Kenny Boy Paxton as Trump's "real" AG nominee? I doubted it before being proven right

As everybody and their mom knows in the world of politics, Matt Gaetz pulled out and withdrew yesterday. He's reportedly done that before.

He also removed his name from consideration to be President-elect Donald Trump's Attorney General nominee. (I see what I did there!)

Ken Silverstein offers some analysis, as well as some speculation that Trump was playing his version of 11-dimensional chess, per the header. Here's the nutgrafs on that:

From the perspective of Trump and his political advisors, the strategy was to “flood the zone” with cabinet nominees, including some that were near certain cannon fodder, with Gaetz at the top of that list. The administration would be happy in the unlikely event that any of the dregs somehow passed Senate scrutiny, but completely unbothered if they didn’t, the calculation being that the Democratic and a few potential Republican rejectionists wouldn’t block all of his preferred choices even if they were all completely unqualified or unsuitable for the respective positions he’d allotted them for fear of looking intransigent, or they lacked the courage or integrity to go to the mattresses more than once or twice.

Hence, the president’s enemies would be more than satisfied by being able to brag about how they saved the nation from the nightmare scenario of Attorney General Matt Gaetz; meanwhile, Trump might be able to sneak through a replacement nominee who was just as bad or worse, and had been held in reserve for that reason rather than being nominated first. For example, one of the sources cited the possibility of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a possible substitute for Gaetz, but I’m pretty sure he was joking.

Sorry, but not buying it, from here in Tex-ass, to expand on my retweet of Ken Thursday. Note; It's not Ken, but a source of his saying that. Nonetheless, Ken, pass it back up the line. And, I'm leaving that just as I wrote it, because less than 24 hours after Gaetz had AG interruptus, Trump pivoted to Pam Bondi.

Yes, Kenny Boy is one of Trump's biggest suck-ups and ass-kissers here.

But, there's the question of whether he really wants to leave Tex-ass or not. There's many reasons he might not want to.

One is to continue on his revenge tour against Texas House Republicans who voted to impeach him last year. I don't think this is a big deal, but it could be a small one.

Second is to build on the revenge tour against the old Court of Criminal Appeals and actively work on trying to reshape it with its trio of new judges. This might be something.

That said, even as I updated this Thursday evening to include the Pam Bondi info, I saw on Twitter that Kenny Boy was on Steve Bannon's show. He certainly indicated interest when Bannon said that he heard Paxton was being shortlisted. OTOH, he certainly wouldn't just feign interest.

Third? That's 2026.

Big John (Cornyn) lost his bid to be Senate Majority Leader, and he's up for re-election then. He'll only be 74, a practical child still in the gerontocracy of today's Senate. As of the start of the current Congress, per Pew in 2023, before Feinstein kicked the bucket, there were four Senators over age 80 and 30 in Cornyn's 70-79 age bracket, with him being at the younger end of that at 71. But, Thune is nearly a decade younger, and the GOP doesn't term-limit the majority leader, unlike the majority whip. Unless Thune is a fuck-up, or decides HE wants an early retirement, Cornyn isn't getting the brass ring.

Will that be enough for him to want to step down?

Or, even though by some voting metrics, he's become more wingnut than Havana Ted, will he face pressure from the far right to step down?

If so? Would Gov. Strangeabbott want the seat? Or would he want to run for re-election to break Tricky Ricky Perry's gubernatorial tenure length?

In either case, Dannie Goeb as Lite Guv is two years older than Big John. Even if Cornyn doesn't step aside, Goeb might. 

(If Strangeabbott ran for Senate, there's no way Goeb is running for guv; that would be like a cockroach coming out in the light and wanting to stay there and be visible. That said, if Paxton ran for guv, Patrick might want to return to office for one more term, to be a mentor, a shield, and a "break glass in case of emergency" guy.)

So, it's possible that Kenny Boy would have one, or two, options on moving up in two years. Or he might hope that Trump appoints him, not to the federal bench at the district level, but the Fifth Circuit.

Beyond that, with Trump's transactional personality, why would he really be looking at Paxton in the first place? His suck-ups aside, Paxton is nowhere close to Trump's inner circle. Did you see him get featured at the RNC? No. Bondi, OTOH? A no-brainer. And, per the above, what sort of Trump circle is Bannon in these days?

==

Side note: Contra Ken, I don't think Gaetz's payoff is going to Fox. OANN or Newsmax? Possibly.

Side note 2: With Kelly Loeffler at Ag instead of Sid Miller, it looks like Texans have been shut out, other than the recycled John Ratcliffe. Maybe Trump thinks they're such ass-kissers, so subservient, that they don't need to be placated.

I shot the JFK, but I did not shoot the LBJ

Riffing on Bob Marley and the Wailers, it's another anniversary of one of Merikkka's dumbest and most ill-informed, yet non-charmingly endearing conspiracy theories.

In reality, besides the buttloads of physical evidence? If one looks at the history of actual and attempted U.S. presidential assassinations, Lee Harvey Oswald is nowhere outside the norm on either being a nutter or on acting for actual or alleged political reasons. I addressed that on the 60th anniversary.

That won't stop the David Talbots, Jefferson Morleys and other nutters from continuing with their nuttery, of course.

And, with Donald J. Cheeseburger re-entering the White House in two months, it will all ramp up more, starting with Jan. 20, 2025.

That said, Trump head-faked Morley et al in his first term and didn't release "everything." THAT said, Morley has claimed to know what files he's not getting, in one of the biggest-ass cases of circular reasoning I've ever seen. Of course, he also lied about no longer being a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Reminder: I know the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. 

The enshittification of Shitter gets worse

And, in this case, it has nothing to do with Elmo Musk's politics.

It has nothing to do with #BlueAnon celebrities and political celebrities fleeing to BlueSky, all while either forgetting or else being ignorant of the fact that its owner, Ice Bath Balls Jack Dorsey, wasn't exactly a barrel of enlightenment when he owned Shitter, and neither was Shitter itself. (This also ignores that Ice Bath Balls Jack couldn't make a real profit on Shitter, so he dumped it on Musk.)

What it is, is that Elmo's Shitter appears to have dumped the "Trending" on the right-hand rail of a normal Shitter page. Dumped as in gotten rid of it.

Instead, we have this "Explore," listed as being currently in Beta, but surely about to be shoved down our throats.

It's nice. Or rather, "nice."

But, it's all about politics.

It's like Elmo and his autistic/OCD goons don't recognize the world of non-political media, and for that matter, non-media period, users of Shitter. (Well, maybe former users, if more and more of these people go away, too.)

Like #NBATwitter, for example.

I don't know if Cory Doctorow has tackled this subset of enshittification in detail, but it's the reverse of the old (and untrue) adage that "the customer is always right." It's now, "the tech dudebro owner is always right."

That said, it IS fun watching and reading all the post-election #BlueAnon blather. Or rich people like Ellen Degeneres being serious about leaving the US.

LeBron is just taking a Shitter break. Maybe he'll establish international residence after he retires? 

Update, Nov. 22: A LOT of people must have bitched about this. Shitter made them go away.

Texas Progressives talk politics, fall, book bans

Off the Kuff showed that in Harris County, Republicans did slightly better than 2020 in terms of votes collected. It was a downswing among Dems that made them competitive.  

SocraticGadfly takes a look at some recent climate science news of concern, especially in light of the upcoming COP29.

John Cornyn lost his Senate Majority Leader bid.

And ... the Observer has now removed the interim tag from Gus Bova as editor in chief. Way to make him sweat a few months.

Joe Biden is not emptying federal death row, sorry, Slate. Dear Leader didn't do it and he didn't free Leonard Peltier. 

Usually, I'm not that big on Steve Vladeck, but his interaction with Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones at a Federalist Society panel is definitely worth a read. That said, had I been him, I wouldn't have participated, because I would have expected the possibility of being sandbagged. That then said, yes, judges are partisan — but basically, within duopoly party bounds.

Frank Strong recapped the school board elections of note.  

