President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

He’s in the 99th percentile of Worst Humans of All Time.

 

So, this happened

 

And yet for every good thing, there is a bad:

 

Anyone else have any sense of primary season in your state? In Oregon we have two open Congressional seats - one brand new, and an open Governor's race. Most polls show "undecided" with a healthy lead in all polls, but we're just a month out from election day. The new congressional seat contest is especially weird - a guy who grew up in Oregon, and only moved back after COVID hit to work remotely has raised about $6m already despite having zero political experience and almost zero voting history in Oregon (despite never re-registering in another state). And yet, Pelosi's PAC just gave the guy $1m in a primary that includes at least two who have logged time in the Oregon state legislature.
The weirdest thing is - all of the races - for both Ds and Rs are pretty much toss-ups, but there seems to be little interest in any of the races.

 

It’s gone. What was it?

 

All of Alabama's R's are racing to see who can be the Trumpiest candidate on the far right. Even Gov. Maw-Maw, who used to be a fairly moderate example of Southern Republican, seems frightened that she's behind and is trying to out-Trump the Trumpers.

 

"Tell me what I should be saying" is straight-up cult stuff. Mike's cowardice is no surprise but his gall certainly is.

 

The GOP talking points were widely distributed back in W's day. It was readily ascertained logging on to Drudge, turning on the radio to the Bill Bennett show and progressing to Rush later in the morning. If Mike Lee missed the memo, it's his fault.

 

Minnesota is in kind of a weird situation right now. The governor, Tim Walz, who has basically governed as Minnesota's strict but earnest Dad, is strongly hated for relatively strict COVID management policies in the non-urban parts of the state and has the albatross of sitting on his hands too long when the George Floyd situation got out of control. The Dad stuff makes him a lot more tolerable than douchebag white liberals like Jacob Frey, but Minnesota is purple enough that he would be in significant trouble ... if the state GOP had its shit together in any way shape or form. The state party is currently under an interim chief after a palace coup ousted Jennifer Carnahan, who was married to a dying (now dead) Congressman and was best buddies with an operative who was busted for trafficking underage girls. She was also apparently an asshole boss.

Meanwhile, their candidates for governor include but are not limited to:

• The utterly grim former state Senate majority leader, who has a degree from Oral Roberts, a non-binary kid who hates him and celebrated narrowly holding on to the state Senate majority in 2020 by having a party that got one of his members killed due to COVID.
• A nutbar former state Senator and COVID-denier doctor who chose as his running mate (already), Matt Birk, Harvard graduate, Vikings offensive lineman, COVID troller and Shiite Catholic father of eight.
  
• An official Black Republican Outsider in the Herman Cain tradition who convinced BFF Michelle Tafoya to leave the sidelines, or at least the left side of the field, but just to do comms.
• A former Minneapolis Police Department officer and Hennepin (Minneapolis) County Sheriff who was also briefly the state public safety commissioner during the last Republican administration in the mid-2000s until it was found he enjoyed many a good racial slur during the early part of his career.
• A handful of other unremarkable officeholders, activistis and Official Outsiders.

At the Congressional district level, the new Minnesota maps didn't change a lot after redistricting. There's still one tossup district out of eight, the result of which will determine whether Republicans have five seats or six from the state. My district is probably going to remain reliably red until the environmentalist wing of the Democratic Party stops fighting tooth and nail against mining projects in Northern Minnesota that they should be fighting against but are a huge political wedge issue because there is no other way to make a good living in that part of the state.

Despite the doomsaying, I really don't think we're going to know the lay of the land until mid-summer when everyone starts going out on the trail, Trump puts his foot in his mouth a couple dozen times and voters are confronted with things like Trump's love of Putin and Jan. 6 (not to mention prices potentially stabilizing and COVID hopefully fading over the good-weather months).

We've gotten wintry mix storms in each of the last four consecutive weeks, so everyone's pissed off about everything. Jesus might not be able to win as an incumbent if the election were held this week.