105 replies to this topic

[LFC]

Bact PhD, on 18 February 2021 - 04:12 PM, said:

Don’t know if this is necessarily a good thing—“DeMinimis” is also up for re-election in 2022. If he runs afoul of Dolt 45 between now and the qualifying deadline, it would not surprise me in the least if she throws her hat in that race.

And such a stylish hat it is! (This was literally the first image that came up when I searched for "ivanka trump hat meme." I love the internet.)

[Probabilistic]

Her opinion of herself is too sublime to accept being 1 in a 100. She needs to be 1 in 350 million. Otherwise it's no fun

[LFC]

LFC, on 16 February 2021 - 02:13 PM, said:

Former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) is already angling to get his seat back...maybe.

Aaaaaaand he's out.

Quote

Former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) will not challenge Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in 2022 after all, he said in a new statement.

“I am confident that whoever wins the Republican primary next year will defeat the Democratic candidate in the general election for this seat, and I will do everything I can to make that happen,” he said.

Perdue filed as a candidate for the race a week ago, but said at the time that he was still weighing his options. He lost reelection to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in the January runoff, and was considering challenging Warnock for the state’s other seat next year. Warnock, who toppled former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) in the same runoff cycle, is currently finishing the end of the retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s (R-GA) term.

Warnock shrugged at the Perdue news. “I am prepared to defeat whatever Republican they come up with,” he told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

[golden_valley]

LFC, on 23 February 2021 - 01:48 PM, said:

Aaaaaaand he's out.

Maybe he wants a run at Ossoff in 2026. Georgia will have more time to perfect voter suppression techniques by then.

[pnwguy]

LFC, on 23 February 2021 - 01:48 PM, said:

Aaaaaaand he's out.

Perdue knows he's not nearly MAGA enough. The base voters want MTG!!!

[AnBr]

pnwguy, on 23 February 2021 - 08:08 PM, said:

Perdue knows he's not nearly MAGA enough. The debased voters want MTG!!!

FIFY

[LFC]

Trump has shifted from the heavy lift and low profit of a new political party to the light lift and high profit of a new PAC. Welcome to MAGA PAC. Now it just remains to be seen how much of a factor it is in the 2022 Republican primaries and how much it's just a funnel for cash into Trump's pockets. No matter what it will likely act as a sponge for campaign donations which automatically hurts Republican candidates, even if they are MAGAts.

Quote

On Sunday, Donald Trump’s fundraising machine charged back to life after its January lull, blitzing fans with emails and texts on the heels of the ex-president’s CPAC keynote address, urging them to “donate” to “SAVE AMERICA!” It worked, netting Trump and his team more than $3 million off of that speech, according to an adviser, bringing the committee’s on-hand total north of $80 million.

That cash was divvied up between three political committees tied to the former commander-in-chief, two of them formed just days before he riled up the CPAC crowd packed into a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Orlando. The new setup indicates that Trump is bent on raking in cash like someone who is mounting a run—or who wants to pressure anyone who thinks they can take him on.

Over the weekend, Trump’s team converted his old campaign into a PAC and added a new joint fundraising committee to the mix, an overhaul designed to crush the revolt he faces from a small faction of elected Republicans tired of lugging the baggage that accompanies an alliance with the broadly unpopular former president.

Trump ditched his official candidate committee in favor of a nonconnected committee—a fundraising vehicle not tied to a candidate, party, or corporate interest—called MAGA PAC. It’s a move that will enable him to accept more money from individual contributors over a longer period of time. He can also carry on his tradition of self-enrichment, tapping the new PAC as a personal slush fund, including for hanging legal debts incurred as an officeholder and candidate.

Additionally, unlike a super PAC setup, this allows Trump to directly fund candidates of his choosing—a key part of his post-presidency ploy to retain the loyalty of politicians who might be tempted to move on from the MAGA era.

The moves also signal an opportunity to wall off dissenters from influential megadonors, specifically with the introduction of the new joint fundraising committee, Save America (also the name of his leadership PAC), which can accept high-dollar checks. Two people familiar with the new political and fundraising operation say that Trump himself views it as yet another way to maintain his hold on the GOP, and to keep candidates and potential endorsees or primary challengers subordinated to the MAGA ethos.

Those sources added that Trump plans to continue his fundraising partnership with the Republican National Committee, but has at the front of his mind the fact that he will likely clash with other Republican leaders and political influencers over certain candidates and races in the future. That potential dissonance means it is vital for Trump, allies say, to continue to build his own massive war chest as “leverage,” as Trump has described it.

