A Pew Research poll in June found 44% of Republican or GOP-leaning voters believe the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine. Just 34% believe it's "about right" or "not enough." That's the highest level of GOP skepticism for Ukraine aid since the war began.
It gets better. Sam Brown has a primary opponent in Nevada: Jim Marchant, who lost last year for secretary of state on a 2020 stolen election platform. Brown apparently doesn't agree, but don't look for him to say it.
The interesting question to ask these guys is, "You say you served in the military? For which country did you fight against the United States?"
All those trillions of dollars spent in the Middle East? A whole lot of those dollars were spent on trashing Iraq. Our military was sent over there based on Republican lies. Then there's all the money to Saudi Arabia. (Remember, most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.) As usual the Republicans are ignorant of the facts of the situation, or they're just plain lying.
If they had a spine they say what the hawkish GOP of those conflicts did. Insist the US go to Iraq, screw-up Afghanistan and remember the bumper sticker magnets.. support our troops? That was the political cudgel they used to keep the war going.
The GOP only knows revisionist history because they are unwilling to admit mistakes. Usually it interferes with their propaganda.
When Trump ran in 2015 he was a 6x bankrupt moron
and after a recession that clearly everyone should remember, so? Yeah morons. And of course FOX and Tucker Carlson helped. Oh how I wish I could kick his teeth in. Lemmings.
the people whose teeth I would particularly like to kick in are those fools who decided it'd be cool to put TFF on TV, presenting him as this wise, if occasionally abrasive, business mastermind. if any single factor made him think that politics was his "real" game, it was THAT. prior to "Apprentice," he was just a dumbass has-been who actually never was.
You'll like knowing that the guy who did that ended up running MGM, and when the studio was bought by Amazon he landed on his kiester out in the cold (so far as power-trippping goes). Of course it's not a very cold cold, since he was smart enough to bank most of what he got from the Apprentice. But yeah, that is in fact the thing that made people think he was something besides a joke. He was so broke at the time the show really saved him.
It seems that two dangerous traits in the GOP have now come to find a common cause. There is the old-fashioned isolationist strain, typified in the 1950s by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, that was mindlessly isolationist, and so jingoistic they could not imagine that any country could possibly threaten the United States. Then there are the Dixiecrats that migrated to the GOP beginning in 1963 and culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Isolationism and racism is a heady brew in the GOP and would be a problem at any time. Unfortunately, the effect is now amplified by the leadership of an outright authoritarian who ties the two together to undermine democracy and alliances among democracies. He leads the faithful (1) to distrust any system that allows “those people“ to vote, and (2) to see resistance toward other authoritarians as a slippery slope entangling us with more of “those people“, but this time overseas. And virtually all GOP pretenders are jumping aboard because, at root, bullies are drawn to fear and they are bullies in their soul.
'Demographic profiles of Republican and Democratic voters'. Gary, I thought the following would be of interest to you, TC (if he hasn't seen it) and other TAFMers..
'Many of the prominent demographic differences that have defined the two parties’ voting coalitions in recent years persisted in the 2022 elections. Democratic voters were once again, on average, younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and more likely to possess college degrees than Republican voters. Those who voted for a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House were also less likely to live in a rural area and more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than Republican voters.'
'Racial and ethnic composition of 2022 voters'
'More than eight-in-ten Republican voters in 2022 (85%) were White, non-Hispanic, down slightly (from 88%) compared with the 2018 midterms. Nearly identical shares of Democratic voters in 2022 (64%) and 2018 (65%) were White.'
'Black, non-Hispanic voters represented 17% of Democratic voters in 2022, while Hispanic and Asian voters accounted for 11% and 4%, respectively, of the Democratic Party’s support at the polls. Hispanic voters made up 7% of Republican voters, while 2% of GOP voters were Asian and 1% were Black.'
'Rural, suburban and urban composition of 2022 voters'
'Even as the Democratic voting coalition has remained more urban and the Republican coalition more rural overall, the share of suburban voters among Democratic voters has been rising since 2016.'
'...Suburban voters have grown as a share of Democratic voters since 2016
In Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, suburban voters made up nearly half of Democratic voters (48%). By the 2022 midterm elections, they comprised 57% of the Democratic voting coalition. Among the electorate as a whole, the share of suburban voters was 55% in 2022, up 5 percentage points from 2016.'
'The share of Democratic voters who describe their communities as urban declined by 5 points since 2016 (from 32% to 27%).'
