also old is Maine’s governor and party establishment pick for senate — who Carville has said he did some campaign work for — and perhaps he now feels burned in having come around for Platner. Nature abhors a vacuum, someone was going to fill the void left by being handed the unpopular governor who lacked energy in campaign. And I would like to think someone — one of those five Democrats running for governor — would have, but looking over to Michigan I guess I am not sure — the Democrat who sat in the middle between the amazingly sucky establishment pick and the DSA-speaking type, the one who received Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement as opposed to the one with Bernie Sanders’s — and probably the one I would opt for — cratered in the polls and is out. The center cannot hold. Hard to say how a two-way race where she represented the establishment pick against the wild and wacky small s socialism or the leftward pick against the establishment pick — but it does not bode much well in transplanting over to a hypothetical Maine contest with a third not nasty tattoo having not dark drunkened rap-ey past, or two-way race against him. So — Carville has half a point — but the half a point he does not have glares badly.

Is this a typo for Bill Clinton? — if the numbers are in the correct order, the number should be +1 and not -1. If not, I guess we have three in positive territory. A cross tabs and demographic break down might be interesting. The number is probably buoyed by older demographic, as you move younger Democrats fall aside or scratch their head to a “dunno”. On one hand, I cannot help but think that he — in collaboration with the Republican Congress — set off the ticking time bomb that exploded in the Economic collapse of 2007 — 2008. On the other hand, there is something I saw attributed to President George HW Bush — saying that if he can account for and keep from getting loose all nuclear material in danger of escaping at the end of the Cold War, he will be comfortable knowing he did his job as president, a matter which abounds in no way whatsoever in domestic politics where the entire job is behind the scenes. Such feeds litter the Clinton Administration and no one can get themselves to credit him for, oh, monitoring the terrorism threats all night asthe world turned the calendar to the new millennium. Or. I can’t help but think we would be in a better place with a President Gore continuing on the essentially fruitless “so — we gonna do this ‘state solution’?” where President Bush justices itaside.

The George W Bush plus 9 Figure is very annoying. Trump, if you recall, rode anti-Bush sentiment to the Republican nomination, always able to knock on those ‘forever wars” and any attempt at a “grand bargain” on immigration. And a certain amount of politicking separates Trump from the past Republican Party, not stressing any continuities. Maybe there is a renewed appreciation for usaid policies the wake of Musk / Trump policy?

I am well aware that the list of supporters of President Biden basically consist of DL Hughley and me. I am not entirely sure Hunter Biden counts as one — it is hard to read his authenticity. The current moment with the camatose McConnell and a batch of Republicans informing us about their lively in-depth conversation on the Iran situation brings out mocking references to Biden. Who, if you recall, after the debate was out campaigning after his “defeat medicare” debate, and, as you probably don’t recall because it lies in “presidential duties no one bothers with”, was announcing a complicated prisoner release swap he made with the Russian government sometime after dropping out of the race. I suppose our more immediate comparison is with Trump though — and I suppose it is a “he might have gotten there in his second term” with a number of key differences — you are stuck with Trump of appreciating that no one but Trump could be sold a bill of goods by Netanyahu in military actions with Iran, and only Trump can put war with Greenland on the table. An element of partisan binding goes on from the left part of the Democratic Party. One of the people with the Majority Report (not Sam Sedar) in discussing Graham Platner and wanting to cast a wide net of hypocrisy chimes in that “I believe Tara Reade” regarding his accusation against Biden. This comes from a person whose immediate response on the NY Times article of a month back was to point to the Republican politics of the named accuser — (and it was a story where you knew there was more in it but you can’t quite get to it — sure enough we got to it over the weekend). Political enemies of the moment in Biden (they lump in with Trump) , political friends — of the moment (Planet before this weekend) and a question of an opinion so dumb wonder if I think I don’t even want to take a listen to this show again.

