Wyoming and Alaska get their turns with the 2022 midterm primary season, with some big political names, hot button issues, an attempted political comeback, and one hot mess of a voting process included.
First in Wyoming, the question wasn’t would Representative Liz Cheney lose her seat, but by how much. With the over/under set at 30 points, Cheney couldn’t even hold that line, losing 66%-29% to one-time ally Harriet Hageman who had the unbeatable dual threat of a Trump endorsement and not being Liz Cheney.
Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman easily beat Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the Republican side of the fight for Wyoming’s lone seat in Congress.
On the Democratic side, Lynnette Grey Bull won her party’s primary. She will be running against Hageman in the Nov. 8 general election.
Early Wednesday morning, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office reported results from all 23 counties. In the final, unofficial tally, Hageman received 113,025 votes to Cheney’s 49,316.
Even before the county numbers began showing up online, the other members of Wyoming’s congressional delegation quickly weighed in with their congratulations to Hageman, who pre-primary polls had consistently forecast as the winner.
Hageman was joined by family, friends and some supporters here, as media outlets far and wide reported, just an hour after polls closed in Wyoming, that she was the winner. As the results were discussed on television at Hageman’s election party, the crowd cheered and hollered in celebration.
Many said in interviews they were there to congratulate her in person, and had known she would beat the incumbent by a landslide.
“By our vote today, Wyoming has put the elites on notice – we are no longer going to tolerate representatives who don’t represent us,” Hageman said in her victory speech. “Wyoming has made clear that we are done being governed by the Washington, D.C., uniparty – those Democrats and Republicans who don’t really care which party is in power, just so long as they are.”
Cheney acknowledged Hageman had won and said she had called her rival. Cheney also continued her comments against former President Donald Trump and those like him who have denied the results of the 2020 election that he lost.
“Two years ago, I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again,” Cheney said in televised remarks. “But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election.
“Tonight, Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary. She won. I called her to concede the race,” Cheney said. “This primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”
Other political leaders in the state made statements congratulating Hageman in the minutes after Cheney accepted defeat. U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both R-Wyo., each said they were looking forward to her joining them in Washington to represent the Equality State.
“Harriet will be a tremendous ally in the fight to unleash American energy, combat inflation and secure our southern border,” Barrasso said. “Along with Cynthia Lummis, the three of us will be a strong, conservative and effective team for the people of Wyoming.”
A news release from Lummis said the lawmaker “extended her congratulations to Harriet Hageman on her primary win for Wyoming’s lone seat in Congress.” In the emailed announcement, Lummis said of “my friend” Hageman that she will now hold the seat that Lummis herself occupied for eight years.
Hageman has been leading incumbent Cheney in nearly every poll released ahead of the election, including the latest completed by the University of Wyoming. The survey was conducted through the last week of July and into the first week of August, and found that 57% of GOP primary voters surveyed supported Hageman. Cheney polled at 28%.
Liz Cheney became enemy number one to vast swaths of the GOP for not only going against Donald Trump but being the standard bearer of anti-Trump Republican establishment opposition — such as it is — to the former president from her perch as vice-chair of the January 6th committee. even as most other Republicans refused participation. While that made her a media favorite and drew praise from the anti-Trump folks, Cheney knew like everyone else that was probably political suicide in one of the reddest states in the country. For primary GOP voters having a very safe seat meant they could fully express all the rage they wanted to at Cheney without any political concerns for the general election. The MAGA faithful will be gleeful, while there will be handwringing among the commentariat over “what does it mean when Liz Cheney did the right thing garble garble…”
It means the right and wrong thing doesn’t matter in a safe seat primary if you go against your own party. If this is shocking to you, welcome to politics; pull up a chair and take notes, you have a bunch of things to learn. Liz Cheney gets her political martyrdom and moral victory, the GOP get a generic, automatic yes-voting member of congress who probably won’t have a headline outside Wyoming in her entire congressional career after this. And the world keeps turning.
