You want to see a more extreme version of what I showed you yesterday, this one from the left rather than the right?
Check this out, and see if you can tell what makes it a more extreme example of what I’m on about:
Brad —
Since Trump’s first day in office, his attacks on women have been relentless. His administration and the GOP have now:
- Rolled back Title IX regulations.
- Denied access to birth control.
- Attempted to criminalize abortion.
- Tried to deny healthcare for women and children.
If this isn’t a war on women, I don’t know what is — but it won’t go unchallenged.
For decades, Congressman Evans has been on the front lines fighting for women’s rights and our freedom to make our own choices. But recently, the Trump administration stripped away birth control from millions of women — and Dwight needs our help now more than ever to fight back.
Women rely on birth control for countless reasons like endometriosis, controlling (often painful) hormonal conditions, and family planning. This ill-conceived decision to roll back the Affordable Care Act’s mandate will not only make contraception unaffordable for 55 million women across the nation, it takes away a woman’s right to plan for her future.
During October, the month that women are reminded to take special care of our health, the Trump administration managed to find yet another way to sabotage us. It’s completely unacceptable, we will fight this at every turn.
Thank you for standing up,
Mary Kate
Mary Kate Clement
Finance Director
Dwight Evans for Congress
That’s right. The entire release didn’t bother even to mention the state or district he seeks to represent — or in his case, to continue to represent. It’s Pennsylvania’s 2nd Congressional District, FYI, located in Philadelphia.
(Oh, and in case anyone’s having trouble digging my point — no, I’m not saying he is more extreme, in terms of political views, than that woman yesterday. That would be pretty tough, since she’s all about being as extreme as she can be. No, my point, which should be perfectly obvious, is that he takes the all-politics-is-national madness a step further than she did. She, at least, mentioned Tennessee. In passing. Once…)
His website touts his interest in “a stronger Philadelphia, block by block,” which certainly sounds like he’s embracing Tip O’Neill’s dictum about politics being local. But in reaching out to the rest of the country for money — that is, to a subset of a subset of the rest of the country, carefully whittled and shaped by an algorithm — he demonstrates no interest at all in Philadelphia.
On the website, he wants to talk about “a plan or America’s cities,” “creating good jobs” and “investing in public schools.” Not a word in those main headings about the single issue that he’s reaching out on in this fund-raiser.
And of course, the people he’s trying to reach with this email don’t care a fig (at least, in his estimation of them) about any of those issues. That’s the thing that sort of blow me away about the email. It seems to suppose that Donald Trump was just fine until he weighed in on the part of the ACA that forces employers to offer birth-control coverage.
Never mind the way the guy has disgraced the office of president since Day One. Never mind his taunting North Korea, or withdrawing from the TPP, or pulling the U.S. out of the Paris accord, or his grossly irresponsible and indiscriminate attempts to destroy the ENTIRE Affordable Care Act, as opposed to this one small part of it.
But that, presumably, is all his recipients care about. He is, without apparent shame, trying to exploit the lack of perspective of single-issue voters.
Which makes me wonder, as I wondered with that Marsha Blackburn email, how did I get on this list? If he thinks that’s what I care about, and all I care about, he don’t know me very well, do he?
I say that for a number of reasons, not the least of them being: I couldn’t care less who represents the 2nd Congressional District in Pennsylvania, and wouldn’t lift a finger — much less write a check — to affect the outcome.
Why? Because it’s none of my business. I live in South Carolina.
Related Posts
As for the woman I wrote about yesterday, click here to read about her latest nonsense.
You know what else gets me about these people, on the left and right? The mendacity.
To read the item above, with its repetition of the “war on women” canard, you’d think Trump was banning birth control — instead of backing off of forcing employers to offer coverage that pays for it.
Meanwhile, Marsha Blackburn insists she’s being “censored” over her opposition to Planned Parenthood — even thought Twitter will allow her to post whatever she wants for FREE; they just won’t let her pay for it.
But the Outrage Industry doesn’t care about such details. It’s all about getting the easily outraged to cough up cash, regardless of the facts….
Ironically, this rhetoric comes to us at a moment when we have been freshly reminded what an actual “war on women” looks like.
