elections | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 3

The DNC Is Excited About The Donald

June 16, 2015 by Bitchy

This is fantastic! Here’s the official statement from the DNC regarding Donald Trump’s entry into the republican primary field;

This would be the best troll ever, especially since The Donald is so narcissistic as to believe it’s earnest.

I and the internet at large have been having a lot of fun with Trump’s entry into the republican clown car. But in all seriousness, Trump made a giant mistake today. His only talent is that he has is the ability to market himself to low class, low income assholes who dream of the day that they have so much money that their assholishness has to be accepted by those around them. He’s about to get torn apart by the media, by his opponents, and by the billionaires who have other ideas about who they plan on selecting to be the nominee.

If the Fox debate were going to be held tomorrow, Trump would be in because he meets the “top ten” in the polls candidate threshold they established. If he’s still holding on to a top ten spot come mid July, sit back and pop some popcorn because this is going to get mighty amusing. Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs, who have decided to join forces (this is a very bad turn of events) are going to punch him hard with more money than he could possibly hope to ever inherit. And when someone throws a punch at Trump, Trump turns into a roid rage kind of asshole.

Mark my words, Trump won’t have much left to market after this presidential run. His brand is about to become damaged beyond repair.

I couldn’t be happier.

The Anecdotal Obamacare Story That Matters

April 20, 2015 by Bitchy

If you’re even casually familiar with me, you know that I have almost no use for anecdotal "evidence". Anecdotes are not evidence of anything other than what one person believes they’ve seen at one specific moment in time. Obamacare has brought a glut of anecdotal Obamacare horror stories to my various social media pages. Statistically speaking, every single American who got screwed by this law has ended up finding me on social media. No seriously, the numbers simply don’t support these claims of devastation and woe. One guy claimed that his insurance premiums increased by 250%! Holy shit! Surely Fox News would have found him if this were true, right? I mean, they paraded a bunch of Obamacare "victims" whose stories all turned out to be 100% bullshit. Fox was really in need of a legitimately fucked over insurance consumer. Why didn’t this guy take this opportunity to possibly become a right wing hero a la Cliven Bundy? Why? Because he told me he was in Arizona. I looked up the stats for his state. Turns out that in Arizona, rates went down by ten percent for 2015. Oopsie! I never heard back from him after I shared that data with him. I guess he died at home alone, of a stubbed toe that got infected because he couldn’t afford the one million dollar copay that came with his wretched Obamacare plan. Poor bastard.

And then there was the vet who insisted that the VA was the worst health insurance in the world, and that Obamacare was going to destroy the previously awesome private insurance market. When I pointed out that the VA has always had a higher satisfaction rating than private insurance, he got huffy and played the "I’m a vet and you’re not" card. I let him know that I would be happy to ignore his attempts at acting intellectually superior with actually being intellectually superior if he could find me a single year in which the VA’s approval rating was lower than that of private insurance. He didn’t even bother to do that, instead opting to insist that he knew better because of his first hand experience. I assured him that the curmudgeon contingent was included in those approval ratings. He was unmoved by reason, logic, or anything that might not fit with what he "knew".

These are just a couple of anecdotal examples of why I have no use for anecdotal "evidence" (see what I did there?) Wanna know where I’m going next? Yep, I’m going to share an anecdotal Obamacare story. This is the story of James Webb, a fifty one year old self proclaimed teabagger and veteran. He hates commies and Obama. He does love guns though. He really, really loves guns. He loves to make videos of himself shooting guns. Lots and lots of ‘pew, pew, pew, pew, pew’ videos on his youtube channel. He hates the fact that the gays have ruined The Walking Dead for him. He refers to the Ferguson protestors as the "cesspool of America", who come from "generations and generations, and generations of living off the government". He’s been posting videos on youtube for seven years now so if after reading this, you decide that he was a plant, let me assure you that he isn’t.

Anyway, James posted a video last week that will double the one million views mark he crossed last month (congrats James), in a matter of days. James posted a video explaining why he might vote for Hillary Clinton. See, James retired last year because Obamacare set him free from having to work for health insurance. He’s not interested in losing the awesome and affordable coverage he has. Before I get to the latest video about who he’s going to vote for next year, let’s watch a video he put up seven months ago, explaining how Obamacare allowed him to retire at the age of fifty.

Notice how he starts off by saying that, "In the Obama administration, the least [sic] you work, the more you get. Now I know it used to be you worked hard, you saved hard and you retired, but not anymore". But as he kept talking he says, "I’ve been pulling that wagon for thirty-one years. It’s my turn to ride in it, and I’m going to ride. I’m going to ride in that wagon, and I deserve it." This is a guy whose right wing programming is at odds with what he’s seen and lived.

To republicans, if you don’t work until you die, you’re lazy. I know I’m skipping ahead but let’s get into some of the replies he got to the video he posted last week. Some republicans weren’t happy with his considering voting his own self interest in 2016. One woman said, "Heaven fucking forbid you have to go back to work. Since when is retiring at age fifty acceptable?…..Get off your fat ass and go back to work…..You are what’s wrong with this country." This is my favorite part of the stupid twat’s email to him, "People who vote based on what’s best for them are fucked up people. You need to be thinking about what’s best for society as a whole and future generations, and our planet, and humanity as a whole." Yeah, she said that to justify voting republican. WOW! That just redefined the parameters of cognitive dissonance. Another guy writes James to call him a troll. He demands that James explain himself and the affliction that justifies his early retirement.

