SOTU

Highlites

Oh my god Katie Britt actually wore the Serena Joy outfit for her State of the Handmaid’s Tale. I’m dying. pic.twitter.com/hGJ8GGUopF

— Chad Chavez (ChadC.bsky.social) (@ChadAChavez) March 8, 2024

Some of the Press Poodles got it about right:

Then there's NYT:

And never mind that the lede paragraph

began with "Biden did great, and then

the GOP sent out this fuckin' loon."

(I may have paraphrased a little)

I encourage everyone to watch this, but you're going to need a stiff drink and a subdued gag reflex.

All it needs is the Sarah McGlachlan music in the background.

Today's Takedown

A TikTok-er has a message for Ms Boebert via YouTube.

WTF, Mitch?

Mitch McConnell is a lot of bad things - dumb is not one of them.

But he'd have to be pretty dumb to endorse Lord Commander Apricot at a time when Trump can't really do anything to hurt him if he doesn't.

McConnell has announced that he'll be stepping down from his leadership position, and it's more than just a bit likely that he'll be out of politics altogether pretty soon. So - WTF, Mitch?

I think maybe Mitch knows (or is confident) that Trump's going down in flames this year, so he's being cagey and strategic. He'll endorse Trump as a seeming gesture for "party unity", so that when Trump does crash-n-burn, the old guard Republicans can reclaim what's left of the GOP, and resume the plutocracy project in their usual, sneaky, underhanded, fuckery-dependent way.

Or, he's just bailing on another chance to be a leader - same as he's done before - hoping the voters will do his dirty work for him.

Just a wild guess.

Today's Today

"Bloody Sunday"

On March 7, 1965, an estimated 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed southeast out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. The march was led by John Lewis of SNCC and the Reverend Hosea Williams of SCLC, followed by Bob Mants of SNCC and Albert Turner of SCLC. The protest went according to plan until the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they encountered a wall of state troopers and county posse waiting for them on the other side.

County sheriff Jim Clark had issued an order for all white men in Dallas County over the age of twenty-one to report to the courthouse that morning to be deputized. Commanding officer John Cloud told the demonstrators to disband at once and go home. Rev. Hosea Williams tried to speak to the officer, but Cloud curtly informed him there was nothing to discuss. Seconds later, the troopers began shoving the demonstrators, knocking many to the ground and beating them with nightsticks. Another detachment of troopers fired tear gas, and mounted troopers charged the crowd on horseback.

Televised images of the brutal attack presented Americans and international audiences with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, and roused support for the Selma Voting Rights Campaign. Amelia Boynton, who had helped organize the march as well as marching in it, was beaten unconscious. A photograph of her lying on the road of the Edmund Pettus Bridge appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world. Another marcher, Lynda Blackmon Lowery, age 14, was brutally beaten by a police officer during the march, and needed seven stitches for a cut above her right eye and 28 stitches on the back of her head. John Lewis suffered a skull fracture and bore scars on his head from the incident for the rest of his life. In all, 17 marchers were hospitalized and 50 treated for lesser injuries; the day soon became known as "Bloody Sunday" within the black community.

Told Ya

Occam's Razor tells us our first consideration should be the obvious:

There's something wrong 

with the fucking polling.

More Trump-Haley Polling Errors

Outside of Vermont, which Haley appears to have won, Haley is getting beaten just about everywhere tonight. That’s 100% expected. But we are seeing that polling seemed to dramatically overstate Trump’s margins. So for instance 538 had Trump up 49 points over Haley in Virginia. But it looks like it will be just under 30 points. Needless to say these are still very lopsided defeats. But that’s also a pretty big polling miss.

Some people I’m seeing are ascribing that to a huge amount of strategic voting by independents and Biden-supporting Dems. So it’s interesting but doesn’t mean anything. I’m not sure I totally buy that. I’m not quite sure what it means. But I don’t think I buy that it means nothing. The number of people who are willing to strategic vote is never very high. It’s hard enough to get people to vote at all, let alone vote to make a point for election observers or to own the other parties frontrunners. If that’s what it is I would say that it suggests a truly extreme amount of mobilization on the anti-Trump side.

I suspect a lot of these are either conservative-leaning independents who are voting for Haley but won’t vote for Trump in the general and true independents (move back and forth between parties) and are making a statement. Neither side can win with only its own registered partisans. You need a lot of independents. I’m going to wait until all the numbers are in to decide just what I make of this. But the mix of significant anti-Trump vote and in many cases big polling errors just don’t square with writing it off.

Vote Your Values

... and recognize that your values guide your interests - but sometimes it has to go the other way, and your interests drive your values.

Don't abandon your belief in your better self. Just understand that you have a lesser chance to be that better self if you don't survive some of the more mundane - even crass and distasteful - things in life along the way.

It may involve issuing a few fat lips and bloody noses.

In the meantime, the plutocracy is rollin' along, singin' a song.

Today's Pix

click to embiggen

☟

Counting

Trump went 14 - 1

Average margin: 45.3 points

Biden went 15 - 0

Average margin: 78.5 points

I'll say it again:

There's something wrong with the polling.

We hear practically every day

• Biden's behind
• Biden's got trouble inside the party
• Biden's not popular
• Democrats are losing the messaging war

But then people vote (the only poll that fucking matters, btw), and gosh - kinda looks like Biden's doing pretty well.

I'm not saying Biden's got it in the bag. You won't hear me say that unless he gets sworn in again next January.

So don't get cocky - remember what it was like when they called it for Trump in 2016, and get busy.

GET TOGETHER

GET TO WORK

GET SHIT DONE

Get Wise

I wasn't fully aware of it back then, but I do remember the time when women were all but invisible outside the confines of their marriage, and their kids, and managing their households.

PoliticsByTabitha

Today's Eternal Sadness

I found a picture of my late husband & me from the late 80’s. He died of Covid on May 25th, 2020. He served in the 82nd Airborne during Vietnam & died because the president was “playing it down”. I was not allowed to see him. He died alone surrounded by people in hazmat suits. pic.twitter.com/pWZa45Ee4A

— Karmacat (@TallisHolly) March 5, 2024