Here’s Bill Maher’s 10-minutes Real Time segment that constitutes his video “op-ed”. This is one of the best such segments I’ve seen.
As the title indicates, Maher thinks that Biden should make a hasty exit. The bad news is that he’s quite enthusiastic about Kamala Harris as his replacement, a choice that I don’t agree with. But the good news is that he also think she’s too unpopular to win. He also likes Gavin Newsom, despite his “slickness” (Maher even suggests a slogan: “I’m havin’ Gavin”). Further, he’s a fan of Gretchen Whitmer (my favorite candidate) and Mayor Pete (my former favorite candidate). He also suggests five governors who are younger and liberal but not “crazy woke”.
h/t: Rosemary
👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 Thank you for the belly laughs. Better than coffee.
This was one of the best. 😂
What can be, unburdened by what has been
As above, so below
Aufheben der Democrat
My first exposure to KH’s WCBUBWHB was from her speaking, without an obvious comma-pause. So I heard:
“What can be unburdened
by what has been”,
which makes even less sense than the comma-pause version. Not a good first impression.
“America is getting new tits” leads to the uncharitable question, which boob are they going to pick? I’ll just say that Mayor Pete is an abysmal choice, both for this own recording campaigning and for this tenure as Secretary of Transportation. He seems to be the only person in this administration who has done less the Harris.
I confess ignorance (so this may be off base), but when has a secretary of transportation ever been widely recognized as having done a good or even great job? Chances are they simply disappear from the news. Further, I suspect that someone in that position is to enact the policies of president, and if high profile orders don’t come from the top then what more can they do?
My understanding is that he would do poorly with blacks in the south as they tend to be socially conservative. Not sure if that would make a difference to the overall outcome though.
Thanks for posting. I laughed out loud many times. And I need a laugh when it comes to the Biden situation.
How great is the track record of pundits? We tend to forget their prognostications after elections and what-not.
Wouldn’t it be awkward if Biden actually won?
Not awkward for me because we wouldn’t have Trump as President!
What changed your mind about Pete?
Andy Beshear, the second-term governor from Kentucky, won office by defeating a Trumpy and abrasive Republican incumbent in the fifth-most Trumpy state in America. He then was reelected by beating what could have been the first black governor in Kentucky, a Trump-supporting-but-highly-personable Republican attorney general who is a Mitch McConnell protégé.
Several national publications have run profiles about him, wondering if he has the formula to win votes across party lines. It’s complicated. Beshear’s father was a former governor, which helped, so he would lose that advantage on the national stage. What also helped him is that Kentucky, while a reliably Republican state for the last 25 years at the level of national offices, retained its Democratic Party heritage at the local level. The State House, for instance, was run almost exclusively by Democrats from the Civil War until 2017. National politics became too far left in recent years for the old-fashioned Democrats, and it has hurt the party significantly at the local level. Still, enough of the moderate Democrats-turned-Republicans remain that Beshear was able to win back their votes. His favorability ratings have topped the country for Democrat governors. Not easy to do in a Republican-dominated state. (Newsome and Pritzker both underperform the favorability polls in their Democrat-dominated states. Whitmer slightly outperforms expectations.) As it is now, Beshear’s more progressive preferences have little effect in Kentucky as he is hamstrung by a vetoproof majority in the State legislature. That has probably lifted his popularity significantly since his most visible role is as consoler-in-chief. As I mentioned earlier in the week, the guy is almost impossible to dislike. I look for him to be on the short list for VPs should Kamala (cringe) get the nomination. He has his own ambition, of course, and he might not care to be on a losing ticket.
If we could recapture a presidency that focused on executive branch management, foreign affairs, the commander-in-chief role, a consoler during times of trouble, and America’s face to the world, a guy like Beshear could win in a landslide. But as long as either of the two parties keeps trying to push one-size-fits-all policies onto a diverse nation of 50 states, especially by using the regulatory framework of the executive branch bureaucracy, then we can expect national gridlock and highly partisan presidential candidates.
Thank you Doug. Thoughtful and helpful info. I’m intrigued by your analysis and will put the governor on my to be followed list.
Did you see the pro-Hamas disingenuous article front page FT lying about the herculean efforts of the Nation to facilitate relief access into Gizeh? The dismantling of the pier has nothing to do with the humanitarian strategy of the defenders!
Thi has nothing to do with the post or anything else on this thread. It’s just a mind dump and it’s angry as well as irrelevant. Read the Roolz.
He nailed it with, “We need new characters in the sitcom we call a country”.
If both parties actually paid attention to what the overwhelming majority of voters are saying, that they dislike both presumptive candidates, they’d be smart to pick fresh ones. If the Repubs ran Nikki Hailey against Biden, she’d probably clean up. And if the Dems picked any of the bench warmers against Trump, they’d probably also prevail.
Perhaps they should return to the old days of smoke-filled back rooms. The current nomination process is clearly broken.