Texas 2036 points to higher education opportunities in prison as a way to break the recidivism cycle.

The Fort Worth Report repeats plenty of previous information that turning out office building lights at night reduces the number of fatal collisions suffered by migratory birds. 

The Current reports that Texas enacted the nation's third-highest number of book bans in the last academic year. 

 The Bloggess assures us that she and her progressive bookshop aren't going anywhere.

John Nichols puts himself on #BlueAnon stupidity watch

The header is a pun on being on a "death watch," and post-Nov. 5, I wish I had thought of it sooner.

Nichols, the columnist at The Nation with the most visceral dislike for third parties, using his DSA Rosey fellating as a cudgel at times, yesterday seemed to think it was a big deal that Trump's share of the popular vote had officially fallen below 50 percent. (It had, per Wiki, as of Nov. 18, not 19, but as of yesterday evening when I wrote this, Wiki had Trump back at 50.0 percent.)

So, Wikipedia itself backstops my first callout of Nichols — he's shooting at a still-moving target.

So, this?

Unfortunately, for the president-elect, the United States takes time to count 155 million votes—give or take a million—and the actual result will rob Trump of his bragging points.

Might be a self-own.

And this?

Trump can no longer claim that powerful mandate. By most reasonable measures, the beginning point for such a claim in a system with two major parties is an overwhelming majority vote in favor of your candidacy. Trump no longer has that.

Certainly won't stop Trump from claiming a mandate. Shrub Bush was only a plurality president, if that, in 2000. Didn't stop him.

Nichols even, much later in the piece, admits this.

That won’t matter to Trump, who claimed a mandate even when he lost the 2016 popular vote by almost 3 million ballots. Four years later, Trump refused to accept his defeat by more than 7 million votes, and denied that majority support for Biden in the 2020 election amounted to anything akin to a mandate.

So, why is this being written?

Nichols goes on to note how Harris was better than this, that, and the other candidates of years past, even as Wiki's page notes her EV results were the worst since Dukakis.

He says she did well and thus Democrats shouldn't despair.

He ignores the massive decline in Democratic turnout, the Hispanic shift and other things that can't all be blamed on Harris running a craptacular campaign, worsened by Dementia Joe's failure to drop out sooner. I mean, per Anton Chekhov, the gun from Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign stupidity in Great Lakes states was in the room in Act I. Then 2020 was Act II and here we are in Act III.

That then said, to riff on Corey Robin? Winning by 2 percentage points or more in an America, er Merikkka still frozen in the Sixth Party System, and unlikely to unfreeze in the near future, is something.

I saw this piece because it was trending on Google News. Probably a sign that a lot of BlueAnon other than Nichols need to be put, or put themselves, on that stupidity watch.

Reminder that, speaking of fellation, Nichols also did that long ago with fauxgressive Randy Bryce, aka Iron Stache.

Warmonger Joe ups the game again in Ukraine

Warmonger Joe is doing it again, OKing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to use ATACMS in long-range use. 

Semafor doesn't even cite anonymous Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ in poo-poohing Russian President Vladimir Putin's concerns — it just does so, in clear editorializing. (The NYT, at the first link, at least has that fig leaf, and it also notes specific possible responses by Putin.) Nor does it call bullshit on Zelenskyy's offer to replace US troops in Europe with Ukrainian ones. (I'll bet other MSM have also been letting that one fly.) Anybody who's seen Ukrainian draft-dodging and the violence when Ukrainian draft officers land a fish know how that would turn out.

Texas Supreme Court basically sends Robert Roberson back to hell

The reprieve Roberson got a few weeks ago, when the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence subpoenaed him to appear before it, to testify about the state's junk science law and the Court of Criminal Appeals' refusal to follow it?

Out the door. Sort of.

The Texas Supreme Court said the committee overstepped its constitutional authority, and that prosecutors can ask for a new execution date to be set. As a sop, they said the committee can subpoena Roberson again, as long as that doesn't interfere with a new execution date. Joe Moody of the committee thinks it's more than a sop. We shall see. As of the time of that story, the Anderson County District Attorney had not asked for a new execution warrant.

Science news: Climate change cheating at Paris, atmospheric red flags — important as COP29 approaches

Not that this will actually affect anything undertaken at COP29, starting with the hypocrisy of it once again being held in a petrostate, this time, Baku Azerbaijan. (Yale Climate Connections notes that countries of the world need a "quantum leap" just on meeting current, and currently unfulfilled, commitments from past climate "accords.")

==

The cheating at Paris? I'm talking about the Paris round of climate change "accord" talks, which I have long ago called "Jell-O" that was made such by two people: Dear Leader Obama and Xi Jinping.

Now, more evidence in that general direction? Two Swedish academics talk about what was essentially game-rigging on trying to stay below 1.5°C, which we of course have broken already.

(S)oon, the ambitious Paris agreement limit turned out to be not much of a limit at all. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC, the world’s foremost body of climate experts) lent its authority to the 1.5°C temperature target with its 2018 special report, something odd transpired.

Nearly all modelled pathways for limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels involved temporarily transgressing this target. Each still arrived back at 1.5°C eventually (the deadline being the random end point of 2100), but not before first shooting past it.

OK ....

They then spell this out:

De facto, what they said was this: staying below a temperature limit is the same as first crossing it and then, a few decades hence, using methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere to dial temperatures back down again.

From some corners of the scientific literature came the assertion that this was nothing more than fantasy. A new study published in Nature has now confirmed this critique. It found that humanity’s ability to restore Earth’s temperature below 1.5°C of warming, after overshooting it, cannot be guaranteed

Fantasy! Many of us have already faulted the IPCC for being overly conservative. Now, per further items in the piece, it appears that this overt conservativism (contra climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe, with Mann even attacking James Hansen) was deliberate for political reasons.

Read on, MacDuff: 

If reversal cannot be guaranteed, then clearly it is irresponsible to sanction a supposedly temporary overshoot of the Paris targets. And yet this is exactly what scientists have done. What compelled them to go down this dangerous route?

Our own book on this topic (Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, published last week by Verso) offers a history and critique of the idea.

When overshoot scenarios were summoned into being in the early 2000s, the single most important reason was economics. Rapid, near-term emissions cuts were deemed prohibitively costly and so unpalatable. Cost optimisation mandated that they be pushed into the future to the extent possible.

Politics! Also note the phrase "Climate Breakdown," in the book.

Politics!

(B)ecause modellers could not imagine transgressing the deeply conservative constraints that they worked within, something else had to be transgressed.

One team stumbled upon the idea that large-scale removal of carbon might be possible in the future, and so help reverse climate change. The EU and then the IPCC picked up on it, and before long, overshoot scenarios had colonised the expert literature. Deference to mainstream economics yielded a defence of the political status quo. This in turn translated into reckless experimentation with the climate system. Conservatism or fatalism about society’s capacity for change flipped into extreme adventurism about nature.

There we are.

And read that Nature study. (I'll be trying to find that book!) It notes the real cost is that of carbon removal. IF possible. It also goes into more detail about how climate change feedbacks that are likely already being cooked into the system can't necessarily be undone by negative human GHG emissions.

==

The atmospheric red flags connect. A new study shows that global methane emissions continue to rise. And, guess who's one of the worst offenders of a 2021 global methane emissions agreement? China is also in the top five, as are the rest of the BRICS countries not named South Africa.

==

And, a friendly reminder — it's not fundagelicals vs the liberally religious that's the big divide on taking climate change seriously, as a climate crisis. It's secularists/non-metaphysicians/atheists vs everybody else AND that "everybody else" includes the so-called Nones or religiously unaffiliated.

Texas Progressives post-election Roundup: Some bemoan, others are more realistic, detached and more

There IS a Texas Progressives Roundup in this corner this week, even if Charles Kuffner, still in a state of shellshock at Off the Kuff over missed predictions at the state level, isn't initiating it. I know I got the national results wrong in my prediction, and have no problem admitting it, even without Brains dropping in — though he got his response back. (Speaking of, him quitting the Roundup rather than editing what Kuff sent and adding his own material, which I had been doing months, if not a full year or more, before Brains left? OK.)