A couple things to say on Obama. We have Bill Maher giving a mea culpa that “Obama was right” on his Iran Nuclear deal, that “this was what we were gonna get”, it is time to… acknowledge this … as though it is a hidden truth, shocking. Not such a bright guy, Maher? Or is he only hanging out with rightwingers these days? The other matter is, people I have never understood why I should have an opinion on… Michele Obama. Maybe I have a mixed assessment on her school lunch attempts and it’s effectiveness, though the opposition on it always seemed absurd. Otherwise I was more thinking about her when Her husband was president. We move to this year and apparently she is front and center in the mind of an mma fighter. Why?

Maybe there was a bizarro version of the dynamics of the Colorado Republican Gubernatorial Primary with the Portland mayor race of 2020. Portland coulda jumped ahead of the Socialist freight train in that year (if not any other this far) in particular, but opted to go to the unpopular “center not holding” (but apparently was) — and much mocked by right wing media — incumbent mayor because the “defund the police” candidate was outflanked by the “supported by the Chaz-sters” write-in candidate who kept on running even after the primary booted her out. So it is the 40 percent plus one getting by the 40 percent minus one because of that intransigent twenty percent purity cadidate.

But it appears as though the … man in the middle (?)… has beaten out the mainline woman establishment candidate. He got to that 40 percent plus one with her main opponent getting 40 percent minus one and the bigger kook the twenty. The debate was insane.

MR. DOW — MR. BOTTOMS ON THE TOPIC OF RELIGIOUS AND POLITICS HE SAID YOU WERE DEEPLY HONORED TO HAVE THE ENDORSEMENT OF YOUR GOOD FRIEND JOE ALT — JOEL ALTMAN WHO CALLED FOR THE EXECUTION BY HANGING OF THE GOVERNOR ATTORNEY GENERAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE WHO HE CALLS SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN JEWS. MR. OLTMANN YOU SAID WOULD HAVE MADE A GREAT GOVERNOR ENDORSED A SCALED-DOWN TO BECOME THE COLORADO REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIRMAN. DO YOU ALSO BELIEVE COLORADO’S GOVERNOR ATTORNEY GENERAL SECRETARY OF STATE SHOULD BE ARRESTED, TRIED AND HANGED IN DO YOU BELIEVE THEY ARE A SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN JEWS?

Mr. Bottoms carried on with secret information that all these Democrats are going to be indicted for… sedition… or, policy differences of you will, and affirms that he does support the death penalty.

And the one that has garnered a lot of attention.

MR. MARX YOU MADE CLAIMS THAT ARE UNLIKE ANY ONE EVER MADE BY SOMEONE RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR IN HISTORY. YOU SAID YOU’D BEEN AROUND THE WORLD ARMED TO TH TEETH RESCUING WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND YOU STOPPED HUMAN SMuGGLERS AT THE MEXICAN BORDER AND MADE THEM PAY A PRICE -THAT YOU AS A CIVILIAN CALLED A MILITARY AIRSTRIKE THAT KILLED 70 ISIS FIGHTERS YOU ARE THE FIRST AMERICAN IN GAZA DURING THE WAR WITH ISRAEL YOU DID 150 HIGH-RISK MISSIONS AND EVERYONE HAS BEEN A SUCCESS … BUT YOU TOLD ME IT’S ALL TRUE AND YOU DON’T NEED TO PROVE IT TO ANYONE. BUT YOU’RE TALKING TO VOTERS NOW. HOW SHOULD VOTERS DECIDE WHETHER YOU LEAD ONE OF THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY LIVES IN HUMAN HISTORY OR WHETHER YOU ARE LIAR AND A FRAUD?

Wow, it’s Al Gore and his “serial exaggerations” all over again. Except … Al Gore was more modest and happened to be largely true? Maybe there’s Hillary Clinton and Bosnian snipers? Except here it is just fabricated fantasy life. Mr. Marx responds by pulling a Richard Nixon, pulls in his dog his defense. Are you calling my dog a liar? Why is his dog at the debate stage anyways?

