Turkeys and Drumsticks 2019
Norman Rockwell “Freedom from Want” [Public domain]
Over at the old Right-Thinking blog, I would take advantage of the Thanksgiving Holiday to give out my awards for Turkeys of the Year and Golden Drumsticks. The latter are for those who exemplify the best traits in our public sphere. The former are for those who exemplify silliness and stupidity. I rarely give them out to someone who is evil; they are reserved for those who regularly make me shake my head and wonder what they’re thinking. It’s a sort of “thank you” for making snarky tweeting easier.
We’ll start with the Turkeys of the Year. For reference, the past winners are:
2007: Alberto Gonzalez, Nancy Pelosi, Hugo Chavez
2008: Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin’s critics, Hillary Clinton, Congress, Joe Biden
2009: Mike Steele, Glen Beck, the State Department, Sarah Palin, Andrew Sullivan.
2010: Janet Napolitano and TSA, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, MSNBC, Lower Merion Schools, California Voters.
2011: Nancy Pelosi, Republican Presidential Field, Occupy Wall Street, Anthony Weiner, the Eurozone.
2012: The Culture Warriors, Unions, The Poll Unskewers, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, MSNBC
2013: Healthcare.gov, the Platinum Coin, the Shutdown Caucus, the National Park Service, Fiscal Cliff Panic Mongers.
2014: Jonathan Gruber, Lamenting Democrats, Barack Obama, Jim Ardis, Paul Krugman
2015: The Presidential Field, College Students, The Election Media, Rolling Stone, Barack Obama
2016: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Clinton Supporters, the Clown Panic
2017: Donald Trump, the Resistance, Anti-Anti-Trumpers, Congressional Republicans, David Mueller
2018: Michael Avenatti, Jacob Wohl, Donald Trump, Delicate Trump Supporters, NBC
I must say that last year’s picks were some of my best ever.
Without further ado, here are this year’s biggest turkeys:
The Democratic Presidential Field: The Democrats are going into what should be one of the easiest elections in history. They have a President who is intensely disliked, an economy that is still healthy but stumbling a bit, a disheartened conservative wing and a progressive wing that can smell blood.
And they are running out what has to be one of the weakest slate of Presidential candidates in their history. Joe Biden is the current front runner but, with all due respect, he’s a 77-year-old man with a tendency for verbal gaffes and a history of imploding campaigns. The only reason he’s leading is because the rest of the field is even worse. Kamala Harris was running high until her weak policy knowledge was exposed (with an assist from Tulsi). Beto was gone by Halloween. Bernie is sounding increasingly looney. Warren was goaded into presenting an absurdity of a healthcare plan and can’t seem to get past Bernie despite a sycophantic media. Mayor Pete is currently surging but his popularity in the African American community is non-existent. Klobuchar should have everything going for her — a woman from the Midwest who has won a big state and appeals to moderates. But you could throw a binder further than her campaign has gone.
Look at the slate: the mayor of a midsize town; a half-term Senator; an unremarkable Congresswoman; a crackpot Senator who’s not even a Democrat; a couple of billionaires with nothing better to do. Look how little executive or foreign policy experience is out there. Yeah, Trump was less qualified than any of them. But he’s coming into this race with four years of experience under his belt. Bad experience, of course, but experience nonetheless.
Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but I really think these dopes are going to get Trump re-elected. And this isn’t an anomaly. During the Obama years, the Democrats lost thousands of seats at the local level — state legislatures, governorships, etc. They don’t have the kind of farm system that can build their grass roots, increase popular support and occasionally cough up a real political talent at the national level. They have made the Presidency the whole game. And as a result, they may lose.
The Trumpists: There is no argument too stupid, no rationalization too strained, no smear too ugly for the defenders of our embattled President to unleash. And there is no limb they can climb out on that Trump will not happily saw off. How many times will they rush out to proclaim some Donald Trump Pravda (“Stormy Daniels is a liar!”) only to have Trump admit to whatever it was and send them out to proclaim a new Trump Pravda (“It was all perfectly legal!”). How many times do they have to defend the indefensible?
(For why I call Trump’s utterances ‘pravda’, read this.)
They know what they’re doing. Watch this look between Devin Nunes and Steve Castor after Sonland’s testimony.
I’m not gonna read into looks too much, but after the first two hours of Sondland testimony, Devin Nunes doesn’t seem…ecstatic. pic.twitter.com/QXXirs04ix
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) November 20, 2019
That’s the look of people who know they’re screwed but have to persist anyway. In some ways, it’s reassuring to know the Republicans aren’t complete cement-heads. But it’s also appalling.
