Peter Noone is a Democrat? :eek:
Anyone else think that Congress should refuse to seat Gianforte because of the assault?
Anyone think the R’s will have no problem seating this criminal?
The only reason to spend gobs of money in losing causes is if you believe that there is some future benefit doing so creates for you. I’ll believe it when I see it.
I think that the Democrats should be using contributions not for Don Quixote quests, but rather to start shoring up the underlying infrastructure and to start creating an inroad in the public consciousness in “red” areas that Democrats actually offer a valid alternative to Republicans. For example, where I live (in South Carolina’s Representative District 5, currently undergoing an election process to replace Mick Mulvaney), Democrats are so far the also-rans that the state party has almost given up bothering to gain votes from the traditional Republican constituencies. 58 of the 124 seats in the House of Representatives were uncontested by Democrats; Republicans control 80 seats after the election, so that was 72.5% of the seats now held by Republicans. That’s just plain silly. It concedes to the Republicans a huge advantage in state politics. It’s the political equivalent of throwing in the towel.
(In fairness, 34 of the 44 seats Democrats won were uncontested by Republicans, which is an even higher percentage. But Republicans are in control, so it’s not like they are needing to contest seats held by Democrats. Further, they drew those seats to be strongly Democratic, so one can understand why they might not bother. :rolleyes:)
But I keep reading in the news, online, and on this Message Board all sorts of Democratic hype for their chances of recovering the political ground they have given up since 2008 because of what they perceive as generalized public discontent with President Trump and the Republican-led Congress. While I don’t discount that some such unhappiness exists, I believe that the effect is over-dramatized. I think the fact that none of these supposedly competitive races is ending up truly competitive (with the exception of the Kansas race, possibly) is an indication that it is going to take a whole lot more than just pouring money into various disconnected by-elections in the hopes of snagging some victory. Indeed, the more that they lose after doing so, the more impotent the Democratic Party looks nationally.
Ok, now let’s get serious. The guy attacked another person. Things like that happen all the time in America. He’s charged with a misdemeanor offense, and he’s apologized.
The Democratic Party refused to remove from the office of President a man who was a serial philanderer with women, who had most probably engaged in what might be termed “unwanted advances” in the best (to him) light, and who had apparently attempted to subvert the investigative process into his behavior. Under the circumstances (and without even trying to go find examples of Democratic Party candidates seated in various state or national legislatures who had committed various potential crimes), the Democratic Party is hardly capable of claiming that a guy who got into a fight with a reporter shouldn’t be seated. :dubious:
In 2009/10 the Republicans lost 7 straight special elections for the House, and won another because there were two Democrats who each pulled about 30%, allowing the Republican to run up the middle, so to speak. We all know how the 2010 midterms turned out.
The reason these special elections exist is because a Republican won the White House, and picked friendly people to appoint to cabinet. Of course they exist in Republican-leaning or strong-Republican districts. Some of those Democratic wins in 2009/10 were by margins that should have alerted people that something was up, relative to the same district in 2008.
Yes, in politics, a win is a win. But not every playing field is even. And if Republicans want to think that nothing’s going on when Democratic candidates are making safe districts competitive just because they still won them - well, I won’t stop them.
In 1995, Democrat Jim Moran punched a congressional colleague.
The D’s had no problem seating Moran in 1996, again in 1998, again in 2000, again in 2002, and again in 2004, 2006, and 2008, also in 2010.
Anyone else think anything else about that?
Can’t recall that I did. But in 1995, on a 1200 baud connection, “the Internet” didn’t mean much more than email, and the Bristol Herald-Courier probably didn’t give it much coverage.
So it’s hard to compare reactions to more or less equivalent outrages then and now.
The shared benefit would be involvement, resulting from a sense of common cause between the newly-activist grassroots and the Democratic Party. And a benefit for the Democratic Party organizations would be a more well-stocked war chest for 2018.
