The 119th United States Congress

[Hongbit]

Seeing many Dems online calling for AOC to primary Schumer in the next election.  

It’s another example of how many are out of touch.    The party needs to become less progressive if it ever hopes to win back power anytime soon.  AOC having a stronger voice would be a disaster. 

[Motown Bombers]

2 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

Seeing many Dems online calling for AOC to primary Schumer in the next election.  

It’s another example of how many are out of touch.    The party needs to become less progressive if it ever hopes to win back power anytime soon.  AOC having a stronger voice would be a disaster. 

She's not popular outside of the Bronx. She also threw a tantrum when Dems primaried Bowman and then blamed the Jews for him losing. 

[chasfh]

10 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Schumer, after going public with a Senate Dem commitment to stop the CR, reverses course. I will let others argue the merits of letting the gov shut down vs taking a bad bill and letting the public steep in the GOPs priorities, but I will not accept that it was anything but bad strategy to announce a policy you find yourself walking back so quickly. If the possibility of the dems blocking the CR was real, Schumer never needed to say a word about that publicly. If the votes were actually there in his caucus he could have kept that leverage in his pocket right up until the vote, while leaving his options open for his members to take the temperature in their states and spike the effort if it wasn't playing well back home.

Schumer is an institutionalst at his core, and despite that the foxes are ravaging the chickens in the henhouse, he still believes in Institution writ large. That's what he's trying to protect with his caution. He appears to be trying to shape the direction of Democrats' response, albeit in the most feeble way possible, and it's getting away from him, so he's reteating into institutionalism. He is too calcified to realize we are way, way beyond the point of the institution healing its own wounds.

[Motown Bombers]

It just gets me that Schumer showed so much more backbone to his own party by throwing Biden under the bus than he has to Trump. 

[chasfh]

FWIW, I don't think AOC is the Gaza Jane some make her out to be.

[romad1]

5 minutes ago, chasfh said:

FWIW, I don't think AOC is the Gaza Jane some make her out to be.

she's hardly Jane Fonda manning a NVA anti-aircraft gun.  She's better looking than Jane Fonda too.  Although Barbarella Jane Fonda was extremely nice. 

[chasfh]

7 minutes ago, romad1 said:

She's better looking than Jane Fonda too.

Maybe AOC is better looking than this one ...

We can have a debate about whether she's better-looking  this one ...

[Motown Bombers]

Honestly, Jane Fonda does not look bad for 87. She should have her plastic surgeon visit Mar-A-Lago. 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[gehringer_2]

I posted in the Trump thread why I think Schumer end point was right while his leadership has been all wrong - but again - the Dems are forming their typical circular firing squad in over a strategy that is too knee jerk, too short term, and too poorly thought out to begin with (i.e. forcing a shut down). Wasting their ammo on the wrong battles.

[romad1]

can actually do a direct comparison

 

[CMRivdogs]

JVL on Schumer's capitulation..using wildfires as an analogy for the Musk/Trump/Project 25 Administration  

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/chuck-schumer-and-the-wildfire-a

Quote

The federal government is on fire. We can see that.

But we do not know the extent of the blaze. We don’t have overhead imagery. We don’t know if it’s possible to stop the fire from spreading, because it’s only just begun—or if the flames are already out of control behind the visible fire line in front of us.

In a way, people like me, who want Senate Democrats to fight, assume that the wildfire is still manageable. That Democrats can fight by ordinary means; that negotiations can be done; that some form of compromise can be struck.¹

Now, you could read Schumer’s position as capitulation. (And maybe that’s what it is.) But another way to read it is that he believes the wildfire is already much worse than we know. That it is already out of control. That no direct attack Democrats can make will stop it.

So instead, he has chosen to pull back and try to find some line that can be established to contain it from spreading even further.

***************************************************************

In other words: Trump has already broken the law while dismantling the federal government. If Democrats fail to keep the government open, it will provide him a quasi-legal pretext to speed up that lawless project. No negotiation with Trump could have produced an enforceable compromise. Passing the CR for Trump isn’t about avoiding a fight. It’s a controlled burn in an attempt to slow the fire’s progress.

Is this view correct? We can’t know. But I’m certainly not dismissing it out of hand.

Quote

Even if Schumer’s view is correct, there is still a counterargument: accelerationism.

The accelerationist argument goes something like this: Schumer is right that Trump and Musk will use a shutdown to speed up their dismantling of the government. But that’s going to happen either way. The politics of a government shutdown are good for Democrats. So why not make a stand here? Accelerate the pain. Accelerate the lawlessness. Establish the Democratic party as an anvil on which you break Trump’s popular support.

In the end, I probably come down on the accelerationist side. But I’m not super confident in that judgment. Because once you start down the accelerationist path, events can spiral out of control.

And we should remember that chaos favors Trump. Always.

 

[romad1]

1 minute ago, CMRivdogs said:

JVL on Schumer's capitulation..using wildfires as an analogy for the Musk/Trump/Project 25 Administration  

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/chuck-schumer-and-the-wildfire-a

 

Tim Miller was talking up accelerationism.  

[Motown Bombers]

The same Bulwark guys who said anyone could beat Trump except Biden and we must throw him overboard, have thoughts on what Schumer, who did follow the Bulwark's advice, should do?