These people aren’t morally outraged that James is retired at the age of fifty. They’re enraged that they can’t. And the reason why they can’t, is because they’ve bought the whole line of right wing bullshit that keeps them slaves to the billionaires who bought their party. They have Stockholm Syndrome and they can’t allow anyone to suffer less than they expect to have to suffer. These are the same dumb dumbs who insist that welfare recipients should be subjected to drug testing. I post statistic after statistic about state after state, where testing welfare recipients has unearthed very little drug use while costing taxpayers a lot of money. I always get replies to those statistics, proclaiming that "if you’re on welfare, you should be drug tested". But I just showed you that doing that wasted a whole bunch of your taxpayer dollars for no good reason at all. But NO! People on welfare must be punished, and reason, logic, and fiscal responsibility are irrelevant! These people are not rational. They’re probably not even hateful by nature. But their struggles make it necessary to punch down at people who they need to be on the rung below them. Because if there’s nobody suffering beneath you, what does that make you in the grand scheme of society?

I always ask myself, as part of deciding where I land on an issue, "who are you advocating for?" If you want to humiliate poor people, even though it’s going to cost you money to do it, who are you advocating for? If you’re insisting that James’ lazy ass need to get a job right now, who are you advocating for? We see James himself do it at the beginning of the video I posted above, when he said that under Obama, people no longer need to work hard. He can’t even hear his own contradiction when he goes on to say that he’s put in thirty-one years of work, and deserves to enjoy his life. Here’s the difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives believe that they’re the worthy exception to the rule. Whether it’s taking food stamps, collecting unemployment insurance because of a layoff, or signing up for Obamacare; they earned it but everyone else is a moocher. Liberals believe that everyone who needs help should have it. The exceptions are the teenie, tiny ( I can post dozens of examples) few who abuse the system.

Here’s a couple of other things about James that I noticed. He went from the military, straight into a government job where he became eligible to retire at the age of fifty. That dreaded big government he and his ilk hate, is who he worked for. And that dreaded government he worked for provided him with the pension that Ronald Reagan and the republican party don’t want anyone to have. That’s why they invented 401k’s. They weren’t funneling enough money to Wall Street, or enough company profits up to the top with pension plans so they concocted 401ks to steal (I urge you to watch that video) more from you. Everything that James has gotten for his hard work, is something that he’s voted against having. He says that he’s voted republican for thirty-two years.

And by the way, that finish line at age sixty-five wouldn’t exist at all, were it not for democrats. Republicans never wanted, and still don’t want you to have medicare or social security. They also don’t want for you to earn a living wage in exchange for working hard. Is anyone under the impression that cleaning office buildings is work for lazy people? Are they too lazy to work and too lazy to bootstrap themselves into college with that $7.25 an hour they wouldn’t even be earning if republicans had their way? Their whole fucking system is designed to keep you a lifelong wage slave. The only way you get anything in republican paradise, is to be born into it. If you’re not born into a family that can send you to college, you’re literally shit out of luck. You’re worse than shit out of luck, because they will treat you like a lazy piece of crap for not being able to get yourself to college on the crap wages they insist you should earn. I showed you in a post last week, that if you’re born poor in America, 70% of you will stay poor. Republicans like it that way. And poor republicans have been programmed to like it that way. That’s why they avail themselves of the opportunity to shit on someone else, every time they get a chance.

This post is already longer than I intended, so I’m going to wrap it up soon. The reason why James’ anecdotal Obamacare story matters, is because it runs contrary to his ideology. What he realized isn’t what he expected to realize. That just makes him more credible. Here’s the video where he talks about his struggle with his 2016 vote;

And here’s a follow up he posted yesterday;

Notice how the second video lacked explanation? I wonder if that’s because it’s just an inexplicable decision? I believe that James will ultimately vote his own self interest because once the thinking starts, the programming really can’t reassert itself. I don’t know who the nominees are going to be, but I’m pretty sure that James won’t be voting republican.

Rand Paul 2016

April 7, 2015 by Bitchy

Rand Paul has officially stepped into the republican primary clown car. Believe it or not, I think he’s the most viable candidate among those who have already announced or have made it clear they’re running.

He’s come a long way in his efforts to learn how not to sound like an idiot. I don’t think he’s said anything idiotic in the past (at least) six months. I think he’s going to appeal to millenials with republican parents since they’re predisposed to veer right. His father’s libertarian schtick will appeal to young white men (libertarians are 96% white and 68% men) who aren’t interested in more wars, but love the myth that more freedom will allow the free market to solve all the problems in the world.

I say his father’s schtick because Rand appears to literally have no mind of his own. There is not a single policy position he believes in that didn’t come directly from daddy. I’m always suspicious of people who entirely agree with a parent. It demonstrates a lack of independent thought and in the case of the Paul’s, also critical thinking. My father and I were not politically in agreement in a damned thing. He was an immigrant, blue collar Reagan republican. I thought he was out of his damned mind.

There’s a decent chance that he’s going to win the Koch primary he auditioned for. They haven’t announced a winner yet. But the fact that he auditioned should tell you all you need to know about his "libertarianism". He’s a corporatist, just like the rest of the republican party.