The thing about Donald Trump is that…he’s the Devil. Oh, I don’t mean he has a pointy tale and a pitchfork (unless he likes to play dressup in his extramarital flings, which would be the most relatable thing about him). What I mean is … classically, the Devil doesn’t do bad things. What he does is persuade good people to do bad things, to go against their better natures. This is what Donald Trump does. He turns good people bad. He makes good people defend his racist utterances; he makes good people defend his corruption; he makes good people defend his incompetence and brutality and callousness.
And just like the victims of the Devil, the Republican Party has sold its soul. And for what? A few judges? A “tax cut” that we’ll have to pay for tenfold?
Elon Musk: A late entry based on his disastrous rollout of the Tesla truck. But Musk has thoroughly earned this spot. He’s currently being sued for defamation for calling one of the men involved in the rescue of the Thai soccer team a “pedo”. His Starlink program is contaminating the night sky and creating a hazard to space travel for unclear benefit. To be fair, he’s done some real things: SpaceX is a big success. But much of his success seems to be improving existing tech and presenting it with a lot of flash.
Anonymous: As Andrew so perfectly said, make yourself know or shut the hell up. Anonymous is a perfect emblem for the Resistance and the anti-Trump forces in general. Big on show, big on words, light on success.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn: After becoming Prime Minister, Johnson saw defections from his own party and a string of humiliating defeats in Parliament. By any reasonable standard, he should be facing an utter rout in the coming election.
But he isn’t because his opponent is one of the biggest horse’s asses in the Western World. An old-style Marxist crank who has coddled and tolerated anti-Semitism within the Labour Party so manifestly that a number of party members have fled rather than be associated with it. A man who has tried to have one foot on either side of the Brexit debate and, as a result, is falling through the middle. Say what you want about Johnson, at least you know where he stands.
Polls can be wrong and we’ll see what happens in the election. But no matter who wins, Britain loses.
Dishonorable Mentions: William Barr, Josh Hawley, Young Adult novel mobs, Ralph Northam, AOC, AOC’s critics, Trump, Michael Cohen, Seth Abramson, Ilhan Omar, Ilhan Omar’s critics, Theresa May, the parents who bribed their kids into college, Rudy Giuliani, Jacob Wohl, Michael Avenatti
Here’s a summary of the past recipients of the Golden Drumsticks (links above). Some of these I’ve eventually come to regret. Praising anyone in politics is bound to backfire on you eventually. But I put them out in the interest of honestly owning up to my past blogging.
2007: Arnold Schwarzenegger; Ron Paul; Barack Obama; David Petraeus; Juan Carlos; Burma’s monks
2008: US Military; Jeff Flake; Ron Paul; Republican Governors; Barack Obama
2009: The American Fighting Man; Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd; George W. Bush
2010: The Tea Party; Chris Christie; Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles; the Next Wave of Republicans; David Cameron and Nick Clegg; American Soldiers
2011: Seal Team Six; Mark Kelly; The Arab Spring; the Technicians at Fukushima
2012: Down Ballots; The Sandy Responders; Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods; Mathew Inman
2013: Francis I; Edward Snowden; Rand Paul; The American Military; The Institute for Justice
2014: Ebola Responders; Francis I; Rand Paul; David Brat; The Supreme Court
2015: New Horizons and Dawn; Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler; Amnesty International; Video and Body Cameras; The Non-Crazy Presidential Candidates
2016: Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Dr. Brian H. Williams; Disillusioned Democrats; Kellyanne Conway; Nate Silver
2017: Women Speaking Out; Ronan Farrow; Jake Tapper; the Competent Trump People; Houston
2018: Robert Mueller; Justin Amash; Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron; The Sane Republicans; the Thai Soccer Team and their Rescuers
This year’s recipients:
Justin Amash: Amash may be the only person in Washington who actually read the Mueller report. And he is the only Republican to come to the obvious conclusion: that Donald Trump tried to obstruct justice flagrantly and repeatedly. And that the only reason he didn’t actually obstruct justice was because his own people refused to carry out his orders. Rather than trust that safeguard to hold forever, Amash came out in favor of impeachment.
As a result, he has been driven out of the so-called Freedom Caucus and the Republican Party. Amash, one of the most conservative members of Congress, has been denounced a sell-out and a liberal trying to curry favor with the media. But he hasn’t backed down. He hasn’t wavered. He continues to say what he thinks. And, in my opinion, he continues to be right.
Amash is now facing a tough re-election bid as an independent. I hope he pulls it off. But even if he doesn’t, he’s one of the few Republicans who has shown any real spine in the Trump era. I respected him before; he was my runner-up last year. I respect him more now.
Seth Moulton: Moulton’s Presidential campaign never went anywhere. But what I appreciate him for is this:
Moulton is one of the few people on the national stage willing to discuss his struggles with mental health. Not being a veteran, I can’t tell you what his words might have meant to others. But being someone who sometimes struggles with mental health, seeing someone talk about it in that spotlight — stigma be damned — meant a lot.
