Friday, February 12, 2021

A legacy "forever stained".

 


The moon will be blue tonight, because I am going to post an editorial from the Wall Street Journal as my blog post.

"Whether a former President ought to be subject to an impeachment trial is a matter of constitutional debate. Whether it’s prudent, if acquittal appears likely, is a related question. But wherever you come down on those issues, the House impeachment managers this week are laying out a visceral case that the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 was a disgrace for which President Trump bears responsibility.

Long before November, Mr. Trump was saying that the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged. On the night of the vote, he tweeted, “they are trying to STEAL the election.” In his speech that night, he called it “a fraud on the American public,” and said, “frankly we did win.” Is it a surprise that some of his fans took his words to heart?

Instead of bowing to dozens of court defeats, Mr. Trump escalated. He falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence, if only he had the courage, could reject electoral votes and stop Democrats from hijacking democracy. He called his supporters to attend a rally on Jan. 6, when Congress would do the counting. “Be there, will be wild!” Mr. Trump tweeted. His speech that day was timed to coincide with the action in the Capitol, and then he directed the crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. Trump’s defenders point out that he also told the audience to make their voices heard “peacefully.” And contra Rep. Eric Swalwell, who argued the incitement to attack the Capitol was “premeditated,” it’s difficult to think Mr. Trump ever envisioned what followed: that instead of merely making a boisterous display, the crowd would riot, assault the police, invade the building, send lawmakers fleeing with gas masks, trash legislative offices, and leave in its wake a dead Capitol officer.

But talk about playing with fire. Mr. Trump told an apocalyptic fable in which American democracy might end on Jan. 6, and some people who believed him acted like it. Once the riot began, Mr. Trump took hours to say anything, a delay his defenders have not satisfactorily explained. Even then he equivocated. Imagine, Rep. Joe Neguse said, if Mr. Trump “had simply gone onto TV, just logged on to Twitter and said ‘Stop the Attack,’ if he had done so with even half as much force as he said ‘Stop the Steal.’”......

....he won’t live down his disgraceful conduct.

'Now his legacy will be forever stained by this violence, and by his betrayal of his supporters in refusing to tell them the truth. Whatever the result of the impeachment trial, Republicans should remember the betrayal if Mr. Trump decides to run again in 2024.'”

This is not Mother Jones, or even The Huffington Post. This is the Wall Street Journal. And if they can see what a horrific thing trump did in his failure of leadership, why can't 50 republican senators in Washington? 

It's a rhetorical question. Of course we know why they can't do it. It's because they lack political courage and a moral compass. They care about one thing: Holding on to power, no matter what the cost.

I hope it was worth it. Something tells me it won't be. I mean when you lose the Wall Street Journal.... 

61 comments:

Faith_and_Fairness said...

"This is not Mother Jones, or even The Huffington Post. This is the Wall Street Journal. And if they can see what a horrific thing trump did in his failure of leadership, why can't 50 republican senators in Washington?"

====================================

Actually, at least five Republican senators are beyond appalled and will vote to convict the former president.

dinthebeast said...

Fergus, seeing the walls closing in on him, threw a hail Mary pass to try to cling to power; power he neither originally earned or ever knew what the fuck to do with, and probably, truth be told, hated.
But he was addicted to it.
Just like his horde of MAGA morons are addicted to the lies he tells them.
What could possibly go wrong?
Any bright sixth grader could successfully answer that question, but Fergus is just enough of a malignant narcissist that whether he could answer that question is in doubt.
Mother fuck that garbage, he knew exactly what he was doing when he threw Pence to the mob while it was in full rampage.
Had that mob got ahold of the vice president, Fergus would have tried to declare martial law and stop the congressional proceedings faster than you can say stable genius.
He had surrounded himself with brain-wizards like Mike Flynn who had been urging him to do exactly that for weeks at that time, and probably saw it as his one last card to play, when in fact he ran out of cards to play when he lost the fucking election.
Had he not repeatedly lied that the election was stolen, the mob wouldn't have been there. Full fucking stop.
Propaganda is like dope, it's addictive and there are well known pathologies associated with using what you are selling.
And as for the trial, my mother worked for criminal defense attorneys for decades in a town of 25K people, and if any of her bosses had ever fucked up in court half as badly as Fergus' counsel did today, they would have been busted down to paralegal and spent the rest of their careers doing investigation and serving process.
As for the senate Republicans, boo fucking hoo. They hitched their political fortunes to Donald fucking Trump, and they expected what to happen? I can only hope that some of them are still capable of feeling the humiliation that acquitting the rat bastard brings to them, and that the primary challenges they avoided by selling out their country pale in comparison to the wrath of the general electorate who were the ones being sold out.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Faith_and_Fairness said...