Cheney will probably run for president next — seeing as she politically will have nothing else to do — where she will get lots of “in a normal political party”-type op-eds, non-Trump fundraising money, and Republican polling support they would have to recalibrate the James Webb Space Telescope to notice. Media talking heads will have hot takes about what Cheney does and doesn’t “deserve” for her principled stand against Trump.
“Deserves” in the words of William Munny “Got nuthin to do with it”. Cheney stopped short of telling the GOP in general and Trump followers in particular “I’ll see you in hell” right before they put her political career down, but it was implied.
Meanwhile up north, the results of Alaska’s foray into ranked choice voting is…you won’t know for a while:
The results of the Alaska special general election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term remain uncertain, as CNN projected none of the candidates on the ballot topped 50% on Tuesday — a necessary feat given the state’s new ranked choice voting rules.
The special general election, which was triggered by Young’s death, marks the first time that Alaska is using ranked choice voting — a process that asks voters to rank their preferred candidates, with the votes for the lowest-finishing candidates coming into play only if no one tops 50%. CNN projected that no candidate crossed that threshold, which means it will be a while until the winner is determined, with the ranked choice voting tabulation scheduled to begin on August 31 — the deadline for overseas ballots to arrive.
The race to determine who will fill the remainder of Young’s term pits former Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee who has not appeared on a ballot since that election loss, against Nick Begich III, who won the Alaska Republican Party’s endorsement in April and is the product of a powerful Democratic Alaska political family, and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Peltola.
All three candidates and independent Al Gross advanced to the August special general election after a June nonpartisan special primary, but Gross withdrew from the race and encouraged his supporters to back Peltola.
Palin’s attempt at a political comeback comes 13 years after she resigned the Alaska governor’s office in 2009 during her only term. Since then, she has been a conservative media figure and has endorsed and campaigned with various Republican candidates, but she has been largely detached from Alaska politics.
Though Palin was the best-known candidate in the race by far and had the backing of former President Donald
Trump, who carried Alaska by 10 points in 2020, rival candidates and political observers in the state previously said the ranked choice voting process could hurt her chances in the special general election. She also faced opposition from voters still angry that she quit the governor’s office.
No matter who wins the special general election to fill the remainder of Young’s term, there will be a regular general election, which will also use ranked choice voting, in November to determine who will hold the seat in the next Congress.
Yes you read that right, there are two elections, at the same time, for the same seat. To add to the delay and confusion, the “second choice” tabulation won’t happen until August 31st. Huzzah, progress.
Meanwhile, Alaska also is working through some things in their senate delegation:
Trump has also set his sights on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who was among the seven Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial. Trump is backing former Alaska Department of Administration commissioner Kelly Tshibaka; he traveled to the state to hold a rally for Tshibaka in July.
However, Alaska’s non-partisan primary system — like the House race, the top four finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election — means that both Murkowski and Tshibaka will advance to the general election, CNN projected. Democrat Patricia Chesbro will also advance, and a fourth candidate has not yet been projected.
Ranked choice voting is a hot topic with some folks looking for a better way to do elections, but the Alaska experiment is not looking like the poster child for the method some hoped it would be.
it is a ‘may you live in interesting times’ thing that of all places, both Alaska and Wyoming have interesting electoral contests.Report
Liz Cheney is part of the Republican establishment that made a choice decades ago to lie down with the lion of the far right in order to secure power. She voted 93% of the time in support of the legislative proposals of Donald Trump. She has a 79% lifetime conservative score from Heritage Action.
That she decided, after her life was threatened by trump’s minions on January 6th to do something is, I suppose, commendable. But it does not even come close to erasing those past sins. I wish her well, but I am not sad to see her go. She is no hero, and she is a fair-weather patriot.Report
It’s very hard to feel bad for her personally, even if one can also acknowledge that the loss of one of the dwindling Republicans willing to at least draw a line somewhere is not a great development for the country.Report
They spent 40 years making this bed. Just like they spent nearly 50 making the bed of Roe. They now have to lie in the bed. That they never thought it would harm them is an interesting cautionary tale, but not at all surprising.Report
Yes she is. That’s part of what I mean by describing the GOP as being the result of 40 years of concentrated focus on obtaining and retaining power at any cost. Though so far as I know no one promised her an election.