The only question is, how long can he maintain not sounding stupid for? In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before he says or does something really, really stupid like plagiarize from an unreliable source like Wikipedia.

Rand Paul is a dimwit who has never had an independent thought in his life. That’s not going to change, no matter how many people have worked with him to de-dumb him. You can’t undo a lifetime’s worth of not using one’s brain.

He’s going to run into more racism because he’s a racist. But things like his Southern Avenger associations won’t hurt him with republicans who don’t much mind racists. Rand is racist because his father is racist and, as I pointed out earlier, Rand appears never to have had an independent thought in his life.

His entry into the race will definitely liven things up because he’s a shifty street fighter. We’ve seen him get into kerfuffles with Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio (who’s even dumber than little Rand) and he told us that he fights dirty. Rand Paul will definitely make things more interesting and depending on where the Kochs decide to put their money, he may make the republican primaries an actual race (unlike democrats, who seem to be fine with a coronation).

Ben Carson, Idiot Savant

April 5, 2015 by Bitchy

So GQ magazine did a profile on Ben Carson that they very aptly named, "What If Sarah Palin Were A Brain Surgeon?"

I say that it’s aptly titled because it’s hard not to notice that the brain surgeon is a complete idiot. I know what you’re thinking; "Come on Bitchy, the man is a brain surgeon so your political bias is clearly clouding your judgment in assessing his intelligence."

Let’s judge together, shall we?

So Carson made the (now) requisite fact finding trip to Israel, where he was provided with a guide to show him around and answer his questions.

From the article;

[His first question] "In the United States, we have Republicans, Democrats, and independents. What do you have?"

Ummmm. Don’t you think that he would have done some rudimentary internet searches to learn the basics? I mean, seriously. Who goes to a foreign country and expects someone to school them, starting at a 2nd grade level? But let’s continue with the article;

The woman answered Carson’s question about political parties, telling him that there were Labor and Likud and a host of other factions in the Knesset. "And what is the role of the Knesset?" he interjected.

"What is the Knesset?" Are you fucking kidding me? How clueless and uninformed are you? If you think I’m being harsh, let’s get back to the article;

This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature….. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. "It sounds complex," he finally said. "Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"’

"Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"

So this is the first time Ben Carson has been exposed to the mechanics of a parliamentary system, which is far more common in the first world than our one-of-a-kind representative democracy? This goes beyond stupid and ignorant. This demonstrates the same disinterest in the world that George W Bush demonstrated when he was a primary candidate. Republicans didn’t think that level of ignorance was going to be a problem. Turns out that not knowing what "Sunni" and "Shia" are was a giant problem.

So at some point during Carson’s trip, he was given three IDF (Israeli defense force, but you knew that because you’re not freaking Ben Carson!) tutors. From the article;

"….. to discuss the nearby Syrian civil war. He [the IDF member] claimed that most of the Islamist fighters weren’t Syrian but came from Morocco and Europe. "It’s just like the troublemakers in Ferguson," Carson said, betraying a habit of wedging the unfamiliar into a context he understands.

The man is a child, trying to distill everything he hears down to information that he can fit (incorrectly) into buckets of situations he’s (or so he thinks) familiar with. No, Ben Carson, there is no possible way to correlate the Syrian revolution with Ferguson Missouri, you unmitigated dolt.

At another point on his trip, he asks, "Is this area right here protected by the Iron Dome?" I’m still shaking my head, and I’ve been digesting that morsel of stupid for a couple of hours now.

Here’s another part of the article I found interesting;

Even among Carson’s political team, though, there’s some recognition that he could benefit from a little more polish. The day of the president’s State of the Union, Carson had spent five hours getting briefed on domestic and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank; the next morning, he would travel to Texas for two days of media training. But on the night of Obama’s speech, the task of getting Carson ready for the White House fell to Williams alone. He’d arranged for Carson to appear on cable news to offer some post-speech commentary and was busily prepping the doctor.

The ‘Williams’ referenced there, is Armstrong Williams. Another know-nothing radio talk show host that Barack Obama annihilated in his campaign to win the Illinois senate seat he held before he became president.

As Sam Seder (majority.fm) put it, Ben Carson will forever change the implication of the statement, "well, he’s no brain surgeon".

Mike Pence Will Never Be The Nominee

March 31, 2015 by Bitchy

So Mike Pence, governor if Indiana is thinking of running for president. This tells me that his political instincts spectacularly suck.

I’m sure everyone knows that he signed a ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’ (or RFRA) last week. We already have a federal RFRA, but that one doesn’t go far enough for Indiana republican legislators. It doesn’t allow business to discriminate against (for example) the LGBT community because of their religious beliefs. This law not only empowers businesses to refuse to serve, hire, rent to, and a whole slew of other things to a member of the LGBT community, but it also shields them from being sued if they do.

A little context: there was a law suit in New Mexico (who has its own RFRA) called Elane Photography v Willock. That was a case where a same sex couple sued a photography studio for refusing to photograph their wedding. The New Mexico RFRA protects a business from being sued by the government over their "free exercise" of their religion. The defendants tried to use the New Mexico RFRA as a defense, but New Mexico’s state supreme court ruled that RFRA didn’t apply since the government wasn’t a party in the suit. Indiana decided they weren’t going to make that mistake, so their RFRA includes language that bars someone who was discriminated against from suing the bigot that did the discriminating.