[Traveler]

All I can this doing is to 1) siphon off cash, 2) turn away potential POGers. This means that it will turn off many of the megadonors who won't want to bet on a losing horse. So quite a bit less cash going to the candidates themselves. Who will likely lose the general, as the rump POG deserts them. I just cannot see it being near as close next time around.

[LFC]

Traveler, on 03 March 2021 - 02:03 PM, said:

I just cannot see it being near as close next time around.

If the Dems can stick mostly to the issues of most concern to 70% of the country they should do well. If they expend too much political capital on like transgender rights and immigration it will hurt them. It's not that both of those aren't worthwhile, just that with the limited capital they have it's important for them to work more on things like COVID, minimum wage, healthcare, family leave, etc. More quietly Biden will undo many of the harmful environmental policies that Trump and his industry swamp created.

[AnBr]

 LFC, on 03 March 2021 - 03:13 PM, said:

If the Dems can stick mostly to the issues of most concern to 70% of the country they should do well. If they expend too much political capital on like transgender rights and immigration it will hurt them. It's not that both of those aren't worthwhile, just that with the limited capital they have it's important for them to work more on things like COVID, minimum wage, healthcare, family leave, etc. More quietly Biden will undo many of the harmful environmental policies that Trump and his industry swamp created.

This is one if the main things that the ultra libs seem to never grasp; political capital. Getting things done, especially those things that are less politically popular requires political capital, which is a finite supply. It requires give and take, sometimes arm twisting. There is only so much of it that you can expend at any given point. You have to be judicious in how you spend it and know when you are just wasting it. It requires building consensus and coalitions. Sometimes you can bully others to go where you want them to go (a la LBJ in passing the Civil Rights Act) but usually not. Timing and reading the table is essential.

[Practical Girl]

Of course, TX Gov Timmie is in it to win it in '22. No serious GOPer challenge. Smart money is still on him and his huge cash, but we do have some Democrats that have been quietly hanging out, doing their jobs and building a coalition. Smart pols are analyzing the 2020 Presidential race, and understanding where the opportunities lie. If Beto can ever get out of his own way, there's plenty of smart money that would back him- among others. Even though this god forsaken state will never shed it's conservative roots, there is a real shot for anybody with balls to challenge this failure of a human and government. Stay tuned, y'all!

[LFC]

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is out for the 2022 race.

[AnBr]

How Repugs many are out, now?

[LFC]

AnBr, on 08 March 2021 - 07:42 PM, said:

How Repugs many are out, now?

5 in the Senate. And as this article points out RonJohn promised he'd only serve two terms (we'll see if that holds up) and Chuck Grassley will be 89 on Election Day 2022.

[golden_valley]

LFC, on 08 March 2021 - 10:58 AM, said:

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is out for the 2022 race.

I wonder if Claire McCaskill would run again. She lost to Hawley 2 years ago.

[LFC]

golden_valley, on 08 March 2021 - 07:59 PM, said:

I wonder if Claire McCaskill would run again. She lost to Hawley 2 years ago.

From my link just above.

Quote

Update: In case anyone was curious, McCaskill, who is now an MSNBC political analyst, announced this morning that she's not running, either. In a tweet, the former Democratic senator said, "...I will never run for office again. Nope. Not gonna happen. Never. I am so happy I feel guilty sometimes."

[golden_valley]

LFC, on 08 March 2021 - 08:01 PM, said:

From my link just above.

Thanks. Too bad she won't run but it's probably easier to serve as a pundit on tv now...lower stress too.

[AnBr]

LFC, on 08 March 2021 - 07:50 PM, said:

5 in the Senate. And as this article points out RonJohn promised he'd only serve two terms (we'll see if that holds up) and Chuck Grassley will be 89 on Election Day 2022.

Of course we would also need to factor in how many Repug vs Dem seats are up and what may be contested incumbent seats.

[LFC]

Yes she'd be a long-shot in 2022 too but an outspoken white supremacist nationalist looks like she'll be running for a House seat in Florida. And if you think she's just a fringe candidate look at the people who supported her. She's solidly within the Republican base.

Quote

Laura Loomer was the toast of the Trumpian right during her long-shot 2020 congressional race in Florida.

She received a shout-out from then-President Donald Trump. She campaigned with the President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. And she earned support from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Roger Stone, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was then a candidate for Congress.

