Call Mitt Romney? He claims there was "never any attempt to win support from across the aisle." Then WTF was Manchin doing when he was writing his "bipartisan" version of a voting rights bill? And it Mitt had his feelings hurt because the WH didn't call him, he has a zillion ways to signal privately that he'd like to talk to Biden. And your proposed Centrist Caucus only has four Republicans. According to my math, that doesn't get anyone past McConnell's universal filibuster.
There was a time Americans put the health of the community over individual freedom. I stood in line as a child to get the oral polio vaccine. It was a sugar cube soaked in pink vaccine. So many children were dying from polio. My friend, Judy, survived but wore heavy leg braces. My parents thought the vaccine was a gift. Beyond that I got the vaccine for smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and numerous more. I am vaxed and boosted. And even if I get a breakthrough case, my nurse practitioner dil assures me I won't end up in ICU with a ventilator down my throat. We have lost almost 900,000 Americans to a pandemic virus. Husbands have lost wives. Wives have lost husbands. Parents have lost children. Children have lost parents. By spring 1,000,000 Americans will be dead. Trump and Republican politicians politicized the virus. They lit a fire and the blaze now controls them. Community is a thing of the past. Now it's about the self righteous individual's "my freedom - my right" crowd. They care about no one. And there's always one who crows about getting Covid and "it was nothing and I'm immune" while ignoring all the others that overwhelm medical facilities and health care staff. Who end up shutting down schools because of their recklessness. I'm done with these selfish people. They will reap what they sow.
I wrote this on FB, August 8 of 2020: "In the second scenario, Trump is defeated in November, refuses to accept the results, declares martial law, and deploys the National Guard – assisted by Russian troops – to confiscate ballots and voting machines. Who would stop him?"
The only thing I was wrong on was the Russian troops, but I'm starting wonder now whether something equally heinous will be revealed...
Loved Amanda Carpenter’s “too stupid to coup” line and Jurassic Park metaphor 😂. Also, those Aaron Rogers memes were fire and gave me much need lols in the morning.
Now about this Filibuster bullshit- I support ending the Filibuster because we should have to live with the consequences with whom we elect. I am sick of congress doing practically NOTHING for years. The filibuster is the great excuse for not legislating anything. I agree there is some blue state hypocrisy about voting rights, but the Filibuster needs to go no matter what. And yes, I realize this means that if congress changes control in the midterms I’m prepared to live with the consequences. I think American’s need to WAKE THE F UP and actually PAY ATTENTION to who they elect and what they vote for. End the Filibuster and let us live with Democracy and end this bipartisan trench warfare. Sinema sucks cuz she sucks. She reminds me of every girl that bullied me in middle school. Joe Manchin wants to pass something and is willing to talk. I hope Dems work with him and get something, LITERALLY ANYTHING done.
Interesting about Mitt's case: voting rights are not the most important issue ever and therefore I don't need to care about it. I am sure of one thing, if Mitt and his family had to sit in line for 2, 4, 8, 10 hours to vote in perfectly non-discriminatory voting processes, things would change. Also, where was Mitt and the don't do things straight party line when Supreme Court judges were stolen? Ready to take advantage, that is where. Voting lock-step just like he is complaining about today. All of this is very rich and proves once again, all of these MF'ers (Rs and Ds) only care about themselves and power.
Charlie, as always spot on with the development of the Sykes law. The committee needs to continue to unravel the “fact spaghetti” and get this snowball rolling down the hill at a much higher rate of speed.
Maybe anti-vaxers should be offered mud baths. Not that they work again any of the covid mutants, but it will help the users to become comfortable in damp earth.
This Supreme Court discussion is infuriating. FIRST, if Biden didn’t make the promise of nominating a black female, we’d likely still have Trump. Look at the margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia and tell me I’m wrong. Second, imagine for 2 seconds if Biden signaled he would not follow his campaign promise of nominating a black woman. The entire media world would have Biden’s lunch. His support among the black vote would plummet. This is the kind of Monday Morning quarterbacking that does nothing but piss off the center-left. Especially when you talk about the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, and list the many conservative appointments to the court have happened over the past 4 decades while only winning the popular vote once. Part of my motivation behind the Bulwark mission is to FIX this as well - the current way the Supreme Court is filled is unsustainable.
Saletan has already lost me. Go to Twitter to engage with others who do not share my viewpoint? Really? What world is he living in? I got off Twitter in ‘16. I do not know if I would have preserved my sanity otherwise.
I like what Charles Barkley said: Twitter is where fools go to feel important.