Well, this too. In general, the first step to winning is showing up. And if the Dems want to be active at the local level in places like SC-5, I’m sure there’s people in SC-5 who would be showing up at those town halls if you had a Congresscritter at present. How do you get them involved? Because if you don’t, you’ve got nothing. The party gets them involved by showing them that they’re on the same page, by fighting the battles that the grassroots would like to see them fight.
A Democratic Party that doesn’t bother to fight in the first place looks a hell of a lot more impotent than a Democratic Party that fights and loses.
In America as a whole, sure. People get into bar fights and stuff.
But this is a guy who wants to represent the million people of Montana in Congress. People like that don’t engage in fisticuffs all the time in America.
What’s more, this is a guy who’s been threatening reporters in a barely-joking way already during his campaign. In a season where his party leader frequently characterized the press as an enemy.
Yeah, bare-bones apology not even mentioning what he’d done, after the election was over and it was safe to do so. Fuck him.
Funny how you and Bricker have to reach back two decades to discredit the Democrats of today. You know it is 2017, right? And these incidents you’re talking about happened 20+ years ago?
And you should expect that the reaction of people at the time, after watching the GOP and an exceedingly partisan special prosecutor try to blow up every little damn thing (Travelgate! Filegate! Pork bellies!) into a major scandal, that by 1998 it was the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. (And the GOP did their damnedest for a repeat with Obama, trying to make impeachment-worthy scandals out of Solyndra, Fast and Furious, and of course Benghazi!. Fortunately, Obama could see that one coming a mile off, and ran the most scrupulously clean Administration of my lifetime. Not even a Sherman Adams.) So if you’re looking for the party that lacks credibility on such matters, it’s the GOP. They might want to save their powder for actual bad shit, instead of pretending bullshit nonsense is a devastating scandal.
From 2004:
And, crickets chirping.
So explain why the people of Montana shouldn’t be allowed to have this man as their representative? Remember, the argument here is not that he shouldn’t have won, but that he shouldn’t be seated, having already won. To refuse to seat him, you have to argue, do you not, that what he has done is so heinous that it would be inherently wrong of the House to let him be a Representative, even though he has won election.
Is there some gold-touch standard for the type of apology that should be given in order to avoid your determination not to seat someone who’s made an error? Again, we’re talking about not seating an elected person…
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Has the Democratic Party ever taken ownership of the fact that they didn’t do anything about what President Clinton did? Do you think that the Democratic Party now believes the President should have been removed from office for what he did? I have not seen them do so, nor do I think they so believe now; hence the fact they didn’t act to have him removed in 1998 is not somehow now irrelevant.
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Do you think the Democratic Party would respond differently today if they were confronted with a call to remove from office a politician who had done what President Clinton did, even if we remove the attendant sideshow? If you do not (I certainly don’t), then again, the comment I made remains pertinent. It shows that what is going on is keeping a Republican politician from taking his seat because of something that the electorate deemed irrelevant enough to still vote for him. It’s nothing more than a partisan call, not a principled take on when a Representative should be refused a seat in the House.
Wikipedia has lists for all sorts of things including a List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes.
Amazingly enough not all convicted Congressional members were kicked out of Congress or refused a seat following their elections. Just amazing!
</sarcasm>
Since this is yet another election that a candidate supported by Bernie Sanders has lost, perhaps Mr. Sanders should understand that his 15 minutes are up and he should retreat back into being a never-Democrat Independent Senator from his small state of Vermont.
Is there any video of the incident? I am coming up short in searching which leads me to believe there isn’t.
So far as I know, there is not; there is, however, audio of most of it.
The CNN article has a different take.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/27/elec04.prez.democrats.larouche/
Maybe the post is being a bit inflammatory?
Now that I’m at a computer (instead of mobile) I can cite the relevant passage:
I think you’ll agree that this isn’t the same thing as a political candidate attacking a journalist out of nowhere for asking a perfectly reasonable question, right?
I’ll agree that an assault is an assault.
Let it be known that RTFirefly has settled the bet and is a virtuous and excellent Straight-Doper in general good standing, internet-wise.