How many of your state’s legislators are women?

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy has taken over the Republican Party, well at least the Republican National Committee. At his direction the RNC will be getting two new co-chairs. One is Michael Whatley, who has his own election shenanigans – a good reason to get the job. The other is the nasty guy’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. That means the RNC is now an extension of the nasty guy’s campaign. Also...

What this means for other Republican candidates is hard to tell. Will the RNC even remember anyone else is running? Considering that it was serious cash-flow problems and nearly empty coffers that made outgoing Chair Ronna McDaniel so vulnerable in the first place, it’s unclear whether there will be any time, attention, or money for anyone other than Trump. Trump’s ever-tighter grip on the party certainly also means that any candidate who falls out of his favor can expect the RNC to abandon them immediately. Trump's miserable track record at selecting candidates, with his selections based on their loyalty to him rather than their odds of winning and disregarding how well they fit the district or state where they were running, has made for some big Republican losses.

Good news for Democrats. Sumner also reported that last Friday the nasty guy spoke at an NRA event and said words that are quite close to the Nazi “Final Solution.”

The second most frightening thing may be that Trump has said it all before. Many times. The most frightening thing of all may be the complicit silence of the national press.

I’m not sure where in the count of frightening things this goes: the indifference of other Republicans that these words are a problem. Sumner lists some of the many times the nasty guy has said these things. Kos community member raisin bran wrote whatever Putin has on the nasty guy it must be awful. We know about the nasty guy’s numerous and well documented sex scandals and friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Given how much coordination there was between the nasty guy campaign and Russia (100 meetings?) in a previous election and how much the nasty guy has been saying against NATO and for Putin what Putin knows must be much worse than sex scandals (especially since those scandals haven’t made a dent in his base’s devotion). So what is it? I had heard (likely from Gaslit Nation) the devotion is because of the number of times Putin (and other dictators) rescued the nasty guy’s businesses. SmallTownHick of the Kos community offers a suggestion to what that might be. Perhaps Putin is holding the campaign hostage – Putin is willing to do a great deal of election dirty work if the nasty guy shows some cooperation. The nasty guy killed the border defense bill so he could use the problems at the border to attack Biden. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Tom Suozzi’s win this week to replace George Santos says that plan won’t work. McCarter quoted Dana Bash of CNN who reported that killing the border deal prompted several voters to not vote for the Republican candidate. That was a decisive issue because during the last few days of the campaign Suozzi talked a lot about the Republicans being the ones to kill the deal. McCarter wrote that Kevin McCarthy may have been bad as speaker, but he’s pretty good at revenge. McCarthy was great at fundraising. The big donors are his friends. Those who voted against him are finding the big donors aren’t taking their calls. Michael Harriot tweeted a thread now on Threadreader about how racism created the Super Bowl. Back before the National Football League there were lots of black players. The NFL was organized in 1920 and in 1927 all the black players were kicked out. Well, they did have one or two. Not per team. In the whole league. In 1960 the rival American Football League was founded. Their big difference from the NFL was they actively recruited black players. In 1966 the NFL decided to have an annual AFL v. NFL game. The first time it was called the Super Bowl was 1968. And in 1969 the black team trounced the white team and did so on national TV. After the game the NFL merged with the AFL. Which makes the Super Bowl a DEI project. Harriot, writing for The Grio, discussed the lazy analysis of the black vote. Various pundits are saying the nasty guy is poised to get a record number of black votes.

Nearly a century has passed since a Republican presidential nominee even came close to winning a majority of the Black vote (Herbert Hoover in 1928 was the last). It is asinine, bordering on malpractice, for a journalist to publicly suggest that one of the most vociferously anti-Black candidates could achieve what no Republican has done in the last 96 years. Setting aside the media’s lazy, inexplicably stupid exercise in speculative fiction, one wonders why the mainstream media narrative seems to intentionally avoid the one topic that — when it comes to presidential elections — is more important and more mathematically relevant. What about the white voters?

White voters are 67% of the electorate. Why skip over the white voters to focus on minority voters? Because we know how white voters will vote.

Whether it is Democrat or Republican, white voters have not been as concerned with party politics as much as they have been obsessed with whiteness. Historically, the majority of white people in America always, always always vote for the opposite of what Black people want. Poor whites will vote for a party that opposes raising the minimum wage, taxing the rich and providing health care because, in white identity politics, policy does not matter. White women will support politicians who want to control their reproductive rights because whiteness matters more. Suburban moms want good schools and safe neighborhoods but vote for candidates who oppose police reform and accurate history. This is the white vote. I struggle to think of a single other issue that is discussed in such an intentionally obtuse manner.

It was white people who stormed the Capitol, who voted for and served as election deniers, who helped install Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, and who banned affirmative action and American history. The black vote is only discussed because of what white voters keep doing. A month ago Jennifer Berry Hawes, in an article written for ProPublica and posted on Kos, asks the question: How many of your state’s legislators are women? Nationally it is one third. Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado have achieved parity. In the old South it is less than 20% and as low as 13% in West Virginia. That leaves large majorities of men controlling policy that most impact women. The states with legislatures most dominated by men have some of the strictest abortion bans. Men in control also means they decide which issues don’t get debated. Those issues include maternal health, children’s welfare, and education. The Old Boys Club is one reason why women aren’t elected. These states tend to be Republican and the party doesn’t recruit and support women. Another is strong paternalism. Only women get asked who will care for the children if she wins and essentially has to move to the state capital. That means younger women can’t start climbing the political ladder until their children are grown. There is also the tendency for women not to run until asked. Even then they may wait until asked several times. But once in the legislature they can stop or blunt the worst policies of the men. All that about men ignoring women’s issues is much worse for black women’s issues. Remember those Valentine candies shaped like a heart with a short saying on them? I’m sure they’re still around, though it has been decades since I’ve seen them in person, single guy that I am who had to avoid sugar. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, offered some updated sayings for the candies. A few of them:

I [HEART] BASIC COMPETENCE ABOLISH MY FILIBUSTER U R MY RECHARGING STATION MELT MY HEART LIKE AN ICECAP