Yesterday, Malala Yousafzai started classes at Oxford. As she reminded us on Twitter:
See, now that’s a “war on women”…
I couldn’t care less who represents the 2nd Congressional District in Pennsylvania,
-Brad
For someone who couldn’t care less you’ve now managed to spend 2 blog posts discussing candidates in other parts of the country.
I’ll tell you what I do care about, in case it’s not clear yet… I care that our politics has morphed into bitter contests between tribes of single-issue ideologues financed by narrow outrage.
We have moved so far from the notion of people in a district or state electing people to represent them (on ALL issues of concern to those constituencies) that it’s a great tragedy, and highly destructive to our republic…
And as a person with great respect for words and language, I am deeply offended that none of these words are being offered as a way to win a debate, or persuade anyone to change his or her mind, or aid in the deliberative process in any way.
Instead, they’re being used to drive us apart, to inspire anger and even hatred toward “the enemy” (defined as “someone who disagrees with me”), in order to create an emotional state in which the recipient will be inspired to give money. And what is the purpose of the contribution, in the end? To continue to finance this apparatus which exists to keep bringing in the money to finance the process of continuing to solicit money.
And it’s all driven not by reason, but by perpetual anger….
And what is my reward for attempting to address this problem? Google puts this ad at the top of my blog:
No good deed goes unpunished.
Good deed or whining? The real problem with politics today is the odious nature of the GOP. Getting distracted by trivial stuff or worse, counterproductive rants about false equivalency between the benevolent, pragmatic, sensible, generous, sensible Democratic Party and the vile, evil, odious, offensive, barbaric, deceitful, reprehensible, obnoxious, disgraceful, paronoid party of Trump is not helpful.
Yes, we know. If you’re a partisan, “The real problem with politics today is the odious nature of the” other guys.
To all of y’all, it’s purely a matter of your own “benevolent, pragmatic, sensible, generous, sensible (doubly sensible, please note)” side against the ” vile, evil, odious, offensive, barbaric, deceitful, reprehensible, obnoxious, disgraceful, paranoid” other side.
To the rest of us, neither of y’all look all that great.
And Trump — well, he’s a separate problem all on his own, way worse than either of you…
Ok, I was being a bit hyperbolic for effect. But the two parties really are very, very different right now. That’s not some sort of cheer leading for the team mantra; I just see the evidence and it’s compelling. And not just on policy matters for which we can deliberate on the merits. No, it is crystal clear that they are the party that favors the wealthy and they pretty much just throw out platitudes to win enough gullible white people from the working class to win elections. As an example does anyone who has seriously looked at the empirical evidence think this business with getting rid of coal regulations is about helping coal miners? It’s clearly just a cynical ploy to look like they’re for the working guy. Coal is just not in Americas future and employs about the same number of people as Arbys. Double that and you really haven’t done much. Renewables are now cost effective and employ 20 times as many people and growing. The Republicans are very good at marketing but they just are not on the side of majority of Americans. Didn’t the whole healthcare debate (debacle) confirm that?
To take it one step further Brad will tell people around the state that they are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t care about who a Democratic representative from Richland County is. Me thinks Brad is putting his eggs in a basket to be the next Governor’s Press Secretary.
Not a bad idea — if, for once, we’d elect a governor I wanted to work for.
The last time we even came close was in 1994, when Joe Riley — one of my favorite SC pols ever — lost the Democratic primary runoff to Nick Theodore by a margin of less than one vote per precinct. That was a heartbreaker. Nick, who was then Gov Lite, had done nothing much but run for governor for 8 years. Meanwhile, Joe had largely neglected the campaign trail because he was busy doing his actual job as mayor of Charleston. That made me a little frustrated with Joe, but that was one of the things I liked about him — he wasn’t the kind of guy to neglect his job to campaign for another one.
Joe finally knuckled down and RAN during the two weeks of the runoff, but it wasn’t quite enough to make up for the eight-year head start Nick had.
Had Joe been the Democratic nominee, he would probably have beaten ex-Democrat David Beasley without too much trouble.
Then, I thought Joe would run again in the 1998 race, but he didn’t.
Since then, the options we’ve been offered have generally been fairly lackluster.
Will this year be better? We’ll see.
