Thursday, December 3, 2020

Last Call For Good Luck With That, House Dems

New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney will be the Dems' new House campaign chair, in a definite message that Dems are playing pragmatic defense to keep their House majority in 2022.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney was elected Thursday to lead the House Democrats’ campaign arm, charged with steering the caucus through an exceedingly perilous midterm with their control of the chamber on the line.

Maloney, who represents a New York battleground district, defeated Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) in a hard-fought — and closely watched — contest to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He will take on the task of shielding a slim majority in the first two years of a new Democratic president and under a new set of district lines drawn in large part by Republicans.

The New York Democrat will succeed Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who oversaw one of the caucus’s most successful fundraising cycles but fell victim to her own expectation-setting and failed to predict the turnout wave from President Donald Trump that crushed Democrats' hopes of an ambitious electoral map that included Texas and even Alaska.

As incoming DCCC chief, Maloney will have one of the trickiest jobs in Washington after the Democrats’ down-ballot trouncing at the polls last month that left Republicans between five and seven seats away from the majority. He will have to convince dozens of new candidates to run in a potentially unfavorable environment and in districts that have yet to be drawn.

Maloney will be immediately inserted into the center of an ideological debate that has gripped House Democrats since Nov 3., with the caucus’s warring factions pointing fingers at each other over exactly why they’re staring down a shrunken majority come January.

Many moderate Democrats — who largely supported Maloney for his ability to win in a Trump-won district — are demanding a new party message that veers starkly away from the GOP’s attacks on socialism and progressive slogans like “defund the police.”

Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, are dissecting the internal gears at DCCC, arguing that the operation needs to rely on more diverse staff and consultants, devote more resources to get-out-the-vote efforts and completely rethink its digital operations.

Many progressives, particularly lawmakers of color, had flocked behind Cárdenas, who proved to be a prolific fundraiser and organizer as he built the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s campaign arm, BOLD Pac, from the ground up. And he staked his campaign on a vow to Democrats’ increasingly apparent struggles with Latino. The party suffered surprising losses in heavily Latino seats in Florida, Texas and California.

Cárdenas was vocal about reforming some of DCCC’s practices, including ending a contentious policy that banned the organization from hiring any consultant that has helped a primary challenger of a sitting Democrat — a practice that enraged progressives.

Maloney has acknowledged concerns with messaging and said he would reconsider the DCCC blacklist, though he has been mostly restrained — both publicly and privately — in his assessment of DCCC’s miscalculations.

“The smart thing for the DCCC chair to do is to say, I don't know what happened until I’ve really had a chance to dig into the numbers,” Maloney said in a recent interview.
 
I'm not sure if Mahoney is the right choice over Cárdenas but that's not my call to make. It's very clear that Dems are going with the the Guy Who Won Twice In A Trump 2016 District™ and that's a very valid argument to make.

We'll see if it pays off.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

We've finally reached the "Charlie Day from Always Sunny" stage of the Trump regime's collapse.

It's time to treat the platforms like media companies 

Forget Ross Perot's PowerPoint presentations, Donald Trump has gone absolutely crackers.

Increasingly detached from reality, President Donald Trump stood before a White House lectern and delivered a 46-minute diatribe against the election results that produced a win for Democrat Joe Biden, unspooling one misstatement after another to back his baseless claim that he really won.

Trump called his address, released Wednesday only on social media and delivered in front of no audience, perhaps “the most important speech” of his presidency. But it was largely a recycling of the same litany of misinformation and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud that he has been making for the past month.

Trump, who spoke from the Diplomatic Room, kept up his futile pushback against the election even as state after state certifies its results and as Biden presses ahead with shaping his Cabinet in advance of his inauguration on Jan. 20.

Biden received a record 81 million votes compared to 74 million for Trump. The Democrat also won 306 electoral votes compared to 232 for Trump. The Electoral College split matches Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton four years ago, which he described then as a “landslide.”

Trump dug further into his contention of a “rigged election” even though members of his own administration, including Attorney General William Barr, say that no proof of widespread voter fraud has been uncovered. Courts in multiple battleground states have thrown out a barrage of lawsuits filed on behalf of the president.

“This is not just about honoring the votes of 74 million Americans who voted for me,” Trump said. “It’s about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election. And in all future elections.”

In fact, his baseless claims are having the opposite effect — undermining public faith in the integrity of U.S. elections.

About an hour after it was posted, Trump’s video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook and shared by more than 60,000 Facebook users. Both Facebook and Twitter flagged the president’s posting as problematic, with Twitter noting that Trump’s claims about election fraud are disputed.

Many of Trump’s claims have been debunked repeatedly in recent weeks.

His overarching claim: “This election is about great voter fraud, fraud that has never been seen like this before.”

In fact, Christopher Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, voiced confidence in the integrity of the election ahead of the November vote. And afterward, he knocked down allegations that the count was tainted by fraud.

Krebs was fired by Trump weeks ago
.
 
Kudos to the Associated Press and reporters Aamer Madhani and Kevin Freking for both suffering through Trump's disassociative break and for calling it as such.