Nancy Pelosi: Look, I’m as surprised as you are. She has been on my Turkey list multiple times. But it tells you how bad things have gotten when Nancy Pelosi — 79 year old die-hard San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi — has emerged as the voice of reason. She shrugged off an attempt by the progressive wing to replace her. She faced down Trump over the shutdown and won. She’s kept the party on a Center Left trajectory that is keeping them viable as a national party. She didn’t jump into the impeachment waters immediately but eased into them as the evidence accumulated. If the Democrats defeat Trump next year and keep Congress, there will be one person who will deserve the most credit. For all of her failings while Obama was President, she has proven to be an outstanding foil in opposition. I’m not too proud to admit it.
The NATO Stalwarts: Trump is abandoning our alliances and giving Russia a free hand. The UK is in the midst of a Brexit meltdown. But the European leaders have managed to keep the alliance together so far.
I once drew a parallel between NATO and vaccines. Everyone is so worried about the potential (and mostly fictional) side effects of vaccines that they’ve forgotten the horrors vaccines protect us from. Right now, Americans are so worried about the costs of NATO that they have forgotten the horrors NATO protects us from.
Honorable Mention: Dan Crenshaw, William Weld, Marie Yovanovitch, Jake Tapper. Of course, everyone at OT is on the drumstick list.
As always, use the comments to nominate your own or flame my slate, as you wish. And have a Happy Thanksgiving.
Say what you want about Johnson, at least you know where he stands.
He stands wherever Boris Johnson profits the most, which changes day by day. He wrote two op-eds before the Brexit referendum, before deciding which one to publish, because he didn’t care about the EU, but about what position would be better for him personally. And more recently, he threw the DUP under the bus not a week later than telling them he will stand with them for a UNITED UK.
That, of course, only makes him more of a turkey. But I can’t let than small whiff of a praise for Boris pass on under the radar.Report
True, but the British public, I would suspect, is unaware of that. He eventually chose a side.Report
2013: Francis I
It took me ten minutes to understand you meant the Pope. I was trying to think which Francis I you meant, given that the last two Francis I of any note (King of the Two Sicilies, and Emperor of Austria, respectively) both died in the 1830s.
Pedantic interlude:The numbering convention for monarchs used to be that you add the number with the second monarch of the same name. It’s Pope Francis until we get a Pope Francis II /pedantic interlude.
Second pedantic interlude: King Juan Carlos of Spain went on as Juan Carlos I. Given that he was my own king, it grated me. Thank goodness I have a Felipe VI now as king /second pedantic interlude.Report
Biden shouldn’t be running.
He’s a front-runner solely on the strength of name recognition. Nobody knows who the hell any of the rest of these people are, and they don’t bother to find out, because there’s Joe Biden on the list so they pick him because they recognize the name. That. Is. All. They don’t care about his policies, they don’t care about his history, they don’t care about his performance, they care about him running as a Democrat and they recognize his name.
Biden is sucking all the oxygen out of the room just by showing up. Nobody cares about discussion of the issues, differentiation between candidates, careful ratiocination of the subtle differences between A Public Option and Single-Payer Healthcare because there’s The Name We’ve All Heard Before up there and everybody picks that because it’s easier than paying attention.
And…people aren’t wrong, really, to do this? I mean there’s no much to differentiate one white dude from another, and the non-white dudes and non-dude whites all sound just like the white dudes, and the only non-white-non-dude is even more focused on putting black people in jail than any of the white dudes, so, there you go. Might as well pick the name you’ve heard because they don’t let you out of the booth unless you’ve put a mark next to someone’s name.Report
Michael Harriot at The Root wrote an opinion piece on Pete Buttigeig and I imagine that he will get a lot of pushback from people on the left for using strong and unequivocal language in his condemnation of a presidential contender.
There.
I rewrote the last part of that last sentence five times.Report
I just read that since it was trending. Not sure an eight-year old comment is going to scuttle his campaign. But Mayor Pete is going absolutely nowhere if he doesn’t turn around his polling with black people and fast. Black people are the main reason is the front-runner right now. You can’t win the Dem primary without them.Report
There is a hypothesis that IdPol is why Trump won in 2016. (This hypothesis is popular because it allows people to not have to talk about Clinton as they discuss why Trump won.)
If this hypothesis is accurate, it is worth exploring whether it applies to 2020 as well.Report
Eh, Pete wasn’t ever going to be supported by that wing of the community regardless of what quote that they find to freak out about. The question is whether he can appeal to the rather jaded, reserved (and predominantly female) AA constituency of the Democratic party that actually votes and moves nominations. The BLM wing of the community is probably to fragmented at the moment to swing the needle since they haven’t united behind any one candidate.Report
A followup has been written.
It’s not an *APOLOGY*, really… but if someone said that Michael walked back his fiercest criticisms, I’d say “yeah, I agree with that”.Report
That is very interesting. I don’t think this will move the wing Michael represents much but maybe it’ll cool their animus a little. About as good an outcome as Buttigeig could ask for.Report
“And you can’t say: ‘Black kids don’t have confidence in the system’ without pointing out all of the reasons they shouldn’t have confidence in the system.””
This is an extremely good point. The issue is not positive examples of success, the world is full of those, the issue is negative examples of people doing shit to black people and getting away with it, and that matters more. Examples of cops shooting the shit out of black guys in situations that a four-year-old child could have talked down, of black mothers getting told that they’re not allowed to send their kids to better schools because reasons.Report
I see that argument a lot, that, for example, people should not be so critical of police, and that the media never reports on all the good things that police do! Like how they didn’t shoot that other black guy, and instead they helped him out! See, it’s not racist!
Completely missing the obviousness of, not shooting a person and actually helping them out is (or at the very least, should be) the basic level of service that is their fecking job! No, the media is not going to report on water being wet (one would hope, maybe it’s a slow news day), because news reports on things that are outside the norm.
Of course, the media also fails to regularly report all the little, and not so little, ways the police/the system fails to help, and causes undo harm instead, but which doesn’t rise to the level of being news worthy.
And PS, I use police as an example, but you see this in relation to other government agencies as well, not just the ones conservatives prefer. Police are just one of the most visible (and one of my Hobby Horses).
I find it frankly disturbing how readily people want to make examples of basic human decency into shining examples of selflessness and courage, and what I would call appalling displays of cruelty and callousness become normative and not worth worrying about.Report
I think it is absolutely okay to celebrate good deeds.
The pathology comes from using those good deeds as some kind of karmic balance. This is how abusers work. “I know I get mad and yell and sometimes I hit you but look how much fun we have together, look at all these good things I do for you, doesn’t that mean something?”Report
Yes, thank you, that is pretty much what I meant.
Relatedly, you ever notice how when an officer is in the news for a bad act, they are refereed to as a “Decorated Officer”, which implies that they’ve gotten a number of awards and citations for bravery, without ever explaining just how often PDs give out such awards for acts which are maybe just a bit above what is expected of the job of a first responder.
It’s a known issue in the military, where commanders would put in for awards and ribbons for every little thing because if their troops were getting awards, the commander would look good for leading such top notch people (and the troops would hopefully love and respect the commander more). Obviously the brass tends to frown upon such things, because it breeds Trumps.Report
A quibble with classifying Minnesota as a “large” state. Using the 2019 population estimates they’re #22, having fallen a place from the 2010 census (Colorado passed them). Minnesota is on the bubble to lose a House seat after the 2020 census.
When I was on the legislative staff in Colorado, I lost track of the number of times I was speaking with some member and said something like, “With all due respect, Colorado is no longer a poor-ish small-population state with an economy based on agriculture and extraction. We’re a rich-ish medium-population state with an economy based on tech and services.”Report
Regarding the Candidate Field – Even my wife, who is a stalwart Democrat, is resigning herself to 4 more years of Trump because every candidate sucks.Report
I no longer consider myself competent to judge the national situation. The whole thing probably comes down to five states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. I don’t know enough about any of them to understand what’s happening there.Report
I think this is all perception and mood. People want a dominant candidate with transcendent skills and the clearly perfect message. Maybe that comes out over time but not usually this early. In any case the insanely long campaign means every candidate gets beat up and questioned to hell and back. We havn’t even had one primary yet. Strong candidates comes out of the primaries not the endless poo storm of a year of pre primary jockeying.Report
More just a lack of interest in any of them. She was really excited about HRC, and she will most definitely vote for whoever wins the primary, but if the WA primary was held today, she’d have no clear idea who’d she’d want to vote for.Report
That’s exactly what I’m seeing (or feeling?): the majority of Dem voters are resigned to voting for whoever comes out of the Dem primary but are so uninspired by those candidates they don’t really care who it is. Personally, I’m not sure there’s a platform a Dem could run on that would capture the zeitgeist of the moment the way (say) Obama did back in ’06, which is an indictment of what the party has effectively become. Most Dem voters, I think, are pessimistic not only about America’s future but also about the ability of liberal Dem top-down solutions to actually work at the scale they’re being sold.. Biden, on the other hand, is a loony and pretty gross old man. That leaves Buttigeig, the one unknown quantity in the Dem field who is also, imo, the best retail politician in the field. But … but he’s a 37 year old gay tiny-town mayor who African Americans don’t like. (I also don’t know a single plank of his platform, which is to his credit!) Can Mayor Pete beat Trump? Can he inspire enthusiasm? He’s currently being absolutely gutted by the lefties…Report
The prospect of the gallows has a way of sharpening enthusiasm for the alternative.Report
Well, we’ll see. If the Democrats want to run 2020 on an anti-Trump/anti-GOP platform they should be airing TV and other ads in heavy rotation starting, like, yesterday, cuz the problem right now isn’t that people think Trump and the GOP aren’t corrupt but that they think the GOP is no more corrupt than the Democrats. Shifting that perception is a hard sell. 🙂Report
I’ve not seen that many election cycles but in the few I have seen I haven’t ever seen the Dems purity politics ever have much legs or take much of a bite when there’s a Republican in the White House. Was it different in 1996 or earlier?Report
I think the term “weak candidate” needs to be retired.