I do remember when Democrats as a party were anti-war. That they no longer are, that they have accepted both the Neocon outlook on international affairs and the neoliberal corporation centered economic lies are two of my main criticisms of them from the left.Report
I’m pretty sure everyone has known this was coming for a long time now. The polling was never even close.Report
I agree w/Andrew that the one true takeaway is that Partisan Politics, erm, trumps all… and Cheney’s loss reflects fundamental support for a Republican party that is oriented on Trump. That’s what the Republican Party is right now.
That said, Cheney, or ‘The Cheneys’ are part of the reason why we have Trump…
And those two things said, the strangest thing of all to me is reimagining a Republican Party reborn out of the House Cheney.
Whatever path forward (hint, it isn’t Dem/Rep parties as constituted today) there’s no use mourning the end of a Cheney.Report
‘The America I stand for is one that invades other nations with impunity, waterboards Muslims, offshores jobs, and makes damn sure the rich hold onto every single penny that falls into their clutches. But a mob of some damn deranged rabble threatening me personally and the integrity of the system I use to make these things happen? Well that’s not the America I know.’Report
The sort of nonsense up with which we will not put!Report
I hate the treatment of a family as a single person. Dick and Liz are different people in different eras who followed different paths.Report
Sure, they are different people with different paths… They are substantially of the same faction with the same goals/objectives adjusted for ‘facts on the ground’ in the 2020’s. Mostly bad ideas from a worn out set of political priors. The major premise stands.Report
Cheney stopped being an anti-Trump Republican a long time ago. She became an anti-Trump anti-Republican. As an anti-Trump Republican, I can spot the difference. She went after Trump – as did others – but she really got attention when she went after Republicans who wouldn’t go after Trump, and worked with Democrats who went after Trump. 80% of her statements may have been against Trump, but 80% of her actions were against Republicans.Report
Only since January 6th. Prior to that she was content to let them fawn unchallenged.Report
That’s just a different way of saying what I said. She used to be an anti-Trump Republican, then became an anti-Trump anti-Republican. She’s been so for her entire current term, as you note, and that makes it really hard to run as a Republican. It’s that famous electoral question: what have you done for me lately? Did she have an answer other than “work against our party”?Report
Prior to January 6th 2021 she voted to support Trump’s legislative policy positions 93% of the time. Seems to me that was a huge answer to “What have you done for me lately” that, ironically, still involves Donald Trump. And yet it STILL wasn’t enough for her to remain in the party. She’s not at all anti-Republican – she’s just anti-Trump.
Just look at her Heritage Action score card – she’s right in line even now.
https://heritageaction.com/scorecard/members/C001109/117Report
Note that holding coup plotters accountable for their actions is “work against our party”.Report
The January 6th committee was never about going after coup plotters, it was about continuing criticism of Trump. And the particular role that Cheney played on it was (a) give it credibility, and (b) attack fellow Republicans.Report
The position you’re trying to carve out for yourself is incoherent.
You want to be “anti-Trump” but not “anti-Trump coup”.
The Jan 6 coup attempt was Trump’s action, and top Republican elected officials were his co-conspirators and organizers. There just isn’t any coherent way to be against Trump without also being against much of the top Republican party apparatus.
Cheney gets this.Report
But…you know that none of that is true, right? I mean, none of it? That none of it is proven or even hinted at? That the word “coup” can’t possibly be used seriously here? If you don’t know that, it’s a problem; if you do know it; it’s a different problem. But my hunch is that people who say things like this simply don’t care if it’s not true. It doesn’t occur to them to consider whether it’s true. That’s a huge problem.Report
I never thought I would need to ask this, but…
Who is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election?Report
I bet the answer is going to be unpleasant. By which i mean trump won with 400 million votes or some such.Report
You never had to ask because I’ve talked at length about how Trump lost. We know he lost, it’s clearly documented that he lost, we know there was no coup attempt, there’s no indication of any coup attempt, there was no conspiracy, there’s no reason to think that there was a conspiracy. Life is easy when you don’t have to make stuff up to make a point.Report
They literally talked about plans to throw the election to the congress and too get states to overturn the popular vote.Report
They literally discussed legal options.Report
yeah that is what i expected. “legal options” to overturn the popular vote just because they said so to have the congress decide who is prez.