Now, we know she was also a self-professed supporter of white nationalism.

“Someone asked me ‘Are you pro-white nationalism?’ Yes. I’m pro-white nationalism,” Loomer said in a December 2017 interview dug up on Sunday by the blog Angry White Men.

Within three years of that interview, Loomer was the 2020 Republican nominee for Florida’s 21st Congressional District.

Loomer’s long history of open bigotry was no secret during the 2020 campaign: She’d long labeled herself a “proud Islamophobe” and was banned from using Uber and Lyft in November 2017 after calling for “a non Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” She was booted from Twitter after asserting that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was “anti Jewish” and supported female genital mutilation.

But the interview unearthed Sunday, recorded on the “Nationalist Public Radio” podcast in 2017, further documents Loomer’s involvement with the racist right.

In it, Loomer justified her support for white nationalism by citing Israel.

“I’m a Jew, and I’m pro-Israel, and I would be a hypocrite if I were to say that I was against ethnonationalism, because Israel is an ethnostate,” Loomer said. “And it’s a great country. It’s a great place. I totally support ethnonationalism.”

She added separately that Palestinians are “not legitimate people” and that she opposed Muslims and Jews “mixing,” including through marriage.

“I’m not really a big fan of this idea that we need to coexist, because you can’t really coexist with people who want to kill you,” Loomer said.

Loomer distinguished in the interview between white nationalism and white supremacy, and criticized the white nationalist leaders Richard Spencer and James Allsup because, she said, they gave off a “very cringey, anti-semitic white supremacist vibe.”

She said in the interview that “this country, really, was built as a white, Judeo-Christian ethnostate, essentially. Over time, immigration, and all these calls for diversity, it’s starting to destroy this country. I don’t oppose people who say that they want to have their own ethnostate.”

[LFC]

The Jan 6 Republican Insurrection, the events and rhetoric that lead up to it, the Republican votes to overturn the election right after, and the continued defense of The Big Lie have inspired a number of Democrats to run against Republicans, even in long-shot elections. They'll be facing motivated competition all over the country for their treason.

Quote

Seasoned political operatives say they’ve never seen anything like it. Amanda Litman, a top fundraising aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, founded the nonprofit group Run For Something in 2017 to give first-time candidates for local office the tools they need to launch a campaign.

In the last two months, said Litman, roughly 11,000 people have registered with Run For Something to express an interest in a campaign for public office. “We saw January 2021 turn into our best candidate recruitment month yet since launching on inauguration day in 2017,” she said. Their registration total for the first two months of 2021 matched their total for the entirety of 2018—a midterm election year that saw a surge in participation nationwide.

“To me, that in the first two months of 2021, more than 10,000 young people said, ‘Fuck this, I’m going to run for office,’ is quite telling,” said Litman. “We did not think there’d be such a surge in interest, we thought it’d stay at the same scale we were at in 2020.”

Litman also said there’s been an uptick in interest in running for election administration positions, like county clerks, given the “big lie” of a stolen election that swirled around Jan. 6. “We ask folks, what’s your story,” said Litman, “and we’ve seen a substantial number point to election administration or democracy writ large as an issue.”

While Run For Something assists the thousands of young people now interested in local positions, on the congressional level, a wave of Democrats have emerged to challenge the GOP lawmakers most associated with Trump’s election conspiracies and Jan. 6.

Apparently it's not only Democrats. Some sane (or at least less insane) Republicans are pushing too.

Quote

Not everyone challenging a MAGA-aligned endorser of election conspiracies has been a Democrat, however. In Pennsylvania, Brian Allen, a psychologist and self-described conservative, is running against GOP Rep. Scott Perry on the grounds he has become too divisive. “I think Scott Perry has been a very polarizing figure and I don’t think that is in the best interest of our country,” Allen told the website PoliticsPA.

Perry reportedly played an active role in assisting Team Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results. According to The New York Times, Perry informed Trump that Philadelphia lawyer Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Department of Justice’s civil division, was receptive to Trump’s fraud conspiracies. Perry connected Trump and Clark, and a plot developed to use the DOJ to advance “investigations” into alleged voter fraud. The revelation sparked calls for his resignation, including from the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

They've also motivated donors.

Quote

These high-profile Republicans are now hated household names among liberal donors—creating a windfall for the Democrats running against them. Beach-Ferrara told The Daily Beast that her campaign raised $100,000 in its first 24 hours. Mizeur raised $225,000 in the first two weeks of her bid.