That said, I'll lead. I offer an early post-mortem (with other things being posted this week) while also focusing on non-duopoly issues, including a big win for the Green Party in Texas, and what also appears to be an implosion, not just here in Texas, but elsewhere, for the Libertarian Party. (I will have a follow-up when we have nationwide popular vote totals for third and minor parties as well as the two duopoly parties.)

The Trib looks at why Texas Dems underperformed again.

At the Observer, Gus Bova talks about "a lost decade"when it's actually been two now, and never mentions Hinojosa's name. True, it was a day before his resignation, but he's still the guy at fault.

That underperformance went beyond statewide races and the GOP gaining a couple of state House seats. Republicans won 25 of 26 contested appeals court races. The Observer looks at the PAC money behind this almost-sweep.

And, Trump took a majority of Latino votes. He even took 14 of 18 border counties. Bova looks at that, too, and manages to mention Hinojosa once, but without attaching any blame to him. In other words, the Observer largely continues to suck, and Bova as its still interim (why does he still have that tag?) editor-in-chief offers little hope for its future, IMO.

The Guardian suggests that nationally, the inflation, or inflation perception, issue was in large part due to Delaware Joe cutting off the tap too much and too quickly on COVID relief.

What happened to Colin Allred indeed?

The election, re the Texas House, did NOT eliminate Dade "Dade" Phelan from another shot at Speaker. Stay tuned.

Beside the nationwide post-election text messages to Blacks, especially men, some students at Texas State showed their own lack of enlightenment.

Texas Progressives, non political roundup

Texas A&M's regents have axed an LGBTQ+ studies minor that faculty wanted kept. I'm of multiple minds. First, this is the university that screwed Kathleen McElroy. Second, objectively, if it's low performing, then maybe it needs gone, while noting we have a short sample period. Third, given issues such as puberty blockers and "reassignment" surgery, and when appropriate and when not, wingnuts aside, maybe there was some indoctrination on the "T."

There WAS NO antisemitic pogrom in Amsterdam. There WAS the government of the Netherlands deciding to join that of the US and Israel, of course, and other longstanding liars like those of Canada and Germany. And, all of them aided and abetted by US media lies, starting with the New York Slimes.

Technically related to the election, but looking beyond it, the recently revived Border/Lines looked at what might actually play out on Trump's immigration policy. It actually looked at both Trump and Harris the day before the election, but everything it said about Trump — and about Harris and most national Democrats, for that matter, stands true. The authors note how much Dems have moved their Overton windows in the past few years, and otherwise have no actual, true "immigration policy."

Calling out other stupid Blue Anon hot takes over the election

Sounding like Ryan Grim, even though he's no longer there, per my previous post about Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski, The Intercept talked last Thursday about Rep. Rashida Tlaib and how she "bucked her leadership" and stood with her Dearborn constituents. First, on the presidential race in Dearborn, actually, fake dove Trump was first. Harris was third.

Jill Stein was second in Dearborn. Had Tlaib openly announced she was voting Green, THAT would have bucked her leadership. Unfortunately, Stein still finished third, but even the Intercept admits she got 15 percent there.

The reason I said this sounds like Grim even though he's no longer at The Intercept? Ryan himself is sometimes pretty good on investigative journalism, but he's a duopolist on electoral politics and slurps too much on AOC and the Squad Fraud, even in a book. He also slurped on Marianne Williamson a year ago. 

==

That stupidity, though, is far short of the stupidity that says Sonia Sotomayor should resign and that Biden should pull an Amy Comey Barrett and ram somebody else in. First, even less likely to be able to pull it off. Nominal Dems Yachtsman Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would revolt from the start.

That said, there's also stupidity within stupidity. I present this:

Want to blow Republicans’ minds?

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor retires.

President Biden appoints Kamala Harris to Sotomayor’s vacancy with a lame duck Democratic senate majority.

Supreme Court Justice Kamala Harris. pic.twitter.com/ivCRkG7eEJ

— Protect Kamala Harris ✊ (@DisavowTrump20) November 7, 2024

With my quote tweet.

Oh, fucking barf me. This is the most deluded #BlueAnon idea yet of all of 2024 — having Harris replace Sotomayor.
Damn, you people really WILL never learn. https://t.co/cDxkbsMA5C

— TheRealSocraticGadfly-I Voted Commie 🍉☢️🌻🌲🇵🇸 (@real_gadfly) November 7, 2024

First, Yachtsman Joe Manchin and Silly Sinema wouldn't support this, even if the GOP didn't otherwise obstruct it.

Second, "institutionalist" Joe Bidn would never propose it.

==

Oh, here's a goodie! The shitheads at NBC, lead by top non-Madcow shithead Alex Seitz-Wald, claim that Trump won so bigly that it's actually proof Kamala and the DNC didn't fuck up but that Trump's win was inevitable.

And, Seitz-Wald IS a shithead of long standing.

==

I'm still planning an actual post-mortem, but I'm going to have to wait until the #BlueAnon stupidity dies down on Shitter and elsewhere.

Librul guilt over Palestine

Abdaljawad Omar weighs in first of two pieces, at Mondoweiss. In case the "librul" doesn't tip your hat, maybe the /s that kool kids use will. Actually, it's more than snark, it's sarcasm.

After noting many possible causes for Harris' defeat, he notes that librul Democrats refuse to accept reality on Gaza as a partial cause:

But one slightly uncanny phenomenon was the fact that many liberals flocked to social media, eager to lay blame on the Palestine movement for the Democrats’ historic defeat. There some wrote vile comments accusing minorities and third-party voters of being behind the historic defeat in the presidential elections, and figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have alluded to this growing discourse on social media, where the ongoing genocide has emerged as a dominant factor in the Democratic Party’s recent loss. In her statements, AOC appears to acknowledge the relevance of the genocide to the Democrats’ defeat, yet she insists that a constellation of other factors was equally instrumental.

There you go. I've seen plenty of that on Shitter myself, made Shitter in the last few weeks by BlueAnon as much as MAGAts.

Then there's this (read the full original for more):

For these liberals, Palestine remains something peripheral, positioned at the margins of their consciousness, never a central or pressing issue. It is a reality to be acknowledged just enough to maintain the illusion of awareness. ...

In keeping Palestine “out there,” comfortably distanced, they refuse to see how this ongoing violence reverberates, how it shatters the moral architecture of the world they believe they inhabit, and how fascism returns to the imperial core with vengeance. ...

To declare that Gaza cost the Democrats the White House reveals a buried awareness of culpability. ...

In essence, the Democrats understand that their steadfast support for Israel, amid its genocidal actions in Gaza, is morally indefensible. Yet rather than face this disquieting truth or recalibrate their policies, they shift the blame outward, a gesture designed not to confront but to externalize their own failing.

There you go.

At Counterpunch, Kathleen Wallace piles on with an "I'm Sorry for your Loss" piece. She mentions Martin Niemoller, beloved of libruls, as a piece of feel-good ethics.

As for Democrats who think they own my vote? This:

I fear very much for the looming Christian Nationalism coming, but to place blame on those of us who did not give full-throated support to a genocidal campaign is to miss the point entirely. You own this shit-show, not us.

Is the bottom line, off Mondoweiss.

She adds that the loudest Democratic gnashing of teeth comes from those quietest about the genocide. She has more at her Substack, but there, has not totally done the duopoly exit, only a safe states duopoly exit.

The post-election blame game and cluelessness game, Democrat-style

The long knives started coming out, at least in private, even before polls closed Tuesday night. A lot of Obama operatives like Jim Messina had been off-put by Low-Energy Joe's campaign even before he got pushed aside. Then, when Clueless Kamala / Hollywood Harris took over, and basically, even with the problems of a short campaign, took the skeleton of Biden's campaign staff, sprinkled it with a little DNC fairy dust, went recruiting Republicans, and quite probably had a worse ground game than some #BlueAnon were alleging Trump had pre-election, that heated up.