In the idea of this as “most extraordinary life in human history”. I do present the curious case of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Blue Dog Democrat of a Southern Washington district and her standard issue Reed College experience. Your mileage may vary in determining things, and it is good to put into office people of different experiences. It is curious that the NY Post has a dump of this stuff in an article to reverberate around three election cycles into her career, as none of it was ever hidden — but I suppose her initial election was an “out of nowhere” win and right now the Republicans are looking for election contests they think they could win. You would like to think a person with this cool background would do some good in Congress, but she fails my litmus tests — big backer of ICE, the “one of five Democrats” who cast a vote on this or that draconian immigration measure, and it spills off into our military. I guess she made a measure of her district and decided that the way to keep in . The president has named her a “radical far leftist” and about the only thing we can get in to support the premise is her college hobbies and the bigger scandal that she peddled substandard weed, misses the mark of the better business bureau.

Yeah, I know — let’s examine every congressional asshat’s frat initiation history and see that the fetish gear parade is tame…

God love the anti-abortion Democrats. The last Democratic governor of Louisiana, Jon Bel Edwards, and Congressman from Texas Henry Cueller. And that may just be it — have to look around in state legislators and one ballot line lower than anyone really knows to find anyone else. One of the two is not even in office anymore. What you are stuck with beyond this is someone, dunking on Republicans, claiming Joe Biden as anti-abortion but in his personal beliefso more legitimately so and authentically than the Republicans and religious conservatives — bending any real definition.

Henry Cueller sneaks into mind off of a Te Nehisi Coates interview, as his forges ahead against Kamala Harris with Palestine as his central issue and now is barking at comments from the likes of James Carville on the recent nomination pwins of DSA figures in New York City congressional districts. And here I can’t help but think of it were not for Darializa Avila Chevalier and her track record of pretty illiberal commentary and maybe toss in yesterday’s Colorado winner, Carville’s comments would be a little bit more mooted — clearly not liking this cohort but able to place then “in the big tent” and try to trumpet a bunch of other someone elses. Te Neisha’s response goes to an issue of race — a suggesting of “disenfranchisement” in the very ac of bemoaning the congressional nominees. “I don’t get it”. “That’s a lot of brown people and black people who voted for Chevalier and Lander.” Sure. And that is a lot of black people who voted for James Clyburn in South Carolina and a lot of brown people who voted for Henry Cueller in Texas, and I am pretty sure the response from Te Neisha Coates on what he thinks of those two persons would be along the lines of James Carville on these three DSA politicians. I think his conception of why they won over is big money and power, structures that need to be overcome and the definition of Democracy is when someone out of DSA politics who beats this machinery – – or something in so many words. The funky thing on Cueller– Trump pardoned him for some corruption charges and then was insulted when he remained a Democrat. Dude remains in the tent, I guess.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis exits stage right, and becomes another interesting figure. God bless him. His governing policy of commuting and shortening lots of non-violent offenders, so it is piles of low level druggies, moves into one non-violent conspiracist of January 6th fame. Tina Peters was almost certainly going to get her sentence shortened by the courts anyways, and Polis stepped in and did it himself. I kind of get it. I suppose the big reason not to is because Trump was pressuring him for the release and there is no way the perception of events isn’t just going to be viewed as step a and then step b — and that is how everyone covers it, what a sad sack Polis is as Peters runs off and gets a hero’s cause celebre welcome from the likes of Steve Bannon. But political office appears something of a rich man’s hobby for Polis and he can just walk off after his two terms in office indifferent that the whole world hates him and his status in the Democratic Party is along the lines on Jon Bel Edwards — he served over there for a couple terms and barely was moved by the headwinds every which way in national party politics.

Dumb feature of the political and media landscape is this disproportionate attention to a few elections in the New York metro area. Mamdani and his DSA machine have pulled three candidates to primary, and defacto insta-general, election victories against established Democratic incumbents. Good for them, but in a 435 member congress while it adds up to a hill of beans it does not add up to any more than that.