@Doug in Sugar Pine....

Curious, Doug, as to your insight regarding the proposal of Never-Trump republicans forming a separate now that it appears the GOP is fully embracing Trumpism to the point of also being hijacked by QAnon and other far-right extremist groups.

Faith_and_Fairness said...

Initially only three repulican senators voted with the democrats to call witnesses. Though the final vote tallied at 55-45, the shocker came in the form of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham voting in the affirmative for witness testimony. Trump's defense team absolutely livid the trial is not concluding today.

Gambler2 said...

From The Hill about a half hour ago....

"The Senate voted Saturday to allow for witnesses in former President Trump's second impeachment trial, a stunning development that could extend the proceeding for days if not weeks."

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/538733-democrats-call-for-herrera-beutler-to-testify-in-trump-impeachment

mike from iowa said...

McCTurtlefuckface announces he will vote to acquit drumpf some more. What a fucking surprise.

Lilacpr said...

Its all a big nothing burger, If he gets impeached I'll eat my hat...

dinthebeast said...

"Curious, Doug, as to your insight regarding the proposal of Never-Trump republicans forming a separate now that it appears the GOP is fully embracing Trumpism to the point of also being hijacked by QAnon and other far-right extremist groups."

Well, if they could actually pull it off, it would bugger the electoral hopes of a variety of GOP candidates for however long they could sustain it. Driftglass has thoughts:

https://driftglass.blogspot.com/2021/02/your-bulwark-quote-of-day-old-porn-is.html

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

They’re not going to call witnesses. Instead, the Senate went ahead and voted to acquit Trump, and then went on vacation for a week.

Only 7 Republicans voted to convict. The rest of them are spineless jellyfish.

mike from iowa said...

It bears repeating, there is no crime heinous enough to warrant magats voting against another magat. Unlike the election, the dog and pony show trial was fixed from the get go.

One correction from a fedw days ago. The judge in Wisconsin DID NOT issue a new arrest warrant for magat Kenosha Killer Kyle. Apparently he is satisfied allowing the defense tgo break court rules at leisure and claim death threats allowed them to move the scum sucking magat to a new location and then not bother tgo report to the pigs or the court.

Magat fuckwad is a murderer. Of course his life should be endangered. But, unlike Blacks, he is still breathing and sans multiple bullet holes for his crimes.

Anonymous said...

Negro California Parents Accused of Beating 5-Week-Old Baby Boy to Death. The Coroner Found Horrific Injuries.

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/california-parents-accused-of-beating-5-week-old-baby-boy-to-death/

Gambler2 said...

Anonymous said...

Negro California Parents Accused of Beating 5-Week-Old Baby Boy to Death. The Coroner Found Horrific Injuries.

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/california-parents-accused-of-beating-5-week-old-baby-boy-to-death/

6:18 PM
---------------
This one's about a white guy. Pretty awful. Read the story.
Former Rutgers and Montevallo Basketball Player Charged With Murdering Woman in Mexican Club

https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-rutgers-and-montevallo-basketball-player-logan-kelley-charged-with-murdering-woman-in-
mexican-club?ref=home

Mostly white people did this.....
"More than 100 Capitol Police officers were injured, at least 15 of whom required hospitalization. Two Capitol Police officers took their own lives in the days immediately following the assault, presumably spurred by trauma and/or guilt over the insurrection. But the death of Officer Brian Sicknick has loomed over the events of the January 6th like no other."
https://talkingpointsmemo.com

Anonymous said...