Why did I start this post off by saying that Mike Pence’s political instincts suck? Because a poll taken earlier this month has 40% of republicans supporting marriage equality. While that’s not a majority yet, the context is really important; two years that number was 27%. The tide is turning, and it’s turning fast. The republican presidential primaries don’t start for another eight months, and the general election is almost a year and a half away. What do you think the numbers are going to look like then?

Mike Pence is pandering to that charming republican base that the world is leaving behind. You don’t have to be a forward thinker to see that’s a bad idea. All you have to do is to look at the polls for today. But beyond that, the thing that really makes Pence a political idiot, is the fact that he hasn’t noticed that the only candidate who is officially in the race right now, is playing to the same base. So if no other republican comes into the primary by making a play for the dinosaur base, Pence is going to be splitting that vote with Cruz. That base represents roughly 24% of us. It’s that 24% that approved of Bush until the bitter end. The 24% that thought Sarah Palin was awesome even after it was clear that she didn’t know anything, and that English may well be her second language.

As if making a play for the base, when the only candidate in the race is going after those same people isn’t dumb enough, he hasn’t noticed something really relevant about recent history. No republican has successfully pivoted from the base to the middle for the general election. Mitt Romney certainly didn’t do it. His pivot turned into a spin, which turned into a face plant. McCain couldn’t pull it off either. He got a bigger ass kicking in the general than Romney got. That "bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" idiocy wasn’t forgotten by the general electorate who were tired of war.

George W Bush didn’t run as a whackadoodle in the primary but then again, he didn’t have to. He had the Bush name. That’s something I will never understand either. Poppy is not a popular president among republicans. They never talk about his awesomeness. So why the hell would you vote for the idiot (it was clear he was an idiot in the primaries) son of a president you don’t hold in high esteem? And now they have to pretend like the son’s presidency didn’t happen either. W is persona non grata at the conventions and everywhere else. And now they’re thinking about voting for the brother and son of the two presidents they have to pretend never existed? How long do they think they can keep this up? I think that one hundred years from now, when republicans are still only acknowledging Ronald Reagan as their awesome president, someone is going to notice there’s something wrong with them.

But I digress. My point is that this mythological pivot from the whackadoodle right to the middle has never been pulled off. Anyone who thinks they can do it, isn’t playing the smart odds.

Signing RFRA was the dumbest thing he could have done at the very time he’s thinking about a presidential run. The legislature is going to have to go back to eliminate the really fucked up language in Indiana’s RFRA, and Pence is going to have to sign the amended version. Yes, they will try and save face by claiming that they basically changed some punctuation marks, but that won’t matter. The base will know.

Every move he made this week was a mistake. Running for president after this will be an eve bigger mistake. He royally screwed up because he has no political instincts to speak of.

Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and 2016

February 26, 2015 by Bitchy

As most of you know, on Tuesday night, Rahm Emanuel became the first incumbent mayor of Chicago to fail to defeat a primary challenge. Followers of this blog or my social media pages know that I was delighted. I think Rahm is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the democratic party today.

He’s the very picture of the "republican lite" bullshit that democrats tried to foist on us in the 2014 election. He’s a republican minus the batshit. And that’s something that no one wants. Republicans don’t want their candidates to lack the batshit that makes a republican a republican. Democrats certainly aren’t excited by "republican lite" candidates, and since democrats aren’t like republicans, they’re not going to show up to vote for any piece of crap with a "d" next to their name. Simply removing the batshit from the republican isn’t going to excite and mobilize democrats to vote.

You wanna know what excites democrats? Progressive candidates. Elizabeth Warren wasn’t ever supposed to be able to beat the senator from Wall Street. She was never supposed to raise more money than Scott Brown. And yet, a progressive ground swell put her in that senate seat, which she will keep for as long as she wants it. Bill de Blasio was never supposed to beat Mike Bloomberg’s heir apparent. I started volunteering for his campaign when he was polling in fourth place in the primaries. He subsequently succeeded in getting enough votes to avoid a runoff all together. Zephyr Teachout, who ran as a third party candidate in New York’s last gubernatorial election took 35 points away from Andrew Cuomo. She literally only had tens of thousands of dollars, versus his millions of dollars. Fourteen days before the election, her campaign hadn’t printed out a single piece of literature to hand out, and didn’t have lists of registered democrats to call during phone banking sessions. And yet, she still managed to take 35 points away from Cuomo on an essentially word-of-mouth campaign.

Every time a progressive dark horse wins, or leaves a serious mark on an election, we are sending a message to the DNC. Not only that, but we’re motivating more progressives to run. I don’t live in Massachusetts, but I donated hundreds of dollars to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign because I knew that helping to get her elected was good for progressives all across the country.

This mayoral race in Chicago may be more significant that the Warren victory, whether you live in Illinois or not. Defeating the former Chief Of Staff to the president, and high profile career politician will send a very loud message to the party and to progressives who are considering getting involved in politics. This would be a huge national progressive victory because of who Rahm Emanuel is.

This mayoral race is important to progressives all across the country. It’s not just about Chicago. It’s about 2016, and the slate of candidates that the democratic establishment ends up supporting. Nothing will shake the DNC to its core, like seeing one of their golden children crushed by a relatively unknown progressive candidate. We all have a vested interest in this election.

