Let’s just come out and say it…

It doesn’t matter who Democrats like and wildly support for president.  If you’re a Dem, your support doesn’t matter if you actually come out and vote.  Your vote is assured.  AND, it doesn’t matter what your candidate’s pet policy happens to be. Most important, stop talking about turning Trumpists into Democratic voters.  Even if the Dems ran George W. Bush, Trumpists would still vote for Trump because facts, criminality, global stability, and common decency don’t matter.  Trumpists will vote for Trump even if the planet is burning down around their ears.  They’re Fifth Avenuers.

Here’s what matters, and the ONLY thing that matters.  Getting Joe & Jill Sam & Sarah SixPack. Period.  When you’re saying, “I like So & So’s policies,” and, “So & So sure showed up So & So in the debate,” or, “So & So didn’t respond very well to So & So’s attack on what So & So did over 40 years ago,” NONE of that matters.  What matters is that the ultimate Dem candidate must have broad appeal, because that candidate MUST get those who don’t pay attention and who are not the base.  Being a smarty pants on policy or sharp elbowed in debates is entertaining as hell, but doesn’t get the votes.  We saw that in spades in 2016.  Hillary was WAY smarter, more experienced, and a serious smarty pants on policy, but she lost.  She lost because she was a terrible candidate, and did not draw low information voters.  Obama did.  Twice.  He did it twice by broad appeal, not detailed policies.

I’m watching the Dems repeat the same mistakes they made in 2016 (and in 2004 and 2000).  Reams of policies don’t matter; splitting hairs on healthcare policy doesn’t matter; rehearsed on-stage attacks during debates don’t matter.  Being a smarty pants doesn’t matter. Broad appeal is the only thing that matters. Which candidate will get the votes of Joe & Jill Sam & Sarah out in the heartland who don’t pay attention until November 2?

THAT’S what Dems should be talking about.  Period.

Jonathan Stickland (M-Bedford) (the M is for Moron) has announced that he’s not going to run for reelection next year.  Normally when an idiot like Stickland announces leaving, I would celebrate, but Bedford has been infested with a terminal case Teabag syndrome, and God knows who’ll run to take his place.  As one commenter said to the accompanying story about Stickland bowing out, “even if Bedford elected a potted plant, it would raise the average IQ of the Texas House by 20 points.”  That may be true, and I’m certainly will for them to test that hypothesis.

Stickland has given an assist to gun nuts who’s soul purpose in life is putting a gun into the hands of every screwball and criminal in Texas (calling it Constitutional); he’s also helped laid waste to Texas education system, healthcare system, and anything the state did to help people in need.

I say good riddance and that I hope an adult in Bedford will stand up and take this seat away from the weirdos and screwballs.

Anyone who bases their judgment on facts knew they were lying from the start.  In fact their entire strategy is based on massive lying.  What am I talking about? Voting.  Republicans figured out a long time ago that their demographic (old, white, angry) is shrinking.  Historically, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, started when the GOP went nuts after Goldwater lost in ’64.  Ultra conservative voices began rising during that time, really more Libertarian and Bircher, and when Reagan beat Carter, the calcification of the party really set in.  From those days to today, the GOP has pushed the entire country farther and farther to the right, pushing everyone not white, not old, not nuts out of the tent.  Trump’s takeover of the party has completed the calcification, adding white supremacy as just another adjective to describe the base.

The GOP base is so demographically narrow that it simply cannot fairly win anymore.  As the country becomes more diverse, our population is moving away from the radicalism and obvious insanity that is now the party.  So, how can they win on a national scale?  It’s two pronged: by keeping the base continuously whipped up and raging about dark-skinned people, and, of course, by cheating.  A lot.

That cheating comes in the form of radical gerrymandering and voter suppression.  Gerrymandering is a fact of life and several cases have been consolidated at the SCOTUS, but, unless Roberts has a sudden fit of rationality, I don’t have much hope.  Voter suppression, though, is just as insidious; keeping Americans from being represented in the Congress, the very basis of our republic.  Voter ID laws have been pushed now for twenty years, based on the lie that there is massive voter fraud occurring during our elections (by dark skinned people) that simply doesn’t exist.  Trump used that same blatant lie to explain away him losing the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes.

One of the Republicans pushing this lie is Chris Kobach, a white nationalist (who won’t admit it) and former Kansas Secretary of State.  Kobach was behind faked voter fraud studies in Kansas, and pushed anti-Muslim policies as well as strict voter ID laws.  After he lost the election for governor in 2017, he became an advisor to Trump, bringing his radical ideology to the WH.  And it’s not good.  In 2017 he lead Trump’s bogus voter integrity committee that quietly folded in 2018 after it couldn’t find one shred of evidence of massive voter fraud and being stopped by the states in amassing private data about voters.