Mitch McConnell was king of the jellyfish today.

He, like most of his GOP colleagues, knows perfectly well how dangerous Trump is. He just won't do anything about him. Nauseating.

From the Guardian:

"Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said on Saturday that Donald Trump was 'practically and morally responsible' for the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 Jan – minutes after voting to acquit the former president in his impeachment trial for that very same act.

McConnell, like the Senators who voted in favor of impeachment, was deeply critical of Trump’s conduct leading up to the attack. 'They [the mob] did this because they’d been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry he lost an election,' McConnell said.

But McConnell argued the Senate could not convict Trump because he had left office before the Senate trial began – a timeline McConnell orchestrated as Senate majority leader after refusing Democrats’ requests to call the Senate into an emergency session in January."

dinthebeast said...

Now the Republican poltroons in the senate have (they hope) avoided a Fergus-fueled primary challenge by selling out their country, it's our job to use the evidence the impeachment managers and their staff provided to turn the general elections they face into their worst nightmares, and as there are fifteen of the despicable creeps up for election next year, give Biden a filibuster proof supermajority for the second half of his first term.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

The forever stained legacy will be that of Demorats who once again revealed that they are colluding with the Republicans on all major issues of importance from the American Empire and its wars of aggression to its domestic policies of Herd Immunity and rejecting Medicare4All during a pandemic and now staging a worthless political show trial for the Jan. 6th coup d'etat.

The Demorats and their "progressive" media propagandists are just as bad as FoxNews or Breitbart when it comes to denying this collusion between their preferred political parties.

But hey, Donald Trump lost his Twitter account! What horrific punishment for staging an attempted coup d'etat. LOL.

PilotX said...

trump is already putting out messages about his “victory” and making America great again. Once again, when was America great and when did it stop being great.

Anonymous said...

I am hearing that the reason the House managers gave up on calling trial witnesses to further reveal Trump's scummy behavior was that Trump's attorneys threatened to call endless numbers of their own "witnesses" -- i.e., Mellisa Carrone-style liars who would spout idiotic noise and nonsense -- thereby dragging out the hearings for months. Since the Senate has other matters it urgently needs to attend to, starting with the next economic COVID relief package, the House managers caved in and abandoned the idea of calling witnesses.

In short, Trump's team resorted to procedural blackmail to bring things to a close, because the witnesses would have further embarrassed and implicated him. Particularly the Republican congresswoman who would have testified about how unrepentant -- in fact, enthusiastically supportive of the rioters -- Trump was as they were smashing their way through the Capitol.

PilotX said...

Man, I kind of miss the trolls who swore up and down trump was going to win the election and even after he lost would somehow stay in office. Pity they never took me up on the challenge to choose a name and discuss said topic. I guess now we'll be back to Chicago crime stats and negro crime reports.

Anonymous said...


The Reverend Jeremiah Wright was right.

Faith_and_Fairness said...

Finally checked out February 13, 2021 edition of driftglass blogspot. Actually LMAO revisiting the "Stone Soup Story" in the blog's lead up to explaining the futile nature of developing an alternative political party.

This was primarily in response to never-Trumpers such as James K. Glassman, one amongst dozens, making the case for a third party option. Mr. Glassman served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the George W. Bush Administration.

https://www.newsweek.com/split-gop-integrity-party-1555313

Faith_and_Fairness said...

Though a good percentage of folks are in agreement with Lila's post @2:01pm, reiterating the impeachment trial was no more than a nothingburger, Atlantic contributor, David Frum proffers another glass-is-half-full perspective:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/impeachment-did-not-prevail-trump-still-lost/618026/

In a nutshell, it really was beside the point that a majority of GOP senators never would agree to convict the former president. Still, our outstanding impeachment managers presented a document archive that will advance a greater long-term objective in ensuring presidential oversight and accountability.

When all is said and done, We, the People, must never again have our life and liberty threatened by the sociopathic actions of a chief executive only interested in being the president of a select segment of the electorate. This is why the next years presents the opportunity to identify and resolve any loopholes that will be taken advantage of by the former president, should he run for office again, or another U.S. wanna-be dictator who remains on the horizon.

