[guest post by Dana]

Nobody likes to lose, and I can’t imagine how bitter it must be to lose an election, but surely one goes into that particular fight with the clear understanding that they may experience defeat, even significant defeat at the end of the day. Fair and square. This response of tears and crying fraud, sexism, and misogyny is unbecoming and on behalf of women everywhere, please stop. It is this very sort of behavior that encourages a “weaker sex” view of women by the usual suspects. Stop giving them ammunition.

Laura Loomer, the right-wing nutjob agitator who lost her bid in the Republican House primary in Florida, reportedly started crying during her non-concession speech, and assumed no responsibility for the defeat. Rather, she refused to accept the outcome, citing fraud instead:

Far-right activist and congressional candidate Laura Loomer broke into tears as she claimed without evidence that she was illegally robbed of a Republican primary victory on Tuesday.

Incumbent Representative Daniel Webster won Tuesday’s GOP primary for Florida’s 11th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press. Although Webster won the race with 51 percent of the vote to Loomer’s 44 percent with over 95 percent of ballots counted, Loomer refused to concede and instead suggested that the result was fraudulent.

[…]

She insisted that she was the true “winner” on Tuesday and argued that “big-tech election interference” could be to blame for the primary’s outcome.

“I’m not conceding, because I’m a winner and the reality is our Republican Party is broken to its core,” Loomer told supporters in a speech following her loss. “What we have done tonight has really honestly shocked the nation. We have further exposed the corruption within our own feckless, cowardly Republican Party.”

“We are losing our country to big-tech election interference,” she said as tears streamed down her face. “And I am pleading with the Republican Party to please start taking this issue seriously because the American people deserve representation.”

But of course, her defeat had to be the result of fraud. It simply couldn’t have been that Floridians preferred her opponent rather than a self-described “proud Islamaphobe” crackpot. Plus a now not uncommon premise to elections by the far right-wing of the GOP is: If you win, it’s a legitimate win. If you lose, it’s obviously the result of fraud.

Then we have Carolyn Maloney, who just lost in a landslide to Jerry Nadler in New York’s House District 12 Democratic primary. Maloney has been a member of Congress for 30 l-o-n-g years. During her concession speech, she also chose to go low in the face of defeat, citing misogyny and sexism:

Maloney whined that she was the victim of “sexist systems and misogyny” as her supporters vented their wrath at her victorious opponent.

“I’m really sad that we no longer have a woman representing Manhattan in Congress,” Maloney told her teary-eyed boosters, later adding: “In Congress, it is that when women are at the table, great decisions get made.”

The longtime lawmaker also thanked great female New York leaders of the past like Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro, who Maloney said “fought sexist systems and misogyny that continues today, as we know from my own campaign” — an obvious dig at Nadler.

Of course, had she won, sexist systems and misogyny would have never been mentioned. At all. Does Maloney ever wonder how it is that she has been re-elected decade after decade with rampant such sexism and misogyny at work? Like Loomer, there is an unwillingness to simply accept that voters preferred the opponent for whatever reason.

So, in the words of that notorious sexist playboy Joe Namath: You learn how to be a gracious winner and an outstanding loser.

Goals, ladies.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Under intense pressure from Democrats, President Biden’s actions are not surprising:

President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced new steps to address student loan debt, which includes forgiving $10,000 for borrowers who make less than $125,000 per year and extending the payment freeze one final time until the end of the year.

Low-income borrowers who went to college on Pell Grants will receive up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness.

In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023.

I'll have more details this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/kuZNqoMe4I

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 24, 2022

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party were pushing the President to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower. But as a new study shows, even the designated $10,000 will result in negative consequences:

President Biden’s election-year plan to cancel student loan debt would cost the Treasury at least $329 billion and would mostly benefit wealthier taxpayers, according to a study released Tuesday.

The Penn-Wharton Budget Model found that forgiving $10,000 of student debt per borrower for families with incomes of up to $125,000 annually, a plan Mr. Biden could authorize as soon as this week, would cost the federal government $329.7 billion in lost revenues over 10 years.

The study showed that a majority of the relief would go to borrowers in the top 60% of earners.

Further complicating the president’s decision:

Deficit hawks say the president’s action would wipe out much of the expected deficit reduction from Democrats dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act” that Mr. Biden signed into law last week. The $740 billion climate-and-tax measure, which is a scaled-down version of the president’s original “Build Back Better” agenda, includes provisions that its authors say will reduce budget deficits by $275 billion over 10 years.

“Simply extending the current repayment pause through the end of the year would cost $20 billion — equivalent to the total deficit reduction from the first six years of the IRA, by our rough estimates,” said the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “Cancelling $10,000 per person of student debt for households making below $300,000 a year would cost roughly $230 billion. Combined, these policies would consume nearly ten years of deficit reduction from the Inflation Reduction Act.”

I’m with Cooke here:

Biden’s illegal move is grotesque classism. In his eyes, those who’ll end up paying are the tradesmen, the riff-raff, the great unwashed, the background noise, the dirty-handed types, whose role is to aid the self-dealing clerisy his party calls its base.

As a reminder:

“People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not… that has to be an act of Congress,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

President Biden himself expressed skepticism about his own legal authority to forgive student loans.

And an Obama-era Department of Education lawyer believes that President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan would face massive legal challenges.

In Case You Missed It via the Wall Street Journal, even a top Obama Education Department lawyer agrees that President Biden’s mass student loan forgiveness scheme is “legally risky.”

[…]

Using executive action to cancel debts for student borrowers without tying relief to their individual needs and using regulatory procedures would put the Biden administration at risk of having its plan overruled in court, according to a legal analysis prepared by Charlie Rose, who served as the top lawyer in the Education Department under President Obama from 2009 to 2011.

“If the issue is litigated, the more persuasive analyses tend to support the conclusion that the Executive Branch likely does not have the unilateral authority to engage in mass student debt cancellation,” Mr. Rose wrote in a memo for his law firm, Hogan Marren Babbo & Rose, Ltd. He suggested that loan-servicing companies and investors that own securities backed by student loans might be in a position to sue the administration over broad-based debt cancellation.

Anyway, the Democrats can look forward to their ranks swelling as young voters give a thumbs-up to this enticement bribe. The impact of the President’s actions on any other voting bloc, even especially the taxpayers footing the bill, really doesn’t matter to the administration:

Sad to see what’s being done to bribe the voters. Biden's student loan forgiveness plan may win Democrats some votes, but it fuels inflation, foots taxpayers with other people’s financial obligations, is unfair to those who paid their own way & creates irresponsible expectations.

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) August 24, 2022

–Dana