Bill Nelson won primary day in Florida. Why do I say that when Nelson was uncontested in his primary, and Rick Scott — sure to be Nelson’s toughest-ever opponent — romped on the GOP side? Because Nelson, a very lousy campaigner who has never faced a tough election and now has one, will be on a ticket with two dynamic candidates who will spur turnout: Andrew Gillum (Governor) and Sean Shaw (Attorney General).
One wrinkle: Both Gillum and Shaw are Black, and this will excite the racist vote, which is not to be discounted in Florida. The Very Loud dog-whistles have already begun, with the GOP candidate for Governor Ron DeSantis blowing one loud in clear in his first post-selection TV interview, so loud and clear that the roof fell on him, and even Fox had to run a corrective.
Gillum is running as a pragmatic progressive, which is just the right note for Florida. Gillum-DeSantis is going to be quite a race:
Florida’s Republican candidate for governor, Ron DeSantis, is a Trump-endorsed lunatic …. His most viral campaign ad included a shot of him teaching his child about “building the wall” between the United States and Mexico even though Florida doesn’t share a land border with any other country. He has already begun sniping at Gillum, but the state Democrats have finally elected someone who might be able to counter bad-faith attacks from the state’s ever-surging right wing.
That’s because Gillum is a new breed of candidate for the Florida Democrats. The party is frequently beset by leadership struggles and is often the butt of jokes among reporters for its near-constant ability to lose easily winnable races in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans. Rick Scott, for example, won two terms despite being a white-collar criminal and Medicare fraudster. The state’s Democratic candidates since 2000 have been former Republican Charlie Crist, former banking executive Alex Sink, Clintonite “New Democrat” Jim Davis, and Central Florida’s forgettable Bill McBride. To say Gillum’s platform is more exciting than Crist’s is like saying a Sherman tank has more firepower than a slingshot. Whether or not you like Gillum, it’s fair to say the state hasn’t seen a gubernatorial candidate like him before.
I’m sending in my contribution tonight.
When you constantly hear dog whistles…
Off topic, but there is a nice example of Rule 1, (noted in the Waiting post). The Senate has fast track confirmed 15 of Trump’s judicial nominees so that they could adjourn, get out of Washington, and go campaign. 15 conservative judges, who will no doubt be endlessly criticized for their extremist views once they start ruling, have been given a free ticket by the Dems to the judiciary branch because Senate Dems were more worried about their jobs than a major branch of government for the next generation.
I’m not sure how YOU explain this hypocrisy, but under my Rule 1, it’s not hypocracy at all, but expected behavior.
I point it out here because it is a perfect example of the Rule, and it is no doubt being completely ignored by your favorite media sources.
We need not just more, but better Democrats.
The “monkey it up” comment, or whatever it was exactly, was not a dog whistle. It was an unfortunate choice of a commonly used phrase. And the outrage machine, turned up to 11 as it currently is, jumped on it. I’ll probably be voting for Gillum (although that is not necessarily a foregone conclusion since I wasn’t eligible to vote in the primaries and haven’t been paying close enough attention to these guys yet to make a final decision). That said, this sort of hypersensitive nonsense is exactly why people are voting for Trump – its turning rational and good people off and driving them away from liberals.
There was an ad being run by a Dem recently that said “If separating families at the border, raising health care costs, siding with Vladimir Putin, and the constant lying is not enough to impeach Donald Trump, what is?” Are you kidding me? When did “raising healthcare costs” become an impeachable offense? This guy is a buffoon. If he would have ended up on the ballot in November, I don’t know what I’d do (the woman who got the republican nod in that race is also a dumpster fire).
I have no idea what the author of that commercial intended, but I have heard very creditable arguments that in light of the various regulations and other tricks they’ve played to undermine the ACA, Trump’s claims that they are working to undermine it amount to a confession of a dereliction of the duty that the laws be faithfully executed. The idea is that normally there’s a presumption of regularity and good faith for things that could be said to be policy differences, but that presumption vanishes when the administration brags it is not enforcing the statute.
(Some respond that Obama’s games with proprietorial discretion in immigration cases could be said to also be an instance of unfaithful execution. To which the answers are: Either it wasn’t parallel in that the Obama people (and especially the President himself) didn’t admit they were undermining the law, just claiming lawful exercise of discretion; or even if it was, two wrongs don’t make a right.)
Well one might note that Obama used the term monkey in exactly the same way, and the way people have been using the term for at least the last 100 years.
One might also note, if one is being honest, the Gilliam himself used the term slightly differently, referring to the FBI investigation of of the Tallahassee city government for corruption as a monkey on the back on the city commission. Are the main targets of this investigation black? And Gilliam himself might even be a target. We don’t know for sure yet.
It’s a common term. And DeSantes did not even use it to refer to Gilliam, but to policies that might be voted for. All of this is just another distraction. More fake outrage about nothing, in order to keep people from actually thinking and noticing what might actually be going on. It happens, because it works. Froomkin, currently has two posts about it and I can’t imagine he is unaware of the use of the word monkey to refer to lots of things and situations having nothing to do with race or the giant corruption scandals involving Tallahassee city government. Do I need to toss out my monkey wrenches now to appease the masses?