Faith_and_Fairness said...

Correction... Meant to say these next few years leading to 2022 midterms and 2024 general election present the opportunity for implementing reforms.

mike from iowa said...

America is a great big magat fueled CLUSTERFUCK! Howz that for greatness?

Fortunately Dems have hopefully enough control to undo the damage and right the ship, again. If magats use the spotus to run moar interference, Dems can add more justices to neuter the magat court.

mike from iowa said...

Get yer Voo Doo dolls out and start sticking pins in the likeness of injustices Thomas, Alito, and the three newest little pigs appointed by fraud to the court.

Anonymous said...

So much for global warming(hoax)

‘Likely a Death Sentence’: Officials Fear Cold Weather Is Greater Risk for Homeless than Virus

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/14/us/coronavirus-homeless-cold-weather.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Anonymous said...

“So much for global warming(hoax)”

So much for your basic comprehension of math and science.

Lilacpr said...

https://abc7.com/tag/homeless-in-southern-california/
Meanwhile back at the ranch,hundreds of people are living in tents and cardboard shacks in plain sight on the sidewalks of Los Angeles. And who cares? Nobody. Oh, and do you wonder where the go to the bathroom?

Gambler2 said...

Anonymous said...

“So much for global warming(hoax)”

So much for your basic comprehension of math and science.

11:28 AM
---------------------
Obviously, you don't understand the difference between climate and weather. Look it up. I don't have the time to educate you this morning.

Gambler2 said...

Oops, the above post at 12:02 PM was directed to the anonymous troll claiming global warming is a hoax.

Anonymous said...

Newsom Recall Campaign Has Enough Signatures to Trigger a Special Election

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/14/newsom-recall-campaign-has-enough-signatures-to-trigger-a-special-election-n1425506

Anonymous said...

My
Ass
Got
Acquitted

mike from iowa said...

Yer ass is still impeached, twice.

Gambler2 said...

Anonymous said...

My
Ass
Got
Acquitted

2:19 PM
----------------
My
Ass
Is
Facing
Criminal
Indictments

Anonymous said...

Trump supporters are smarter.

https://reason.com/volokh/2020/01/30/trump-supporters-verbal-ability/

dinthebeast said...

Shorter McConnell: Fergus is guilty but can't be convicted because he's out of office now that I wouldn't start the trial until he was.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

mike from iowa said...

magats think magats are so smart because drumpf's lawyers convinced a majority of magats not to remove drumpf from office.

drumpf was legally impeached twice, with more than enough proof for anyone to believe except magats. drumpf escaped prison because partisan magats decided, before either impeachment, they would not allow their leader to face the consequences of his misdeeds. Simple as that. drumpf is a three time loser, he lost the 2020 election in a landslide and was impeached twice. That should be life in prison for any three strikes criminal of color.

PilotX said...

“So much for global warming(hoax)“

😆😂 The American educational system has failed us.

PilotX said...

https://www.noaa.gov/news/january-2021-was-among-top-10-warmest-for-us

Flying Junior said...

As it currently stands, the California recall law is some seriously fucked up shit. As our commenter has demonstrated it is a low threshold to qualify for the ballot. All it takes to topple an incumbent is a simple majority of voters who vote to recall. When they recalled Davis, it was unknown exactly how many voters voted yes to recall the governor or perhaps thought they were voting yes to keep him in office. Plus a lot of supporters are going to sit out the election, because it seems trivial.

But the worst thing is that there is this enormous free-for-all runoff election between the candidates. Last time around there were over 200 people running for governor. If no candidate gets more than 50%, the top two candidates have a runoff election. But get this, the one person in the State of California who is disqualified from being on the ballot is the sitting governor who is being recalled. So it ends up being a choice between two schmucks.

Still, I think that Newsom's support is strong enough to weather it, even with this unfair of a playing field. I can't hardly believe the conservative TV stations are ginning up support for the recall just out of sheer spite. Backstabbers like Mayor Faulconer are running against the very guy the were working with so closely to manage the Covidi-19 crisis.