I had hopes that James Smith wouldn’t have primary opposition, freeing him up to run from the start as the kind of candidate we independents like, while the Republicans fell all over each other trying to appeal to the most extreme elements in their base. That, by the way, is why Henry has been such a disappointment. Everybody thought, after 14 years of Sanford and Haley, we’d finally have a guy interested in governing, and he started to pander to the more extreme elements of his party immediately, most notably on roads. As his buddy the president would say, “Sad!”
Maybe James, or Phil Noble, can still chart a centrist course and appeal to voters like me. After all, it would be kind of weird for Phil to run to the left of James, since…
Wait a second. I was about to say, “since his organization, SC New Democrats, is kind of a Third Way sort of organization…”
But I wasn’t entirely sure that’s what it was, so I went to look it up. I found this oped piece by Phil Noble from last month, which I suppose can be read as a sort of warm-up for his announcement.
Then I went to the group’s Twitter feed, where there had not been a Tweet since 2014. At the Twitter feed was a link to a Web page that appears to be defunct.
So… I’m not sure what the groups stands for…
If Trump is as bad as you think he is, how could you ever support ANYONE who was so closely tied to him? McMaster shouldn’t even be a consideration for you, should he? If you can’t say today that there is no way you would vote for him then you can’t be serious about how damaging you think Trump is to America.
“If Trump is as bad as you think he is…”
You say that like it’s a matter of opinion, like it’s possible that I could be wrong. That’s sufficiently mind-boggling that it’s hard for me to read the rest of your comment…
But yeah, I was willing to treat his endorsement of Trump as a momentary madness. Everybody makes mistakes, sometimes terrible ones. It doesn’t make them a total loss.
Henry was a guy who, that one thing aside, had been a pretty reasonable guy. So there was still cause for hope. But his performance in office since then has caused that optimism to evaporate…
I don’t understand why you don’t run for public office… you seem to have what you believe to be all the answers. It’s like talking to a Monday morning quarterback.
Well, you see, you need to be a Democrat or a Republican to get elected. My UnParty lacks any organization, and more importantly, funds. And its hard to run without those…
So then you must pick one, you can still run your agenda… look at all the RINOs in this state. The only reason they run as Republicans is it’s their greatest chance of being elected. If you’re going to run on a made up party, well you might get as many votes as the guy who runs on the Green or Communist party ticket.
The only reason MOST people run as Democrats or Republicans is “it’s their greatest chance of being elected.”
I just can’t see joining either one of those teams. I’ll support this Republican or that Democrat — depending on who is the best candidate — but I can’t see joining either party.
But let’s say I change my mind. Let’s say I decide I MUST get elected, so I have to hold my nose and run for the nomination of one of the parties — choosing on the basis of which one would be better for my chances in that particular race.
Even if I did that, I’d have to be honest with folks and say, “I’m running with this party’s help, and that’s nice of them and all and I appreciate it — I appreciated anyone’s support — but I’m not one of them…”
I think you should run for SOMETHING just to see first hand what the experience is like. Might give you some perspective you don’t have now. It certainly was a wakeup call for me when I ran for school board and was approached in a parking lot by a district employee to inform me that if I did win, my wife would lose her job as an aide in a school library due to nepotism rules. That someone went out of their way to do that was telling. As were the other incidents that suggested the district office had its own slate of candidates it favored. I had a school principal call me to ask me why I was opposed to magnet programs in the district – this was when I had two kids in them at the time. She had “heard” it from “someone”. I also heard a sitting board member state that SHE was responsible for George Bush’s No Child Left Behind program.
Run for any office and see what happens behind the scenes. Your signs WILL be stolen. Your opponents WILL lie about you and your positions.
Well, I know about those things. They happen all the time.
But I agree that running for office would be a very valuable experience. It’s just that the stuff that would be new to me would be different from the stuff that was new to you. What I’m most conscious of being ignorant of is the tactical nuts and bolts of a campaign — the use of time, deployment of resources, etc. And I fully expect that the thing I would HATE more than anything would be raising money. But at least I’m forewarned on that.
I value experience like that. For that reason, a couple of times in my newspaper career I hired back journalists who had left the game and worked in campaigns or for officeholders. I valued the knowledge they brought back of the other side of the equation.