'Among Republican voters, shifts have been much more modest in recent years. Roughly half of Republican voters in 2022 (53%) reported living in suburban communities, while 36% reported living in rural communities and 11% in urban areas. These shares were nearly identical to the shares of Republican voters living in suburban (53%), rural (35%) and urban (12%) communities in 2016.'
'Educational composition of 2022 vote
'A somewhat larger share of the electorate has held college degrees in each of the past two midterm elections (43% each) than in the past two presidential elections (39% in 2020, 37% in 2016).'
'As was the case in the 2018 midterms, voters with and without college degrees each accounted for roughly half of the Democratic Party’s voters in 2022 (51% held college degrees while 49% did not).'
'By contrast, a majority of Republican voters in 2022 had no college degree (63%); a smaller share had a college degree or more (37%). This is similar to the shares of Republican voters with and without a college degree in 2018.'
'White voters without college degrees made up a majority (54%) of Republican voters in 2022, compared with 27% of Democratic voters. Yet the share of Republican voters who are members of this group was down 4 points compared with the 2020 presidential election.'
'Age composition of 2022 voters'
'The electorate was somewhat older in 2022, on average, than in other recent elections, with 64% of validated voters ages 50 and older. And while the Democratic voting coalition was once again younger than the Republican coalition, both parties relied slightly more on the ballots of older voters than they have in other recent elections.'
'A majority of Democratic voters (57%) were ages 50 and older in the 2022 midterms, compared with 51% of Joe Biden’s voters in 2020 and 53% of voters who supported a Democratic House candidate in 2018. Just 14% of Democratic voters were under the age of 30 in 2022 — similar to the 15% of Democratic voters who were in this age group in 2018, but less than their share of Democratic voters in 2020 (17%).'
'Seven-in-ten Republican voters were 50 and older in the most recent election, compared with 62% of Republican voters in 2020 and 68% in 2018.'
'Religious composition of 2022 voters
'Protestants once again accounted for a majority of Republican voters (59%), with their share of the party’s voters essentially unchanged across the past four elections. Protestants constituted a third of Democratic voters in 2022; a larger share of Democratic voters (39%) described themselves as religiously unaffiliated (including atheists, agnostics and those who describe themselves as “nothing in particular”).'
'White evangelical Protestant voters made up about a third of the Republican voting coalition in 2022, while accounting for just 5% of Democratic voters. And while Black Protestants continue to represent a more substantial share of Democratic voters than Republican voters (12% vs. 1%), the share of Republican voters who are Protestant and have a racial or ethnic background other than Black or White grew slightly in 2022 (to 8%, up from 5% in the previous three election cycles).'
'Of those states with less than 70% of eligible residents registered to vote, most are located in the south or midwest. California has 18,001,000 registered voters, but because of the large population of the state, this makes up only 69.4% of eligible voters. The same is true in Florida, where 67.1% of eligible residents are registered to vote, a total of 10,495,000 Floridians. Arkansas is the state with the lowest percentage of registered voters, at 62.0%'
'Here are the 10 states with the highest rates of voter registration:'
I'm usually inclined to agree, except when I consider how much damage an unchecked House could do, and in very little time. right now is a pretty fair example.
historically, there have been times when things were different. but, until the Repugs actually self-destruct in some kind of real way, this is what we've got.
the thing that keeps astounding me, sometimes several times a day, is the complete transparency of these scumbags' "change in position" from a year ago. morality based on polling. and "based on polling" is the best-case scenario.
whenever I hear one of these people talking about a "peaceful settlement," my obvious response is to think about what that would look like. all I can come with is that they want Putin to keep Crimea, etc. if he promises to be a good boy and not take anything else. in other words, try the Munich Approach all over again. I like to retain some healthy skepticism about history "repeating itself," but the parallels strike me as much too close for any sort of comfort.
those "foreign policy realists"(Mearsheimer et al) maintain that "great powers" act out of self-interest and do so rationally, but Putin seems a little less rational with every passing day.
in the back of my head, I can hear that putz Rumsfeld saying (moronically) that "you don't go to war with the army you want, but the army you have." since the Iraqi invasion was purely voluntary (as was Putin's invasion of Ukraine), that particular piece of bullshit just doesn't cut it. I spent the weekend watching old movies, listening to audiobooks and avoiding the news. and guess what?...it felt like an actual old-fashioned WEEKEND!
completely changing the subject, I just read a really excellent piece in the new issue of the NYRB about the chronic problems of SCOTUS. that it's by Laurence Tribe makes it self-recommending. here's the link and I once again hope there's no paywall:
I could only read part of it ... the acceptance of lavish bribes, to call it like I see it, needs to be addressed. Otherwise, I’m miffed that they lied when they were interviewed pre-approval about “established” law... WTH? We can’t lie to the court but they can lie to us? Therein they lose legitimacy.