There isn’t any way to differentiate it from “candidate I don’t care for” and it is always deployed as a way to make a subjective opinion sound like fact.Report
See also: “strong candidate”.Report
Oh, I bet one of our election stats wonks can come up with a polling standard that differentiates a weak and a strong candidate.Report
Not in the way the terms are used in common discussion.
Consider how it is used in this essay.
Michael tells us the Democratic field is weak, then goes on to say “I really think these dopes are going to get Trump re-elected. ”
Which is a pretty common thing to see online, but no less astounding for its premises.
A personal opinion is offered as an objective fact, then is followed by a conclusion where half the electorate is stripped of any agency or responsibility for their actions.
Do the Trumpists vote because of their own willful choice? No, of course not!
They were compelled against their will to do it, by the inability of the Democrats to provide a better alternative!
The danger of this line of illogic is that it prevents us from facing the stark truth that for about 30-40% of the electorate, open fascism and white supremacy is perfectly acceptable, and for a subset of that number, is the only choice they will accept.
Its possible that Democratic candidate could cobble together a coalition of Never-Trumpers and Democrats in enough strength to win. I certainly hope so.
But that requires people to think more in terms of rejecting Trumpism, rather than pining for a superhero who will save us.Report
I think you need to re-read that whole paragraph about Trump being the Devil.Report
Seen on twitter:
Report
Has anyone bothered to ask them which moderate Democrat they would choose, over Trump?
Its not like there is a scarcity of moderate Democratic candidates, right?
Bloomberg, Swallwell, Gabbard, Bennett, Hickenlooper…none of these guys caught their fancy?Report
If I had to guess, I’d say “Yang Fan”.
But he’s not one of those who thinks that everybody else must be like him and therefore would also pick Yang if only they had access to the closer-to-perfect information that he has.
He’s one of those who knows that most people don’t agree with him and yet tries to model their thoughtprocesses in such a way that he can get closer to understanding them anyway.
And from there reaches conclusions.
If I had to guess.
Want me to see if I can get him to show up in comments?Report
Wait, who’s doing the talking here?
Those “two thirds of battleground voters”?
Or you? Or some guy on the internet?Report
Oh, when you said “did anybody ask them”, I thought you meant “Misha”.
Were you asking about the people referred to in the article that he’s referring to?Report
Yes.Report
Oh, well. I guess you’ll have to read the article to find out what they thought.
(I can’t really speak for the people the NYT interviewed for the story.)Report
Aren’t those people the ones who will vote Trump if the “dopes” in the Democratic Party don’t produce a better candidate?
Aren’t those people the invisible ones constantly being referenced in comments about “weak candidates”, “identity politics”, or lack of “pizazz” or some such?
In other words, aren’t those people the very ones Michael and you and much of the OT commentariat are referring to when we all handicap the 2020 election and critique the Democratic field?Report
You’re the one saying we need to retire the terms that reference those invisible people, Chip.Report
Man, if the world bent so easily to my will, I should get a lot more ambitious.
For my next trick, I will wish the GOP away to the cornfield.Report
Here’s another take on that same article:
That said: if this is the Democrats’ election to lose, they should do what they can to not lose it.Report
Presidential elections follow 5 steps:
Primary candidates of both parties declare
Stuff
Candidates chosen
Stuff
General election
Each of these steps is affected by the previous ones, and each of them is affected by expectations about the subsequent steps.
Given all that, a strong candidate is someone at Step 1-2 who is expected to do well in Step 4-5 against the expected opposition. The judgments are subjective (or at least driven by expectations), but there’s no sense in which they diminish anyone’s agency. For example, It’s foreseeable that a qualified but boring candidate would be weaker than a qualified and interesting candidate; that doesn’t deny that people should be able to make better decisions.
And I personally don’t use the terms “weak” or “strong” candidate because I have no confidence in my ability to predict elections, but I’m not going to criticize anyone for using the terms.Report
Given all that, a strong candidate is someone at Step 1-2 who is expected to do well in Step 4-5 against the expected opposition.