One of the tactics Kobach pushed to Trump was adding a citizenship question to the US Census questionnaire.  Sounds benign, right?  Hardly.  The question is specifically designed to scare people who may have members of the family who are not citizens, have a green card, or are undocumented.  Why?  To undercount these populations and disproportionally increase representation to the GOP base (old and white).  Seats in state houses and in the US House are at stake.  Trump and crew have been lying about the reason for adding this question from the very first moment.  Their problem though, is that they’ve now been caught lying to Congress about it.

It turns out that Kobach pushed the citizenship question to the Trump campaign in 2016, long before Wilbur Ross claimed it was introduced in early 2017.  Yesterday, Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Oversight and Reform committee, disclosed details of a closed door interview with Kobach last Monday where he revealed this new detail.  Now we know why Trump has desperately been trying to expand executive privilege over even those who don’t actually work for him, but who just talked to him.  That effort failed and the administration is caught now in yet another lie.

So, Kobach lied until last Monday.  Wilbur Ross lied and stonewalled the House, likely earning a contempt of Congress vote just like Bill Barr did for refusing to testify.  This episode is yet another page in the encyclopedia of lies told by this administration.  Hopefully we can use this lie to shut down another of the GOP’s efforts to win by cheating.

OK, so here’s how bad it is for the Koch brothers….they’re looking for Democrats to support.  That’s right folks, the Kochs hate Trump so badly and understand the damage he is doing to their agenda that they are rebranding Americans for Prosperity as non-partisan.  In previewing the shift at their annual conference earlier this year, Charles Koch said,

“This attitude of holding against others who have different beliefs is tearing our country apart.”

Translation – “We can no longer buy politicians who have sold their souls to Trumpland, so we’re retreating to the middle until we can get rid of Trump and have more successful purchases of politicians.”

When the Kochs retreat, you know that Trump’s takeover is complete.  The conservative wing will have to shed themselves of the cancer that has metastasized in the WH themselves.  Until the invertebrates in Congress manage to stand up, their entire party will be strangled by His Orangeness.  Until that happens, the Kochs will be “non-partisan”.

From late last year, George Packer of the Atlantic summarized the last 60 years of the GOP and nailed it, from pre-Goldwater to the Trump era.  Best quote:

“The corruption of the Republican Party in the Trump era seemed to set in with breathtaking speed. In fact, it took more than a half century to reach the point where faced with a choice between democracy and power, the party chose the latter. Its leaders don’t see a dilemma—democratic principles turn out to be disposable tools, sometimes useful, sometimes inconvenient. The higher cause is conservatism, but the highest is power.”

it gives a blistering picture of what we non-GOPers face against “true believers”.  And it ain’t pretty.

In the furor over the Mueller report in April, many Americans, included yours truly, missed Turtleneck McConnell rolling out the Republicans’ new campaign slogan for 2020 on Fox Noise.  Was it his overseer’s idiotic Make America Great Again mantra? Nope. It’s worse.  A lot worse.  When asked if the American people were going to get Medicare for all, McConnell said, “Not as long as I’m majority leader.  It ought to be called Medicare for NONE.”  And there you have it…not only do the Republicans want to kick millions of Americans off of the ACA, they want to kick another 58 million, 50 million of whom are over 65, off of Medicare.  Let’s think about that a minute.  Before the ACA, there were about 44 million Americans without healthcare.  That number today is about 27 million, not lower because of the GOP’s sabotage of the plan in the states.  That’s not good enough for McConnell, though.  He wants to take healthcare away from all those people and the 58 million on Medicare.  Doing that would cost millions of lives and untold billions of dollars.

Let’s be blunt – The GOP is now fully under the control of criminals, political radicals, and the profoundly corrupt.  They already have lifetime control of our only safety only net, the judicial branch; because of this, voters simply cannot allow them to control both houses of Congress and the WH again.   Believe it or not, McConnell is more dangerous than Trump for two reasons – he has zero regard for the Constitution, rule of law, or common decency, and he’s using Trump as a blunt instrument to reshape America into his radical vision of every person for themselves and his social program, Fuck the Poor.

So, while you’re hyperventilating over Trump’s latest outrage, keep in mind the real goals of McConnell and the rest of the Republicans – destroying the US as we know it.  Also remember their new campaign slogan –

GOP 2020 – Medicare for NONE