In San Francisco, Revenge of the Obama Democrats
Plus, Trump Gets His Fix in Michigan.
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TIM MILLER: In San Francisco, Revenge of the Obama Democrats.
[E]ven after the 2020 election, many Democrats still seemed to think Biden’s primary win was a one-off. Maybe, they figured, it was a fluke that reflected Democratic voters’ desire to find the most electable candidate to defeat the Bad Orange Man, not the voters’ actual preference for the old guard.
The recent elections in San Francisco demonstrate that it might not have been the fluke they imagined.
Here, many Democratic regulars have become actively hostile to the new order that was imposed during the Trump years, and they are banding together to do something about it.
Their coalition is made up of older black voters, elder millennial HENRYs, Asian Americans, working-class union Democrats, wine moms, and Gaybraham Lincoln drag queens. Together they have majority power in the city, and they are trying to put an end to the leftward lurch by reasserting the more practical liberalism of the late-aughts glory days.
And so far, it’s working.
AMANDA CARPENTER: Trump Gets His Fix in Michigan.
If this is the last time you ever hear the names Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo, you’ll be lucky. They are the conspiracy-driven Trump-picked candidates for Michigan attorney general and secretary of state that the state GOP endorsed as candidates in its convention on Saturday.
Reasonable people would have to hope DePerno and Karamo get blown out in the general election and are never heard from again. Their outlandish insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump has led to considerable fractures within the Michigan Republican Party. As such, they’re viewed as longshots who will be unable to unite the party, win over independents, and beat the incumbent Democrats, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
That said, DePerno and Karamo were never really considered serious candidates, yet they managed to clinch their races, thanks to Trump’s backing. And in a midterm year in which Democrats are struggling nationally, it would be unwise to write off any of these races.
Chef Andrés’ World Central Kitchen has set up a sprawling network of cafes and food distribution sites in and around Ukraine. En route to the outskirts of Mariupol, Andrés tells Charlie Sykes he sees the will of the Ukrainian people in every corner, and talks of his mission to make food an agent of change.
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TIM MILLER: Musk Twitter Could Be a Disaster For MAGA Grifters and Republican Ostriches.
In Georgia on Insurrection Eve, we saw how a big Trump megaphone could divide the Republican base, resulting in political success for the Democrats. The election fraud mass formation psychosis led Trump voters in rural parts of the state to stay home rather than participate in yet another RIGGED contest while a small percentage of Atlanta Kemp/Raffensperger Republicans refused to be a party to the anti-democratic horror show. As a result, Georgia elected the state’s first black and Jewish senators—on the same day!—despite the fact that both had fewer votes than their GOP opponents during the November election.
A repeat of that is the worst-case scenario for the GOP at a time when the political environment is looking rather rosy for them.
Back in January, Bloomberg’s Joshua Green interviewed experts on the possible ways Republicans could screw the pooch in the midterms. Liam Donovan offered this hypothetical: “For the last year Trump has been in a straitjacket where he can’t harm his own party . . . Maybe he gets back on Twitter, there’s no bigger wild card than letting the tiger out of its cage.”
Rawr.
MATTHEW C. REES: Millions of French Voters Held Their Noses and Voted for Macron to Defeat Le Pen.
Although Sunday’s election results have largely been depicted by the American press as a huge victory for Macron, it is worth looking a little more closely at the context of the vote and what might come next. In the French system, the top two candidates qualify for a runoff election two weeks after the first round, which is a free-for-all of personalities and platforms. At the end of round one, Macron had just under 28 percent; Marine Le Pen, the perennial darling of France’s far right, garnered 23 percent. Just behind Le Pen was the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose 22 percent of voters were “caught between the fascist or the capitalist,” as one voter despairingly put it. Various other candidates ranging from “not-quite-as-crazy-as-Le Pen” to “probable hammer-and-sickle tattoos” accounted for the last quarter of the electorate.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
FIRE pushes back against the ‘STOP WOKE’ Act… Encouraging FL education institutions to “interpret the legislation as narrowly as possible and, if necessary — where enforcement would be unconstitutional — to ignore it.”
A sit in that’s ‘worse’ than Jan. 6? Florida man thinks so. Florida man also wrote the Disney law. Not so bright.
Me on Star Spangled Gamblers… My pal Alex Keeney has a podcast where they talk about political betting, and I joined to talk about Ohio and Trump’s endorsement of Vance.
The Belarusian Railway Saboteurs… Played a big role in the early days of Russia’s invasion. Bravo.
The formula shortage… The pandemic may largely be in our rearview mirror, but the shortages keep changing. This time, it’s baby formula. And they’re having to shift product from abroad to meet demand.
What happens to your recycled plastic? Bloomberg tracked a few products from the UK to see where they went.
The nuclear missile next door… At the Post, a look at the Montana community that serves as a “sacrificial nuclear sponge.” If you like that story, read this book, which I thought was really interesting.
The eBay movie… This could be an interesting script: the head of eBay security stalking the company’s critics. It’s some wild shit:
The deliveries ordered to the victims’ home included a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects. The harassment also featured Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims’ home.
The threatening Twitter messages were written as if they had been sent by eBay sellers who were unhappy with the victims’ coverage in the newsletter. Some of these messages posted the victims’ address and threatened to visit the victims at their home.
The guy, James Baugh, who pled guilty, said he was just doing what he learned in the FBI. Eek.
More Meadows texts just dropped. Here are some of the highlights.
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