I’d say that process broke down pretty significantly in 2016, when Trump was chosen by the Republican electorate primarily as a repudiation of the GOP. No one except for Michael Moore and the Dilbert guy thought he would actually win in the general.
The positive moral of the Trump story, if there is one, is that primary voters should vote their conscience and take their chances and the general election will take care of itself.Report
Maybe I should have said that “the definition of a ‘strong’ candidate” is someone at Step 1-2 who is expected to do well in Step 4-5 against the expected opposition. I was looking at the meaning of the term, not the success rate of any perceived group of candidates. In any multi-stage game, the expected outcome of the later stages is going to be part of the calculation in developing a plan in the early stages of the game. No guarantees are given, however.
As for 2016, a lot of people supported Trump because they thought he’d be a good match-up against Clinton. He was seen as a repudiation of both parties, as I recall, and I’m fairly sure he did better in open primaries than in primaries of the exclusively-Republican electorate.Report
Hong Kong didn’t get a drumstick?Report
Damn. Damn. Damn. Biggest omission by far. [hangs head in shame]
What happened was that the protests have been going on for a long time and there was just never a moment where I said, “Yeah, put them on”.Report
Yeah, given your prior picks, I figured it was an oversight.Report
I think the very recent elections where pro democracy candidates won very big could be that moment. Elections, sadly, aren’t as dramatic as protests.Report
The election might not be, but that result was pretty dramatic.Report
Hong Kong is still baking in the oven.
I think Anonymous was outed yesterday as a military speechwriter for General Mattis. If so, we’ll see if DoD lawyers think his actions were as bad as a SEAL posing with a corpse.Report
I’m not sure how Boris Johnson could be seen as a failure in this election because it was an election that he was seeking. He inherited a party that had repeatedly failed to pass a withdrawal agreement as promised in its manifesto. He needed and wanted an election and the Fixed Term Parliament Act generally prevents a minority government to call an election. Withdrawing the whip from rebel Tories, proroguing Parliament, and demonstrating a willingness to accept a no-deal, got him his election with the media’s helpful outrage. In the process, he unified his party and to a large extent the leave vote. If he gets a twenty seat majority in the next Parliament, it will be an accomplishment.
Also, interesting that both major parties have committed to repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act in their manifestos.Report
Well said… If, and I say If at this point, Boris returns with an outright Majority it will be a political masterstroke worth studying in the future.Report
Also, pretty big given Conservatives have been in power since 2010, so they could be in control for 14 years.
One of the things that stands out to me is that when Boris was challenged about his claim that the UK could spend the 350 million pounds per week now being sent to the EU on the NHS instead, they decided to stick by their figures. Not clarify or backtrack. The media went all out on establishing the more accurate net figures of somewhere btw/ 275M to 160M per week as if it defeated the underlying points. (The UK sends a lot of money; and we can spend it on things we like) This is about navigating social media driven election coverage and getting it to pay attention where you want it.Report
Yeah, I mean he deserves the Turkey because of who he is and what he’s after but he’s a very opportunistic and capable politician running a very risky play.
The Trump in Britain is the execrable Corbyn despite how Trump and he basically are diametric opposites in personality.Report
Meanwhile, outside of the Ordinary Times bubble, actual Democrat’s are satisfied with their choices.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-you-buy-that-democratic-voters-want-a-new-2020-candidate/
“First, Democratic voters are extremely happy with the field as is. According to a July poll by the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of Democrats rate their field as “excellent” or “good.” That’s essentially tied with 2008 for the highest enthusiasm Pew has ever found among Democrats:
And the numbers may have only improved since then — a HuffPo/YouGov poll conducted last week found 83 percent of Democrats were satisfied with their choices.”Report
Checking to see what the numbers were in 2016…
Huh, Looky there.
Anyway, this is an interesting poll and thank you for sharing it.
He’s higher on Warren than I would be, but both Biden and Sanders would win two out of three of MI, WI, PA so they’d pretty much both beat Trump.
So far, so good.Report
I think a better comparison is 2008. In 2016 the Dems had a “strong” candidate and the official line was that they were rigging the contest or putting their eggs all in one basket. Though even in 2008 I suppose there was already a “strong” candidate assumed to win.
But I do agree with Jesse. I think it’s ludicrously early to be pronouncing the Democratic Candidate field as weak or strong.Report
In 2008, there were a couple of things going on.
ANYBODY would have beaten the Republican candidate. Friggin’ *ANYBODY*.
That said, during the primaries, I had the idea that Clinton was a juggernaut and Obama was a juggernaut and, holy crap, these were two juggernauts fighting each other.
