Most political advocacy groups operate like this. It’s about the moolah, and building that email list.
Category: Politics As Usual
Why the national Dems took a pass on Christie
This was really just plain stupid:
“When we started looking at his reelect numbers, he was just above 50 percent. That meant he was formidable but movable,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Early on, Barbara Buono could have appealed to the national electorate by saying, ‘Look, we need to bloody this guy up before 2016 because he’s the biggest challenge going into that race.’ But she never was able to articulate that…so Democrats stayed out of that race and Chris Christie basically got a free pass.”
National Democrats stand by the decision not to play seriously in New Jersey, according to several who spoke with The Daily Beast. The calculation was two-fold, they said. First, the money required just to land a punch on Christie in the pricey New York and Philadelphia media markets could fund an entire campaign somewhere or sometime else when a Democrat had a chance of winning.
“When you have someone this powerful and this popular, you shrug it off and wait for the next one,” a top Democratic donor said of Christie. “It’s not worth the financial investment to try to take him down or out.”
[…] Second, Democrats firmly believe that no matter how strong Christie looks on Election Day 2013 in New Jersey, the Republican nominating gauntlet will eat his 2016 presidential candidacy alive before he ever gets a chance to face off against a Democrat in a general election.
“When it comes to national elections, we’ve seen how efficient and effective Republicans are at destroying each other’s reputations, so I’ll leave it to them,” said Robert Zimmerman, a national committeeman for the DNC. “Chris
Christie is a very powerful national candidate, but the question is can a mainstream Republican be elected by the Republican Party today? No.”
Continue reading “Why the national Dems took a pass on Christie”
Election day in Philadelphia
Here are the Bar Association recommendations in the judicial elections today.
Don’t vote for Christie
No doubt helped along by numerous fawning media profiles, many New Jersey Democrats plan to vote for Chris Christie tomorrow. They talk about how he’s a “straight shooter” and gosh darn it, they just like the guy.
And you know, he can be very likable — at times. If your only exposure to him is a quick shot on the local news, he can be amusing, even charming.
Like most con men, he’s very good at simulating sincerity.
You like straight talk? I’ll give you some. Chris Christie is a high-living rich guy who does whatever even richer guys tell him to do. And if you vote for him tomorrow, you will strengthen the national profile of a persuasive liar who plans to take this country down a very destructive path.
He ran as a Republican who cares about the environment – and pulled out of the ten-state Regional Greenhouse Gas program, because the Koch brothers . (So if you think about it, he actually contributed to the conditions that created Hurricane Sandy.)
He asked the state legislature for a ban on the armor-piercing Barrett .50 caliber rifle — and then he vetoed it.. Because a group of New Hampshire wingnuts sent him a warning letter, and he has presidential ambitions. So much for his “courage.”
He’s vetoed voting reform moves — because the national Republicans oppose it. Why do you suppose he vetoed the new transit tunnel? Because national Republicans hate government progress. So much for his “independence.”
You know what his job was, before he became a U.S. attorney? He was a Wall Street lobbyist, working for now-convicted felon Bernie Madoff. You know what he accomplished? He got securities fraud removed from a consumer fraud act. “Chris Christie, looking out for you”? Don’t kid yourself.
This bully boy loves to pick on teachers — even though it was Republican policies that depleted the pension funds.
Blue Jersey has spelled it all out before:
When Chris Christie first ran for Freeholder and was sued for defamation, it wasn’t his fault and he did nothing wrong.
When Chris Christie went from “not a candidate for US Attorney” to being appointed US Attorney after he was directly responsible for raising hundreds of thousands (and his brother donates hundreds of thousands) for Bush, the donations had nothing to do with it.
And when many top NJ lawyers pointed out that Christie didn’t have any experience in criminal law and his appointment was directly connected to the above hundreds of thousands in donations for Bush, that was just a coincidence.
Continue reading “Don’t vote for Christie”
NYC votes today for mayor
Funny, the cable talking heads will pronounce a Christie victory as a “comeback for Republicans,” but a DeBlasio win will be treated like an anomaly:
New York votes for new mayor after Bloomberg (via AFP)
Millions of New Yorkers go to the polls Tuesday to elect a new mayor, with left-wing progressive Bill de Blasio tipped for a landslide victory to replace billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The 52-year-old public advocate and his black formerly lesbian wife…
Quote of the day
We actually spend more public money than many (most?) of our peer wealthy nations on health care, mostly Medicaid, Medicare, and veteran benefits. They get universal health care for their public expenditures. We get health care for just the elderly, the extreme poor, and some veterans.
‘Let’s stop trying to please Republicans’
Van Jones:
I don’t understand how this individual mandate is something that we’ve allowed the Republicans to define as some sort of, quote-unquote, government takeover. In fact, it’s their idea. The progressives were saying we want single-payer. Myself, I would say why do you need insurance companies for health care at all. Insurance is what you buy when you don’t know if something bad is going to happen. Maybe I’ll crash my car. Maybe I won’t. I don’t know. So I’m going to get car insurance just in case. Everybody’s going to get sick and die, so you know every single person’s going to need health insurance. That’s not something you can provide insurance for, that’s called a service.
So my view, single-payer. The Republicans always said, no, that’s too much government. So we came back and said, okay, no single-payer. How about a public option? So you’d a public program, everybody could join Medicare or compete with the private companies, too much government. We want individual responsibility. So we said, fine, you win. We’ll do it your way, individual mandate. And then, they say that is a socialist government takeover. Well, hold on a second now. You’re now a part of the pro-moocher caucus? You’re saying it’s okay for people to just dive bomb their way into the emergency room? Yeah, don’t worry about it. Don’t get any insurance. The government will pay for it. Now, you’re like the pro-freeloader party?
Continue reading “‘Let’s stop trying to please Republicans’”
The unemployment benefits cliff
As I think you’ve figured out by now, these cuts aren’t economically sound. They’re just punitive:
[…] unemployment benefits to jobless workers for longer than the normal maximum of 26 weeks have been extended repeatedly, although the maximum duration of benefits has fallen from a peak of 99 weeks to 73 weeks. The Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, financed by the federal government for states that meet certain unemployment and state benefit thresholds, is scheduled to end Jan. 1.
The recent fiscal showdown in Washington make further extensions less likely. And the end of these emergency unemployment benefits could create a further drag on the economy.
The so-called food stamp cliff “may be more of a sidewalk curb,” Mr. Feroli wrote in an email. “The bigger cliff, which I’m surprised people aren’t talking about, is emergency unemployment benefits Jan. 1.” That, he estimated, could shave 0.4 percentage point off growth in the first quarter next year.
I usually just call them ‘whores’
But I suppose “liberalwashing” works just as well!
Busting a dark money Koch ring
Seems like they shouldn’t just be able to buy the country, should they?
Dark Money, Honey: How a Koch Ring Got Busted (via LA Progressive)
Last week’s announcement of a settlement between the state of California and two political campaign organizations linked to the Koch brothers fittingly coincided with the centenary of the first scientific explorations of Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar…