Pierce: The Myth of the Centrist Holy Grail

[mcar]

Heidi Heitkamp, the Democrat who represents the the newly minted petro-state of of North Dakota, has a brother who hosts a local talk radio program. Why this doesn’t make the brother the shame and disgrace of the Heitkamp clan, the way that Charles Adams shamed John and Abigail by being a sockless drunk, is another topic for another day. One nice thing about being a talk-radio host whose sister is in the Senate is that you never lack for an emergency guest with a little national cred in their CV.

So it was on Thursday, when Joel Heitkamp had Heidi joining the program, and he asked her about her party’s most recent standard-bearer. From CNN:

Heitkamp, who is facing a tough re-election race in a state Donald Trump won in 2016, was asked Tuesday by her brother, KFGO host Joel Heitkamp, when Clinton will "ride off into the sunset." "I don't know, not soon enough, I guess," she responded. The host asked, "What's the answer?" And Heitkamp said again: "Not soon enough."

Anybody who attended a Trump rally knows how right HRC was in saying what she did. I’m not entirely a fan; I voted the other way in the Massachusetts primary for all the reasons that anyone did. But there is no question that what she said in India was an accurate summary of the forces that propelled our current president* to the job he now holds. Racism and belligerent, weaponized nostalgia were the accelerants that fueled the fire. It might have been economic insecurity that made people Trump-curious, but it was the xenophobia that got them into the halls....

It really is time to stop buying every voter in certain states a cookie. You people saddled the nation with a corrupt, incompetent oligarch who turns everything and everyone he touches into hazardous waste. You did it because he stroked your cultural and social yearnings until you trilled like a chorus of locusts. You are done no good service by politicians who keep telling you that you’re the salt of the earth, or by reporters on expedition who demand that the rest of us be careful of your tender fee-fees. If you want the country to stop being moronic, stop voting for morons.


https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19455351/democratic-party-trump-country-conor-lamb/

[mcar]

2. Kick

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. stand up

We need to stand up for truth and what's right. We need to give people a reason to vote for our candidates beyond just the fact that we're not TrumPutin. See, e.g., what Lamb actually campaigned on (rather than what lyin' Ryan and TrumPutin claimed post election).