The GOPpers may want to reassess their dimwitted positions in light of Russia's new posture (See link at end.). This guy Medvedev may want to step well back from making a threat to use nukes. There are people in his own country who will assassinate him. He and Putin are the unprovoked aggressors in Ukraine and have committed numerous war crimes. By its very nature, the launching of a nuclear response threatens the NATO countries, perhaps the entire world, as well as Ukraine, and knowing the duplicity of the Russian leadership NATO nations have been preparing for such an act of immoral idiocy. (And as for idiocy, Tommy Tuberville needs to rethink his hold on military promotions because we never know when a threat becomes an act of war.)
My understanding is that Putin ha been told exactly what will happen to him and Russia if he is crazy enough and stupid enough to use a nuke in Ukraine (and using a nuke on anything other than a city would have little or no effect anyway). With our air power, we could eliminate most of the Russian presence in Ukraine, including that damn great bridge. And Russia's Black Sea fleet would no longer be in being (it would be a tourist diving site). Beyond that, who knows?
Still, desperation and face-saving drive people to the extremes. Just as rejected lovers will slay their former love objects, so may Russia use nukes to avenge its humiliation, world warnings notwithstanding.
It gets better. Sam Brown has a primary opponent in Nevada: Jim Marchant, who lost last year for secretary of state on a 2020 stolen election platform. Brown apparently doesn't agree, but don't look for him to say it.
The interesting question to ask these guys is, "You say you served in the military? For which country did you fight against the United States?"
Amen
All those trillions of dollars spent in the Middle East? A whole lot of those dollars were spent on trashing Iraq. Our military was sent over there based on Republican lies. Then there's all the money to Saudi Arabia. (Remember, most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.) As usual the Republicans are ignorant of the facts of the situation, or they're just plain lying.
Frankly, I’ve never known a Republican who let something like a fact get in the way of their belief.
If they had a spine they say what the hawkish GOP of those conflicts did. Insist the US go to Iraq, screw-up Afghanistan and remember the bumper sticker magnets.. support our troops? That was the political cudgel they used to keep the war going.
The GOP only knows revisionist history because they are unwilling to admit mistakes. Usually it interferes with their propaganda.
When Trump ran in 2015 he was a 6x bankrupt moron
and after a recession that clearly everyone should remember, so? Yeah morons. And of course FOX and Tucker Carlson helped. Oh how I wish I could kick his teeth in. Lemmings.
the people whose teeth I would particularly like to kick in are those fools who decided it'd be cool to put TFF on TV, presenting him as this wise, if occasionally abrasive, business mastermind. if any single factor made him think that politics was his "real" game, it was THAT. prior to "Apprentice," he was just a dumbass has-been who actually never was.
You'll like knowing that the guy who did that ended up running MGM, and when the studio was bought by Amazon he landed on his kiester out in the cold (so far as power-trippping goes). Of course it's not a very cold cold, since he was smart enough to bank most of what he got from the Apprentice. But yeah, that is in fact the thing that made people think he was something besides a joke. He was so broke at the time the show really saved him.
Totally. Prior to that," reality show" he WAS an assclown in NYC anyway.
I keep waiting for normal to come back but I guess that won't happen
Sheesh...
It seems that two dangerous traits in the GOP have now come to find a common cause. There is the old-fashioned isolationist strain, typified in the 1950s by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, that was mindlessly isolationist, and so jingoistic they could not imagine that any country could possibly threaten the United States. Then there are the Dixiecrats that migrated to the GOP beginning in 1963 and culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Isolationism and racism is a heady brew in the GOP and would be a problem at any time. Unfortunately, the effect is now amplified by the leadership of an outright authoritarian who ties the two together to undermine democracy and alliances among democracies. He leads the faithful (1) to distrust any system that allows “those people“ to vote, and (2) to see resistance toward other authoritarians as a slippery slope entangling us with more of “those people“, but this time overseas. And virtually all GOP pretenders are jumping aboard because, at root, bullies are drawn to fear and they are bullies in their soul.
'Demographic profiles of Republican and Democratic voters'. Gary, I thought the following would be of interest to you, TC (if he hasn't seen it) and other TAFMers..
'Many of the prominent demographic differences that have defined the two parties’ voting coalitions in recent years persisted in the 2022 elections. Democratic voters were once again, on average, younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and more likely to possess college degrees than Republican voters. Those who voted for a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House were also less likely to live in a rural area and more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than Republican voters.'