So, if you’ve ever donated to a political campaign and can afford it, now is the time to chip in ten bucks to help Garcia beat Rahm, who is about to dump several metric tons of money into this campaign. This race matters to all of us, and if we band together, we can win it.

Operation FDR

November 14, 2014 by Bitchy

My dirty hippie mayor, who won his election by a nearly 50 point spread by running as a socialist, has some wise words for our pathetic democratic party political machine.

I live in New York City so my mayor is Bill de Blasio. I started volunteering with de Blasio’s campaign when he was polling in 4th place. Not because I routinely get involved in political campaigns. I don’t. I’m seldom motivated to. De Blasio motivated me. I knew he was going to be the next mayor of New York City because of his populist message. I knew the message was the right one.

Raising taxes was part of his platform. No really, it was. I knew that he was going to win because of it. He wanted to raise taxes on the filthiest of the rich in New York City by a tiny amount so that he could provide universal pre-k to every child in the city. Who wins an election in America by promising to raise taxes? Bill de Blasio. Jerry Brown. Twenty seven districts in Wisconsin voted to raise their own taxes. New Orleans voted to amend their freaking constitution to raise taxes. Clayton County in bright red Georgia voted to raise their own taxes. That’s what I could find in a ten minute Google search. One single search string, five pages into those hits. There are definitely more, but you get my point. Some Americans are starting to realize that if you want nice things, you have to pay for them.

Americans are becoming more and more liberal. All across the country, Americans voted to raise the minimum wage. The majority of us have embraced marriage equality. Americans are becoming increasingly less interested in throwing people in prison for smoking pot, so they’re taking the matter in their own hands. That "tough on crime" mantra that gave us those "three strikes" laws in some states is starting to be recognized for the disaster that it is and is slowly being undone by the voters.

We are becoming more liberal every year, and Bill de Blasio knew it. The democratic party did not. They ran a shit show of an election effort all across the country. Some democratic voters are attributing the blood bath of 2014 to voter suppression. I agree that this was a contributing factor, but the margins shouldn’t have been close enough for that to be true. Others are saying that democrats were wildly outspent. That’s only true in a few races where republicans had to polish their biggest turds: Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, Sam Brownback, and a few others. But generally speaking, the spending was fairly even. The problem was that democrats didn’t have a platform. They ran as "republican lite", and it was absurd. Who the hell is going to vote for republican lite? Democrats? Republicans? Democrats put on a shit show this time around. Alison Grimes can’t say she voted for Obama, yet she’s campaigning with Elizabeth Warren who is the face of socialism? WTF kind of disjointed message was that? How hard is this, "Yes I voted for President Obama and that’s why nearly 500,000 Kentuckians have health insurance for the first time in lord knows how long"? See, that was the perfect answer because it’s true, it sounds genuine, and the word ‘lord" made it in there for good measure! Mark Pryor ran a commercial in which he was thumping his bible so hard, that I swear I lost approximately 10% of my hearing.

To summarize: liberalism won, but "republican lite" lost to "the real deal republican". Any regrouping or strategizing democrats do that ignores this fact is going to be useless.

Enter my socialist mayor. He had a little advice for the party. I agree with everything he said, but I want to go over the parts I found particularly prescient.

As a Democrat, I’m disappointed in last Tuesday’s results. But as a progressive, I know my party need not search for its soul — but rather, its backbone.

We are so off to a good start here.

The truth is that the Democratic Party has core values that are very much in sync with most Americans.

We believe in taking dead aim at the income inequality that infects our communities — from big cities like New York, to small towns and rural areas across the United States.

We believe that the wealthy should pay their fair share so we can lift people out of poverty and grow our middle class.

And we believe in rules that prevent big corporations and Wall Street banks from unraveling workers’ pensions, suppressing employees’ wages and benefits, and rigging the system to reward wealth instead of work.

Hellooo, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, and Bill de Blasio and your incredibly high approval ratings. There’s a reason why they’re so popular, and that was it.

This year, too many Democratic candidates lost sight of those core principles — opting instead to clip their progressive wings in deference to a conventional wisdom that says bold ideas aren’t politically practical.

To working people, it showed Democratic weakness — a weak commitment to the change desperately sought by struggling families, and a weak alternative to a Republican philosophy that has held America back.

Yep. When Alison Grimes refused to say that she voted for president Obama, she looked like a little weasel. Nobody likes an oily politician who can’t even pretend to be sincere for as long as they’re campaigning.

Bold, progressive ideas win elections.

Just ask Senator Al Franken, who has fought fearlessly to rein in Wall Street, and won by a larger margin on Tuesday than President Obama did in Minnesota in 2012.

Or Senator Jeff Merkley, who never backed away from his support for Obamacare — a federal program that is already working to reduce income inequality, and promises to do more to address the inequality crisis than anything out of Washington in generations. Merkley won re-election in Oregon by six points more than Obama won that state in 2012.

Then there’s Governor Jerry Brown, who cruised to re-election after championing — and winning — a millionaire’s tax that dedicated funding to California’s public schools.

And don’t forget Governor Dan Malloy — who was written off by so many in his re-election bid in Connecticut. Malloy raised taxes so he could invest more in education each year (at a time when other Governors were slashing education to close yawning budget gaps). Malloy passed earned sick time and a minimum wage hike. And in his re-election bid, he proudly stood alongside President Obama.