Fuck you assbite California republicans.

Gambler2 said...

Flying Junior,
As I recall, Governor Grey Davis, was on the ballot. The Republicans paid some Latino guy to run and take away votes from Davis. As a result, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican won. He was a lousy governor but not as bad as Reagan was.

Davis was a much better governor than any of the Republicans. In the 57 years I have lived in California, we have never had a decent Republican governor. The four who were elected seemed to care only about upper income people,the Chamber of Commerce, and destroying public education.

Flying Junior said...

Gambler,

Not so fast. From the wikipedia article:

The first question was whether Davis, the sitting governor, should be recalled; those voting on it were 55.4% in favor of recall and 44.6% opposed.

The second question was who would replace the governor in the event that a majority voted to recall him. Among those voting on the potential replacement, Schwarzenegger received a plurality of 48.6%, by surpassing Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante's 31.5% – about a 3-to-2 ratio. Republican Tom McClintock received 13.4% of the vote – less than half the share of the candidate he trailed. Green Party candidate Peter Camejo polled 2.8%, trailing the third-place candidate by almost four-to-one. Each remaining candidate polled 0.6% or less.

Schwarzenegger's votes exceeded those for the next five candidates combined, despite the presumed division of Republican voters between him and McClintock. There were also more votes for Schwarzenegger than votes against recalling Davis, avoiding the theoretical scenario of the replacement having less support than the recalled governor.


You can see that Schwarzeneggar got fully 48.6% of the vote. Cruz Bustamante got 31.5%. Gray Davis wasn't even allowed to run. The courts had settled one legal question as to whether voters who chose to not recall would be allowed to pick a favorite. So, I guess everyone was satisfied that more people voted to choose Schwarzeneggar than chose to keep Davis. Which to me is circular bullshit. But that's where it stands. Don't feel bad. In my mind there was a runoff. Oops!

I think this law needs some tweaking. It's really stacked against the incumbent. So we have to be vigilant when the republicans invoke it. I think it's a shitty thing to do. All of this crap about democrats attacking small business really makes me angry.

Remember Arnold, the comic governor? He wanted to balance the budget by licensing more slot machines. Republicans have no clue.

dinthebeast said...

Gavin Reptile will probably hold his office, but do remember that we occasionally vote for some fucked up shit here in California. Remember prop 8? Prop 187? Prop 13? Pete Wilson?
People were trying to make hay out of the fact that all of the Democrats who won seats in the blue wave of 2018 didn't get to keep them last year, but you have to remember that California has an independent commission that draws its districts, so we're not gerrymandered and actually do have some competitive elections, so I don't see that as a bad omen for Newsom, I see it as a functioning democracy.
Yes, sadly, we do have some Republican districts here, as a matter of fact I live in one, represented by the execrable Tom McClintock, who was just reelected over the weak-tea Democrat who ran against him.
Gavin is... ambitious. Always was. When he was mayor of San Francisco I really got the feeling that the stuff he was doing there was aimed at getting him in higher office, and that's still the criticism I have of him.
He's been better than I feared he would be, but right now he's caving to political pressure and reopening parts of the state that might have been OK if he hadn't jumped the gun.
Still, he's miles ahead of any goddamn Republican you could think of as a gubernatorial candidate.
Arnie wasn't quite as horrible as I thought he'd be, but almost. California is a big, complex state, and running it isn't for the ignorant or the faint of heart, or as Arnie found out, the stubborn.
Much like Rauner in Illinois, Arnie wouldn't deal with the state legislature and the budget was chronically late. It got so bad that the lege passed a law that made it a crime for them to fail to have a budget passed by June, and they still didn't have one until October.
Arnie responded by bad mouthing the state legislators, always a winning negotiating tactic, and calling them "girlie men", to which Tom Ammiano replied "That's mister girlie man to you."
But as fucked up as Arnie was, he wasn't a doctrinaire Republican, and he knew he couldn't be president, so he wasn't using being governor as a springboard to higher ambitions.
So any Republican who weaseled their way into the governor's mansion would face even harsher gridlock that Arnie did, and the tactic would most likely backfire on their presidential ambitions.
They would still suck, and like Arnie, leave a multiyear clean up for the next sane governor, due to our insane tax laws.
Jerry Brown can be infuriating at times, but props to him for turning the state around when he got back in after Arnie; the needles he had to thread to get our schools funded again were daunting, but he had the political chops to pull it off. I generally like Newsom, but fear that he lacks those chops.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

"Much like Rauner in Illinois, Arnie wouldn't deal with the state legislature and the budget was chronically late."