It’s not a coup if we try to make it look all legal is still an attempt to overturn a lost election and seat the loser in power. Must be some word for that.Report
The same word would be applied to the FEC, the Electoral College, poll workers and Secretaries of State, except I guess with an angrier voice.Report
That is just gibberish. There is a lawful process which they tried to evade.Report
Lawyers make the best possible argument for a position, and policy / political people map out the most effective way to implement it. They tried their best to find the path but they couldn’t, so they dropped it.Report
Lawyers can’t, well not legally, push illegal actions. Just because a lawyer says it does not make it legal. Also as i remember that whole break into congress stuff didnt’ go as planned. What would have happened if it did?Report
IANAL. As a programmer, I take a few cracks at a problem, and if I can’t find the solution, I consider that a solution might not be possible. I get the feeling that the lawyers did the best they could to find a legal path, but they couldn’t. And in a completely unrelated story, there was a break-in.Report
The defining characteristic of belonging to the Republican Party is to be willing to believe in an alternate set of facts.
70 million dignity wraiths.Report
It’s ok if you don’t have a reply.Report
Maybe one of the other lawyers here will swoop in to disagree with me, particularly one with more courtroom experience, of which I have little and it is now long ago. However my experience is that facts and evidence are much more relevant to an outcome than what a statute or regulation or precedent says (obviously there are exceptions to this). The problem with what Trump did, even with the considerably walked back arguments they made in court compared to what the campaign said to the media, is that they walked into court with nothing to substantiate their allegations. Most likely because nothing actually exists that would do so.Report
Yeah, that sounds right. I’m lumping together the tactics (alternate electors, legal challenges, et cetera) as attempts to find a path to victory. I really don’t think there’s been any evidence that the 1/6 riot was a planned component.
The whole thing reminds me of a Brett Favre game. They’re down 17 points at halftime, all he has to do is thread the needle three times and they win. He’s done it before. He’ll go out there are rack up 18 consecutive completions if you count the interceptions.Report
You are aware that several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders have been indicted for Seditious Conspiracy in connection with January 6th?Report
OK, guys, link me to the article that makes the case you’re making clearest.Report
There is no “One Article” that would pull it all together. The January 6th Committee hearings make the case, including emails and sworn testimony. Every news outlet that has covered them has all that material. Of course Fox, OAN and Newsmax didn’t cover them, so if that’s where you are getting your information you would indeed not be exposed to this.
But if you want the best summary so far, New York Magazine has it:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-campaign-steal-presidency-timeline.htmlReport
We’re in Creationist territory here.
Pinky reads the same newspapers and sees the same teevee as everyone else.
He is witness to the same reality as the rest of us but simply rejects it.
He’s willing to break with Donald Trump personally, but Joe Walsh’s observation about the impossibility of being a NeverTrump Republican is just something he refuses to accept.Report
I can now say I’ve read the most solid presentation you have and there was no evidence of coordination. One of you can talk about the plans and actions of the Trump team, and another can talk about the riot, and you can overlap so much that it sounds like it’s one sentence, but apparently no one can connect the Trump team strategy with the riot.Report
As a refresher, the leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have been charged with Seditious Conspiracy.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/1111132464/jan-6-hearing-recap-oath-keepers-proud-boysReport
Connecting the Trump team to the rioters? How about a quote from Donald? Almost the last line of his speech that day:
“So we’re going to, We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.”