Meanwhile Hillary’s private server had code on it that was CCing the Chinese on every email that went through it while she was Secretary of State, and no media will report it.
This is why you will get more Trump and why you got him in the first place. Nice going.
I would take you more seriously if when you offer weird claims like “Meanwhile Hillary’s private server had code on it that was CCing the Chinese on every email that went through it while she was Secretary of State, and no media will report it.” you gave your source for it. And if it wasn’t a whacko web site….
Indeed. And even if that wild assertion were true, a much better question is, do you believe that she did that (i.e., the inclusion of code CCing the Chinese) on purpose? Or do you believe that this happened because some nefarious third party made it happen?
This is public knowledge now. I’m sure you can google it and come up with your own sources. I don’t give you sources because in the past, if I did so, you quibbled with the source rather than the facts.
The specific claim is that this was done by a Chinese company, but nobody knows who actually monitored the account. I can tell you that in the business world, it is a common belief that any tech you bring into china will be hacked. Smart people use a special phone and computer for China, and/or wipe it completely upon leaving. There are plenty of pictures of Hillary in china using unsecured personal phones…but maybe it was all about yoga.
Look, I’m not responsible for convincing you of anything and I don’t really care what you think of me, but if you actually cared as much as you act like you do, you’d be aware of this, or make yourself aware. Put in your own legwork.
Yah, I “quibble” with sources like Trump tweets and the daily caller. If you are ashamed of your sources why should I or any reader 1) take you seriously, or 2) bother to check them out. Next thing you will tell me aliens from Venus walk among us, the media is covering it up, and we should just look it up if we don’t believe you, why should you do the work of providing sources.
In any case, here’s what I found from those radical pinkos at NBC news:
Let’s stay reality-based, shall we?
I saw this today and it reminded me of some of your comments on Hilary:
https://apple.news/A8VJpAGmHQLObGTaI7fwQbQ
Apparently, Trump’s cell phone is vulnerable to and likely being listened to by the Chinese, Russians, and who knows who. Trump’s advisors have warned him. He is not heeding the warnings.
When will Trump supports chant “lock him up,” I wonder?
Meanwhile, I’d say just take the damn thing away from him whether he likes it or not. It’s a matter of national security.
That’s always been my hang up on the Hillary emails question – so what if she used her private server? Ok, she shouldn’t have done that. She should have been more careful. But was she intentionally sending classified material to people who weren’t supposed to have it? If the answer is no (and I have never heard anyone claim otherwise), why on earth are people so riled up about it? The suggestion that Hillary should go to jail because she sent emails from the wrong email account is as ludicrous as the suggestion that Donald Trump should be impeached for raising health care costs. Its nonsense, and people in both parties have reached such a fever pitch of hysteria that its drowning out common sense and logical thinking. Its shameful, really.
The FBI, it turns out, was aware that the Chinese had put some code on her email server that would cc an account that was presumably monitored by Chinese intelligence. Every email that went through her server was CC’d to this fake account, thus the Chinese were aware of every email that passed through her server. They were able to do this because her server was not properly placed within the security scope of the State Department.
We don’t know the full details, but this would be relatively easy to do and if one created an account called, for example, HrcFullBackup, it likely would not ever be noticed or questioned by anyone other than someone who really knew what was going on on that server.
This report came out some time ago, but has only really been spoken of in media (conservative) recently, and in the mainstream, not at all. (Had you heard this fact before I mentioned it? That we knew the Chinese were reading all the emails on her server?)
Does this demonstrate some intent on her part to send her emails to china? No, but she definitely had the intent to operate a private server without government security protocols in place, thus exposing herself to hacking. Under the usual rules that apply to everyone else (I have held a top secret clearance), this is enough to get you convicted for violations of National security. Whatever you think, you have to question why this is not being pursued by the FBI, or the press. If nothing else, it great
Y feeds the narrative that laws only apply to some people.
No, I don’t have to wonder why this is not being pursued.
Just like I agreed with you on the practical outcome of chasing Trump about contributions re Michael Cohen (because I don’t think that the average voter will appreciate the distinction between “Trump” and a “Trump company,”), I also don’t see that the average voter is going to appreciate the purported severity of sending an email from the wrong email address. I intend to have a gmail account. I do have a gmail account. I accidentally send work emails on my phone from my gmail account all of the time. This is how most people will come to see. No matter what the experts think.
And Congress, and the politically appointed administrators of the FBI and the Justice Dept realize that. See Rule 1.
This is all a bunch of nonsense and a distraction from real issues that impact the lives of the voters.
Here’s a much more important questions that we should be talking about:
I have a thoroughly Hispanic sounding and looking name. My parents were born in another country. I was born here. I lost my passport. When I go to get a new one soon, will I be able to without ligation?
Why does my very brown 18 year old half sister with an Indian last name get stopped at the airport “randomly” 100% of the time she flies?
Why is the FDA suddenly (in the last handful of years) regulating cigars so much? There is no evidence that they are targeted to or smoked by kids. These regulations are having a real impact on small business and thus hurting the economy.
What is the source of the red tide on the west coast of Florida, and how can we stop it/prevent it from returning?
These, and lots more questions of actual practical concern, are where we should be spending out valuable intellectual resources.