And things have now gotten so bad for Trump's mental breakdown that VP Mike Pence is heading for the lifeboats too.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Recently-pardoned traitor and spy Michael Flynn has joined the ranks of those calling for Trump to declare martial law and put Democrats and democracy to death.

Lin Wood, an Atlanta-based lawyer who says President Donald Trump asked him to join the effort to challenge Joe Biden’s election victory, is promoting a right-wing group’s call for Trump to declare martial law and use the military to oversee a new election. Retired Gen. Michael Flynn also promoted the call for martial law just a day after the Justice Department released the language of the extremely broad pardon Flynn received from Trump.

We the People Convention, an Ohio group with Tea Party roots, made the call for martial law in a full-page ad in the right-wing Washington Times and a press release distributed Tuesday. As of Tuesday afternoon, the press release had been shared more than 70,000 times online. Wood tweeted a link to the press release, adding his own message:
 
Good morning. 
Our country is headed to civil war. A war created by 3rd party bad actors for their benefit - not for We The People. 
Communist China is leading the nefarious efforts to take away our freedom.  
@realDonaldTrump should declare martial law.

Wood, who is apparently working on his own rather than as an official part of Trump’s legal team, sued unsuccessfully to block certification of Biden’s victory in Georgia. He recently suggested that Georgia voters should hold off voting for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in their runoff election until the senators did more to support Trump’s election challenges. Wood, whose Twitter bio includes the QAnon movement hashtag #WWG1WGA, is scheduled to hold a press conference in Georgia with former Team Trump attorney Sidney Powell Wednesday afternoon.

Wood also represents Kyle Rittenhouse, who has become a right-wing folk hero after being charged with killing anti-racism protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A recent profile of Wood in the Trump-supporting Pentecostal-oriented media outlet Charisma said that he is “walking in the power of the Holy Sprit as a humble man of faith” and described him this way:

Prayer is the ammunition of Wood’s slingshot, figuratively speaking. He comes to do legal battle for “We The People” in the name of the Lord whose hand is still on America, he said, and he will not allow the enemies of God’s people to take over this nation and transform it into the twisted image of the godless, manipulative, intellectual elite who disdain true Christians.

The ad calling for martial law cites constitutionally suspect actions that Abraham Lincoln took during the Civil War as precedent for Trump to act. “Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history – including the civil war,” the ad reads.

The ad claims that leftist activists, colluding with Big Tech and a corrupt media, are out to destroy the United States, and that their “attempted stealing of these elections” is an act of “rebellion.”

Here are the concluding paragraphs:


We the People must not and WILL NOT cede our exclusive Constitutional right to elect our Representatives to judges, lawyers, courts, Governors, Secretary’s of State, Congress, corrupt election officials and local politicians, the corrupt media – or Leftist threats of violence! It is OUR EXCLUSIVE RIGHT to decide our Representatives not theirs! Therefore, We the People MUST demand a NEW and fair national vote, a vote that all Americans can trust and live by regardless of the winner! Without a fair vote, we fear, with good reason, the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent. Gun sales are at an all time high and 40% are first time gun owners looking to defend themselves, their property, and their rights. Therefore, Mr. President you must act now before there is no peaceful way left to preserve our Union.

When the legislators, courts and/or Congress fail to do their duty under the 12th Amendment, you must be ready Mr. President to immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote. A vote that assures a fair election in every jurisdiction and reflects the true will of the people. Federal candidates only. Paper ballots. No computers. Hand-counted with both parties watching every vote. Only registered voters. Photo ID to prove residence. Conducted safely with everyone wearing masks and six feet apart, just like we did in Ohio. Only then can the winning candidate be accepted as legitimate by a true majority of We the People who must give our consent to be justly governed! Unfortunately we are at a point where we can only trust our military to do this because our corrupt political class and courts have proven their inability to act fairly and within the law.

You must also act, like Lincoln did, to silence the destructive media’s one-sided propaganda designed and proven to influence the election outcome, and end the unlawful censorship of Big Tech, to restore the confidence of the American People in our electoral process or we cannot continue as a nation. Failure to do so could result in massive violence and destruction on a level not seen since the Civil War. Limited Martial Law is clearly a better option than Civil War!

Many will object to these actions, as they did in Lincoln’s day, but we assure you that We the People understand that no less action will suffice to prevent the loss of our Constitutional right to vote and preserve our Republic. It is time to honor your oath, Mr. President. It is time for you to boldly act to save our nation as Lincoln did. We the People will support a national re-vote. We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own, if you do not act within your powers to defend us.
 
These folks are quite frankly, openly seditious terrorists.  They are baying for blood. It's easy to dismiss them as blustering cranks and useless idiots who would probably shoot themselves loading an AR-15 more than anyone else.
 
But then again, it only takes a few of these assholes to shoot up a state legislature or three, doesn't it? 

And note: a grand total of zero Republicans in Congress are condemning Flynn for this.

They really do want a Second Civil War at this point, guys.

It won't take much, either.

StupidiNews!