Last Thursday, Philly DNC head Bob Brady hammered hard, and also reiterated Dementia Joe being pushed out.

Harris spox Brendan McPhillips hammered back harder:

“The Pennsylvania for Harris team knocked more than two million doors in the weekend leading up to Election Day, which is two million more doors than Bob Brady’s organization can claim to have knocked during his entire tenure as party chairman,” McPhillips wrote. “No serious person can say they have an answer to what caused nationwide trends in the electorate less than 24 hours after polls closed. If there’s any immediate takeaway from Philadelphia’s turnout this cycle, it is that Chairman Brady’s decades-long practice of fleecing campaigns for money to make up for his own lack of fundraising ability or leadership is a worthless endeavor that no future campaign should ever be forced to entertain again. The thousands of dedicated staff and volunteers on the Harris campaign should be applauded for their efforts in the face of an unprecedented campaign, and will no doubt be the ones who are going to dust themselves off and get back to work.”

Meanwhile, both Biden and Harris let more Gazans get killed, even if that wasn't a primary reason for Harris' el foldo.

Please, more of this circular firing squad. Please, enough of it that Democrats finally look at the shitty shape they're in and the self-inflicted reasons for that.

Sadly, I'll have to bet 400 quatloos that doesn't happen.

==

The two alleged party leaders won't do that, either. Biden and Harris acolytes are too busy shivving each other, and their opponents' bosses by extension. 

==

Chief shivver? Someone who knows how to wield it well, Nancy Pelosi. She blames Dementia Joe for not dropping out sooner, so that Harris, or whomever, could be primary-vetted.

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

But? Why does nobody blame Delaware Joe for breaking his one-term plan (technically not a promise) in the first place?

==

The Ax, David Axelrod, calling today's Dems a "smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party"? Gee, weren't they already moving that way when your boss, Dear Leader, was in the White House?

==

If I see one more Dem apologist, or national media pundit, say something to the effect of "Maybe American exceptionalism isn't totally true," I'm going to fucking barf. We leftists have always known that. And, your statements are pretendian, anyway; they're premised on "those" Merikkkans being not so noble, not you.

==

Ed Buckner on the cluelessness angle, flying his freak flag. You're a secularist/atheist, and supposed to be some sort of skeptic, and you think Kamala ran a good election? AND that she was "ambiguous" on Gaza? I'd already been thinking about unsubbing, and this may have been the final straw.

==

As for the future? Beyond "deep depression," Axios gets it right otherwise. A Veep who was, if not a DEI hire, someone who walked, talked and quacked halfway like one, especially after Biden promised on the campaign trail to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court? She can't be the party's leading voice and won't be. Dementia Joe won't be for obvious reasons. Dear Leader? Harris didn't listen to him; Team Biden, rightly, wrongly, or in the middle, found him and his alums to be condescending. The Slickster and Madame Hillbot? Yesterday's news, and an inflamer of the Gaza issue.

Gilberto Hinojosa walks the plank of the Texas Democrats' SS Minnow

At least for public consumption, nobody had to push the long-time executive director of the Texas Democratic Party's SS Minnow overboard; he did it on his own. As the Trib notes, the stupidity of saying Texas would break for Harris, combined with the Democratic ineptitude plus GOP inroads on the Hispanic vote being so bad that Trump won a majority of Texas Hispanics, made his position untenable. And yes, Trump ran ahead of Havana Ted Cruz, took 55 percent of Texas Hispanics (that's the term Hispanics nationally prefer, well ahead of "Latino" and WAY ahead of the laughed-at and despised "Latinx") and took 14 of 18 border counties.

His biggest failure? It's directly tied to that one failure above, and it's that Hinojosa has peddled that old "demographics is destiny" for Texas Democrats for more than a decade, as did Battleground Texas, Markos Moulitsas himself of Daily Kos and various other #BlueAnon idiots. I called bullshit back in 2013, and updated as needed. But, many Texas Dems, the type like Charles Kuffner and many who follow him at Off the Kuff, kept drinking and even peddling that Kool-Aid.

He finally faced a leadership challenge back in 2022. Sadly for the party, not only did he win, but looking ahead, both the challengers were ConservaDems of the type that make Greg Summerlin types salivate. Kim Olson, who finished No. 2, did the typical nice, polite Dem thing and didn't challenge him and fight him publicly, even as she was being anonymously shivved over an old assault allegation. No wonder he won, holding on like a South Texas jefe.

Elsewhere, the Trib looks more at this year's Texas Democrats' failures. Overall, I suspect that Texas Democrats are about as ready to learn the real lessens that are available for the learning as are national Democrats.

At the Observer, Gus Bova talks about "a lost decade"when it's actually been two now, and never mentions Hinojosa's name. True, it was a day before his resignation, but he's still the guy at fault,

Calling out decrepit "Bernie would have won" BlueAnon hot takes

The first bad hot take I saw was from Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski, at Ryan Grim's Substack. Ryan himself is often pretty good on investigative journalism, but he's a duopolist on electoral politics and slurps too much on AOC and the Squad Fraud, even in a book. He also slurped on Marianne Williamson a year ago. 

Krystal Ball is a long practitioner of this, and Kulinski? I called him out on Twitter just a week before the election. So, their "Bernie would have won" is not only probably not true, but it's also tohu wevohu. (It is an admission that "he's a Dem," though, which I've known for a coon's age.)

Besides, Ball herself is a #BlueAnon grifter outside of presidential elections. Dem Congresscritter candidate before Bernie ever ran for prez? Check. Supported school vouchers? Check. Wrote for the neoliberal Atlantic? Check. Worked for a federal contractor? Check. And shit, married to Kulinski, too. I don't follow Generation Zip Zilch Nada talking heads that much, so I didn't know that before, either. Kulinski? Worked for the semi-fraudulent pergressuve Justice Democrats. (AOC's ties to a Justice Dems-funding bankster, and her one-time chief of staff's purported Justice Dems-money laundering show that.) Calls Gaza a genocide but still duopoly-stans other than presidential races. (Both voted for Stein, despite her investments hypocrisy, rather than going further left; Kyle worked for Turn on the Love Faucets Marianne Williamson before she dropped out. In addition — and while I voted for a nominal Communist while not being one, what's "good" secular humanist Kulinski doing not only stanning for but working for New Agey nutter Williamson? Seriously, Kyle might be more full of shit than Krystal. "Secular Talk" would be more like "Secular Bullshit," or "Secular Do As I Say Not As I Do." Beyond that, she's at least as much an antivaxxer as Stein and antiunion, or she was in her past.)

To put it another way? They look like, without apparently actually being DSA Roseys (not mentioned on their Wikis), they're trying to be like DSA Roseys. If Bernie had been nominated in any of the last three presidential contests, they would have dropped Stein like a hot potato. Or, even if genocide fellow traveler Williamson had been nominated, I'm sure. Or, one step right of AccommoGreens.

So, yeah, they're BlueAnon. Maybe BlueAnon with a side of trollery, but ultimately BlueAnon. And, they're picture is in the dictionary of Peter Principle "we're not Democrats but we really are" triangulators.

First, his political stances aside, Bernie's a bad campaigner. The idea that "Bernie would have won" is nowhere near guaranteed. This sets aside his age, which would have been exposed on the rigors of a presidential campaign.

Now, the actual politics.

Bernie's a genocidalist himself, first, or at minimum, a fellow traveler. Related? He's a sheepdogger for the Israeli genocide. Related? He's signed blank checks to Israel before, then lied about it. Related? He's anti-BDS, as I noted in this post about him being a warmonger outside of his Iraq War vote.

A sheepdogger second, who sheepdogged for Biden in 2020 just a week after Dear Leader and Harry Reid shivved him, then started sheepdogging early in 2023. Also, don't forget that Bernie, no more than many other Senate Democrats (he is one) said nothing when Biden became Dementia Joe. And, what I forgot to mention in my original tweet? A warmonger in general, third, who's long had a hard-on for the F-35, a plane that John Kasich knew sucked back in 2016. That said, Bernie is also a possible nuke lover in relation to his F-35 boner.