I have my eyes open to the possibility of running for office all the time — or working in someone else’s campaign to gain experience that way.
But for me to run, a lot of rare factors would have to come together.
I really, seriously thought about running for Kenny Bingham’s House seat last year. But since I would run as an independent, it would be crucial that there be no strong Republican running (or Democrat, either, although Republicans are what count in my district). At first, it looked like those conditions might be met, with the incumbent retiring and no heir apparent.
But then I met Micah Caskey, and was so impressed with him that I figured there was no point. He was someone I looked forward to voting for myself. In fact, there were two strong guys running for the GOP nomination — Micah and Tem Miles. Either one was strong enough to make a run as an independent even more untenable than it would usually be….
“You say that like it’s a matter of opinion, like it’s possible that I could be wrong. ”
It’s absolutely possible that you could be wrong on how bad Trump is. 40-45% of Americans don’t think he’s terrible. So it is just your opinion.
But I do find it interesting that you were willing to excuse McMaster for something that went WAY beyond a momentary lapse of judgment. This wasn’t a snap decision. He was Trump’s biggest supporter in the state. It goes to McMaster’s world view.
Yeah, I know you don’t get it that I forgive people for bad stuff. But if I didn’t, I’d just have to despise the whole human race. And I can’t live like that.
I acknowledge that things have to get done. So I look for people who are reasonable enough to work with and get those things done, despite the fact that every human has done bad stuff at some point.
The problem, of course, is there are some people who are totally committed to doing bad stuff ALL the time. If it’s bad, they’re going to embrace it. Trump is one of those people. In fact, in my life, I’ve never encountered anyone in public life who was so MUCH that kind of person.
And no, that’s not just an opinion.
What exactly has Trump done that is unequivocally “bad”? Factually “bad”, not your opinion “bad”?
He’s signed some executive orders. He’s made some stupid statements. He’s tweeted.
Was the Gorsuch appointment driven by a commitment to doing something “bad”? That’s about the biggest thing he has done so far.
Oh, and did you see your boy, Lindsey went golfing with Trump the other day and made a point to tweet about what a great golfer Trump is?
“President Trump shot a 73 in windy and wet conditions!”
“Some golfers howled, but on Tuesday afternoon, in a 33-minute phone interview with GOLF.com, Graham repeated that Trump had indeed shot 73. Or 74, tops. Asked if the president took any mulligans, Graham said, “Not one mulligan. Not one.”
“We talked about serious things on the back nine,” he said. “North Korea. Iran. Immigration. But the first nine was all about golf. Donald Trump on the golf course is a very charming, gracious man. Very funny. Very competitive, but gracious. When you host somebody, you want them to have a good time. We would play a hole, he would talk about the hole, how they took trees down. He had a lot of pride in the course. It’s something, to play a golf course with the president of the United States on a course he owns. He’s got that big, giant flag there—it’s pretty stunning.””
Sounds like Trump has a big fan there… one might even say he was in love. You can read all the in depth analysis by Lindsey on Trump’s golf game here:
http://www.golf.com/tour-news/2017/10/11/donald-trump-73-senator-graham-details-presidents-improbable-round
How many of these sort of stories will you forgive Lindsey for?
Oh, it’s completely disgusting. There’s no excuse for cozying up to Trump that way.
I believe Lindsey has a moral obligation to do what he was doing a year ago — explaining in no uncertain terms what a destructive force Trump is, and how harmful he is to the country and (for those who care) the Republican Party.
And I’m not going to try to explain to you again why Trump is so harmful, because you absolutely don’t get it. There’s a cognitive block. You will dismiss anything I say as “mere words.” Because you don’t understand that most of the job of being president is using the right words in the right way at the right time….
Like LBJ on Vietnam?
The most important thing for a President to do (not say) is to keep America safe, and use whatever means to keep the economy in good shape. I don’t care if he’s a deaf mute – I can get words from anyone.
Yeah, Doug, you can get words from anyone. But the words spoken and written by a president matter vastly more than the words you can get from any other person on the planet. By far.
And words can make the country unsafe. Such as words threatening North Korea, deliberately baiting (in terms reminiscent of an elementary school playground) a seriously unstable foreign leader with a nuclear arsenal. Or threatening to decertify Iran and causing our strongest allies to distance themselves from us.