Malloy not only lived to tell about it on Tuesday, he increased his margin of victory in a rematch with his 2010 Republican opponent.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I have nothing more to add to that.

Critics will point to competitive Senate races in Kentucky, Arkansas, and North Carolina as places where such progressive policies would all but ensure Democrats’ defeat.

Our question is: how would they know?

In those states, Democratic candidates didn’t say much about progressive taxation, expanding health and retirement benefits, or implementing anti-poverty efforts like universal pre-k or affordable housing.

In Kentucky, more than 413,000 residents have signed up for Obamacare — making it one of the program’s most notable success stories. Arkansas had the nation’s fourth highest poverty rate last year, at 19.7%. In North Carolina — nearly 60% of three-and-four-year olds are not enrolled in pre-k. What were the Democratic candidates offering voters there?

Exactly right. If the progressive ideas are popular, why is running progressive candidates never an option? That was some crappy strategery (my little homage to Bush) on the part of Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who just plain suck at politics.

We saw photo-ops with candidates firing their rifles of choice; witnessed rhetorical gymnastics about how different they were from Obama; and watched televised debates dominated by empty attacks on the Koch Brothers’ influence on campaigns, rather than policies requiring billionaires like the Kochs to pay their fair share in taxes to fund programs benefiting working people.

I’m not blaming the individual candidates here. The strategies they employed are largely the making of Washington insiders who force-feed message points on candidates under threat of being written off by their national party infrastructure.

Yep. That’s his non-Bitchy way of describing the shit show I’ve been referring to for the past week and a half. And he’s referring to the incompetence of Israel and Wasserman-Schultz without naming names.

Acknowledging the need to address income inequality helps win elections. Want proof? Look at the Republicans. In several contests where the GOP prevailed last Tuesday, candidates spoke directly to voters’ concerns on issues like poverty, wage equality, and underemployment.

And tackling inequality is not only good politics; it’s good government.

Yes! The core of the republican base, that 30% that stuck with Bush to the bitter end, the ones who loved Sarah Palin have twisted themselves up so far that they don’t realize this. They think that working hard and not getting jack shit for it is the American way. They have themselves so twisted up into a pretzel, that they literally can’t tell you what they’re advocating for anymore, other than punching down. But they are only 30% of the country. Another twenty percent, who were temporarily caught up in that "tax cuts for the rich will create a utopia for you, in which even cancer is cured" bullshit are coming out of that fog.

You and your government are partners with a vested interest. You work hard, and put forth your best efforts to increase GDP, and your government makes sure that in exchange for that hard work, you’re not starving in the streets. If you work, your basic needs should be met. And since any rational person knows that Comcast won’t do that for you, it has to be your government.

And the fight against inequality isn’t limited to blue states. Right now, there’s a fierce battle being waged on behalf of pre-k in dark-red Indiana. In Kentucky, Governor Beshear maintains wide support and popularity after publicly championing the benefits of Obamacare to the state. Last week, voters in Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved ballot measures to increase the minimum wage.

I have nothing to add to that, except to say that Americans are moving left while our government is moving right.

The 2016 presidential election is two years off, but will have a huge impact on the lives of America’s middle-class and poor. Democrats simply cannot rely on shifting demographics and a badly damaged Republican brand to hold the White House and help countless Americans who are struggling.

We must demonstrate, from coast to coast, that we are a party dedicated to lifting people out of poverty; one committed to building a bigger and more durable middle-class; one that is unafraid to ask a little more from those at the very top — the wealthy individuals and big corporations who have not only rebounded from the depths of the Great Recession, but who’ve accumulated record new wealth.

Yup. "We suck slightly less than republicans isn’t going to cut it. Liberals aren’t going to accept that. We’re not republicans. We don’t have Stockholm syndrome, and we’re not lemmings with a team mentality about politics. We expect our candidates to uphold their half of the partnership. Independents and younger voters aren’t going to accept that either. They’re just going to stop showing up. And the "we suck slightly less" perpetuates and actualizes the (for now) false notion that both sides are the same.

I understand that democrats need to raise money. I understand that because of Citizen’s United, no politician stands a chance of being elected to any position higher than dog catcher without making nice with a few industries whose self interest are at odds with their constituencies. I get it. I get that we need to fix the money in politics problem, which is why I’m constantly advocating for joining Mayday or (preferably and) Wolf PAC. We need national democrats to get on board in a vocal way. Bernie Sanders can’t be the only politician in the country talking about it. Cenk (Uygur, who started Wolf PAC) seems to think that we can amend the constitution without congress’ help. I don’t agree. We need as many allies in congress as we can get. Democrats need to start talking about this all the time. An overwhelming majority of Americans (72% – 91%, depending on which poll you look at) want to get money out of politics. This is a winning issue. Republican lite is not a viable platform. It’s time to deploy a new strategy. I call it, "Operation FDR". Everywhere we see an FDR or his ideology, we win. It’s time for democrats to go back to their roots and listen to my socialist mayor.

To be clear, I use the term ‘socialism’ in a tongue and cheek way to mock what republicans have done to our dialogue. Regulated capitalism isn’t socialist. Leveling the distribution of wealth so that the game isn’t rigged from the top isn’t socialism. It’s healthy capitalism. And anyone who uses the term ‘socialism’ in any way other than how I use it, should be ignored. That person is batshit crazy, and not worth your time. Spend your time talking to somebody else who has a brain, an open mind, and a heart that isn’t filled with hate.