'Racial and ethnic composition of 2022 voters'
'More than eight-in-ten Republican voters in 2022 (85%) were White, non-Hispanic, down slightly (from 88%) compared with the 2018 midterms. Nearly identical shares of Democratic voters in 2022 (64%) and 2018 (65%) were White.'
'Black, non-Hispanic voters represented 17% of Democratic voters in 2022, while Hispanic and Asian voters accounted for 11% and 4%, respectively, of the Democratic Party’s support at the polls. Hispanic voters made up 7% of Republican voters, while 2% of GOP voters were Asian and 1% were Black.'
'Rural, suburban and urban composition of 2022 voters'
'Even as the Democratic voting coalition has remained more urban and the Republican coalition more rural overall, the share of suburban voters among Democratic voters has been rising since 2016.'
'...Suburban voters have grown as a share of Democratic voters since 2016
In Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory, suburban voters made up nearly half of Democratic voters (48%). By the 2022 midterm elections, they comprised 57% of the Democratic voting coalition. Among the electorate as a whole, the share of suburban voters was 55% in 2022, up 5 percentage points from 2016.'
'The share of Democratic voters who describe their communities as urban declined by 5 points since 2016 (from 32% to 27%).'
'Among Republican voters, shifts have been much more modest in recent years. Roughly half of Republican voters in 2022 (53%) reported living in suburban communities, while 36% reported living in rural communities and 11% in urban areas. These shares were nearly identical to the shares of Republican voters living in suburban (53%), rural (35%) and urban (12%) communities in 2016.'
'Educational composition of 2022 vote
'A somewhat larger share of the electorate has held college degrees in each of the past two midterm elections (43% each) than in the past two presidential elections (39% in 2020, 37% in 2016).'
'As was the case in the 2018 midterms, voters with and without college degrees each accounted for roughly half of the Democratic Party’s voters in 2022 (51% held college degrees while 49% did not).'
'By contrast, a majority of Republican voters in 2022 had no college degree (63%); a smaller share had a college degree or more (37%). This is similar to the shares of Republican voters with and without a college degree in 2018.'
'White voters without college degrees made up a majority (54%) of Republican voters in 2022, compared with 27% of Democratic voters. Yet the share of Republican voters who are members of this group was down 4 points compared with the 2020 presidential election.'
'Age composition of 2022 voters'
'The electorate was somewhat older in 2022, on average, than in other recent elections, with 64% of validated voters ages 50 and older. And while the Democratic voting coalition was once again younger than the Republican coalition, both parties relied slightly more on the ballots of older voters than they have in other recent elections.'
'A majority of Democratic voters (57%) were ages 50 and older in the 2022 midterms, compared with 51% of Joe Biden’s voters in 2020 and 53% of voters who supported a Democratic House candidate in 2018. Just 14% of Democratic voters were under the age of 30 in 2022 — similar to the 15% of Democratic voters who were in this age group in 2018, but less than their share of Democratic voters in 2020 (17%).'
'Seven-in-ten Republican voters were 50 and older in the most recent election, compared with 62% of Republican voters in 2020 and 68% in 2018.'
'Religious composition of 2022 voters
'Protestants once again accounted for a majority of Republican voters (59%), with their share of the party’s voters essentially unchanged across the past four elections. Protestants constituted a third of Democratic voters in 2022; a larger share of Democratic voters (39%) described themselves as religiously unaffiliated (including atheists, agnostics and those who describe themselves as “nothing in particular”).'
'White evangelical Protestant voters made up about a third of the Republican voting coalition in 2022, while accounting for just 5% of Democratic voters. And while Black Protestants continue to represent a more substantial share of Democratic voters than Republican voters (12% vs. 1%), the share of Republican voters who are Protestant and have a racial or ethnic background other than Black or White grew slightly in 2022 (to 8%, up from 5% in the previous three election cycles).'
That's it for now.
Sounds about right to me.
Another two bites:
'Of those states with less than 70% of eligible residents registered to vote, most are located in the south or midwest. California has 18,001,000 registered voters, but because of the large population of the state, this makes up only 69.4% of eligible voters. The same is true in Florida, where 67.1% of eligible residents are registered to vote, a total of 10,495,000 Floridians. Arkansas is the state with the lowest percentage of registered voters, at 62.0%'
'Here are the 10 states with the highest rates of voter registration:'
1. District of Columbia - 86.9%
2. New Jersey - 84.6%
3. Minnesota - 82.9%
4. Mississippi - 80.4%
5. Oregon - 79.9%
6. Maryland - 78.6%
7. New Hampshire - 78.3%
8. Montana - 77.5%
9. Maine - 77.4%
10. North Dakota - 77.3%
(Pew Research)
But the electoral college and the marginL numbers there are the thru put
The Senate is even worse per representation.