Other foreign policy problems include being a silent backdoor supporter of our 2019 would-be Venezuelan coup. A supporter of the Hillary Clinton/Dear Leader coup in Honduras.

Other domestic problems? Yeah, he voted against the Iraq War. He voted FOR the Patriot Act.

And a gun nut lite. I won't call him a gun nut, but he is a gun nut lite. But, my kindness won't hide that this has been a long-standing issue.

Finally, tho I don't have a link anywhere within the piece, I wrote three years ago that Ball was a Tulsi Twerker, long after anybody with a brain could and should have known that she was a Hindutva-fascist, an Islamophobe (the two are tied), an opponent of wars unless they targeted Mooslims, and worse.

To sum up? Bernie probably wouldn't have won. Even if he had, he would have been in many ways, and in every way on foreign policy, Just.Another.Democrat.™ But, per the likes of myself, Ted Rall and many others, sheepdoggers Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski don't care about things like that. They care about "winnability."

If the issue is winnability? Since Ball was a Tulsi Twerker? Just nominate her in 2028.

All Wrong on the Eastern Front

With apologies, or not, to Erich Maria Remarque, this is an expanded version of the Goodreads review of my most recent World War 1 reading. And, it's being posted just before Veterans Day, for people to savor.

The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 by Nick Lloyd
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Gack!

I had some heads-up via a two-star reviewer, Elliott — who nonetheless has the wrong thing he pitches the biggest fit about in his review (Lenin almost assuredly DID order the killing of the Romanovs), and is apparently a tankie in general and also a JFK conspiracy theorist, per his overall reviews at his first link that this book might be less than fantastic. (Said tankie has been blocked, too.)

Actually, presenting itself as a "magisterial" history? It's crap and needs to be crushed.

(On the "presenting itself," I have as one my Goodreads bookshelves "touted by critics." And, even if they didn't use the word "magisterial," the idea was clearly there, with talk about how this was the most tome-like and impressive book about the Eastern Front since Norman Lloyd 50 years ago.

So, if it's not "magisterial"?

It needed to be crushed, in my opinion, especially since I got my review in before the 25-reviewer mark and was the first one-star person to give it a review, not just a rating.

And crushed it will be in the paragraphs to follow.

I knew to ding this a star for including Italian front war as part of the Eastern Front, per seeing Elliott when stumbling across this just two weeks before seeing the book in my library. And, when we get there? Any noob about WWI history can see the front moved 10 miles in two and a half years. If you have to include it? Skip to the last year.

There are many more errors right off the bat in the introduction. Serious ones. "Rookie mistakes." 

Lloyd claims Trialism was a factor in Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. Reality? He had abandoned Trialism years earlier, in part due to fears that, whether the Triad included a third crown or not, it would stir up Quadrilateralism among Czechs. Given that, even before the start of the war, the Czechs were the noisiest minority in the Austrian parliament in its half of the Ausgleich, this wasn't an idle worry.

Whether the likes of Apis realized that or not, and cared or not, I don’t know. It's cited in many histories, whether of just the June-July Days, or the war in general, as inspiration for him sending the assassins to Sarajevo. That said, the 1908-14 relationship of Ferdinand to Serbia could get a book on its own. In reality Ferdinand was often almost as Serbia-bellicose as Conrad.)

Franz Joseph’s semi-mystic comment on Ferdinand’s death, quoted on the first page of Chapter 1 has generally been seen not as generic fatalism, but his last comment about the morganatic marriage bringing the hammer of fate down upon itself. Lloyd not getting this right further reduced my confidence in him. (And, as it turns out, we're just getting started.)

I wasn’t expecting a full book about the July Days, as I’ve read both "The July Crisis" and "Sleepwalkers". I was expecting a bit more than what we're actually offered in terms of background.

The bits of analysis sprinkled throughout pages of Austrian, Russian and Italian military deficiencies, such as in medium and heavy artillery, are nice. Or “nice.” Why not more of that? I've seen more in other histories of WWI that weren't limited to the Eastern Front. And, putting all of this together in a brief early chapter, up-front, would have been a good table-setter for a book being presented as "magisterial" or similar.

The maps are decent but not great for a book whose focus is military history. (One of the reasons I five-starred Lloyd's Passchendaele book was the quality of the maps.) Some of the maps show only borders/boundaries of military action. Those that do indicate location of armies don't show boundaries between armies on either side. None of them dive below the army level to the corps level.

OK, the biggie on the big picture? You can include Italy but not the Ottoman-Russian front in Armenia? True that this was second to Mesopotamia, and eventually Northwest Arabia-Palestine. But, it was there, and definitely more Eastern than Italy. And, it’s like Lloyd’s determined to write the Ottoman Empire out of WWI history while writing in Italy. For example, the Ottomans sending troops to the Salonkia Front? Not mentioned. (And, other things listed below, and hold on to that thought.)

But, even worse?

Lloyd misses entirely that Emperor Karl was reportedly talking with Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasiç as well as the French, via his Bourbon-Parma brothers-in-law, in early 1917. This is one reference. I’ve seen others. Wiki also has this. And, it lists a source: MacKenzie, David (1995). Black Hand on Trial: Salonika 1917. (I've just submitted an interlibrary loan request to my library; the book is rare enough that, while it's listed on Yellow Satan, it isn't here. So far, it's not available, though two copies are “out there,” it seems at the Houston Public Library.)

This one is a biggie and is far less known than Karl’s talks with Britain and France via his brothers in law. In fact, it was new to me until I stumbled across it while doing some Net-searching for notes for the review. But, it’s still real. And, for a book that presents itself as a “magisterial” history of the Eastern Front? Missing this is simply not acceptable. I'm not an academic, but I found the book, and PDFs of it are available through various academic systems.

Were these talks related to Apis’ eventual treason trial? Was it, in turn, related to a possible deal at what seemed to be near the low point for Serbia in the war? Was Apis' execution, per his own Nathan Hale-like words, part of a cover-up so that Pasiç’s own pre-knowledge of Sarajevo could never be nailed down?

By this point, and also per the paragraph below? I knew we were in two-star territory, and I was entertaining one-star thoughts.

Back to other stuff missed in re the Eastern Front? Where’s the Ottoman invasion of Qajar Dynasty Iran, in part because of Russian meddling there pre-WWI, that helped cause one of the worst famines of the 20th century and led to the toppling of the dynasty, replaced by the Pahlavis? Where’s the Central Powers getting Libyan tribes not yet subdued by Italy to invade Egypt from the West? (Well, not here because Palestine and anything Ottoman is not part of the Eastern Front.)

There's also the issue of a lack of a thesis, also a biggie in what's supposed to be a “magisterial” book or the first book of its like about the Eastern Front in 50 years. (Sidebar: I've not read Stone's book, but I obviously know plenty about the Eastern Front from other WWI books; maybe Stone's wasn't so magisterial, either.)

Actually, we're missing two theses.

One is the cause of the war. And a brief (and incorrect) reference to Trialism doesn't cut the mustard. Give me one. Even if if it's something I'd instantaneously reject, like an updated version of Fritz Fischer's German war guilt, at least we have a talking point.

Second? There's no thesis on why Lloyd defined “Eastern Front” as he did, especially in light of this being volume two of a three volume set. Again, I might disagree with your thesis when you present it, but we still have a talking point.

Other missing things, that I'll try to keep short?

We get relatively little analysis of generalship, whether Lloyd's own or a derivative round-up. Tannenberg is an example. “We” all know Hindenberg and Ludendorff glory-hogged, but Lloyd doesn't discuss generalship there.

That relates to issues of audience. Is this book for a more general reader, or for somebody who is a fairly serious student of The Great War?

Other minor issues include things like calling today’s Lviv by its Austrian name of Lemberg but NOT calling Wroclaw by its then-Prussian name of Breslau. And yet, Thorn it is, not Torun. I hate inconsistency in this in any WWI book.