But Doug, it goes SO much farther than that. When practically everything a president says tells people around the world that he’s an unstable idiot, it harms the country. But I don’t expect ever to be able to persuade you of that.
I haven’t been able to decide yet if you really, truly don’t get it, or you just like arguing with me so much. But I see no reason to keep running in circles about the same points on which we’ll never agree.
You might find it fun, but I don’t…
Oh, and as for “Like LBJ on Vietnam?”…
Go back and think about how much of what you and others object to is what LBJ said and didn’t say about Vietnam. His presidency fell apart over the “credibility gap” as much as anything. And credibility is about words…
You’ll want to say, no, it was the war itself.
But a president isn’t politically harmed necessarily by waging war (see FDR and Truman) — as long as he can keep justifying that war to the people, and keeping their trust. And guess how you do that?
“There’s no excuse for cozying up to Trump that way”
There is for Lindsey. It always depends on where we are in the election cycle and who is in the Oval Office at the time. There’s time for sucking up and there’s time for being “tough”.
But that’s okay, you’ll forgive him because he likes amnesty for illegal immigrants.
I don’t argue for the sake of it. I argue because I believe every word I say. Trump hasn’t done anything yet to make me think he is the worst President ever. I didn’t vote for him, don’t support him in any way. But I also judge what I see before me.
I also consider what a Hillary presidency would look like 9 months in. What would be different? How would she respond to North Korea that would make us safer? How would she have handled Puerto Rico or any of the other states hit by hurricanes differently?
You have to keep doubling down on how terrible Trump is because to do otherwise would be a psychological blow. I can continue to assess Trump on a day to day basis. So far, eh, no big whoop.
I also find that those who call him a white supremacist are devaluing that word every day. He’s probably got some biases (as we all do)… he’s got a mouth on him like a typical New Yorker (which offends the delicate sensibilities of some people), he’s impulsive with the Twitter (but there’s occasionally some grains of truth in there).
It’s a whole new world for a lot of people. Some of us can deal with it, others can’t. The vast majority of people I run into don’t care.
“Trump hasn’t done anything yet to make me think he is the worst President ever.”
And see, that’s why we can’t agree.
Because Trump isn’t content merely to be the worst president ever — which indeed he is. It’s not even close. We’re not talking quantitative difference, but qualitative. Every other president, good and bad, is in one category. He is in a category by himself. A whole other plane. No one has ever come remotely close to being as unfit for the office as he is. Some pretty damning cases can be made against Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, but they’re just not in his league.
And as I say, he’s not content with that. He cannot hold himself back from PROVING it again, every single day. It’s a compulsion with him.
And if that’s not obvious to you, I’m afraid I can’t make it obvious.
You keep talking about all the apathetic people you know. Well, hurray for them. It must be delightful to be so oblivious. But everyone who does care, and has a CLUE about public affairs and our political system and its strengths and weaknesses, everyone who feels an obligation to this country to come to its aid in this moment and save it from this guy and the destructive people who support him, DO see it.
At this point, the only thing that serious observers seem to be disagreeing about is whether the right way to deal with this is impeachment or the 25th Amendment. And in the last few days, that debate has been deepening, as the picture from multiple sources in the White House is of a guy less and less able to control himself or be controlled by others.
Either way, it’s going to be tough to accomplish with a Republican majority that is TERRIFIED, quaking in their boots, over the madness that has infected their base.
And as hard as it’s going to be, the very first step on that long road is understanding just how bad this situation is.
You’re not going to get it. You’re a smart guy and you’re my friends, but your mind works differently. Really differently. So I’ll just have to try to persuade other people….
“You’re a smart guy and you’re my friends, but your mind works differently. Really differently. So I’ll just have to try to persuade other people….”
So… you’re going to move on to less smart people and persuade them???
I’m going to move on to OTHER smart people…
Who are you trying to convince at this point? What will convince people to turn against Trump will be based on what he does, not by what you say. In fact, people like Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul have gone the OPPOSITE way on Trump in the past year. They may not like him, but they are trying to work with him. How is that possible if he is the worst President ever? Something doesn’t sync up with your thinking if you can hold Lindsey in such high regard (the highest?) and then watch him cozy up to Trump. The people who I say don’t care aren’t apathetic, they understand that there is little point in wasting time whining about Trump. The constant drumbeat of anti-Trump media (including the stories about the 25th Amendment) has become tiresome.