I know that sentence doesn’t make much sense, but hey it’s Donald (quote captured from NPR). And I also realize it doesn’t directly say “storm the place,” but you wanted a connection between the two camps. Got it.Report
From the NPR transcript: “So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.
“The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
The sentence (or whatever you’d call this) makes sense if you cut out the digressions.
“So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue….And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give…try and give our Republicans, the weak ones…the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”Report
Pinky: Thanks for cutting out the digressions. It does help make his sentences more sensible. (They usually need that). I did not do that because I didn’t want it to look as if I was rearranging the defeated president’s words. But my point, a point that you have now quite ably reinforced, was that there was indeed a direct connection between the Trump team and the riot. There is more than one connection, of course, but I thought that using the ex-president’s own frickin’ words connecting the two would pretty well settle that hash.Report
OMFG…okay not really surprised. It was all coordinated. If only there were hearings where all this came out. They knew it was illegal because at least one of them SAID SO IN AN EMAIL.Report
“As a programmer, I take a few cracks at a problem, and if I can’t find the solution, I consider that a solution might not be possible.”
Where was the “problem” here? A legal, fair, well-conducted election is a “problem?” In whose world? So you have no issue with lawyers trying to find a “legal path” around a well-conducted election? And how is trying to undo a legal, fair election not a coup attempt? And how can you look at the testimony and the easily visible facts on the ground and not see cooperation and even conspiracy? Maybe there were many people just swept up in the moment (including a defeated president who wanted to go urge the besiegers on), but there was plenty of organization there as well.Report
I don’t think it was the right thing to do, but I also don’t see evidence of conspiracy.Report
Fixed it for you.Report
And you don’t want to see the lack of evidence. That’s what makes this a conspiracy *theory*.Report
Simply because the evidence is not yet public doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That aside, I have a lot of professional training in dealing with both uncertainty and with drawing conclusions and inferences from data.
When Michael Flynn is photographed with people charged with seditious conspiracy and a week later is in an Oval Office meeting discussing how to stop the certification, that’s evidence. I have no doubt there’s evidence in the thousands of text messages and emails the DoJ and the House Committee possess.Report
There is no public evidence but I’m sure some will be revealed because I’m really good at piecing things together. There we go, it took us years but we finally got to the sincere part. I should call this creationism to tie into Chip’s earlier comment, but this is just conspiracy theorizing.Report
Illegal options.Report
Well it wasn’t a surprise and I’m not surprised that I’m unmoved. Sure Cheney would have been better than her foaming at the mouth replacement- agreed. Yet all I can muster is a disgusted “Eh”.Report
One of the takes I’ve seen is that Cheney was a Washington Denizen and Foamy is a Wyoming Denizen.
To the extent that people want their senators to represent their state rather than some weird nationalistic (and fascist!) idea of “America”, this is democracy in action.
Yay.Report
Hurrah….Report
I mean, it is obviously Democracy in action because people voted and whatnot.
But they elected her three times prior. So “She lost because she’s not REALLY from here” doesn’t really work.Report
I was poking around the internet, and it seems likely (at least to me) that she won’t “be from there” at all after the new Congress is seated. She and her husband of almost 30 years live in McLean, VA. He was pretty high up in the Bush43 administration and is now a very successful lawyer representing large corporate customers in federal courts around DC. Their children who are still school-aged attend private school in the McLean area.Report
Oh, I’m aware she’s not a true Wyoman. But that didn’t bother folks much in 2016/18/20. Something changed from then to now… from her winning 3 times in the general to getting demolished in the primary. It wasn’t her residency history… it was what happened since Jan 6.Report
Now you’re making me wonder… how did she do in primaries in those other years?
Before you click through, make some guesses in your head for the following questions:
1. Did she run unopposed in the primary?
2. If she didn’t run unopposed in the primary, by how much did she win?
Got those answers in your head? Here’s 2016.
Here’s 2018.
Here’s 2020.Report
So this proves what exactly? She won a plurality in 16, an outright majority in 18 and again in 20. We already told you this.Report
Oh, sorry. I missed where you told me that she won a plurality in 16.