Finally, while not having large font with blown-out leading, like some of today's non-fiction books trying to look more impressive than they are, this book did NOT have relatively small font and leading, either. In other words, there's not enough verbiage here to consider this “magisterial,” either.

In short, again, magisterial this is not. (Had it not been touted by critics and so billed, the rating would only be two stars, and a high two at that.)

The ONLY thing new to me of note was the first use of poison, or poison-like, gas (closer to tear gas than chlorine or mustard) was on the Eastern Front, not Western.

So, while this doesn't fall in my “bs-pablum” shelf, it's still a one-star book. It's otherwise overrated.

==

How to fix this book, beyond things like better maps, more maps and the niggling city names?

First, since Lloyd had already done a Western Front book, he should have already had the idea of a MENA front book queued up. Italy’s not really MENA, but it’s closer to that than it is Eastern Front. Palestine, Mesopotamia and the minor actions go there. Armenia and Iran go in the Eastern Front book. Since a third volume is supposed to follow, that may be it. In turn, that would have made it easy to present a “cur alii, non alii” thesis for why Italy is in, the Ottomans are out, in this book's introduction.

Supposedly, this was the second of three volumes. If so, then he divided wrongly, per what I just said above. If we get into things like German meddling in Iran and even in Central Asia, hoping the Ottoman Sultan would issue a call for jihad that Muslims in the British Raj would respond to, etc., he'll have plenty for a third volume, which means that he could have put what I said above in this volume.

Second? Better maps.

Third? Volume three had better address ALL of the fighting I mentioned above, or it will get a swifter grokking and faster crushing.

View all my reviews

So, why did I get it wrong on my prediction?

Yes, I got it wrong, on my presidential prediction post last week, as Brains liked to remind me. And yes, you got it right.

Yes, I already knew in Pennsylvania especially, and somewhat in the other "blue wall" states, that her ground organization wasn't that strong. I thought Trump's was enough worse that this wouldn't be critical. I'll get to that thought more below.

I probably could have seen that shifting that Overton Window too far right, namely, in explicit campaigning with Republicans and leaning into their comments would backfire, and backfire too much to be overcome, as lackluster Democratic turnout proved.

I said in a Substack note that, despite Democrats' attempts to avoid 1968 problems, this was like 1968 — at least as far as the actual electioneering. Sadly, this DNC, even though it didn't go fully virtual, had no protests.

Anyway, Harris was kind of like Hubert Humphrey, following a one-term president who unwillingly stepped aside. Of course, the Hump had a three month head start and was at least partially vetted in primaries. And, as Jeff St. Clair notes, unlike the Hump with LBJ, she never even tried to separate herself from Biden. (Scarily, he may be right that Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro — IF he's re-elected in 2026 —becomes a 2028 Democratic favorite.) And, as I already knew, per Sy Hersh, the Hump was a better Veep, and a better retail politician in general. Harris couldn't even see the need to break free from Biden.

Obama at least had the additional excuse of appointing someone older, Whiter, and being perceived as more establishmentarian, to try to defuse at least bits of the “angry Black man” meme that some Democrats, as well as many Republicans, may have had in 2008.

What Biden thought Harris offered the ticket, of any 2020 Democratic candidate, whether those who stayed in primaries or those like Harris who dropped out early, I have no idea. Harris may not have been a “DEI candidate, but, IMO, the perception was going to be there, along with Biden’s other pledges, such as that he would nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.

I read about Elon Musk's GOTV work and no on-the-ground staff, allegedly. Binoy Kampmark said that The Pustulence Scott Presler actually did some stuff. And, per the second paragraph from the top, Mike Elk was among the people who missed this, and he lives in Pennsylvania, which is where Elk is from. So, Mike, YOU blew it. Great labor reporter, but you veered into cheerleading on election-specific posts. I saw that at the time, on the cheerleading, and probably, because of that, should have been more skeptical about your eyesight otherwise. (Update: Elk NOW links to a Latino vote split post-mortem, but still hasn't offered his own Pennsylvania analysis. And, no, requiring white-collar journalists in office five days a week isn't union-busting. https://paydayreport.com/bezos-cracks-down-on-washpost-union-key-western-pa-county-improves-dem-dems-soul-search-on-latino-voters/

For that matter, Klippenstein dropped a piece after voting for the lesser evilism half of the duopoly. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, which, like Pennsylvania, flipped because of her crappy campaign.

Otherwise? Per your piece, Brains?

You don't think it was the genocide, do you? Nah. Must've been something else, like resentful Black men or sexists/misogynists in general or maybe it was Joe Biden, the most progressive president since FDR, not stepping aside soon enough. It probably wasn't affordable healthcare or the economy or climate change, of course. I'm sure the autopsies performed by the Democratic braintrust will figure it out in the coming days. Or weeks. Or months.

Other than Michigan, no, Gaza probably didn't crush her campaign. Sadly,  no. Maybe you think I'm cynical with such a thought. No, that's just skepticism, from where I stand. Most Americans don't give a fuck about most the rest of the world. I've been called cynical before, when I was just practicing good skepticism.

That said, per the likes of Samra'a Luqman, it appears to have brought a new round of Bernie ⇒ Trump voters, for different reasons than 2016. (I knew then that they were less than PUMA ⇒ McCain voters in 2008; not sure what this year's numbers will say, if anybody even parses them.) As I said there, though, I still perceive people doing this, rather than Bernie ⇒ Stein, as people cutting off their nose to spite their face. In that case, schadenfreude is a bitch and that poisoned chalice is yours. You did vote for Trump, rather than a third-party candidate and Democrats’ lies that you voted for Trump.

Other than the general Overton Window? James Carville, who tried to peddle his snake oil, and yes, I'll admit, may have gotten me to stare at the bottle, though not actually drink, said 32 years ago, "It's the economy, stupid." And, no, the economy isn't as good in many place as some talking heads say. 

As for Biden being the most progressive president since FDR? For all his faults on Vietnam, and other things, no, I'll still take LBJ. We can agree to disagree. Or just disagree. To be honest, I'm surprised you think that. I really am.

Let's take the Inflation Reduction Act. Two years ago, my town was on the list for the first year's buildout of electric vehicle charging stations after the Federal Highway Administration approved TxDOT's buildout plan. Two years later, there's not even been a site chosen, let alone a contract let. And, Brains, you know that the Dems' Green New Deal is pretendian, and that Biden has been letting NEW oil and gas leases offshore as well as on land since then. No federal protection for Roe in the pre-Dobbs first two years of his admin. No minimum wage hike, etc etc.

I should maybe have thought about Harris' support among working-class Black men, since they started to question Dear Leader at his second election run in 2012, as I noted a month ago.

But? I also called you out on Twitter.

You voted for an investments hypocrite. She is, and she was eight years ago, and the hypocrisy is made worse over Gaza. You were wrong then, and you're wrong now. And, we won't relitigate that here. Suffice it to say that, even though I'm not a Commie, that's part of why I voted for one. (The fact that everything leading up to Stein being a three-time retread shows the GP is past its best-buy date is another. Let me know if the party avoids a nominee who plays footsie with antivaxxers in 2028; ditto for Texas Greens not nominating another antivaxxer fellow traveler in 2026, while I'm there.)

Top blogging of October

Contra what is normally the case, all of the most-popular posts from October were FROM October.

Also, as you might expect, many of these posts are election-related.

So, let's dig in.

No. 10? Kind of indirectly election-related, as a federal judge said Texas AG Ken Paxton's use of an old state statute is unconstitutional. Paxton had been using this to harass out-of-state hospitals over certain types of childhood medical treatment for which this non-twosider has not yet thought of an appropriate term in his own Wittgensteinian linguistic world.

No. 9? "Fucking Donald Trump is why I'm no longer on Twitter" was written a day or two before Elmo Musk has his goons restore Ken Klippenstein, then me. Definitely election-related.

No. 8 is about Robert Roberson getting justice — for now, even as Kenny Boy keeps fighting legiscritters.

