Great summary of the hearings by Tangle. Fairly long read but worth it, IMO, especially if you haven’t been following everything closely like me.
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If Pence’s folks are turning over dirt that ends up burying Trump, it may go down as one of the most spectacular “revenge is a dish best served cold” examples of all time.
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The NYT article on the fake electors scheme has a lot of revealing info. The Trump legal team working on the scheme was stupid enough to repeatedly describe them as fake electors in their internal communications.
Not sure if this will successfully get you past the paywall or not:
Working for a bad guy means writing some very weird emails.
(and yes that got me past the paywall, thanks)
What does everyone think about Democrats and the Jan 6th Committee calling Trump and his MAGA supporters a “Threat to Democracy,” while simultaneously funding or advertising for MAGA candidates in primaries against more moderate Republicans? Why would they fund candidates that are a threat to democracy? It seems risky. Or perhaps Democrats don’t really believe the candidates are a threat to democracy, it’s just more rhetoric to fool the infinitely foolable fools.
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It’s a dangerous and reckless game that I don’t support.
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Yeah the “hey let’s get a bat shiat crazy MAGA guy/gal on the November ticket and hope enough Independents find them too extreme” seems like a dumb strategy as at least a few are going to slip through the general and we’ll get more Boebert/ MTG types in Congress which is exactly what we don’t need.
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The “threat to democracy” part is objectively true.
The Dems trying to get these people on the ballot so they have a potentially easy win is just playing with fire imo. For example if that Pennsylvania guy gets elected governor he has already said he will try to give their electoral college votes to the Republican regardless of the outcome of the actual votes.
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You are conflating “Democrats” with the DNCC. Democrats are not a monolith; there is a huge range of political views among those that end up voting “D”. There is a reason why the saying goes “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” Most democrats and progressives are largely frustrated with capital-D Democratic party leadership.
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I am a bit torn. Republicans have been playing dirty games like this for years and that is how they have gained power. Add gerrymandering to those games. It’s certainly risky to do where a fringe candidate might end up winning, but it also seems risky to just let Republicans keep doing their thing. If 10 seats flip to moderate republicans or 2 seats flip to MAGA candidates…what is the bigger danger to democracy. Remember you also have districts like Wyoming where Liz might get the boot to one of those nutjobs running against her, so MAGA candidates are going to go up this election regardless…keeping the majority might end up being the lesser of two evils.
I’d rather both sides play by my rules, but that is not realistic.
In 2016, I voted for the former President in the GOP primary, partly because I thought he was the easiest-to-beat option, partly because I believed Congress would be a check on any excesses if he were elected (whereas I thought Cruz + a GOP Congress would be disturbing), and partly because the Democrats’ primary outcome was a foregone conclusion in this state.
I made at least two assumptions that, in retrospect, were very poor.
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Or perhaps they think all Republicans with the exception of a handful that have basically been driven out of the party are a threat to democracy and the threat is best countered by promoting the least electible of them.
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Don’t I remember hearing about at least one race in Florida where the GOP supported the “candidacy” of a person with a similar name to the Democrat-to-beat, in an effort to split the vote and get an easier-to-beat nominee?
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Fucking awful. Normally I would call it dirty politics, caused by a failure of our generally shitty system.
Post Trump, I would call it suicide politics, motivated by individuals trying to grasp power and damn the consequences.
I’m happy to accept dirty politics as an inevitability. But this seems too likely to backfire.
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Yeah, I think anyone amplifying the signal of the Big Lie, insurrectionists, or white nationalists is doing a disservice to the country. I understand the strategy, but I don’t like it.
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I can’t speak to your numbers, but broadly I’d much rather have fewer Traitors than more Democrats.
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I think the bigger issue (for the Democratic Party, and the Nation as a whole (IMO)) is that once these “moderates” are in Congress, they’ll fall under the heel of the MAGA “Republicans.” Especially if the GOP takes control of either chamber. They’ll need to get reelected and only one way to do that is to suck some dick, metaphorically (I presume).
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