The sainted Gorilla Monsoon would have said “the unstoppable force versus the immovable object!” as part of the buildup to this match.
And, dang, they beat the crap out of each other. By some measures, Clinton won the 2008 primary (to conclude that, you have to ignore certain shenanigans in Michigan which, seriously, should have caused a bigger ruckus than they did and should have been a bigger warning about 2016 than they were).
This time? Well, I don’t get the feeling of there being several candidates that are equally juggernauting amongst themselves.Report
No, there’re no obvious juggernauts I suppose unless one counts Bidens oddly gaffe proof campaign.
I also remember the presence of those juggernauts being cited as a sign of the paucity of the Democratic Party’s feebleness. Now their absence is a sign of Democratic Party malaise.
This, I note, coming from a conservative who’s own party had a deep bench of conservative politicians who then got whupped by a grifter reality TV star. This cycle the Democrats closest equivalent (Williamson) is barely a footnote.
I just am noting that the the Democrats potential roster is always bad; the reasons its bad change like a rolling slot machine screen but you never have any doubt what the prognosis will be.Report
This tweet got a lot of play last week. It’s marginally insightful.
I just am noting that the the Democrats potential roster is always bad
I’m saying that it’s not. In 2008 it wasn’t. That a million years ago, true, but those were two heavy hitters.Report
Funny, I recall a lot of people saying it was bad in 2008. Nothing on the field but corrupt ol’ Hillary Clinton and a bunch of also-rans.Report
You don’t remember the excitement over Barack Obama’s speech in 2004? (When he won in Chicago and defeated the carpetbagging Alan Keyes?)
You don’t remember *THIS* energy:
???Report
Ultra right-wing partisan makes snippy tweets at Democrats, Jaybird swoons as if it were gospel truth that does not need to be weighted, Franco is still dead.Report
I swooned over Andrew Yang promising to get rid of Daylight Saving Time.
This is merely me saying “huh, yeah”.Report
Before Obama blew up, the critiques were common and gusty. After Obama blew up the critiques were deeply skeptical- note how even AA’s didn’t begin switching over on Obama until he had his success in Iowa. Once he beat Hillary then all talk was about PUMA’s and then got increasingly shrill and desperate until his landslide victory.Report
Maybe I am too close to an enthusiast but Maribou happened to have been in Chicago in 2004 visiting friends when Obama got elected to the Senate.
And she sang his praises there for a good, long while.
So my take on enthusiasm for Obama may be skewed, I admit.Report
S’why I try and keep about half my reading in conservative outlets.Report
I was at Red State at the time! (full disclosure: banned, etc)
They were attacking him back in 2004. (“B. Hussein Obama” was the big one that Moe Lane (remember him?) called “Low Rent” and got called out for it.)Report
I would question what the poll is really getting at. What it might be measuring is simply “Do you think the folks in the current field can beat the opposition’s candidates?”
Back in 2008 they may have been worried that Americans wouldn’t turn out to elect a black candidate or a female candidate (Obama and Hillary), and there were no other options on the table. But a majority of them figured either Obama or Hillary could probably beat some Bush replacement (which turned out to be McCain/Palin). I don’t know if the question was even polled in 2012, but 2004 might be a better basis for comparison.
What I fear might skew this poll is that it might be measuring a different question, “Do you think any Democrat with a pulse can beat Trump?” I would expect that at least 65 percent of Democrats, especially CNN viewers, would answer “Yes!”
It might be hard to drill much deeper, even though there’s plenty of polling on head-to-head match ups, because what’s being sampled is what Democrat’s think other Democrat’s will do if their candidate is ‘X’. That’s a bit indirect and fraught with problems. Most respondents might assume that all the Bernie Bros or Yang folks would rally behind ‘X’ even if that wouldn’t really happen. Or most supporters of ‘X’ might answer that if X isn’t the candidate, X will fail to rally the party, all the fringe supporters will bail, and Trump will win, which is the argument a candidate’s supporters will often make to try to sway people who are supporting someone else.Report
What’s happening with the Democratic Primary is that the invisible primary is now visible. This means that a lot of formerly hidden chaos is open for people to see.Report
You say ” die-hard San Francisco liberal” as if it were a bad thing.Report
Also, how did you not give Erdogan a Turkey?Report
I would nominate for a Turkey of the Year a group of Republican Congressmen who may be called the “Trump Minions” or some other similar name. These include such notable figures as Devin Nunes, who minionized himself with repeated re-broadcast of already-debunked and not-particularly-coherent conspiracy theories; Matt Gaetz, whose protests over “star chamber” hearings upon which his own colleagues were sitting culminated in an unauthorized entry into a secured room with an unsecured cell phone; Jim Jordan, who did not let his implication into covering up a sustained practice of rape while he was coach of the Ohio State wrestling program, or his failure to have purchased a suit jacket, stop him from making emotionally powerful but factually sparse questions during the impeachment inquiry; and most of all, Kevin McCarthy, whose twenty-minute interview on 60 minutes contained so little cogent argument it raised real questions about his sobriety and intellectual capacity. Mick Mulvaney, no longer a member of Congress, also gets the biggest Cabinet-level Turkey nomination in l’Affaire d’Ukraine for being the first one to just blurt out “Of course there was a quid pro quo, we do that sort of thing all the time around here. Deal with it.” Turkey awards all around, if you ask me.
