272…A Long Day
So I thought I might just share a few things worth reading that I saw today, and a little bit of Convict Joe news.
First up is an article from Brian Beutler, the EIC for Crooked.com, the written arm of the Crooked Media empire. In Boycotting Republicans Isn’t Enough, he makes the argument that not only do we need to defeat Republicans at the ballot box, but we need to take a page from their playbook. If we can take back the Congress, then we must be more aggressive than we have been in the past. Because Democrats believe in governance and compromise as an innate part of how to run a government, when we take control we tend to look to make peace and invite Republicans to the table. When Republicans take power they punish Democrats for having had the temerity to win an election. We don’t have to go full on authoritarian like Republicans have, but for more than 20 years the fight has been so asymmetrical that Democrats will have to fight back much more strongly than we have in the past. We will need to hold commissions examining how everything we’ve seen in the past year happened. We’ll need to hold people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to a public accounting of their deeds over the last decade.
It reminds me of an unattributed quote I read recently. “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” If we have the opportunity we need to make Republicans feel oppressed without actually oppressing them.
The second piece I read was essentially a much more eloquent stating of the second half of my piece from yesterday, in which I made the case that all of attempted changes to immigration from the President, John “Spousal Abuse Apologist” Kelly, and the rest are not about national security, or the economy, but are about plain, simple racism.
In Philip Bump’s piece in the Washington Post from yesterday he offers a step by step explanation of how family reunification (I’m not going to use the Frank Luntzian term for it) works, and how the way the White House has been selling it is a load of garbage. It’s a little long, but definitely worth the read.
Finally, our good buddy Convict Joe had an appearance at the Saddlebrooke Republican Club today, and my window into Tucson politics for the time being, Joe Ferguson was there live tweeting it. Go take a look. It’s remarkable for the lack of batshit crazy in it.