I agree with Matt Bernius' critique of your argument. As a boy, my mother taught me that "color blindness" is what a good "anti-racist" (although that term didn't exist back in the '70s) should always practice. That the quality of a human being should be judged on an individual level, person by person. As a white working-class woman, this was a progressive position to hold at that time. Many of her friends were racist and used racist epithets regularly, but she always talked to me afterwards, saying that what her friends thought and did were wrong. That I must do the opposite of what her friends were doing.
These lessons prevented me from becoming racist myself, even when bullied by groups of black kids at school. Having previously had black friends who shared with me a bit of what their lives were like, I could see that the rage that these bullies were taking out on me had nothing to do with me. They had inherited the rage of the black underclass that has boiled for generations. They were kids who didn't know any better.
Clearly, whichever black woman Biden nominates will not come from the black underclass. She will have enjoyed the benefits of middle class life in America. Nevertheless, she will know what it is like to grow up as a black woman in America, which - even within the middle class - is a radically different experience than that shared by white Americans.
The Court already skews against the life experiences of the working class and the working poor. All nine Justices (save perhaps Thomas, a man I once admired, but whose views have devolved in ways I don't even want to get into) come from middle- to upper-class backgrounds. To a large degree, that can't be helped (not many working class kids find themselves on the Federal bench as adults). But we can broaden the vision of the Court by including voices as yet unheard from this august bench.
As you say, Charlie, whomever Biden picks will possess a fine legal mind. But the fact that that mind is held within the body and life experience of a black woman will, I think, make a profound difference.
I don't get the dust-up over the nomination to the Court. Biden made a campaign promise and he's fulfilling it. How many minorities were on the Federalist Society's lists handed to Trump when he made his choices? Exactly zero as far as I know.
Thanks for reprinting Romney's speech. Your suggestion that Biden call Romney is a good one. So is the idea of having a centrist coalition of senators. Biden should stop worrying about what Sanders/AOC and other left-wing Democrats think.
I don't care for Mitt Romney for a couple of reasons which are of no consequence here, but I will say that that "not caring" amounts to outright brotherly love compared to the unbridled loathing I feel for all but a very, very few of the Republicans in D.C. and elsewhere these days. That said, regarding his words on the Senate floor, I'm pretty much down with all of them, unless some of them can be proven to be outright falsehoods, or so far off from reality as to invalidate their meaning. And though I don't care all that much for this guy, I don't think he's the type to knowingly go down that road on this particular issue. One caveat: I could be completely wrong. It's not like a politician has never snookered me before.
I take this view because first, I've always seen the most dangerous and immediate threat to our "democracy" post Jan. 6 as vote counting (read ECA), not vote casting. 100% turnout of the entire qualified electorate is meaningless if the will of those votes can be subverted and the election "stolen" through subterfuge at the state level, the means for which are steadily, and completely un-stealthily, being laid in Republican controlled legislatures and governor's offices across the nation. And second, even if his list of objections based on properties of that legislation overstates the actual case by half, these were still some very flawed bills. But in reality, how the hell are any of us supposed to know whether or not that's the case?
Seriously, how many of us voters know any real specifics about exactly what was in that pile of legislation, and what, exactly, that legislation would do out there "in the real world" of townhall and firehouse voting precincts? Maybe I'm the only under or uninformed voter among us, but I doubt it. How many out there heard any D's offering up "Here's a specific problem with voting rights, and here is how this bill will address that" and then explain specifically how that would come about? Maybe it happened somewhere, but not anywhere I was looking. And I was looking.
Not that the R's aren't guilty of this, but in customary fashion, the D's put a fancy and appealing name on these measures, attached a couple of witty tag lines, cried The Sky Is Falling, which it is, though not in the way they wish it to be perceived, and went on their merry way sloganeering about the whole damned thing, thinking that would be enough. Well, it wasn't. And that kind of politicking ain't gonna' be enough to preclude the sky from falling where it actually could cause a fatality for our republic in a very short time.
These guys need to quit lookin' at the world from the shade of their navels, quit squabbling like ill-tempered preschoolers, and get seriously busy with whatever limited help they may be able to muster from Mitt and those very few like him to actually accomplish some effective defense against the very serious threats accumulating in the hinterlands of state governments.
Am I for voting rights for all? Hell yes! Am I for making sure that those rights still actually have meaning after all the votes are cast and counted? Do I really need to answer that?
Hey Charlie - I'm a Centrist Dem, and I agree with you entirely on the voting legislation. My only qualm is that states (like my home state of Michigan) continue to allow a gross disparity to take place in the treatment of minority voters; that is, waiting time at the polls. We have all seen pictures of long lines of minority voters in large cities. I, on the other hand, have lived in a rural area for 35 years, and never once have I had to wait in line to vote. It seems to me that this is a voting rights / equal protection issue that could and should be addressed at the federal level.