We need to abolish the House of Lords... er, the Senate.
I'm usually inclined to agree, except when I consider how much damage an unchecked House could do, and in very little time. right now is a pretty fair example.
historically, there have been times when things were different. but, until the Repugs actually self-destruct in some kind of real way, this is what we've got.
to quote any number of DC comics heroes, "ugh."
OK. Other than statistics what does it explain?
Statistics matter a great deal for seeing, understanding and strategy.
Exactly right!
Apparently the MAGAts need more proof that they are the sworn enemies of Democracy in the US and elsewhere. God flush 'em down the toilet!
Yeah!
Coming from a long line of men, and now women, past
and present, who have served in the military and
upheld their oaths, I am
ashamed of these men who
speak out of both sides of
their mouths, just to try and
win an election. There is NO
PLACE for them in a country
sworn to protect others from
the twisted likes of Vladimir
Putin, Donald Trump, Ron
Ron DeSantis and their ilk.
You can’t imagine how hard it is to live in Pennsyltucky, especially when the Maggots come to town.
All of these MAGA people apparently are pining with tear-stained nostalgia for the days of the German-American Bund......
Apparently!
Of course they are experts on socialism & communism. History be damned.
Spot on with “Florida Governor Ron DeSatan”
the thing that keeps astounding me, sometimes several times a day, is the complete transparency of these scumbags' "change in position" from a year ago. morality based on polling. and "based on polling" is the best-case scenario.
whenever I hear one of these people talking about a "peaceful settlement," my obvious response is to think about what that would look like. all I can come with is that they want Putin to keep Crimea, etc. if he promises to be a good boy and not take anything else. in other words, try the Munich Approach all over again. I like to retain some healthy skepticism about history "repeating itself," but the parallels strike me as much too close for any sort of comfort.
those "foreign policy realists"(Mearsheimer et al) maintain that "great powers" act out of self-interest and do so rationally, but Putin seems a little less rational with every passing day.
in the back of my head, I can hear that putz Rumsfeld saying (moronically) that "you don't go to war with the army you want, but the army you have." since the Iraqi invasion was purely voluntary (as was Putin's invasion of Ukraine), that particular piece of bullshit just doesn't cut it. I spent the weekend watching old movies, listening to audiobooks and avoiding the news. and guess what?...it felt like an actual old-fashioned WEEKEND!
completely changing the subject, I just read a really excellent piece in the new issue of the NYRB about the chronic problems of SCOTUS. that it's by Laurence Tribe makes it self-recommending. here's the link and I once again hope there's no paywall:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/08/17/constrain-the-court-without-crippling-it-laurence-h-tribe/
I could only read part of it ... the acceptance of lavish bribes, to call it like I see it, needs to be addressed. Otherwise, I’m miffed that they lied when they were interviewed pre-approval about “established” law... WTH? We can’t lie to the court but they can lie to us? Therein they lose legitimacy.
The GOPpers may want to reassess their dimwitted positions in light of Russia's new posture (See link at end.). This guy Medvedev may want to step well back from making a threat to use nukes. There are people in his own country who will assassinate him. He and Putin are the unprovoked aggressors in Ukraine and have committed numerous war crimes. By its very nature, the launching of a nuclear response threatens the NATO countries, perhaps the entire world, as well as Ukraine, and knowing the duplicity of the Russian leadership NATO nations have been preparing for such an act of immoral idiocy. (And as for idiocy, Tommy Tuberville needs to rethink his hold on military promotions because we never know when a threat becomes an act of war.)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/dmitry-medvedev-nuclear-threat
My understanding is that Putin ha been told exactly what will happen to him and Russia if he is crazy enough and stupid enough to use a nuke in Ukraine (and using a nuke on anything other than a city would have little or no effect anyway). With our air power, we could eliminate most of the Russian presence in Ukraine, including that damn great bridge. And Russia's Black Sea fleet would no longer be in being (it would be a tourist diving site). Beyond that, who knows?
Still, desperation and face-saving drive people to the extremes. Just as rejected lovers will slay their former love objects, so may Russia use nukes to avenge its humiliation, world warnings notwithstanding.
So then the question becomes, who is the scorpion and who is the frog.....?