I mean, because I overlooked your telling me that, my assumption, when I was googling this, was that she won with an outright majority in 2016 because she only faced token opposition.
Like her 2018/2020 numbers? I thought that her 2016 numbers would be identical to those.
Given 2016, I am much, much less surprised by yesterday’s numbers than I was back when my assumption was that she won handily back in 2016.Report
What’s your point?
Mine is that she got trounced because she went up against Trump and the GOP, not because of her residency history.Report
My criticism isn’t about “residency”.
It was more of a whole “representation” thing. In the current year, Wyomans don’t seem to think that Cheney is a good representative for them.
That’s not a “residency” thing, not really. I suppose it could be a “one of us” thing.
The Trump thing does seem to be one of the things that put her on that side of the line rather than this side of it. Despite voting 91% of the time with Trump otherwise.Report
At this point I think Trump is the one of us thing at least as far as GOP primary voters are concerned. Here they picked a QAnon raving buffoon over the heiress apparent to Larry Hogan. DNC helped a little but it wasn’t even close.
Ironic thing is I think Hogan’s pick would have had a good shot at winning since the Democratics passed over 2 or 3 well regarded, experienced candidates with solid records for a total novice whose main claim to fame is writing a book Oprah liked. But instead they concede the race. And while I’m certainly not losing sleep over Republican own goals it’s hard to see this kind of thing as a positive development. At the very least closed party primaries are looking to me every day like a worse and worse deal for the public at large.Report
“ One of the takes I’ve seen is that Cheney was a Washington Denizen and Foamy is a Wyoming Denizen.”
Okay then.
Yes, they definitely wanted the other guy. No argument there.Report
If I may use the lingo from one of those movies that features “dance-offs”:
I wasn’t using “denizen” to refer to where they were from.
I was using “denizen” to refer to where they are at.Report
Fully conceded that they used to like Cheney quite a bit and now they much prefer the other guy for reasons.Report
I don’t know about the word “like”.
I might go to “saw themselves as beneficiaries in a mutually beneficial, though transactional, relationship”.Report
“I agree with you.”
“No no… we don’t agree!”
“But I do agree with you.”
“Yea but see here you don’t.”
Why man? Why?Report
Kazzy, I feel that I am making distinctions that you are not.
Should I not mind?Report
I used the word “like” and I used the word “prefer” and you used the phrase “saw themselves as beneficiaries…” and I don’t think their is much value in distinguishing between all those in this case beyond you needlessly arguing and/or trying to make some other point you won’t just state explicitly.Report
When describing the actions of the voters in this case, I prefer the word “prefer”. I don’t like the word “like”.
So, yes. I agree with you that they preferred Cheney’s opponent to Cheney.
Hence how they voted.Report
And I think it’s ridiculous we spent this much time and this many words to draw a distinction between “like” and “prefer” in an election that was decided by 35+ points.Report
I have seen the election multiple times used as a way to explain that the people in Wyoming are bad.
I’m trying to avoid language that has a whole lot of overlap with moral language to the point where I kinda want to avoid language that gets used in aesthetics.Report
Why?
You’re making an assumption here that should be interrogated.Report
Because I believe that the relationship between people and their representatives is transactional in nature and see no inherent immorality in a “what have you done for me *LATELY*” attitude on the part of any group of people who throw out their representative for another.Report
Isn’t the mere act of choosing one candidate over another a moral choice?
Like, even viewing it as transactional is itself a moral choice?Report
There’s a difference between positive and normative analysis.Report
Eh, I tend to see the relevant act when it comes to voting not as “voting in politician X” but as “throwing the bums out”.
So reframing this as “isn’t not re-electing Cheney an immoral act?” strikes me as a reframing to an obviously absurd question.
No. Refusing to re-elect Cheney is not immoral.
Throwing the bums out is morally acceptable.
“Like, even viewing it as transactional is itself a moral choice?”
There are ways to turn every single choice one makes into a moral choice. Did you do something selfish instead of earning more money to donate to purchase mosquito nets for central Africa?