Is this also the same Tim Miller who's never worked on a winning campaign? 

[romad1]

8 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

The same Bulwark guys who said anyone could beat Trump except Biden and we must throw him overboard, have thoughts on what Schumer, who did follow the Bulwark's advice, should do?

Is this also the same Tim Miller who's never worked on a winning campaign? 

someone who has worked a few winning campaigns...also screw you on hating on Nevertrumpers. 

 

[Motown Bombers]

5 minutes ago, romad1 said:

someone who has worked a few winning campaigns...also screw you on hating on Nevertrumpers. 

 

I hate the Bulwark people. They ran a whole campaign to force Biden out. The Lincoln Project guys, minus Steve Schmidt and the peso, supported Biden to the end and then switched to Harris. 

Pelosi has been wrong a lot lately too. She all but guaranteed Dems were taking the house after she threw Biden under the bus. 

[oblong]

regarding Biden and all that... I don't hold it against members of congress who thought he shouldn't run again.  It was clear he shouldn't have. The first debate told us that.  I'll never forget the shudder that went down my spine at one particular moment.  That's when I knew he couldn't campaign and win.  But I'm not expected to know that.  People in DC who are connected.... they are.  I'm sure things were discussed and that's the source for all the whispers and "backstabbing" we saw.  They were right.  People close to him should have come up with some kind of a succession plan.

 

 

[romad1]

9 minutes ago, oblong said:

regarding Biden and all that... I don't hold it against members of congress who thought he shouldn't run again.  It was clear he shouldn't have. The first debate told us that.  I'll never forget the shudder that went down my spine at one particular moment.  That's when I knew he couldn't campaign and win.  But I'm not expected to know that.  People in DC who are connected.... they are.  I'm sure things were discussed and that's the source for all the whispers and "backstabbing" we saw.  They were right.  People close to him should have come up with some kind of a succession plan.

 

 

Many a granddad has wowed their grandkids with their acumen and hints of their previous talents only to reveal themselves no longer able to stay up past 8pm. 

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, oblong said:

regarding Biden and all that... I don't hold it against members of congress who thought he shouldn't run again.  It was clear he shouldn't have. The first debate told us that.  I'll never forget the shudder that went down my spine at one particular moment.  That's when I knew he couldn't campaign and win.  But I'm not expected to know that.  People in DC who are connected.... they are.  I'm sure things were discussed and that's the source for all the whispers and "backstabbing" we saw.  They were right.  People close to him should have come up with some kind of a succession plan.

 

 

This. 

[Tigerbomb13]

22 minutes ago, oblong said:

regarding Biden and all that... I don't hold it against members of congress who thought he shouldn't run again.  It was clear he shouldn't have. The first debate told us that.  I'll never forget the shudder that went down my spine at one particular moment.  That's when I knew he couldn't campaign and win.  But I'm not expected to know that.  People in DC who are connected.... they are.  I'm sure things were discussed and that's the source for all the whispers and "backstabbing" we saw.  They were right.  People close to him should have come up with some kind of a succession plan.

 

 

Yup. That campaign was DOA as soon as that debate ended.

[mtutiger]

4 hours ago, Hongbit said:

Seeing many Dems online calling for AOC to primary Schumer in the next election.  

It’s another example of how many are out of touch.    The party needs to become less progressive if it ever hopes to win back power anytime soon.  AOC having a stronger voice would be a disaster. 

I don't know that AOC would be the right candidate to run for that seat, even in deep blue New York, but what I do know is that Schumer has absolutely lost control of his caucus and, once this episode passes, probably needs to step aside and let someone else be Minority Leader.

You don't have to be an AOC acolyte to see how badly he botched this.

Edited 8 hours ago by mtutiger

[Motown Bombers]

Donald Trump literally said during a debate that people were eating dogs and cats. Republicans rallied around him. Dems spent three years criticizing their candidate and then threw him under the buss and ran him over a couple times. Guess who won? 

[Motown Bombers]

56 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

I don't know that AOC would be the right candidate to run for that seat, even in deep blue New York, but what I do know is that Schumer has absolutely lost control of his caucus and, once this episode passes, probably needs to step aside and let someone else be Minority Leader.

You don't have to be an AOC acolyte to see how badly he botched this.

Senate Democrats should visit him at his house like he did to Biden and then publicly call on him to resign from leadership. I want to see Biden publicly call on him to step down. 

[chasfh]

12 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Donald Trump literally said during a debate that people were eating dogs and cats. Republicans rallied around him. Dems spent three years criticizing their candidate and then threw him under the buss and ran him over a couple times. Guess who won? 

Trump’s established reputation lowered the bar in some ways and disintegrated it in others, so he is never going to be hurt by saying the most outrageous things possible. If he publicly dropped an N-bomb today, it would recede into the background and, if not forgotten, then considered relatively unimportant by next Friday.

[Motown Bombers]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Trump’s established reputation lowered the bar in some ways and disintegrated it in others, so he is never going to be hurt by saying the most outrageous things possible. If he publicly dropped an N-bomb today, it would recede into the background and, if not forgotten, then considered relatively unimportant by next Friday.

Because Republicans stuck by him.