American Politics 4.0 - Orangeyou Glad He’s Back?

[puffnstuff]

The Sandwich Guy trial is nearing its end, jusy deliberating now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...fic-rcna242195

Update
Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department's case against "sandwich guy," the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty on Thursday after several hours of deliberations.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

This wasn't just a solidly Democratic state thing. Pennsylvania is as purple as it comes, and the Supreme Court Dems that were up for retention won their votes by over 20 percentage points. There were two Superior Court seats open as well, and the Dem candidates won both of those. In my county (including Pittsburgh) there were 497 total races and Republicans won only 11 of them. Across the state, in Bucks County north of Philly, Dems now hold every seat in the county for the first time in history. In Clearfield County (DEEP Pennsyltucky), the Dem candidate won a Court of Common Pleas race in a county Trump won by over 50 points last year.


In Mississippi - as far from a Democratic stronghold as you can get - Dems broke the GOP supermajority in their house for the first time since 2019.


Every single county in Virginia moved to the left (including Appalachia).


This wasn't just a defeat for the GOP, this was a demolishing. All manner of Dems won - Mamdani is the face and gets the most headlines, but along with his Dem Socialist platform, Spanberger and Sherrill are much more moderate but still cruised to easy victories.


I'm really, really hoping that the DNC takes a few messages from this:
1) Youth. We're tired of seeing 75+ year olds running our government into the ground. We want to see our peers as the face of politics.
2) Running the correct candidate in the correct locales. Make no mistake, Mamdani isn't winning in the suburban Midwest. Kamala Harris was a radical liberal socialist to many of those people (I live and work here, I know these people). Mamdani is excellent for New York and can easily win there, but other places need to run more moderate candidates. There is no one perfect candidate for every district/city/state.
3) They cannot cave on the shutdown now. Clearly what Trump is doing is intensely unpopular, and across the board, Dems who were willing to battle back were victorious. People want candidates who will fight regardless of just where exactly they land on the center-center left-left spectrum.


This is certainly not to say Dems are suddenly way better at campaigning and lots of this is typical buyer's remorse in the off year after a presidential election. Unfortunately a lot of this is just dumb people who voted for Trump (or just stayed home) last November, who are now realizing that when you touch the stove it's pretty damn hot. Sure would be nice if they'd figured that out a year ago, but at this point I'll take any good news I can get, and there was a lot of that yesterday, across a lot of states, and most with commanding margins. I don't think the GOP won a single big race yesterday.

What does a successful endgame to the shutdown look like for the Democrats? It seems that there messaging is working for now, and are winning the political aspect of it. But there is a real cost to Federal government employees who are going into month 2 of no paychecks, some loss of SNAP funding, airline mayem coming up for people trying to go home for Thanksgiving, etc. I don't know that those victims are all willing to be pawns in that battle.

The core issue that the Democrats are fighting for is Obamacare subsidies to stay at the same level. It's really an unusual hill for both sides to die on since it only affects a sliver of the population. Holding out for that is a pretty small victory.

Democrats cheering for a protracted shutdown may start to backfire as more and more people start to feel real affects of it.

[Drak]

They had a on camera healthcare conference not long ago in the oval. One of the men near the podium collapsed. Trump just stood there looking down at the guy. Then he stood there looking annoyed. Meanwhile. RFK Jr. pulled a George Costanza and bailed immediately.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

Trump said if his name was on the ballot Dems would not have won anywhere.

While it's ridiculous to suggest they would have lost every single race, the numbers don't lie, the GOP have performed meaningfully worse in elections when Trump isn't also running. Which just further shows what a cult it is, a lot of them will show up for Dear Leader, but not anyone else.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

While it's ridiculous to suggest they would have lost every single race, the numbers don't lie, the GOP have performed meaningfully worse in elections when Trump isn't also running. Which just further shows what a cult it is, a lot of them will show up for Dear Leader, but not anyone else.

Except in 2020.

Trump on the ballot when he is not in power = good for GOP.

Any election when Trump is in power = bad for GOP.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

2) Running the correct candidate in the correct locales. Make no mistake, Mamdani isn't winning in the suburban Midwest. Kamala Harris was a radical liberal socialist to many of those people (I live and work here, I know these people). Mamdani is excellent for New York and can easily win there, but other places need to run more moderate candidates. There is no one perfect candidate for every district/city/state.

This is why when when people think it's such a simple thing to nominate AOC to run for president, people need to be careful what they wish for. There are a lot of Democrat voters that are probably closer to Republicans when it comes to conservative values and the "anyone but Trump" strategy doesn't work.

Two party systems suck.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Slava

I was in Austin in the last couple of weeks, and I wasn't blown away. It's interesting because I hear all this stuff about Austin and how amazing it is, and it was "OK" but not particularly noteworthy.