Did you watch a show that was fun to watch instead of something educational? Did you play a game instead of volunteering at a shelter?
Babtists tell the story of Lottie Moon, missionary to China who died of starvation because she shared all she had with people who were in need around her. When she died, she only weighed 50 pounds.
Are you a little overweight, Chip?
Anyway, while it’s possible to turn every single option before oneself into a moral choice between Heaven and Hell, I don’t see that as a useful framing.
Certainly not for something as dumb as whether one is going to re-elect a Cheney.Report
Yes, you’ve got right that everything we do involves a moral choice.
We make our choices and live with the outcome.
Here the voters were presented with two candidates.
If someone says “Throw the bum out”, that is a clear moral choice that the outcome of electing the challenger is the preferred to the outcome of the status quo.
And it seems eminently useful for citizens of a democracy to analyze it this way.
When the new Senator from Wyoming is instrumental in overturning American democracy historians and the grandchildren of today’s voters can say “You did this!”Report
Congresswoman. We can’t be making any mistakes about things like this or Pinky will mock us.Report
Remember when he used to name-drop semi-famous people instead of saying something on his own? As Ronald Reagan used to say, are we better off now…?Report
Representative.Report
As I recall, the official site says that either Representative or Congresswoman/man is correct. And in an address, prefixed with “The Honorable.” Also that while a Senator is also a member of Congress, they are referred to as Senator and never as Congressman/woman.
Three years on the staff for a state legislature left me generally pissed off about all of the protocol. However, from my time staffing the House Appropriations Committee and calling the roll, I can say “Representative” really fast.Report
Yeah, I submitted the comment before refreshing. I wasn’t trying to correct Philip, just Chip. And I wasn’t trying to mock.Report
It would make some great video to have someone call some of our more pompous Senators (but I repeat myself) Congressman, and film the corrections.
Technically correct, but not in common parlance.Report
When the new Senator from Wyoming is instrumental in overturning American democracy historians and the grandchildren of today’s voters can say “You did this!”
I suppose that that’s something that you can throw in my face when the new Senator from Wyoming is instrumental in overturning American democracy.Report
This is moral language in as much as it is passing judgement on the participants and their actions.Report
Eh.
I think that something can be a “mistake” without it being a moral failing.
People make mistakes, after all.
I think that doing something dumb instead of doing something smart isn’t necessarily a moral failing.
People are dumb, after all.
It’s possible to judge something without judging it as a moral issue.Report
I loved that essay today from John Duke about his conflicted feelings about his German grandparents, of how their choices from nearly a century ago still reverberate down through two generations.
Like I said in my comment, how will our children and grandchildren judge us? How will history judge us?
When children come home in 2075 and start their book report and unearth a picture of PopPop in a MAGA hat will their hearts flutter with pride, or will they cringe and desperately beg for answers, hoping that somehow, surely, kindly old PopPop wasn’t, y’know, like that.Report
Eh. If I were confident that I could predict the views that will be considered true and right 100 years from now, I’d probably be best off adopting them now.
As it is, I see a multiplicity of viewpoints and, believe it or not, not all of them converge on “MAGA” being seen as being the equivalent of the Nazis.
One or two of them do, of course. But others have them being seen as being approximately as interesting as “Goldwater voters” or, of course, “Reagan voters”.
“He was only doing what was fashionable!”, maybe they could say. “Everybody wasn’t connected to each other via the overnet! They had no idea!”Report
“Why did the so-called liberals hate the MAGA people so much?”
“White liberals only had but so many ways to maintain their status in society. They thought that by crab bucketing hardest against the MAGA people, they could differentiate themselves. You see this with the frequency that they adopted and then abandoned moral fashions. There was the LatinX incident, the issues with their journalism, and their attitudes toward the liquidity of what they called gender.”
“Pinche pendejos.”
“Yes. Pinche pendejos.”Report
Yes, this my point.
You’re adopting a moral posture, staking out a position which will be your legacy.