The main political headache in Illinois is that over a period of many years, Democratic politicians underfunded the pensions of state employees. This was a stupid thing to do, but it happened, and now we need to fix the problem. The obvious solution, floated by Democrats, is that taxes have to be raised on wealthy people to bring the pension fund up to where it should be.

But for Republicans, Democrats created this problem, so it is "unfair" to solve it by giving Democrats the tax hike on the rich they've always wanted -- so, instead, we should go with the (unethical, probably illegal) Republican solution of shafting state employees out of the pensions they've already earned. The Illinois GOP devoted lots of effort to demonizing state employees, according to the Republican playbook, suggesting they are overpaid and their pensions are lavish and undeserved anyway.

So basically Rauner's governorship was just him making impossible demands of the legislature and getting rejected, over and over again, for four years straight:

Rauner: Hey, let's shaft retired state workers out of their pensions!

Dem-run legislature: Um, no? Let's not?

(Note: The miserable saga is still not over because Illinois voters in November rejected a referendum that would have amended the state's constitution to allow progressive taxation, following a blizzard of dishonest Republican propaganda about what the referendum was for.)

Flying Junior said...

Remember prop 8? Prop 187? Prop 13? Pete Wilson?

Who could forget Proposition Hate? 187 was Wilson's proudest moment. But those happened a long time ago. Ward Connerly's Proposition 209, the inaptly named California Civil Rights Act was quite recent.

I have heard from liberals who roundly advocate the repeal of Prop 13. Many of us would disagree.

I'll bet Bob Dylan would live on the Jersey Shore if he could afford the property taxes.

My brother-in-law lost his house. It was doubly cruel because he had already rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy.

mike from iowa said...

1080 Valentines forfeited their true love to join drumpf/noem body count on Valentine's Day. Wasn't true love of drumpf that caused it. It was true incompetence of drumpf/noem that caused nearly half a billion covid deaths so far.

Gambler2 said...

flying Junior,

You are right. I forgot that I was speaking of the run off. My bad! But I am convinced that money people got to Cruz and paid him to run so that Davis would be out. If this isn't true, then what happened to him?. I haven't heard a peep from Cruz since, so I guess he left politics. Do you know if that's true?

dinthebeast said...

The thing about prop 13 was that it inequitably froze property taxes that are used to fund the schools.
When I went to school in California in the sixties and seventies, the public schools here were the crown jewel of US public education, and five years after I was out they were in financial collapse, mostly in areas without the property tax base to support their function.
And prop 13 put a muzzle on the state legislature's ability to raise other taxes to compensate, so the problem just festered and got worse and worse.
The smartest of the folks I know on the issue aren't calling for a wholesale repeal, as the property taxes in the seventies did need some reform, but the blunt instrument they used to permanently Republicanize the state's tax structure really needs to go.
Jerry Brown, with Democratic majorities in both houses of the state lege, had to resort to ballot initiatives to raise the taxes that rescued our schools.
And don't forget the meat axe Rauner tried to take to the state's schools also, like the time he killed the program for autistic children on national autism awareness day. Like Arnie, not the best negotiator you could pay for...

-Doug in Sugar Pine

dinthebeast said...

Gambler: According to Wikipedia, Cruz was the Lt. Governor for both Davis, who he didn't get along with, and Arnie. After which he ran for insurance commissioner and lost:

2006 Insurance Commissioner election

Bustamante was the Democratic candidate for California Insurance Commissioner.