Sykes's Law: It's Always Worse Than You Thought
Call Mitt Romney? He claims there was "never any attempt to win support from across the aisle." Then WTF was Manchin doing when he was writing his "bipartisan" version of a voting rights bill? And it Mitt had his feelings hurt because the WH didn't call him, he has a zillion ways to signal privately that he'd like to talk to Biden. And your proposed Centrist Caucus only has four Republicans. According to my math, that doesn't get anyone past McConnell's universal filibuster.
Ron Klain should just get off Twitter for a couple of months and go listen to some swing voters.
There was a time Americans put the health of the community over individual freedom. I stood in line as a child to get the oral polio vaccine. It was a sugar cube soaked in pink vaccine. So many children were dying from polio. My friend, Judy, survived but wore heavy leg braces. My parents thought the vaccine was a gift. Beyond that I got the vaccine for smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and numerous more. I am vaxed and boosted. And even if I get a breakthrough case, my nurse practitioner dil assures me I won't end up in ICU with a ventilator down my throat. We have lost almost 900,000 Americans to a pandemic virus. Husbands have lost wives. Wives have lost husbands. Parents have lost children. Children have lost parents. By spring 1,000,000 Americans will be dead. Trump and Republican politicians politicized the virus. They lit a fire and the blaze now controls them. Community is a thing of the past. Now it's about the self righteous individual's "my freedom - my right" crowd. They care about no one. And there's always one who crows about getting Covid and "it was nothing and I'm immune" while ignoring all the others that overwhelm medical facilities and health care staff. Who end up shutting down schools because of their recklessness. I'm done with these selfish people. They will reap what they sow.
I wrote this on FB, August 8 of 2020: "In the second scenario, Trump is defeated in November, refuses to accept the results, declares martial law, and deploys the National Guard – assisted by Russian troops – to confiscate ballots and voting machines. Who would stop him?"
The only thing I was wrong on was the Russian troops, but I'm starting wonder now whether something equally heinous will be revealed...
Loved Amanda Carpenter’s “too stupid to coup” line and Jurassic Park metaphor 😂. Also, those Aaron Rogers memes were fire and gave me much need lols in the morning.
Now about this Filibuster bullshit- I support ending the Filibuster because we should have to live with the consequences with whom we elect. I am sick of congress doing practically NOTHING for years. The filibuster is the great excuse for not legislating anything. I agree there is some blue state hypocrisy about voting rights, but the Filibuster needs to go no matter what. And yes, I realize this means that if congress changes control in the midterms I’m prepared to live with the consequences. I think American’s need to WAKE THE F UP and actually PAY ATTENTION to who they elect and what they vote for. End the Filibuster and let us live with Democracy and end this bipartisan trench warfare. Sinema sucks cuz she sucks. She reminds me of every girl that bullied me in middle school. Joe Manchin wants to pass something and is willing to talk. I hope Dems work with him and get something, LITERALLY ANYTHING done.
Interesting about Mitt's case: voting rights are not the most important issue ever and therefore I don't need to care about it. I am sure of one thing, if Mitt and his family had to sit in line for 2, 4, 8, 10 hours to vote in perfectly non-discriminatory voting processes, things would change. Also, where was Mitt and the don't do things straight party line when Supreme Court judges were stolen? Ready to take advantage, that is where. Voting lock-step just like he is complaining about today. All of this is very rich and proves once again, all of these MF'ers (Rs and Ds) only care about themselves and power.
Charlie, as always spot on with the development of the Sykes law. The committee needs to continue to unravel the “fact spaghetti” and get this snowball rolling down the hill at a much higher rate of speed.
But it is heartening to know that Rogers is protected from tapeworms...
Maybe anti-vaxers should be offered mud baths. Not that they work again any of the covid mutants, but it will help the users to become comfortable in damp earth.
This Supreme Court discussion is infuriating. FIRST, if Biden didn’t make the promise of nominating a black female, we’d likely still have Trump. Look at the margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia and tell me I’m wrong. Second, imagine for 2 seconds if Biden signaled he would not follow his campaign promise of nominating a black woman. The entire media world would have Biden’s lunch. His support among the black vote would plummet. This is the kind of Monday Morning quarterbacking that does nothing but piss off the center-left. Especially when you talk about the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, and list the many conservative appointments to the court have happened over the past 4 decades while only winning the popular vote once. Part of my motivation behind the Bulwark mission is to FIX this as well - the current way the Supreme Court is filled is unsustainable.
Saletan has already lost me. Go to Twitter to engage with others who do not share my viewpoint? Really? What world is he living in? I got off Twitter in ‘16. I do not know if I would have preserved my sanity otherwise.
I like what Charles Barkley said: Twitter is where fools go to feel important.
No thanks.
