They counted on MAGA to be stupid. Always a smart bet. This is an interesting tick-tock of the Border/Foreign Aid bill from the NY Times. (Gift link, here) It starts off recounting how the Republicans thought they could back the Dems into a corner by demanding a border component to Ukraine funding which they knew was vitally important to the White House. The Democrats decided that they would call their bluff and negotiate a border bill and one that would be seen as credible by serious border hawks. But they were not surprised when the Republicans balk: The possibility that Republicans would bolt from their own deal had occurred to Mr. Schumer from the start, given his previous experience. “We knew it way back then,” he said. But Mr. Schumer saw a political upside should that occur: Democrats would be able to say they tried and point to the Republican opposition for failing to halt a surge of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico. “It’s a win if Republicans abandon us at the last minute,” Mr.
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Lara finally gets her star turn Poor RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. Nobody has debased and humiliated herself more chasing the approval of Donald Trump, even going so far as to change her name from Romney McDaniel to just McDaniel because Trump despises her uncle Mitt. But it didn’t really do her any good in the end because like so many others before her, loyalty and Trump are a one way street and he has decided that he’s done with her. In some ways you can’t blame him.The RNC is a mess. The Federal Election Commission released its year end fundraising reports and they showed that the RNC had its worst fundraising year since 2013 only managing to take in $87.2 million in 2023. According to Fox News, “if adjusted for inflation, the RNC’s fundraising was last this low in 1993 — before the 2002 McCain Feingold Act restricted political committee fundraising from corporations and capped donations from individuals.” They started off this year with just $8 million in cash. That’s bad. To make matters worse, the Democrats raised three times as much last year and are rolling in the dough.
Lol. The greatest sore loser in the history of the world has a few words: You really have to wonder when the wingnuts are going to get tired of this. Ever? Or are they so brainwashed they’ll never learn?
Tom Sullivan posted another video of Dem strategist Scott Rosenberg discussing the win last night in NY earlier today. As you know, Rosenberg’s site is called “The Hopium Chronicles” and he called another one right last night. Here’s his post from today: In March of last year I launched this site and community with a memo, Get to 55, which argued that because of MAGA’s escalating extremism more would be possible for us in this electoral cycle. That we needed to go big and shoot to get to 55% of the national vote in November. That our strategy in 2024 should be one of growth and expansion, and taking away geographic and demographic terrain from them. That as Biden went big legislatively in 2021 and 2022, we needed to go big politically in 2023 and 2024 and make this election a clear repudiation of MAGA, which is the only way MAGA will start to lose its dark grip on the GOP – something that would be good for us, for Republicans, for the country.
Could it work this time? With members of the GOP at each others’ throats and yet another special election loss, largely due to their inane antics on the border/foreign military aid bill, it just might: With House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) swearing he will not allow a House vote on a Senate-passed bill to provide Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in weaponry to fight off a Russian invasion, supporters of aid to the nation ― who make up a clear majority of Congress ― are looking for alternatives. The option that’s been mentioned most is a so-called discharge petition, signed by a majority of House members to force a floor vote. But the history of discharge petitions shows they are far easier to talk about than actually execute. Still, it may prove to be the best available option to get the Ukranians needed weaponry. “It’s a dreadfully slow, cumbersome, and brittle process that is not well suited for anything dynamic or urgent,” said Liam Donovan, a former Republican Hill staffer and a partner at lobbying firm Bracewell LLP.
This is good: None of that means she’s going to back off on the issues that matter to her — Gaza pre-eminent among them. It does mean that she isn’t being myopic about the stakes for the whole world, including Gaza, if Trump wins the election. It will be a nightmare of epic proportions. She is an amazing politician and I can’t wait to see how she matures even further. I would vote for her in a second.
And I’m talking about stupid weird Monmouth poll: – Just under 1 in 5 Americans believe the singer Taylor Swift is part of a covert effort to help President Joe Biden win the 2024 election. At the same time, the Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll also finds that most Americans are supportive of efforts by Swift to encourage her fans to vote. Just under half (46%) of the American public has heard something about Swift being part of a supposed covert government effort to help Biden win the 2024 presidential election. Just under 1 in 5 Americans (18%) believe such a conspiracy involving Swift exists. Fully 71% of those who believe this identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 83% indicate they are likely to support Donald Trump in the fall. Also, nearly three-quarters (73%) of those who believe the Swift conspiracy also believe the 2020 election outcome was fraudulent.
Biden is to blame for the border bill failing??? Greg Sargent discusses one of the most disturbing poll results I’ve seen yet. It’s completely inexplicable: You’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has “tightened his grip on the Republican Party,” or that he’s “bent the party to his will.” Pundits repeat such formulations constantly, because, well, it’s true: Trump is exerting a level of influence over his party in a way that’s unprecedented in a former president. But what if voters aren’t aware of it? That’s one possible takeaway from a new ABC News-Ipsos survey, which has a maddening finding: Trump gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal last week than any other major actor in that drama: Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him.
Donald Trump has so many pending criminal cases that he has to decide which ones offer him the greatest opportunity to grandstand on the courthouse steps on a given day. Yesterday, he attended the closed hearing on classified documents down in Florida and didn’t hold any press events afterwards which was odd since it was certainly not a hearing he needed to attend. I suspect he wanted to be there to hear about which witnesses were cooperating with the special counsel so he could find away to send his goons out to intimidate them. I would also guess he’s wanted to sink at his Trumpie judge and give her some sugar from across the room. And there were rumors that he would attend Fani Willis’ potential prosecution disqualification hearing in Georgia and/or the Manhattan case regarding his illegal payments to Stormy Daniels. He’s decided on the Manhattan case apparently. It’s a lot and there’s more: Each of Trump’s four criminal cases is set to reach a clarifying inflection point over the next few days as he barrels toward a rematch with President Joe Biden.
Except: They’re all liars because they know it doesn’t matter to their voters and that many people who don’t vote for them believe this is “true” even if it isn’t factual. And so it goes. Still, it’s important to document the record. Trump’s “border” was fucked up too. It has nothing to do with Biden and everything to do with conditions in their home countries and full employment in the US.