In Bustamante's official candidate statement, he says "I want to become an example to others to lead healthier lives by losing weight myself. Obesity in California costs $7.7 billion a year."

Bustamante claims to have recently shed 43 pounds to 235 pounds by means of diet and exercise.[5]

Bustamante easily won the June 6, 2006 Democratic primary, receiving 70.5% of the vote and defeating his challenger, John Kraft. In the June Primary Bustamante received 1,606,913 Democratic votes, Kraft 674,309 Democratic votes, and Poizner 1,472,729 Republican votes. Many political analysts believed that Kraft, who ran a low-key campaign where he took no campaign contributions, received those votes as a protest for Bustamante's behavior during the 2003 recall election.[6] However, Kraft planned to actively campaign for Bustamante, and donated a significant portion of his fortune as an heir to Kraft Foods to Bustamante.[7]

Bustamante ran against Republican Steve Poizner in November. Bustamante announced that he would not be returning insurance industry contributions to his campaign, a position criticized by Poizner and campaign ethicists. Bustamante also failed to meet a deadline to submit a campaign statement to voters. According to the Field Poll, on November 3, 2006, Bustamante trailed Poizner by 9%.[8] and lost to Poizner by 12% in the general election.

Bustamante was speculated to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in California's 21st congressional district in 2012,[9] but ultimately did not run.

So I don't know what he's up to these days, but I do think the Democrats should try a different tactic this time if Newsom does face a recall, and have a strong candidate ready to run if they need one.
Losing Newsom would be bad, but having a goddamn Republican win would be miles worse.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Gambler2 said...

Doug,

Thanks for the info. I fell behind with state politics when my late husband became so ill, and I took care of him for several years. I'm glad to catch up.

I hope the recall fails. I'm not crazy about Newsom, but the worst Democrat is better than any Republican based on political philosophy. I don't much care for the "let'em eat cake" point of view that drives the current GOP.

Anonymous said...

“And don't forget the meat axe Rauner tried to take to the state's schools also, like the time he killed the program for autistic children on national autism awareness day. Like Arnie, not the best negotiator you could pay for...”

This is a debatable point, but I would not say the problem was Rauner’s negotiating skills, but rather the fact he was trying to achieve an insane, unacceptable objective (cutting pension payments to people who’d already retired). The other side was never even going to enter into negotiations with this as the starting point.

Imagine national Republicans wanted to do something crazy, like ban contraceptives, or jail all Muslims, or bomb Mexico. Democrats wouldn’t present an alternative Democratic Party plan for banning contraceptives, or jailing all Muslims, or bombing Mexico. They wouldn’t try to meet in the middle somehow. Their response would be: “Fuck you, assholes. Over our dead bodies.”

I don’t think Rauner expected to negotiate, either. He thought he could strongarm Democrats into giving him what he wanted by grinding government to a complete halt until they ultimately caved and gave him what he wanted.

Rauner hoped voters would somehow blame Democrats for the state’s resulting dysfunction. They didn’t, and he was out on his ear at the next election.

dinthebeast said...

The negotiator remark was mostly a joke trying to point out how far from their actual jobs both Arnie and Rauner were operating from on account of being goddamn Republicans.


A Pro Publica story (via Susie Madrak's blog) about the mess the capitol police were in prior to the insurrection and what it was like to try and hold the capitol anyway:

https://susiemadrak.com/2021/02/15/i-dont-trust-the-people-above-me-riot-squad-cops-open-up-about-disastrous-response-to-capitol-insurrection/

-Doug in Sugar Pine

mike from iowa said...

I thought Darrell Issa was behind and financed the Davis recall so Issa could become guv and no one voted for him anyway.

dinthebeast said...

Oh, the Viper car alarm creep who was arrested for vehicle theft?
Didn't he just win Duncan Hunter's old house seat?
Guess they like 'em crooked down there.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Flying Junior said...

Gambler,

That's why it's unfair. The Governor being recalled is ineligible as a choice to replace himself.

Anonymous said...

Trump really won the 2020 election and everyone on this board knows it, but doesn't care as along as they can seize power for evil.

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