Matthew Yglesias comments on SARS-CoV-19 and Hayes Brown on voter suppression. Can you guess the two things the messages have in common? (One is very obvious.).

Yes except for his vocal anti-vaccine posturing, DeSantis has been pro-vaccination.

Had he stuck to pro-vaccination rather than done the vocal anti-vaccine posturing, lives could have been saved.

How many? More than zero. Hope it was worth it to him. https://t.co/96hLIl7okn

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 1, 2021

Brown explains

Until we get rid of that or find a way to really shame these Republican senators who are so against the idea of expanding voting rights into voting for such a bill, then I don't see how you can out-organize the other two parts. You can't out-organize gerrymandering; you can't out-organize someone who can say "nope, we just tipped the results of the vote.

There’s no way to out-organize an assault on voting rights. “The Democrats are looking at this too narrowly,” says @HayesBrown. Time to remove the filibuster or “find a way to really shame” the opposition.😖 #Velshi pic.twitter.com/azpTiXW9tU

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) August 1, 2021

They're both right. Yglesias recognizes that DeSantis would have saved lives if he had stayed the course on vaccination. And Brown realizes that eliminating the filibuster is crucial to protecting the right to vote. Simply ginning up the Democratic vote to try to compensate for voter suppression (which may have saved Joe Biden's presidential bid) is insufficient.

But they both make the same, understandable and common, error of Democrats/liberals and centrists.

Brown states "... or find a way to really shame these Republican senators...." Similarly, Yglesias remarks "hope it was worth it to him."

Does Yglesias really hope it is "worth it" to DeSantis? Of course not. He wants the Florida governor to feel bad about it.

That's not going to happen- or at least it won't happen unless the anti-vaccination posture backfires politically on DeSantis.  He will not feel guilt or shame and those GOP senators will not be shamed into expanding voting rights.

Once and probably future Virginia governor about his opponent:

Glenn Youngkin sees no issue attending an “election integrity” rally that even some Republicans are calling a “conspiracy-palooza.”

By attending this event, he is helping conspiracy theorists attack our democracy. He has no shame.

— Terry McAuliffe (@TerryMcAuliffe) August 1, 2021

Shame and guilt or feeling bad is not how they roll.  Republican members of Congress enthusiastically followed Donald Trump throughout the latter's presidency. They saw him in Helsinki siding with a former KGB agent against our nation's intelligence services, try to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on an American politician, work hand-in-hand with a deadly coronavirus, and encourage insurrectionists intending to murder the Vice-President and possibly themselves.

It was all fine with them, the end game the establishment of one-party rule and evisceration of democracy. Democrats or liberals can plead "you should be ashamed" or "I hope you're happy with yourselves" and they will not change. It's who they are.

 

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Timing Is Everything


In late August, the online edition of the northern New Jersey newspaper, the Star-Ledger, reported

President Obama is not planning to campaign for Democrat Barbara Buono in her quest to rob Gov. Chris Christie of a second term, the Associated Press reported Friday.

This year and next, Obama only plans to lend his political firepower to close races where he could help cinch a win for his party, a Democratic official involved with Obama’s political plans told AP. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss strategy and requested anonymity, the wire service said.

No one has discovered who the "Democratic official" was, but he or she apparently was right on target.     Polls in Virginia's gubernatorial election have displayed a 5-10 point lead for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe over Repub Ken Cucinelli.  However, with a relatively large number of undecided likely voters and a third candidate, Libertarian Robert Sarvis, McAuliffe never had eclipsed the golden 50% market.  Third party candidates with no chance of voting usually end up with fewer votes than pre-election polls indicate, making the outcome less certain than otherwise.

On the evening of Monday, October 28, however, The Washington Post unveiled a survey which found Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee McAuliffe opening a 12-point lead over his challenger, 51 percent to 39%, with 8% of voters stating they intend to opt for Sarvis.  

News of the poll was published by Politico promptly at 8:24 p.m. Monday.    Like clockwork, as Politico's Alexander Burns reported less than three hours later at 11:06 p.m.

President Barack Obama will campaign for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe this weekend, giving a late boost to McAuliffe as he seeks to energize core Democratic voters in an off-year governor’s race, Democratic sources told POLITICO.

Obama is set to appear at a Sunday afternoon get-out-the-vote rally in Northern Virginia. It will be the president’s first campaign appearance for McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Presumably, a tentative decision for Obama to enter the campaign had been made earlier.  Just as likely, the decision was tentative, subject to change at the last moment if it appeared there was any chance the GOP candidate would surge to victory.  Indeed, Burns observed

McAuliffe’s embrace of Obama is little surprise this late in the election, but it confirms that the political ground in the race has shifted since the start of the year, when Republicans hoped to win the governorship largely by running up the scoreboard among conservative Virginians hostile to the president.

It appears at this point that such a strategy is unlikely to produce a winning coalition for Cuccinelli, leaving little down side for McAuliffe or Obama in campaigning together.

The Obama camp may take some credit for Cucinelli's decisive victory after Election Day while being given little or no blame for waiting until the last minute.  And he will receive little criticism even after assiduously avoiding the gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey, a state whose GOP governor the President appeared with earlier this year and has lavishly praised.

Bold, Mr. President. Self-serving leadership we can believe in.


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A Proposal Selfishly Rejected

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports today, May 9, 2008, that the executive committee of the Michigan State Democratic Party has proposed a plan to give Hillary Clinton 69delegates and Barack Obama 59.

As I would have expected, the Clinton camp, which has proposed that the New York senator receive 73 delegates and the Illinois senator 55, rejected the proposal. Clearly, Clinton needs a nearly cataclysmic event, a major Obama scandal, or the reemergence of Jeremiah Wright to have a realistic chance to overtake the frontrunner. Apportioning Michigan's delegates on a reasonable and/or fair basis, as suggested by the state party, would barely help Clinton. Neither would apportioning California's 211 pledged (non-super) delegates as they were won, 105 for Clinton, 67 for Obama, and 13 for Edwards, help her much.

The response of Clinton spokesman Isaac Baker to the Michigan offer is revealing: "This proposal does not honor the 600,000 votes that were cast in Michigan's January primary. Those votes must be counted." An official accounting of the votes in Florida (where the candidates signed, and honored, a party pledge not to campaign) and in Michigan (ditto Florida, and Obama and Edwards had honorably taken their names off the ballot) would be necessary (though probably not sufficient) for an effective bid for HRC.

As the Michigan proposal would do little to help Clinton, it actually would bring Barack Obama one major step closer to nomination. Further, the Obama campaign will need to blunt the GOP's expected charge this fall that the Democratic Party didn't care enough to consider the sentiments of voters in these two pivotal states. And the Obamites had to have known that the Clintonites would reject the proposal, which would have left their own guy as the one candidate apparently willing to compromise in the cause of party unity.

Why, then, did the Obama campaign reject this possible solution? Perhaps it figured it was unnecessary, given the defeatist remark ("I don't see it going to the convention") of Clinton campaign manager Terry McAuliffe on the Today show on 3/8/08. Still, one could have expected Barack Obama to be a little magnanimous, even as he triumpantly, and dismissively, proceeds with his victory lap.