I agree with Matt Bernius' critique of your argument. As a boy, my mother taught me that "color blindness" is what a good "anti-racist" (although that term didn't exist back in the '70s) should always practice. That the quality of a human being should be judged on an individual level, person by person. As a white working-class woman, this was a progressive position to hold at that time. Many of her friends were racist and used racist epithets regularly, but she always talked to me afterwards, saying that what her friends thought and did were wrong. That I must do the opposite of what her friends were doing.
These lessons prevented me from becoming racist myself, even when bullied by groups of black kids at school. Having previously had black friends who shared with me a bit of what their lives were like, I could see that the rage that these bullies were taking out on me had nothing to do with me. They had inherited the rage of the black underclass that has boiled for generations. They were kids who didn't know any better.
Clearly, whichever black woman Biden nominates will not come from the black underclass. She will have enjoyed the benefits of middle class life in America. Nevertheless, she will know what it is like to grow up as a black woman in America, which - even within the middle class - is a radically different experience than that shared by white Americans.
The Court already skews against the life experiences of the working class and the working poor. All nine Justices (save perhaps Thomas, a man I once admired, but whose views have devolved in ways I don't even want to get into) come from middle- to upper-class backgrounds. To a large degree, that can't be helped (not many working class kids find themselves on the Federal bench as adults). But we can broaden the vision of the Court by including voices as yet unheard from this august bench.
As you say, Charlie, whomever Biden picks will possess a fine legal mind. But the fact that that mind is held within the body and life experience of a black woman will, I think, make a profound difference.
I don't get the dust-up over the nomination to the Court. Biden made a campaign promise and he's fulfilling it. How many minorities were on the Federalist Society's lists handed to Trump when he made his choices? Exactly zero as far as I know.
Thanks for reprinting Romney's speech. Your suggestion that Biden call Romney is a good one. So is the idea of having a centrist coalition of senators. Biden should stop worrying about what Sanders/AOC and other left-wing Democrats think.
I don't care for Mitt Romney for a couple of reasons which are of no consequence here, but I will say that that "not caring" amounts to outright brotherly love compared to the unbridled loathing I feel for all but a very, very few of the Republicans in D.C. and elsewhere these days. That said, regarding his words on the Senate floor, I'm pretty much down with all of them, unless some of them can be proven to be outright falsehoods, or so far off from reality as to invalidate their meaning. And though I don't care all that much for this guy, I don't think he's the type to knowingly go down that road on this particular issue. One caveat: I could be completely wrong. It's not like a politician has never snookered me before.
I take this view because first, I've always seen the most dangerous and immediate threat to our "democracy" post Jan. 6 as vote counting (read ECA), not vote casting. 100% turnout of the entire qualified electorate is meaningless if the will of those votes can be subverted and the election "stolen" through subterfuge at the state level, the means for which are steadily, and completely un-stealthily, being laid in Republican controlled legislatures and governor's offices across the nation. And second, even if his list of objections based on properties of that legislation overstates the actual case by half, these were still some very flawed bills. But in reality, how the hell are any of us supposed to know whether or not that's the case?
Seriously, how many of us voters know any real specifics about exactly what was in that pile of legislation, and what, exactly, that legislation would do out there "in the real world" of townhall and firehouse voting precincts? Maybe I'm the only under or uninformed voter among us, but I doubt it. How many out there heard any D's offering up "Here's a specific problem with voting rights, and here is how this bill will address that" and then explain specifically how that would come about? Maybe it happened somewhere, but not anywhere I was looking. And I was looking.
Not that the R's aren't guilty of this, but in customary fashion, the D's put a fancy and appealing name on these measures, attached a couple of witty tag lines, cried The Sky Is Falling, which it is, though not in the way they wish it to be perceived, and went on their merry way sloganeering about the whole damned thing, thinking that would be enough. Well, it wasn't. And that kind of politicking ain't gonna' be enough to preclude the sky from falling where it actually could cause a fatality for our republic in a very short time.
These guys need to quit lookin' at the world from the shade of their navels, quit squabbling like ill-tempered preschoolers, and get seriously busy with whatever limited help they may be able to muster from Mitt and those very few like him to actually accomplish some effective defense against the very serious threats accumulating in the hinterlands of state governments.
Am I for voting rights for all? Hell yes! Am I for making sure that those rights still actually have meaning after all the votes are cast and counted? Do I really need to answer that?
Hey Charlie - I'm a Centrist Dem, and I agree with you entirely on the voting legislation. My only qualm is that states (like my home state of Michigan) continue to allow a gross disparity to take place in the treatment of minority voters; that is, waiting time at the polls. We have all seen pictures of long lines of minority voters in large cities. I, on the other hand, have lived in a rural area for 35 years, and never once have I had to wait in line to vote. It seems to me that this is a voting rights / equal protection issue that could and should be addressed at the federal level.