The Sane Republicans may have won an award in 2018; after Flake’s retirement, Kelly’s and Mattis’ firings; McCain’s death, Sasse and Snowe’s capitulation, and Amash’s defection to independent status, I’m not sure who counts as a “Sane Republican” anymore. I might once have said Nikki Haley but, no, she disqualified herself last week.
As for a Golden Drumstick, I would nominate the 2019 United States Women’s National Soccer Team, who won their eighth (!) World Cup with panache, dominance, and a tremendous show of personality. Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Julie Ertz, Tobin Heath, and most of all Megan Rapinoe showed the world a level of soccer dominance once reserved for players with single names from Brazil. Way to go!Report
The Houston Astros get a retroactive Turkey for 2017.Report
1. The rest of the United States continues to vastly overestimate the extent to which San Francisco politics is really far to the left or radical. Generally it is the moderate politicians who win election in city-wide races. London Breed (supported by property developers) won election against the more radical Jane Kim, as did upzoner and development friendly Scott Weiner. Chesa Boudin barely won his reformist race for San Francisco DA compared to typical DA candidate Suzy Loftus thanks to many rounds of ranked-choice voting, etc.
2. With all due respect, your politics are still pretty far to the right, and this causes you to have “I can’t give the Democrats and/or liberals any breaks or credit” as a default thought status. I can think of this as being true for a bunch of posters here because the posters here tend to be older white or white enough dudes. All the polling so far shows that the Democratic candidates easily lead against Trump. The 2017, 2018, and 2019 elections were all very favorable to the Democrats. Republicans lost counties that they held for decades and sometimes over a century (Delaware County, Pennsylvania). Yet there is a still a certain kind of right-leaning older white guy who still can’t give Democrats any credit and would rather undergo unnecessary chemotherapy and surgery (without anesthetic) than give Democrats a lick of credit. It is quite a fascinating knee-jerk reaction.Report
San Francisco isn’t radical leftism anymore. It’s hypercapitalist technocratic/philanthropic libertinism.
You’d think that it’d be more popular among the rubes in flyover.Report
The “rubes in flyover” aren’t libertarian, they aren’t capitalist or technocratic nor are they libertines so why would they like San Francisco?Report
I was being sarcastic.Report
The janitorial staff, the retail clerks, the city maintenance workers in SF, are they rubes, hypercapitalist technocrats, or philanthropic libertines?
The manager of a Con-Agra facility in Nebraska living in a McMansion; which one is he? The women’s studies professor in Iowa? The blogger who wrote that angry article about Mayor Pete? Rubes, or snooty liberal elitists?
As long as I have this power to dispel tired cliches, can I wish this “coastal elite vs flyover proles” stuff to the cornfield as well?Report
Oh, they’re populist as hell. Remember when they were attacking the Google shuttles?
I think that they’re populist left rather than populist right, though… so I suppose we could see how they’re on the same “side” as Google, but I doubt the people on the buses thought they were.
The people who were throwing bricks sure as hell thought they weren’t.Report
Interestingly, Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska — as flyover as you can get — are doing quite well with the capital and tech stuff. Granted, the tech has a somewhat rural lean, which is not being met by the “coastal elites”, who are not interested in, eg, all of the ways that GPS and cheap processing power can make farming more efficient.
I was in Kansas last month and had a very interesting conversation with my BIL about which GPS-based services were worth the money and which weren’t. The very expensive GPS-plus-inertial-guidance that let the tractor make the turn at the end of the row on its own was not; the GPS-plus-soil-samples that let him correct for someone else’s years of mistakes in soil treatment to bump yields up significantly was.Report
Silly Saul, no elections happened between 2016 and now in Jaybird land.Report
Saul’s comment was to the OP.
The election that I care about between now and 2016 is the 2018 one which was, indeed, a blue wave (that is to say: it exceeded what I figured “regression to the mean” would look like and it wasn’t close).
But, no, I’m not willing to use the last election to conclude that the Dems have it in the bag.
And if the left thinks that 2018 and the handful of off-year elections in 2017 and 2019 means that they have it in the bag, they’re going to be wearing similar facial expressions on election night 2020 that they wore on election night 2016.Report