I find that about everywhere I travel. I think my expectations are all f'd up for some reason, but I always want and expect a magical time.

Then you get to wherever, realize you're just going to wake up (from a less comfortable bed with none of your stuff handy), take a big giant dump like you always do, scrounge around for some breakfast, and then go stroll around on someone else's turf. Plus I'm really finding everyone everywhere fkn hates tourists these days, which annoys me to no end.

Am sort of planning a trip to the German/Austrian Alps for the spring. If that sucks I'm done with that sort of international travel. It's always a PITA and rarely ever that great. The reason I'm thinking Germany/Austria is it's mountain towns, which I like, Munich, which seems cool (only been to Frankfurt and Berlin...I did like Berlin), and Austria's alps are pretty fricken nice (was there 30 years ago).

I hate hot places, which rules out all the basic bitch travel the masses seem to like. My jam is mountain towns, so I'm thinking if I stick with that it could be my path forward for travel. Hanging out in Bavarian beer halls for a week and hiking around mountains seems pretty sick. They killed most of their bears long ago, which will make hiking way more chill and fun, too.

[troutman]

There are no cities, no cities to love
There are no cities, no cities to love
It's not the cities, it's the weather we love!

[ResAlien]

Children and idiots are running everything.

WASHINGTON — Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department's case against "sandwich guy," the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty Thursday after several hours of deliberations.

The jury — which feasted on sandwiches for lunch Thursday, according to a person familiar with jury lunches — deliberated the charges for several hours Wednesday and Thursday before delivering the verdict...Border Patrol Officer Greg Lairmore received two "gag gifts" related to the incident — a plush sandwich and a patch featuring a cartoon of Dunn throwing the sandwich with the words “Felony Footlong” — which the defense team argued showed this was not a serious event in his life.

Lairmore had testified that the sandwich “exploded all over” his chest and claimed he could smell mustard and onions. But a photo showed that the sandwich was still in its wrapper on the ground after it hit Lairmore in his bulletproof vest.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...ict-rcna242142

[Drak]

Originally Posted by puffnstuff

The Sandwich Guy trial is nearing its end, jusy deliberating now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...fic-rcna242195

Update
Jurors showed no appetite for the Justice Department's case against "sandwich guy," the D.C. resident who chucked a Subway sandwich at the chest of a federal officer, finding him not guilty on Thursday after several hours of deliberations.

Good. Because it could have been assault with a deli weapon.

[TorqueDog]

Judge: "Have the jurors reached a verdi- ... juror number 6, why is your attire in such disarray?"
Juror 6: "Juror number 2 hit me with a meatball sub during deliberations."
Judge: "Juror 2, explain yourself."
Juror 2: "We wanted to validate the defense's statement that a sandwich cannot cause bodily harm and I have the best throwing arm in the jury. It did not cause bodily harm."
Juror 6: "Juror 2 will be covering my dry cleaning costs."
Juror 2: "Worth it."

[Senator Clay Davis]

To be fair, he did have 47 Big Mac's for lunch, that would make anyone sleepy.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1986492921399373852

[sa226]

A face eating leopard doesn't change its spots. MTG is still MTG.

AOCs theory on the changed tone from MTG is that she desperately wanted a senate spot and was flat out told NO by Trump, so she's now on a revenge tour.

[photon]

Lol the photo of Trump standing there annoyed while the Novo Nordisk executive collapsed and people rushed to help him is so Trump. Tell me you're a sociopath...

EDIT: Ooops, photo already posted.

[ResAlien]

I've maintained a healthy distrust of these products during the rise of GLP-1 inhibitors and nothing can convince me more strongly that they're objectively terrible for you than these ghouls hocking them and making them cheaper. The next time they do something altruistic for the population will be the first time.

[aaronck]

Originally Posted by Drak

They had a on camera healthcare conference not long ago in the oval. One of the men near the podium collapsed. Trump just stood there looking down at the guy. Then he stood there looking annoyed. Meanwhile. RFK Jr. pulled a George Costanza and bailed immediately.

This is such a perfect analogy for what is happening in the US right now-Trump is Trump, the poor bastard on the floor is the majority of the US population right now. I'd put this picture on every Democrat campaign poster from now until the next election

[Jiri Hrdina]

The photo misses one of the key parts though, which is RFK getting the eff out of there as soon as the guy goes down.

[Burninator]

The jury — which feasted on sandwiches for lunch Thursday, according to a person familiar with jury lunches

Clearly big sandwich got to these jurors. Who's got the most to gain from this? Follow the meat!

[Locke]

One small step for sandwiches...one great leap for sandwich-kind.

[puffnstuff]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

The photo misses one of the key parts though, which is RFK getting the eff out of there as soon as the guy goes down.

Rfk probably went to get him a big glass of raw milk to cure him of those vapors