She has shifted a lot of her policy stances over the last 2-4 years to be more pragmatic.
Someone who represents the State of Georgia and thinks it was named after George Washington would be an example of an idiot.
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I’m not sure I would call Trump idealistic. What are his ideals? Does he have a vision for the country, other than “I can do whatever I want and nobody can stop me”?
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Hahahahaha-(deep breath)-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Reap it all.
I also wouldn’t call our Glorious Geezer idealistic, but part of how he got into office is that a bunch of Americans were convinced that he was going to change what they perceived as a very broken politics-as-usual status quo, as well as fixing various other ills.
That’s a very attractive premise if you’re in a position of being dissatisfied with how the government/country has worked.
It’d be incredible to have someone with the guts to change the status quo use their skills for good.
Unfortunately, we got our Glorious Geezer instead.
AOC is a lot smarter than I am. But so are most of the posters here, too. I don’t agree with her on everything, but I trust her values and motivations for the most part.
Romney was perhaps the only Republican in my voting lifetime that falls in a similar category - smart, has decent values, even if I disagree with a lot of his policy. He would have been a decent POTUS compared with Bush/McCain/Trump. McCain would have been fine, but wasn’t all that smart.
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I subscribe to the notion that when an elected official abides by the spirit of the Constitution, and makes decisions based on what they believe is best for the country (as opposed to their own political careers, party, etc.), they’ll be a pretty good official even if I disagree with them.
Romney definitely met those criteria for me. AOC might, but it’s difficult to test the extent to which she’d place country over party in an environment when the GOP has become so objectively horrible.
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Seems like these have nearly converged to the same thing at this point.
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True, but if, hypothetically, the Dems were to gain the trifecta and have inertia, would any particular Dem be willing to vote against the party line if/when the party line were geared towards expanding the party’s power?
In such an environment, it would be very tempting for the party to want to protect the country’s tradition of gerrymandering. Would AOC or any other D politician be willing to buck the party and advocate for restricting or prohibiting gerrymandering even though doing so might make the R’s more competitive, just because gerrymandering is fundamentally bad for a democratic republic?
I’d bet that early-career AOC might have done that. Now that she’s gained experience in how government actually works, however…?
If at that point republicans are still mask-off fascists I would prefer they keep the gerrymandering and push for something like ranked-choice voting. That would allow a new party that actually respects our country and wants to follow the constitution to rise up to replace them. If we manage to regain control, this current crop of self-serving sociopaths should never be allowed close to the levers of power again imo.
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Actual clickbait link: AOC Surges to Lead in 2028 Primary for First Time—Most Accurate Pollster - Newsweek
Well, anything calling itself the “most accurate pollster” must be right!
If the Dems can get the majority this year, hopefully they can impeach Trump fast enough so we can have two years of Vance. After that disaster, maybe the Republicans and Democrats can nominate a pair of viable candidates. 
Will need many GOP Senators to finish the job, as the US Constitution notes that it requires two-thirds of the members present. Maybe there is a way to convince them not to be present. With 55 Dems, it would require 18 GOP members not to show up.
…and I think it’s more likely that the D’s will end up with 51-52.
A proposed constitutional amendment that would require Michigan election officials to verify voters are U.S. citizens is poised to miss the November ballot after a deadlocked vote by a state panel.
“We’re looking at another really bad petition drive, which is putting us in a really bad position,” Gurewitz said. Dozens of signatures in the sample were thrown out because the people weren’t registered to vote, the petitions had improper dates on them or they were duplicates, meaning individuals had signed the petition multiple times.
The ballot initiative advanced by Americans for Citizen Voting would prohibit clerks from counting ballots from voters whose citizenship has not been verified unless those voters show records documenting their citizenship within six days of an election.
Michigan Republicans have a perennial issue in getting their proposals/candidates on the ballot. Every election, there are multiple rejections for reasons ranging from failure to get proper signatures, to outright forgery and fraud. Last gubernatorial, 5 Republican candidates had similar fraud or quality control issues.
But the process is designed to catch these things.
Mike Rogers claims that while he was a ~50 year-old congressman, he saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with his own eyes.
When I served as a US army officer and an FBI special agent, I swore a sacred oath to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Rogers wrote, according to a screenshot of the email shared online by Azi Paybarah, a former Washington Post reporter now with Straight Arrow News. “I dedicated my life to keeping our families safe – working in the shadows, hunting down terrorists, and standing on the frontlines of our national security.”
He then added, in a section of the email highlighted in bold type: “I saw the dead body of Osama bin Laden with my own eyes, knowing that together, we had delivered justice for America.”
Rogers, however, was not in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 1 May 2011, when Bin Laden was shot and killed – nor was he in the White House Situation Room, where then president Barack Obama and senior administration officials at the time, including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, followed the raid in real time.
Instead, as Rogers told reporters the next day, and recounts in a campaign video, he was at home in Washington DC – where, as the chair of the House intelligence committee at the time, he was informed about the raid in a phone call from Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta.
Rogers said – days after the raid – that the photograph he’d seen made it clear that Bin Laden was dead.
Under the category, “Before I had my corneal transplants, everything I saw I saw with my own eyes”. Clearly ignorant of how the phrase is typically used.
Competitive TX county (Tarrant) with majority R board wants to close 92 polling places, primarily in the majority minority precincts of the county.