Obviously, there is no hope of my explaining it to your satisfaction.
But because I love my country, I will not go a day without making it clear (to other people, not you) that the situation is intolerable, and we MUST not act for a moment as though it is OK.
Humans can adjust to anything and treat it as normal after awhile. That must never, ever be allowed to happen while this grossly unfit man disgraces the office of POTUS.
Period.
Yes, that you have low opinion of Trump is a fact. As is the fact that others don’t share that opinion. And that would include half the people in the state of SC.
You’re right. Only 60 or 70 percent of the country has a negative view of him. I’m a real outlier….
And please, don’t think for a moment that it matters to me what MOST people think — even though, in this case, most agree with me.
If 90 percent of the country adored him, that would just mean 90 percent of the country was wrong. I’m an INTP. I don’t need a crowd to affirm what I think in order to have confidence in my judgment, certainly not on a political question.
For instance, most of the country seems to like reality TV. So, you know…
INTP : My opinions are facts. Always certain, occasionally correct.
Not at all. But if I haven’t worked it out beyond reasonable doubt, I probably won’t say anything. Which is why I often seem so certain.
There are loads of things about which I have no opinion, and would not hazard a view on. They just don’t come up all that often on a political blog. I’ve been looking at these issues for a living for decades. So it would be odd if I hadn’t reached a certain degree of confidence in my conclusions.
But there are some very common political questions about which I do NOT have a confident view. We were talking about one the other day — the minimum wage. I think there are good arguments both ways, and I’ve never made up my mind on it…
I feel like I OUGHT to know more than I do about the SC New Democrats. So just now, I tried calling Roy Willey, an attorney who succeeded Phil as head of the organization.
Had to leave a message with a receptionist because he doesn’t have voicemail. If he calls back, I’ll share what I learn…
“I had hopes that James Smith wouldn’t have primary opposition, freeing him up to run from the start as the kind of candidate we independents like, while the Republicans fell all over each other trying to appeal to the most extreme elements in their base.”
So in other words you’re afraid he may not make it out of the primary.
No, I’m afraid he may feel compelled to run in the primary in a way that may make him less appealing to independents in the fall.
If either party has a candidate I like, I always tend to hope he or she won’t get primary opposition, thereby having to bend over backward to appeal to the party’s base. That’s not good for the state or country. The sooner a candidate stakes a position in the middle, the better.
Which reminds me… I wonder what Phil Noble’s motivation here is. I pretty much understand James’ motivation — people have been urging him to run for years, and this seems a good moment to do it. And there was no other Democrat running, so he stepped up.
But when the SECOND candidate in a primary steps up, it makes you wonder what his problem is with the first guy. The question arises, what do you bring that the other guy does not? I’ll have to ask Phil that whenever I see him.
It’s like 2010: I seem to recall that Dick Harpootlian and Jim Hodges recruited Dwight Drake to run because they felt that Vincent Sheheen was too nice, and wouldn’t get aggressive enough with the Republicans. An appalling notion, that the problem with a candidate might be that he’s not partisan enough, but a lot of partisans think that way. I like Dwight, but I didn’t think that was a sound basis for a candidacy. But at least I understood why he was in it.
I’ll be interested to see how Phil compares and contrasts himself to James. So far, the stuff I’ve seen from his campaign doesn’t address that at all…
” The sooner a candidate stakes a position in the middle, the better.”
You mean the candidate chooses his position based on how it helps him get elected versus what he actually believes? Interesting. Remind me again what the middle ground is on abortion, single payer healthcare, school vouchers, and dealing with illegal immigration? Where do you want your candidate on those issues?
Dwight Drake… never heard of him, but the fact that he was backed by Jim Hodges and Dick Harpootlian would be enough for me to vote for anyone running against him.
He’s probably the top lobbyist at the State House. He’s a partner at Nelson Mullins…
To be fair, Dwight Evans was a heck of an outfielder for the Red Sox 🙂