Stevens was still telling people she was endorsing Al-Sayed hours before she wasn’t. I’m really suspecting there is some sort of coercion or blackmail going on here.
If I said “reasonable”, that’s probably going too far. Maybe “understandable”. What I really mean is “not evil or utterly batshit insane”, as compared to voting for the Republican (which would be).
Nate Sliver’s penultimate model shows an 81.5% chance of the Dems taking the Senate with the two most likely outcomes being 53 or 54 seats. This is a high water mark. He’ll run one more model at around midnight (EST?).
(The House is at 96.4%)
What? Do you mean that she was telling people that she was staying out of it until hours before she endorsed Rogers, which is a claim I’ve seen? Or is this a new claim?
54 Democratic seats would be the best of the realistic outcomes here, since it means a check on Trump, no realistic path for Republicans to pursue a deadlock by convincing anyone to switch parties, and no ability for Sayed to hold the coalition hostage to his agenda.
Hey, Nate and I think alike!
What agenda is that?
Pro Constitution? Anti-corruption? Better health care, lower infant mortality?
Guesses to which race will be the thinnest margin decision?
I’m going with South Carolina being the closest and hoping of course it is a D win.
Yeah SC or Nebraska, with an outside shot of Florida.
I think it will be Iowa. Relatively strong Republican candidate and the polling has all been in the tossup range.
I agree. Iowa is the difference between 53 seats and 54 seats imo. And I think it’s gonna be close there.
Reportedly, she told Debbie Dingell at about midnight Sunday that she stood by her statements about Rogers being completely unacceptable. So either she’d been lying to her colleagues for some time or her opinion radically changed within a few hours for some reason. (Or Debbie Dingell is lying, but I don’t think that’s it)
Here is the Dingell interview with CNN. At about the 6:48 mark, Dingell says “I don’t know what changed between late Saturday and Sunday morning.”
AES has apparently had a record fundraising day due to Stevens’ betrayal. Way to go Haley!
I am floored by this. It’s one thing not to endorse a candidate, another thing altogether to endorse a candidate that is actively dismantling core tenets of democracy.
I didn’t vote for Stevens in the primary because she supported unlimited, no-strings-attached funding for the Israeli government.
But I feel like a lot of Michigan voters had a forced choice this year between two relative extremes. I don’t think of El-Sayed as all that extremist but he’s definitely left of center. And Haley was obviously right of center. And both had strong opinions about either side of the Israel/Palestine debate. So I feel like it was framed very much as a choice between supporting Israeli genocide and supporting Hamas terrorists. How can you feel good about either if you have any doubts?
The bigoted ads against El-Sayed have been sickening.
This is going to be a white-knuckles election. There’s also a proposal on the ballot to completely rewrite the Michigan constitution. I’m pretty sure that’s because Michigan voters voted to enshrine reproductive rights into the constitution, by a pretty hefty majority. So they are trying to do an end-run around the will of the people. I really hope Michiganders see it for what it is.
It’s actually less nefarious than this. Written into the Michigan state constitution in 1850, every 16 years, Michigan voters are presented with the option to convene a constitutional convention. It never goes over well, and I believe both Democratic and Republican parties are urging a No vote this year.
Oh, that’s good. I assumed the worst. Hopefully it will fail.
I really encourage reading this transcript of Anderson Cooper’s interview with Stevens. It’s an incredible act of political self-immolation.
Some highlights:
But you were willing to be at a campaign event for him. You wanted to be at a public event with him up until some point, I guess, yesterday.
And it’s just an interesting change, and I think a lot of people are curious to try to understand it.
STEVENS: Was that a question, Anderson, or—
COOPER: No. I wanted to see if you wanted to fill in the silence, but you don’t.
STEVENS: Oh, look, yeah.
Look, Michiganders are going to the ballot box, all right?
There’s over a million people who have already voted, more to go, and I’ve made my—
COOPER: Can I just—one last clarification?
You did speak with Congresswoman Debbie Dingell last night, maybe not at midnight, sometime last night.
And you did tell her you were not doing this.
And you told other people you would be at the church service with Clyburn.
You told Debbie Dingell you were not going to do this.
Is that correct? Last night, at some point?
STEVENS: Anderson, that is nice editorializing and nice bits of information about speaking about what’s going on with Michigan.
I’m giving you the courtesy of saying an opportunity to go to a church service and have a prayerful moment.
It was Sunday. It was very beautiful.
It was about friendship, of which I have many incredible friends in the Democratic Party, and I care a lot about them.
AES refuses to hedge on trans rights, LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, etc., in an interview with Ross Douthat:
That transcript doesn’t capture Haley’s really long, uncomfortable silences as she struggled to formulate the words to say. It was brutal to watch. Too bad she doesn’t have a staff that can help her prep for media appearances any more.