Elections 2023 and 2024 (Part 1)

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Iā€™d be tempted to ask those folks to define ā€œgood people.ā€ Then Iā€™d have a short story to tell them about Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Most people agree that Carter is a good person based on his actions before and after his term. Yet there are conservatives who will claim he was the worst POTUS because of the economy. Few will point to his foreign policy.

The media will cast things in terms of extremes, to get an extreme reaction. Sharing Michael Harriotā€™s lesson about evaluating candidates might be a better idea, though. Heā€™s got a lot more examples to challenge the notion of political purity tests.

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In other Texas election news, the Trump backed Texas House District 21 candidate lost in a runoff to the current state Speaker of the House, and Ken Paxton, Dan Patrick, and Greg Abbott are crying that the Speaker stole the election by getting Democrats to vote in this Republican primary runoff. There is no evidence of that. At all. But Paxton is threatening any Representative who supports Phelanā€™s bid for re-election as Speaker with being completely cut off from the Party. Itā€™s a shit show. Oh, and for context, Phelan supported the impeachment of Paxton.
https://www.chron.com/politics/article/texas-republicans-speaker-phelan-19483843.php

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This highlights the importance of elections as judges retire and conservatives push for replacements who support their policies and beliefs:

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Another triumph of hope over experience.

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Good luck as a conservative independent or centrist Republican. How are they doing these days?

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I hope his yacht sinks and he has to pay for environmental remediation.

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Republicans are notoriously good at uniformly using certain terms and names, sometimes to the point that they become common usage (like Democrat Party instead of Democratic).

Iā€™d love to see Dems unite in doing that every single time they mention Tromp, with ā€œconvicted felon Donald Trump.ā€

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Indeed. They should. I canā€™t imagine that Biden campaign wonā€™t do that as often as they can.

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If Biden and Tromp do debate, I hope Biden drops the usual Democratic politesse and says it about forty times.

While my opponent, convicted felon Donald Trump, still has several trials pending, Iā€™ve never spent a single day under indictment.

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He should, absolutely. Just keep hammering that shit home. I think thatā€™s the way to win over the independents and moderate republicans sick of Trump. Plus, point out that having a convicted felon with OTHER cases pending, including one thatā€™s about stolen classified documents could create a constitutional crisis. The campaign needs to both not let up on this shit AND tout what he has done in office, while promising more, if we gets a second term AND he gets solid majorities in the house and senateā€¦

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The Convictacrat Party.

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I believe the problem is not that Democrats arenā€™t trying to do that. We need strategies to overcome the skewed media coverage. If we all agreed on a term and tried to make it go viral, weā€™d also have to fight to keep it front and center. I find it very interesting that a small group of mostly Republican ā€œsuperspreadersā€ can dominate the narrative on social media regarding a range of issues, but alternative voices spreading facts and truth face removal of messages or other methods designed to bury what they are saying:

I was glad to see the Biden campaign calling out the media on this by showing up at 45ā€™s trial. Democrats will need to use similar tactics to reach anything close to equal coverage. Itā€™s more expensive in terms of time and money, which is another reason why conservatives in control of some media outlets do it as a backhanded way of supporting the GOP and Republican candidates.

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