The fact that your posture is one of indifference is itself a moral choice.Report
The assumption that we are hollow people merely adopting postures is one that will probably reflect poorly on you for moral reasons but reflect well on you for ones related to accuracy.
I hope that, for all our sakes, this insight of yours reflects well on you.Report
Posture doesn’t mean hollow.
It’s simply your position on things, your chosen moral viewpoint.
You’ve made a moral evaluation on both liberals and MAGAS and found them equally deficient.Report
Oh, I was thinking of the “behave in a way that is intended to impress or mislead” definition of “posture”, I guess.
I do have the position that voting out a Cheney is not a particularly interesting moral act, though. You’re right about that.
It is my chosen moral viewpoint that “throwing the bums out” is not morally bad in general and, yes, in the specifics here, it’s not bad either.
Of course, I do not believe that the Wyomans are National Socialists.
I think that jumping to such conclusions does a better job of trivializing the 30’s and 40’s than it does of communicating the fierce urgency of the times in which we live, myself.
But if I saw that the most important thing was communicating group membership, yeah. I could see doing that. Maybe accusing them of being even worse than that.
They voted out a *CHENEY*.Report
It’s good to know that you aren’t like all those hollow people who are merely adopting postures to impress or mislead.Report
I was not intending to communicate that either of us were doing anything but posturing.
That said, I do hope that *SOME* of the things I point to are things that have substance.
Even if I have none.Report
I think a lot about that in the abortion debate.Report
100 years from now it will all be quaint because sex and reproduction will be handled the way it is in Demolition Man.Report
I’m not arguing with your point. I’m just saying that if she can’t win the seat in Wyoming any longer, she’s most likely to go back to just dropping into Jackson occasionally.Report
Had Cheney embraced the Big Lie she would have won in a landslide.
The Big Lie is now the party line and anyone who fails to parrot the party line is erased.
It really is that simple.Report
Joe Walsh (former Trumper, now neverTrumper) has an interesting insight:
Report
So he’s basically agreeing with the leftists and liberals around here.
How do you feel about that?Report
I don’t think I feel things about it?
I think things about it. Makes me wonder the extent to which it will be possible to not be Nevertrump without also being a January 6th Truther.
I wonder whether that will be a needle that will be possible to thread.
If so, I imagine it will be someone who ignores the screams to answer the question of whether they think that Biden is really the President.Report
Anyone is better than a Cheney.Report
Why is that?Report
Cheney is the epitome of a person who can only be praised with faint damns.Report
Heh, I’ve never seen this epigram. Well done. A Chip original or ‘repurposed’ from someone else?Report
Agreed. I’m keeping this one. For.. uhh… science.Report
A Chip original so far as I know, but is rightfully the property of The People for use as they see fit.Report
The People’s Commissariat of Cultural Cache has been notified of the depositReport
Sorry, man.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1998/06/no-64-praise-with-faint-damns.htmlReport
Like George Harrison, I plead unconscious plagiarism.Report
He’s so fine.Report
Boy i bet it would be useful to have the local input about the Alaska election from a long time resident. I’ll have to go find one cause i got nothing. Weird and wild results so far.
My favorite pointless bit so far is Kelly Tshbiska (sp?) complained that people were voting for another pol whose name is Kelly when they meant to vote for her. Some of his votes should be for her if only the people weren’t confused. Her campaign slogan: Kelly for Alaska. What a moron.Report
Did we attract a new nutter? It sure looks that way.
The results in Wyoming are bad but not surprising. Liz Cheney will probably get paid lots of money to run a think tank and/or be a color commentator on CNN or MSNBC. Alaska is more interesting. A Democratic candidate managed to top the House election with a reasonable sized plurality but not the Senate vote. My guess is that a lot of Alaska Democrats but Murkowski as their first choice to prevent the Trump nut from advancing,Report
There are no issues other than Trump’s a traitor that Liz Cheney agrees on with CNN or MSNBC’s viewers. The minute she let her anti-abortion or pro-fossil fuel opinions show, she’d be done.Report