The Veto Tsunami

November 6, 2014 by Bitchy

I’ve been seeing variations on this meme for a couple of days now:

I like the sunny optimism, but that’s not what’s going to happen. This meme assumes that Obama isn’t aligned with a lot of the republican agenda. Remember, he extended the Bush tax cuts. He was dying to make the grand bargain. We do not have the dirty hippie socialist president that some seem to believe we have. I’m sorry, but that’s just a fact.

The thing everyone points to when proclaiming that President Obama is a socialist, is the thing that republicans created twenty years ago. Obamacare is not socialism. It’s a giant gift to the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and it puts a band aid on the failing business model that is for profit health insurance. It gave insurance companies that coveted and rare demographic known as the millennials. Yes, twentysomethings have to have insurance now, and that’s a hail Mary for Aetna because as a nation, we’re getting older and more expensive to maintain. For profit health insurance is going to cave in on itself. Obamacare just bought them more time. Don’t get me wrong, twentysomethings should have coverage. They won’t get insurance if they’re not forced to get it. They don’t need it because they’re young and healthy, and they don’t want to pay for it. Since they traditionally haven’t participated in the health insurance market, we all pay more than we should in our thirties and forties. See, you pay for the insurance you should have had in your twenties one way or another. Since the young and healthy ones aren’t contributing to the risk pool while they’re young and healthy, the risk pool becomes riskier than it should be. More risk = higher premiums. If you’re one of the people who have always had insurance, you paid for your twenties twice. That’s not going to happen anymore, so we got some relief out of this plan too. But it’s not even in the ballpark of socialism. It just happened to be an elusive middle ground when both corporate profits and people get a win.

Obama is not a socialist. He’s not even a liberal. When it comes to all things corporate-profit related, there’s no daylight between what republicans want and what Obama wants. He’s never attempted to regulate Monsanto, stop oil companies from destroying our water supply by fracking the fuck out of our country, hold Wall Street accountable for their malfeasance, or even raise taxes on corporations, who have never paid less than they pay now.

No, there won’t copious vetos in our future.

Oh, and the hope of the veto also ignores how non confrontational this president is. Remember, he got Shirley Sherrod’s resignation as fast as he did because he was worried about what Glenn Beck was going to say on his show that night. This is not a bold president who stands up to anyone that he isn’t running against in an election. We’ve never seen candidate Obama in the White House, and we’re not going to see him now.

The Rise Of The Despised

November 5, 2014 by Bitchy

That’s what the 2014 election was. The year of crappy legislators with low approval ratings floating to the top, despite the fact that their constituents hate them. When I say hate, I mean really hate. Let’s review.

I want to start with the one whose approval ratings made it seem inconceivable that he could get reelected; Rick Scott. Six months into his term, in June 2011, his approval rating was 33% with a disapproval rating of 59%. Less than 12 months into his term, Rick Scott’s approval rating was 26%. He was, by far the most despised governor in the US. By August of 2012, his approvals went up to an unimpressive 39% with a mere 51% unapproving. By October 2013, his approvals were back down to 33% and his disapprovals were at 55%. Two freaking weeks ago, Scott had an approval rating of 44% with a disapproval of 49%.

Next up, Georgia’s Nathan Deal. I couldn’t get as much polling data on Deal as I could on Voldemort, but I got enough. In April 2013, Deal was at a net -4 with an approval of 37%, disapproval of 41%. Six months later in August, it got worse with an approval of 34% with a disapproval of 41%. To put that into context, Obama has been riding high compared to Deal.

And now we move to Sam "bankrupted Kansas" Brownback. This asshole went into the governorship with a proud proclamation that Kansas was going to be a "real, live experiment" for right wing policies. And that’s exactly what he did. He eliminated taxes for businesses in Kansas, causing nearly a billion dollars to evaporate. But have no fear, Kansas public schools can just get by with less. This has the added bonus of ensuring that Kansans stay stupid, thereby increasing the odds that they would continue to vote republican. By February 2013, Brownback’s approval ratings were at 33% with disapprovals at 51%. Here’s the really interesting part of those numbers; the disparity among democrats, independents, and republicans. Independents were at 22% approve, 66% disapprove. Democrats were at 14% approve, 81% disapprove. The fiscally responsible, family values republicans of Kansas approved of his budget blowing, family screwing performance to the tune of 55%, with a mere 30% actually sticking to the principles they espouse by disapproving of this shit show.

Do not ever, EVER allow a republican tell you that they give a flying fuck about deficits OR their families. That’s clearly not the basis upon which they cast their votes. Sorry, I’m a little bitchy today. But Kansas gets what Kansas deserves.

Our next shining example of a not-at-all-dysfunctional democracy is the re-election of Rick "I’m going to replace democracy with emergency managers" Snyder of Michigan. One short year into his term, Snyder’s approvals were at 40% with 47% disapprovals. By December of 2012, thanks to his cheer leading for "right to work for less", he was at a 38% approval, 56% disapproval. A month and a half ago, he had an approval rating of 37% with a disapproval of 54%.