No. 7 is related to an election — that of 2012. It's about how many Black men saw through Dear Leader in his re-election campaign.

No. 6? I called out "pergressuve" blogger Charles Kuffner for practicing election disinformation when he said that write-in candidates aren't on the ballot.

Fifth? Counterpunch further lost me (it had been losing me before that) with leaning into anti-BDSer / pro-duopolist Noam Chomsky and lesser evilism endorser Ralph Nader. (I noted as part of this all of Nader's laundry list of problems along with why I think Jeff St. Clair ignores those issues.)

No. 4? My third-party roundup of Oct. 12 may have been popularized by Cort Greene's voluminous butt-hurt commenting. Fire away again!

No. 3 is sadly and disgustingly indirectly tied to the U.S. election. It's my thoughts on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023 in Gaza and beyond.

No. 2? I did a thorough takedown of butt-hurt editorial page staffers at the LA Times and Washington Post over their owners' refusal to let them write a presidential endorsement editorial. In a spin-off follow-up, I noted this was kabuki theater because these endorsements would have been out of date anyway.

No. 1? Voters of Tomorrow is indeed full of shits and sellouts.

Some non-twosider election wrap thoughts, starting with third parties

Cross-posted in moderately shorter version at Substack.

Per the header, and per my voting, we’re going to start at looking at the two third parties in America, the Greens and Libertarians. (Per my verbiage, and that of at least some political scientists, the other parties are “minor parties.”)

And we’re going to start with that subhed.

I’ve not seen the national numbers yet, but here in Texas, yes, the Libertarian party imploded indeed.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein finished ahead of the Libertarian nominee, Chase Oliver. Yes, you read that right.

Stein took 0.73 percent to Oliver's 0.6 percent.

In 2020, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen took 1.12 percent in Texas to Howie Hawkins’ 0.30 percent. The ratio was the same in 2016, and in 2012, with both parties much higher in 2016 because it wasn’t in the middle of COVID, which hurt third parties and minor parties, and it wasn’t apocalyptically shaded by both duopoly parties.

Then, it was 3.16 percent for Gary Johnson vs 0.80 percent for Stein. In 2012, without many voters thinking Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were as crappy as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, it was 1.1 percent Johnson, 0.3 percent Stein, here in Texas.

Average 2012 and 2016 and you get 0.55 percent. Stein outperformed that, despite being a three-time retread with investment ethics problems. Side note: Yes, she whiffed on not knowing the exact number of Members of Congress. And? AOC constitutionally whiffed on wanting to cut Congresscritter pay during a shutdown. Take that, #BlueAnon.

Do that same averaging for Libertarians and you’re at 2.13 percent. Oliver MASSIVELY underperformed that.

I suspect the Mises Mice cuck-up in the Libertarian Party has borne fruit. I have yet to see national numbers, but, I have another state number to reflect that.

Here in Texas, the Greens had just one statewide candidate besides Stein. Eddie Espinoza was running for a spot on the Railroad Commission of Texas. Libertarians also had a candidate, Hawk Dunlap.

Both finished well ahead of their parties’ presidential nominees, but the main comparative takeaway is that Espinoza had 2.75 percent to Dunlap’s 2.6 percent.

The second main takeaway is that, under the stipulations of a 2021 Texas Legislature bill pushed by state Sen. Drew Springer, that requires third parties to break 2 percent in a statewide vote once every five cycles to keep statewide ballot access, Greens, instead of facing a do-or-die in 2026, are now good through 2032.

Will they get a better gubernatorial candidate in 2026? That remains to be seen. They had Brandon Parmer the non-candidate in 2014, ran nobody in 2018, and had gun nut, antivaxxer and more Delilah Barrios in 2022. (I think I held my nose and voted Parmer in 2014; with no Green, I undervoted in 2018; I undervoted in 2022.)

For that matter, will the GP national get a better presidential candidate in 2028? The list of candidates a year ago, at the time the party recruited Cornel West, sucked canal water. (And, given the reality of Cornel West, that “sucked canal water” includes him.) Before Stein bit the bullet / decided to pay off 2016 FEC-incurred debt, and after West stepped aside, no “names” like Margaret Flowers or Matthew Hoh stepped forward.

Nationally, confirming possible LP meltdown? At Ballot Access News, Winger says the Georgia LP lost state ballot access, falling below 1 percent on the presidential vote. (To be clear, that's 1 percent of actual voters in a presidential election, not 1 percent of registered voters.) Let us not forget that Chase Oliver is FROM Georgia. And, as part of that, let us note that Stein was nearly even with Oliver there. Considering the old Georgia GP getting the boot after 2020, and related issues, for these results to have Oliver at just 0.39 percent, and Stein to be close at 0.35 percent? Horrible, on the Libertarian side. 

Here in Tex-ass, maybe legacy media focusing on Stein gave her a boost. But, in Georgia, a swing state and the post-2020 fallout I noted? No, that's on the LP. That's implosion.

Also, as mentioned in an email discussion with Jordan from IPR? The Libertarian Party's national convention flirtation with Trump probably contributed to the implosion. While it may not have been totally driven by the Mises Mice, it certainly was in part. The New Hampshire LP's early-on actual endorsement of Trump was also an underminer. All the other shenanigans, both by LP National's board and by some state parties, after the convention only added to this. (I will have a follow-up whenever Wikipedia or somebody likes that gets us the nationwide third-party vote count so I can compare to 2020 and 2016.)

I can't help but think that, even though they didn't do as I thought and run a presidential candidate in states where they had a party line ballot access, either directly or indirectly, that the newly formed Liberal Party has plenty of room to build.

Update, Nov. 18: Wikipedia doesn't yet have a state-by state breakout, but with 98 percent of the estimated national vote counted as of this time, we can confirm a Libertarian implosion, per Wikipedia's 2024 presidential election page when contrasted with its 2020 page. Oliver got ONE-THIRD of what Jo Jorgenson got in 2020. And, within this election, he only got 80 percent of Stein's numbers.

As for why? It's of course speculation on the Mises Mice angle. But, it's reasonable and informed speculation based on everything that happened at the LP national convention and after. That includes the Trump dalliance by the Mice at the convention and after, the similar dalliance with Brainworm Bobby, state parties dumping Oliver from their states' presidential ballots and more.

Again, I can't think but that the Liberal Party has room to grow.

Emailing some sites, Richard Winger responded to me from Ballot-Access News. His only comment was to clarify/correct hat for ballot access, Georgia law is 1 percent of registered voters, not 1 percent of people voting in a particular election. (I have clarified, but, Richard chose not to comment on Libertarian turnout and support issues other than to say the LP plans on addressing ballot access issue for the next election.)

Update, Nov. 22: More Greens than Libertarians, 20 versus 18, won nonpartisan elections, per Winger.

==

To the duopoly-focused side now.

There will be a separate piece on the “blame game” for Democrats at the national level coming up.  Various Democratic intelligentsia are already talking about some failures (and unsheathing long knives for internecine warfare in some cases), while ignoring a whole set of more obvious failures.

One observation, from a note I posted last night, to whet the appetite on that?

One interesting issue is that this election WAS like 1968 in many ways, despite Dems trying to avoid a Chicago repeat. (It’s too bad there weren’t actual protests this time around when Harris and the DNC stiffed Palestinian supporters.)

You have a sitting Veep trying to succeed a one-term Prez who stepped down less than willfully, with the Veep not removing themselves from the president’s shadow. That said, Harris more willingly stayed in line with Biden than Humphrey did with LBJ. That also said, other things aside, the Hump was a better candidate.

Three other observations?

First, Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys, discussed in my busted prediction of last Saturday, is officially garbage. That said, he’s repeatedly claimed that he actually got 2000 right but Bush v Gore made him wrong. However, he refuses to admit that only the Electoral College made him right in 2016. So, in reality? From 2000-2024, he has a half-right, three rights, a half-right, a right and a wrong. That makes him five for seven.

