[guest post by Dana]

Just a few brief clips:

Biden: The Republican party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans and that is a threat to this country… Maga Republicans do not respect the constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. pic.twitter.com/V6EDTOTicT

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2022

Biden: Notwithstanding those folks you hear on the other side there, they're entitled to be outrageous. This is a democracy. Good manners is nothing they ever suffered from pic.twitter.com/Z8In4IXcGf

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2022

You can watch President Biden deliver his speech in its entirety here.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

I submit that it would appear to be nearly impossible for any American that holds the Constitution and rule of law in the highest regard – and certainly in greater regard than any president – to reasonably disgree with this. Because, if one tries with all their might to push aside partisanship, party preference, and loyalty, and reads this as a concise explanation, and even warning as to why it is so imperative that we do everything within our power to safeguard the office of the presidency and our system of government, I believe that you too would be inclined to agree with Charles C.W. Cooke.:

Last year, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman got a great deal of grief for reporting that Trump earnestly believes that he can — and possibly will — be reinstated as president before the 2024 election has been held. But Haberman was correct: Trump does believe this. And that he believes it should disqualify him from holding office. It should disqualify him because it represents a willful rejection of the American system of government, which does not allow for arbitrarily reinstating former presidents or holding do-over elections. It should disqualify him because it represents yet another attempt to stage a coup against the rightful winner of the 2020 election. And it should disqualify him because it exhibits a raw contempt for the public, which does not deserve to be told such brazen lies. Americans may — no, Americans should — disagree about anything they wish to disagree about. But, at the very least, they ought to agree unanimously to reject (or remove) political candidates who promise ahead of time that they intend to violate the rules by which they are legally bound. Eighteen months have now passed since Joe Biden was inaugurated, and Donald Trump is still searching for illegitimate ways to undo his loss. That, in and of itself, is proof of his unfitness for office.

Why does Donald Trump say such things? There are two possibilities. The first is that Donald Trump earnestly believes that he won the 2020 presidential election, and that, at some point soon, he is going to be parachuted back into the White House. The second is that Donald Trump cares so little about the American system of government that he is willing to spend his days inventing ever-more-outlandish theories as to how he might crowbar himself into the Oval Office. Only Donald Trump can know which of these possibilities is true, but both are proof that he’s a lunatic, and that the Republican primary electorate should reject him in favor of someone who is able — or willing — to acquiesce to our most basic constitutional rules.

Every. single. word. of. this.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

It was at the Women’s Health Day of Action and Women’s Equality Day conference when she proclaimed that it’s “sinful” to be against abortion:

“The fact that this is such an assault on women of color and women [in] lower income families is just sinful. It’s sinful. It’s wrong that they would be able to say to women what they think women should be doing with their lives and their bodies. But it’s sinful, the injustice of it all,” Pelosi said August 26 at the Roundtable on Women’s Reproductive Health in San Francisco.

The California representative, who is a Catholic, then claimed that “extreme MAGA Republicans” are harming women by restricting abortion.

“We take pride in California’s leadership on reproductive health,” Pelosi said. “A beacon of hope and refuge in a time of widespread fear. Emboldened by the radical Supreme Court, extreme MAGA Republicans are inflicting unimaginable pain on women and their families.”

Nice spiel of condescension toward women of color you’ve got going on there, Nancy. This brown anti-MAGA-not-a-Republican woman resents a lily-white woman assuming the position of God and telling me what’s what like I can’t figure it out for myself. As if my views would automatically line up with hers because she knows best. Wake up, girl, it’s 2022!

I realize that, in the circle game of abortion, my views are not necessarily your views, and your views are not Nancy Pelosi’s views, and Nancy Pelosi’s views are not my views, but I would guess that a great number of us have some overlap. When Pelosi makes a blanket judgment that it’s “sinful” to be against abortion, she arrogantly dismisses out of hand that for many, faith factors heavily into the formation of views on abortion. And clearly, faith compels millions of Americans to hold a sinful! pro-life position. This is ironic, of course, given that Pelosi’s own faith as a self-identified Catholic seemingly doesn’t factor into her abortion views one bit. Moreover, I don’t believe that abortion is the black-and-white-binary-you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us issue that she presents. Life is more nuanced than that. People are more complicated than that. And life gets messy. At times, very messy. So consider me sinful in Pelosi’s judgy eyes: I want limits on abortion yet support exceptions for rape and incest, and if the mother’s life is in danger, or if it is known that the baby has died in uteror or will be stillborn. But if Pelosi wants to act like the 2020 Republicans screaming that it’s a binary choice and hold a similarly narrow-minded and politically cynical view (about human worth), then I happily remain a sinner. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can easily slough off the very complicated issues surrounding abortion, adopt her blinkered view of life and dismiss out of hand the inherent worth of a living soul in the womb because I know what it would cost me to do so.

Anyway, that wasn’t the biggest line of bullshit Pelosi spewed at the conference:

And I’ll just say this: yesterday, I was at something in Los Angeles and a mom told me that – listening to all of this going on – her three-year-old daughter – the mother said something about, one time, she would go to bed, and she said, ‘Mom, nobody should tell girls what to do with their bodies.’

[Laughter]

Three years old. So it’s coming through. It’s coming through. A whole other generation.

Thus confirming that this god, anyway, has feet of clay.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Last night, Democrat and Native Alaskan Mary Peltola defeated Trump-endorsed Sarah Palin in a special general election to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Don Young, a long-serving Republican in the House, who passed away in March 2022.

This was the first election in Alaska to use rank-choice voting, a measure adopted by votes in 2020:

Voters pick their member of Congress by ranking the candidates, and a write-in candidate if they choose to do so, in order of preference. If a candidate wins a majority of votes on the first round, he or she wins the race. But if no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and his or her supporters’ second-choice votes will go to the remaining candidates. The rounds continue until two candidates are left, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

As of Thursday morning, with 93% of votes counted in the ranked choice results, Peltola defeated Palin 51.5% to 48.5%.

[…]

According to the Alaska Division of Elections, the system benefits voters. “By ranking multiple candidates, you can still have a voice in who gets elected even if your top choice does not win,” its website says. “Ranking multiple candidates ensures your vote will go toward your second, third, fourth, or fifth choice if your top choice is eliminated, giving you more voice in who wins.”

After Palin’s defeat, she criticized the new voting system

…saying in a statement that it was a “mistake” that was originally “sold as the way to make elections better reflect the will of the people.” But now, she said, Alaska and the rest of America see “the exact opposite is true.”

“The people of Alaska do not want the destructive democrat agenda to rule our land and our lives, but that’s what resulted from someone’s experiment with this new crazy, convoluted, confusing ranked-choice voting system,” she said. “It’s effectively disenfranchised 60% of Alaska voters.”

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas also cast doubt on the election outcome because something just had to have been rigged:

60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat "won."

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 1, 2022

Of course, it can no longer be a clean election loss when a Trump-endorsed candidate fails to win. And there’s no way that Alaskan voters simply found the challenger more appealing and a better representative of their political views.

Other Republicans took Cotton to task for his claims:

Ranked choice voting gives all Americans a voice and not the extremes of a party. So youd be outta luck. No wonder you don’t like it https://t.co/0kmF3ihBZG

— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) September 1, 2022

Ironically, the very system that Palin and Cotton criticize could possibly allow her a win in November: Peltola, Palin and Begich are all competing to win a full term in the House in the November 8 general election. They advanced from an August 16 nonpartisan primary along with Libertarian candidate Chris Bye.

Though Palin has not yet made what many believed would be a political comeback, it is still possible she could win the seat in November under the ranked-choice voting system.

–Dana