This truly was the year when the poop floated to the top of our government. Why did this happen? Money. I don’t have exact figures right now because of all of the last minute "dark" (otherwise known as Citizen’s United) money that went into all of these races, but it looks like the usual pattern of the biggest spender winning the election held true last night. Snyder spend roughly three times more than his opponent. Nathan Deal spend about twice as much as his opponent. I can’t get numbers that are remotely accurate on the Kansas and Florida races. It will be a while before the dust settles on all of the cash that came in just during the last two weeks. I do know that Florida’s grand total on the 2014 election cycle was about $350 million dollars. Of course, $85 million of that was from Sheldon Adelson making sure that no one could legally smoke pot in Florida, so that had nothing to do with the governor’s race. There were too many sources of cash swirling around all four candidates for me to calculate where it all landed. I will write a follow up to this post when I have those numbers.

So what’s the point of this post? I actually have two. Number one is that every election moving forward will produce the same results; poop floating to the top. We will never get good government until we fix the system. We need to amend the constitution to get money out of politics. We have no other viable options left. That voting third party horseshit that got us Bush in 2000, got Florida four more years of Rick Scott. That is clearly not the way to go. If you’re fed up with this shit (literally), you need to join us at Wolf PAC. Volunteer, donate, do what you can do. You literally have no other options. Whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, you’re not going to get the government you want any other way. My second point in writing this post is so that you would have these approval ratings on hand the next time some batshit crazy republican brings up how much Obama sucks. Let them know that his approvals are well within the range of likely re-election if he ran for a third term.

Definitely Not The Most Imortant Election In Your Lifetime

November 4, 2014 by Bitchy

I have said virtually nothing about this election. Weird, right? Why is a political junkie silent about an upcoming election? I have two reasons. First and foremost, there are too many senate races that are too close to call. Nate Silver says that republicans have a 76.2% chance of taking the senate. That sounds crazy to me. Not because I don’t like what he’s saying, but because those six races are so close that it’s really going to come down to a factor that hasn’t been taken into account; ground game. Sam Wang, who was even more accurate than Nate Silver in 2012 (not in 2010) has republicans odds of taking the senate at 53%. Wang and Silver are actually in a math geek pissing contest. It’s kind of amusing to watch if you’re as geeky, but not as mathy.

53% makes more sense to me even though Wang only uses polling data to come up with his odds. Nate Silver takes some other factors (generic ballot polls, approval ratings, cash raised, etc) into account. So even though Silver incorporates data that I personally believe is important into his model, I think that Wang’s odds are better this time around. Neither of them factor in ground game. Ground game is going to be the deciding factor in six senate races.

I’m not going to go through them. This is not a horse race piece. I’m not going into it because it doesn’t matter. Control of the senate is as close to irrelevant as control of the senate has ever been in our history. The gridlock situation isn’t going to change. Republicans aren’t going to pass anything too insane through both houses because they’re working very hard to make sure they have no platform that can be attributed to them.

The most relevant thing about control of the senate this time around is the impact it will have on 2016. The first status update I posted in Facebook for 2014 was a promise that I wasn’t going to talk about 2016 until 2015. I’m going to break that promise a tiny bit (hey, 11 out of 12 months ain’t bad!). Republicans can’t pass too many bills because anything they’re erroneously blaming on Obama now can easily be turned around on them if they control two out of the three branches. So the river of bullshit blaming that has flowed in one direction for the past six years, will now flow in two directions. Republicans won’t risk that. They also won’t risk creating a platform for the first time in six years because any platform they put forward hurts their odds of taking the White House in 2016.

As an aside, that lack of a platform thing is what democrats are doing now, and it’s a huge mistake. They didn’t have a platform for the midterms. Elizabeth Warren tried to guide them, but they didn’t follow her. Offering absolutely nothing works well on conservative constituents, but it most definitely doesn’t work on liberals. Like any other public page on the internet, I get a decent number of trolls (I was so proud of myself when I finally got noticed enough to attract my first troll!) The one and only post I put up that is 100% troll proof, is the one in which I ask conservatives to tell me one single thing that republicans have done to improve their lives. That post leaves the trolls mute. They know the answer and they don’t care. They’re not interested in results or a promise to deliver results. They’re happy making less and less money every year, seeing their kids opportunities shrink, and losing liberties as long as their hate is fueled. I say this earnestly and with no hyperbole; the GOP motto should be, "I hate, therefore I am".

Liberals are inherently different. They need ideas and something in the way of a result to cling onto. There are a significant number of liberals that hare having none of the Hillary-is-the-inevitable-nominee talk. We’re not happy with the, "I’m married to Bill" platform. We’re not republicans, who were happy to vote for Poppy Bush’s dumbest son for no reason other than he was Poppy’s son.

Anyway, I digress. The point of this post is to day that this election is fairly insignificant. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I will make one prediction about one too-close-to-call election that is actually really relevant. Get ready to say buh bye to Rick Scott. His approval ratings have been in the 30s for the past two years. It’s inconceivable to me that he isn’t going to lose tonight. Florida democrats despise Rick Scott more than Florida republicans like him. He’s gonzo. This is important because once Christ wins the seat, he’s going to keep it for a few terms. We need Florida in democratic hands in 2020 so that we can undo the redistricting damage.

That said, GO VOTE! Just because the national seats don’t matter much, doesn’t mean that your local races aren’t important.