Second, that Des Moines Register poll claiming Harris was up 3 points among likely voters in Iowa? Obviously, it was totally broken. Interestingly, in multiple “red” states, including Religious Right, but not libertarian, red-state Missouri, abortion protection state constitutional amendments and referendums PASSED. And, support for these issues translated not one bit into support for Harris or state-level statewide Democratic candidates. This type of ticket-splitting, voting for the party that put you in the position where you pass a referendum to contain them? Innnnteresting. Update: NPR talks to a few of these "ticket-splitters."

Pollster J. Ann Selzer said "I'll be reviewing data" after that total bust. She does note what I noted in my busted prediction, that she had neither candidate above 50 percent.

Also, per a number of other pollsters, at this Beeb piece, Selzer doesn't do any "modeling," other than polling likely voters. Had I known that, I would have been more skeptical when I first saw it.

Third? People who I didn’t think would go in BlueAnon attack mode have. I originally was going to run that as part of the cross-post at Substack, just like the first sentence in this paragraph, then thought of an ellipsis-truncated version, then ran nothing. Here, I'm running it, but adding the name of Ken Silverstein.

Fourth? Lots of commenters at Kuff are in denialism about Gaza. And, ConservaDems like Greg Summerlin are just nutters in general. No, Greg, there's no need to comment here any more; I refudiated all your past wrongness.

Ken Paxton trying to cut off Robert Roberson completely

Kenny Boy's latest? Rather than telling it to accept video testimony rather than an in-person meeting, it's pushing the House Jurisprudence Committee to accept no testimony at all. Per that piece, it's "amazing" the selective memory Paxton has for the state's disciplinary rules of professional conduct.

Here's my writing about its initial subpoena intervention.

The Trib has a primer on Robert Roberson's case history.

And another reason to be frustrated with Claudia de la Cruz

If I had wanted to vote for investments hypocrite Jill Stein instead of the Party for Socialism and Liberation's de la Cruz, as I actually did, I would have done so — I would have voted Stein instead.

Now, I see on Shitter that last week (way too late for early voters), her campaign called for an unofficial fusion with Stein's in some states and Cornel West's (gack!) in others.

I told her last night that if she's the PSL's nominee in 2028, she's not getting my vote. This is the last straw in several.

The worst previous straw was her refusing to attend a third-party presidential debate in Los Angeles, to which she had been invited. She would have had to pay airfare from NYC and a hotel, as well as get a day or two off work. But, that would have been it. IMO, it would have been a big visibility boost to the party. But, she didn't show. 

If this were a parliamentary government, we could talk about pre-election fusion for legislative seats. (We still can, in the US.) We could talk about coalitioning in such a parliament after elections. (Independents do that in the US House and Senate.)

But, in a strong-presidential system, even if you admit you're a "spoiler," no, you run as yourself.

Texas Progressives have last election thoughts

Kenny Boy Paxton, having lost this year, is already teeing up a new lawsuit for 2025, suing the State Fair for its gun ban, and has private plaintiffs with him this time.

The Texas GOP killed Nevaeh Crain, IMO. That said, national Democrats, in years when they controlled Congress and Clinton, Obama or Biden was president, assisted to some degree by not doing more for federal legal protection.

The RRC wants $100 million from the Lege to tackle blowouts. That's a drop in the bucket.

Tarrant GOP head Bo French is even nuttier than its county judge.

What "foreign adversaries" are trying to buy ranchland in the Big Bend area, Lindsay Dawn Buckingham?

"Shock me" not just that state Sen. Phil King is in bed with Oncor, but how deeply he's in bed.

Shitter is coming to Tex-ass with its headquarters, and like everything else Elmo Musk has done with the company, that looks like it will look like shit.

Off the Kuff contemplates a blue Tarrant County, now and in 2026. (Contra Kuff, IMO this is Beto's fault.)

SocraticGadfly looks at the Muslim-American and Arab-American election break points.

 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said with the election at hand, know your rights as a protester. The First Amendment is your permit to protest.

 

The Current reports on a small town candidate for City Council who got harassed for being a burlesque performer.

 

The Texas Signal looks back at that classic movie celebrating fifty years, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

 

Texas 2036 is all about investing in the state's water resources. 

 

 Lone Star Left relates the spooky tale of an old unsolved murder. 

 

Raise Your Hand Texas advises teachers how they can get involved in the upcoming legislative session.

A few last pre-election tidbits

The Texas GOP is determined to use immigration bullshit as a hammer to "turn Texas red" in border counties. The Trib and ProPublica have the details from Val Verde County (Del Rio). The Observer looks at larger border politics battles in Cameron County. Isn't that the base of TDP head Gilberto Hinojosa? It also looks Hudspeth County, outside of elections, where the GOP incumbent is pushing back on some nuttery but not all, and other border-county sheriffs.

Even Danny Goeb refudiates Lara Trump and her lies that Tex-ass voting machines are flipping votes.

A&M International student who is relatively uninvolved in local politics (and not a US citizen anyway) gets butt-hurt that Webb County wouldn't make the university a voting site.

T for Texas and T for trans? Anti-trans ads look like Havana Ted Cruz's preferred path to victory. And yes, per the Observer, he's likely to win.

Exclusive! Apparent transcript of Trump's vetting interview of JD Vance

It seems incredible, just 48 hours before Election Day, but, we've received an anonymous copy of what purports to be a transcript of Donald Trump interviewing J.D. Vance before offering him the vice-presidential nomination.

This is NOT the Vance background check dossier, allegedly hacked by Iran, distributed to news media around the country and eventually published by Ken Klippenstein.

No, this is — purportedy — Trump interviewing Vance for the vice-presidential nomination. The transcript is unedited, other than putting Trump's words in italics.

“Usha? Yeah, she’s a Sambo, Mr. President. But, that’s OK. She’s good to me, and she knows her place. You know, they’re as smart as a whip, like darker-skinned Jews ...

"Boy, you got that right. Like my son-in-law. Scary. You'd almost think he's my son, but maybe he got some of that from osmosis with Ivanka. Besides, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull a con on a real con man."

... Or like Chinese without the slant eyes. Like Amy Chua. She was smart enough to see that Usha would be an Indian Tiger wife for me.” 

“You’re right, JD. On those Chinese? That Xi Jinping? Almost as smart as me. People who get lots of power do it only by being smart. Hitler was almost as smart as me.”

“Well, the Indians are Aryans, Mr. President.”

“That, what’s his name, Mode?”

“Do you mean Modi, Mr. President?”

“Yes, that’s it, just like I said.

“Smart as a whip. Some people would call him a fascist, I guess. I just think he’s good at keeping Muslims in control. Maybe he’ll build a wall with Pakistan. Wouldn’t be as beautiful as mine, but it might be OK.”

“You know who’s really smart?”

“Besides me? Putin. We talked about it.”

“It’s amazing how many people underestimate him, just like you get underestimated, Mr. President.”

“You got that right.”

“Thank you.”

“Speaking of Indians, why isn’t Commala as smart as a whip? Did her Black genes overwhelm her Indian genes?”

“Boy, that’s a good guess, Mr. President. A good guess indeed.”

"You know, the smart ones know their place. Like Ben Carson at that debate. He knew to wait for me. Or that Donald guy. Not Donald Duck but ... "

"You mean Mr. Donalds? The Congressman?"

"Yes, that's it. Knows who he is and what his place and role is."

"Mr. President, once again, your analysis of people, and how smart people work around you and fit in with you, is impeccable."

“Vance, that’s why I like you and want to offer you this job. You think like me.”

“Mr. President, I’m sorry I wasn’t smart enough to do that in 2016. I’m glad I am now.

“And? You name it, and I’m your point man. Single women, cats, immigration, how immigrants feel about cats? I’ll be on it.”

“You’re my kind of guy, unlike that weasel Pence that some of the Religious Right talked me into.

“And, one final thing.”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“You’re in the Senate, right? Whatever needs to be done on Jan. 6, 2025, to make sure all those electoral votes are counted correctly, and there’s no Democratic steal, I’m counting on you.”

“I’ll do what needs to be done.”