A little bit of a received opinion, and I haven’t looked too far at these soon-to-be congress critter, but two of them are all right, serious, set to figure in legislating and one of them sucks. So we see Bernie Sanders embracing in full and publicalky endorsing and then congratulating those two and keeping his lips sealed on that third one. But — this is Mamdani’s geo-parcel of the party and he has brought that third one up. And though of course the Republicans and John Fetterman will giddily portray them all as monstrosities — how does this go over in Peoria? — that third one will get a lion’s share of quotations tossed about, broad demands to comment on positions taken. And, I don’t know. If she proved unserious to the job and sticks to the narrow great left omni-cause of unconsidered latest trending sloganeering, she looks like the candidate most likely to go the way of Jamaal Bowman — make an ass of herself and lose in a primary to someone probably a mite to the right of the district but serious. And that will be described as a political earthquake even as everyone else carries along, a stalling of DSA politics. Which — may just show the limitations of their appeal, the factions in that organization naturally divided and factionalized further to the left, the very presence in electoral politics already a sell-out of real Socialist principles anyways.

Funny to see Talarico — and I ponder how Paxton and the Republicans make hay of his snippy commentary of the past. I watch a current favorite of theirs and ponder the meaning — Talarico chides some mega church pastor politicians and their teachings, it transmutes to Talarico hating Christianity. The footage is aired all about Republican media outlets. They cut it off mid-sentence, breathtakingly actually mid-word. Funny though, because the nuanced filler context and explainer for it is probably as politically a bummer as the out of context comment — it aligns him with those nasty secularists after all and this is the Christianity this electorate follows and how they define Christianity. Talarico’s Christian parsing here would probably would serve well in Peoria, but he is not in Peoria — we shall see if he can get over it in Texas.

“Idiocracy!” The common coinage, levelled as we look over at the spectacle of mma cage matches and the sea of shady corporate sponsors. ” We are living in Idiocracy!” And granted, the show out on brings us to Idiocracy. But otherwise, we only wish we were in Idiocracy. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho? He cares about the state of the nation and brings in the best people he can find to work on our problems, the problems inflicted on us by previous bad corrupt leadership. The guy is digging the nation out of the hole from the malicious idiots the Americans had brought to power previously. We are not living in Idiocracy — we are living through a prequel to Idiocracy.

And when we get to Idiocracy, Fox News and Newsmax (and Bari Weiss’s CNN and CBS) will be right there — marshalling half the electorate against him.

I have to refresh my memory on the controversy which met the Biden Administration at his hosting of the lgbt event — not the event itself, innocuous, but a specific incident. Someone took her shirt off, grabbed some snapshots. A lack of decorum not becoming of the White House, the Biden Administration rightly admonishes her and “won’t invite her” again. I figure it was worth it for her — she got what she wanted. But it is worthwhile to state at her comments:

Montoya defended her post on Instagram and Twitter, saying that “going topless in Washington, DC is legal and I fully support the movement in freeing the nipple.” She said critics of her toplessness affirmed that she is, in fact, a woman, as a man would not face similar pushback. She said she had “zero intention of trying to be vulgar or be profane in anyway,” adding that she covered her nipples with her hands in the video “just to play it safe.”

I am reasonably certain that the Biden White House would not want the men — trans or cis — to throw their shirt off, as much as you’d want to pound this “double standard” angle. The Trump Administration though — apparently not so much.

Somewhat annoying, Wikipedia does not have the primary percentages for South Carolina’s Republican primary. A signal of the decline in Insta-relevance of Wikipedia — any time I the past two decades it would immediately get inserted into Graham’s article and the Senate election article. I find the total elsewhere — 56.8 percent. His nearest challenger, who I would want to look into to see what his coordinates on opposition are — gets a 28.9 percent. Graham has a greater vote share than 2014 and less than 2020. Always considered a bane to the right, he probably got established to the right side in Trump in 2020 — his Kavanaugh performance an obvious inflection point. In the current year, various anti-war Republicans who took parts of Trump’s promises seriously — including Alex Jones and weirdo YouTube guy who has videos showing “on the ground, what’s really going on with antifa at ice protests in Portland” — shift the blame on Iran over to Lindsey Graham, chief neo-con. And I suppose you would have to have a grudging respect for Graham if he was indeed playing a long game — though I don’t know how you mitigate Ukraine in that scenario and mostly just laugh and mock at the half-deal walk-away reportedly in the air tonight. For his part, the commentary on his Twitter feed — happy birthday President Trump, I can’t wait to see this ufc cafe match! Do you believe him on that?

