{"id":17653,"date":"2018-08-31T16:27:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T23:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=17653"},"modified":"2018-08-31T16:27:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T23:27:50","slug":"the-coming-clunker-of-a-gubernatorial-race-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2018\/08\/31\/the-coming-clunker-of-a-gubernatorial-race-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"the coming clunker of a gubernatorial race in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listening to the left wing celebration on Democracy No<\/a>w on the victory of Andrew Gillum in the Florida Democratic gubernatorial primary wearies me.\u00c2\u00a0 First of all, we start with the presumption of guilt — unexplained — on the part of the Republican nominee with the following comment…<\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s build off the success we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had on Governor Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.<\/em><\/p>\n

The show kept chopping the first line of that out, which does clarify the matter a little and add ambiguity on “monkeying”.\u00c2\u00a0 And here the problems comes rushing in:\u00c2\u00a0 cue all conservative and Republican media outlets with clips of any Democrat and especially Obama using the term “monkey” in this way, and…<\/p>\n

Probably the case of what everyone thinks is going on.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably.<\/p>\n

Yes.\u00c2\u00a0 Years ago, with Bob Corker against Harold Ford in Tennessee, my initial response to the charge regarding his “Playboy ‘call me'” ad was that the racist charge on it was overblown, until the follow up radio ads with bongo confirmed… it was indeed, but plausible deniability is built into these things for a reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Ditto his comment describing Gillum as “articulate” — (I suppose he may have gone the Joseph Biden route with his black opponent and said ‘clean’) — the question comes in: what back-handed compliment belittling him can he go with?\u00c2\u00a0 If I were a cynical advisor for Ron Desantis, I would get “caught” in a calculatedly “off-the-record” tape of the sort that had Romney recounting 47 percents and Hillary calling out baskets of deplorables and Obama with “bitter” gun clingers… (or maybe just something sure to be caught by a Gillum tracker ala George Allen’s “Macaca”) where he’d be complaining about the “monkey” matter and really stir the fire by acting frustrating on everything and suggesting something like “I say ‘monkeying’ around, everyone knows what I mean, and you know… then the liberal media just goes Apeshit over it…”\u00c2\u00a0 Ba da bing, worth a “identify with the candidate” that wins over the gut of pc-hating Floridans who think — rightly or wrongly — they’re just walking on egg-shells.<\/p>\n

To his credit, the interviewed spokesperson — left wing political activist — punches the trivial concern away to discuss what he really thinks the campaign should be about.\u00c2\u00a0 To his discredit, it comes across as a bunch of blustery noise that doesn’t signify anything.\u00c2\u00a0 And now I’m fatigued by things — there are goods and bads with the policy apparatus of the more liberal candidate who won this nomination as opposed to the policy apparatus of the more centrist “establishment” candidate who lost, but I do get tired of being shuffled into the idea that I’m voting for a “movement” that stretches across all issues into a tidy inter-locked package.<\/p>\n

But more than that… the happy talk… the celebration gets to me.<\/p>\n

And on Tuesday, we saw that the majority of people in the state of Florida want to move forward.<\/em><\/p>\n

Election results:<\/p>\n

Ron DeSantis — 913,997
\nAndy Putnam — 591,550
\nBob White — 32,593
\nOthers — 80,333<\/p>\n

Andrew Gillum — 517,863
\nGwen Graham — 472,995
\nPhilip LeVine — 306,621
\nOthers — 212,481<\/p>\n

It is an unpleasant sign for Democratic chances in November that the Republican vote total was greater than the Deomcratic vote total.<\/p>\n

The activist goes on to call the state of Florida a “racist state” and that we have the opportunity to enact a “radical agenda” and…<\/p>\n

It has its virtues, and it’s good to be a truth teller, but I’m not sure the framing works to win over a general electorate.<\/p>\n

And a crux of the coming elections in November, from the other political activist here.<\/p>\n

So, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m from Chicago, where we have a number of rank-and-file Democrats who actually are perhaps Democratic in name, but in all other ways they are corrupt, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually act in the best interest of the people\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago to various members of our City Council to the person who sits as governor in the state of Illinois.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fantastic, perhaps?, but in the meantime… on the ballot in Florida… the incumbent Senator Bill Nelson who… currently trailing Rick Scott (the man the Republican nominee is tying his record to and urging everyone not to “monkey it up”)… and… well, Bill Nelson needs the Gillum voters who aren’t terribly enthused by such a centrist figure as he to deign to vote for him, and Gillum needs to stop any bleeding from his voters who are stuck on “Democratic Socialism”…<\/p>\n

… Presumably, despite not proceeding with a neatly tied together “movement” grounds, they’d prefer Nelson over Scott — particularly if it spells the difference between a Democratic and a Republican senate, correct?<\/p>\n

… And they both will be a bit off each other’s track in messaging as they proceed.<\/p>\n

NERMEEN<\/span> SHAIKH<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, I want to turn to Fox News host Laura Ingraham commenting on Andrew Gillum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upset victory in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Florida.<\/em>
\nLAURA<\/span> INGRAHAM<\/span>:<\/strong> Gillum is the African-American male version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s young. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of dynamic. And he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running on a platform of universal Medicare, legalized marijuana and abolishing ICE<\/span>. Exciting. And he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s viewed by hard-left Democrats as kind of a savior from the stranglehold that the party\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s establishment have had on their desires, hopes and dreams.<\/em>
\nNERMEEN<\/span> SHAIKH<\/span>:<\/strong> Charlene, can you comment on that? I mean, Fox News, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the same network that DeSantis said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153monkey this up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>
\nCHARLENE<\/span> CARRUTHERS<\/span>:<\/strong> Yeah, you know, this is more of the same. We saw this in 2008. We saw it in 2012. And we saw a version of it in 2016, where conservatives, Republicans, where the media, that is also controlled by corporate interests, use not just these whistleblowers, but, as Andrew noted, like bullhorns, to really lay their values out on the table.<\/em><\/p>\n

… Uh huh.\u00c2\u00a0 Am I missing something here?\u00c2\u00a0 Laura Ingraham said the exact same thing as the group of activists in this DN interview, only with a sarcastic inflection on the word “exciting”, and changing “radical” to “hard left”…<\/p>\n

But we’re stuck in the narrow echo chambers, having to twist Laura Ingraham’s message that echoes those of these activists, if from an oppositional stance instead of a supporting stance, into … something that doesn’t?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listening to the left wing celebration on Democracy Now on the victory of Andrew Gillum in the Florida Democratic gubernatorial primary wearies me.\u00c2\u00a0 First of all, we start with the presumption of guilt — unexplained — on the part of the Republican nominee with the following comment… We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to work hard to make sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17654,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17653\/revisions\/17654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}