And I guess Graham would not have won if Trump had not stated an endorsed. Normally the President endorses all the incumbents of their party, so we can’t really place it. I known Cornyn lost in Texas, but Trump endorsed Paxton because his endorsement would not have pushed him to victory anyway. I do have one partial defense on Texas Republican voters — four terms in office may just well be enough justification to shift to another guy. The defense falls away, of course, on just what Young Turk they have as replacement. But you want seventy somethings plus in the Senate, you just want them not to be a super-majority. Likewise, you want the majority of them to come out of the Lawyer business and Lawyer educational complex — but you kind of want to throw an oyster farmer or two into the mix

A certain amount of happy talk on James Talarico, which gets undermined in the same breath with a “makes it a race” — fighting chance. Or, where everyone was before — Beto O’Rourke, that football guy in 2024. And unlike them who were behind in every poll you ever saw, he leads in the polls. The Republicans have an effective and tried and true strategy though: just say that he’s gay. Or, Vegan, which is the same difference. See, this way when he floats any shot of him eating meat they can claim he’s hiding it, a sign of desperation! And then float out a tweet celebrating the “first trans candidate” — can’t argue against that without alienating the trans, right?

For his part, we see the problem with the latest Republican “take down the establishment” — Paxton. Amuse yourself with the divorce proceedings by the divorce proceedings — “biblical grounds” — ha ha — I don’t really see how anyone cares, even if it’s politically convenient now-off is amusing. The problem when bringing up his record, the things that had the Texas legislator impeach him, and a record of scandal is in the litany — everyone skips right past “election denier” and a lead role in conspiracy hunting on January 6 — no more a scandal, an assumption.

Definitions for what get defined as “scandal” get fuzzy. Graham Platner of Maine — sordid past and all, but I take a kind of “meh” on the latest, even as it appears to drop one hell of a drop in female support in the polls. The circumstances of the latest are a little curious — he brought up his sexting images and infidelity to his wife, oh — oh, five minutes before he decided to run for Senate — a campaign staffer who is disenchanted with Platner dropped it into the ether just now. A semi-scandalous detail — I guess? — on these oh so hot dating app photo is he covers up his Nazi tattoo — I am not sure what that detail is supposed to suggest, even before he was aware of the genesis of the image it is by now a thing that he realises that it is not so bad-ass looking to the chicks he is trying to attract and cheat on. There is a bunch of commentary on Platner I am annoyed with — the consultant pundit Cilizza chimes in that what he’s want from a Platner is to jump in to a state legislator race and go from there. A couple problems with the assumptions baked into the proclamation — we are in a “Schumer cleared the field for an 80 year old career politico, an older version of people who have gone down to Collins in the past” — where is the more liberal and younger state legislator barn-storming the state for this primary? Also you lose years by that deed and the generation gap decreases.

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I watched the 4 episode Netflix series “Death by Lightning”, about President James Garfield.  I somewhat wonder on how an earlier depiction of things in an earlier decade would get depicted -with the scene of Charles Guiteau at Oneida, the people at the commune taking his complaints that it is all menial labor and fucking that his complaint is the women at the free love commune won’t do him — this falls in line with current take of mass shootings and violence as stemming broadly from incel entitlement.

Another thought, kind of where I am always stuck and sometimes end up with no consideration or assessment of “well written” and “badly written” because it is the mark of both  — the dialogue foreshadowing through an expression referencing Garfield’s death.  It strikes me that if a central event of a historical fiction was the famous person eating a hamburger at lunch, you would be finding allusions to that in their life and propping those up, and inventing a few for this mundane occurrence made a central point.