Communion

Loving this political character development from one of McMorrow's most ardent supporters online kjnkjnkjn tea sis!! **** that *****!!

I think this is the danger of how so much of "Election Twitter," and by extension many liberals, have facilitated with politics as like.. wanting to be seen as savvy strategists. Seen as knowing how to best win elections, etc. and not as voters who have policies they want to see enacted. Even accounts from people whose commentary I like, like that @ettingermentum account. Or all the big KHive accounts seemingly knowing oppo for months as nasty DC gossip and gaining followers off of hinting at it yet never posting it. Like as an ADHD girly, I do find myself going "oh... wait, I'm mentally ill" when finding myself as a NJ resident and voter looking up past histories of people who ran for Maine Senate and failed in like... 2008. Like not knowing things is actually good! Wanting to know things is a burden! ddd So it took just scouring the timeline of a few people actually in Maine to see people point out Shah had a colored history as the head of Illinois' health department. And all the centrists who wanted him simply for being perceived as the anti-Platner candidate are now opposite of... Tammy Duckworth dddd.

Yeah, basically. At this point, AIPAC and DMFI and the nation of Israel itself are so toxic that Zionist politicians can't even run on being Zionists. So AIPAC will spend like $5M in ad spending for a Zionist candidate, but the ad will be something like: "Haley Stevens worked for the Obama admin to save the auto industry! She's leading the fight against ICE!* - Paid for by United Democracy for Women**" *- When, in fact, Haley Stevens did things like vote for funding for ICE and to honor ICE. **- And the aid will be paid for by a front group that's usually just a throwaway PAC that AIPAC is shuttling its money through.

@Redstreak @ClashAndBurn Not to get too into the weeds, but I do think education has long been an imperfect cultural marker for what people consider working class. This is obviously imperfect cause class =/= education, but for the 80s and early 90s, there was enough of a correlation. I think it's the smoking gun to the already discussed difference between how Gen X'ers and Millennials view politics. Millennials are the first generation where - while those with degrees do maintain larger salaries than their peers without degrees - the kind of debt now associated with attaining an education, and the increased cost of living, has fractured that correlation between education and wealth. Now, centrists might go - "See! This is evidence leftists are just angry young people resentful they didn't become millionaires!!!" But I think that takeaway misses important cultural markers. Like the accusation of the white socialist turning rural voters into noble savages... but it is not the over-educated, under-paid millennial fetishizing the rural worker. We know that is the M.O of Gen X'ers. The message of Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign was explicitly about how the working class has changed. That it was no longer just white men on factory floors but young people working retail, women working in healthcare, underpaid people working across the service industry, etc. A Gen X'er might view working class as men who work with their hands outside. A Millennial might view the working class to more-so be reflected now by the undocumented mother of three being exploited by her employer (that one poster on here with the house cleaning business ddd). AOC the Bartender, etc. We see this in the changing of unions being taken over by graduate students. The graduate students aren't invading spaces.... the working class is changing! Democrats largely willed this contradiction into existence by focusing on increasing Pell Grants for first generation students. Many leftist millennials are children of parents who are working class in the new way - pink collared, not blue - and who sought college for upward mobility. Ex: "I watched my mom clean houses growing up so I got my degree. I now make $50k a year in my office job but my degree cost me $25k and houses now cost $600k." Who is working class - the car dealership owner with no degree making $250k a year or the barista with a graduate degree? etc.

WHACK HER, PEGGY!!!!

Do you mean win the primary or the general? There's a real chance she's going to lose in the general if she wins the primary. The entire purpose of her career in Congress has become oriented around the single purpose of AIPAC. She's not Jewish herself and worked with AIPAC to take out a Jewish Democrat who was critical of Israel as a local synagogue president (Andy Levin). She has never had to contend with the parts of Michigan with either Arab or Muslims voters like Gretchen Whitmer (who has tried to manage a rocky relationship with Michigan's Arab residents as a duty of being governor) nor has the kind of military background that ironically sees Elissa Slotkin believe that preserving America's military hegemony supersedes Israel's bloodlust for Palestinians and so the latter has criticized Netanyahu as a rogue actor and claiming she cares about the immense hurt and pain felt by many Arab Americans in Michigan. Haley Stevens is likely not even going to be allowed in parts of MI-12 and MI-13 if she wins the primary.

I actually think it was just the M4A and stopping the genocide sis!

Many of the examples are money that has been spent to help the politicians against challengers that AIPAC deemed as critical of Israel. It's why it's odd AIPAC doesn't get ire form the Democratic establishment when its single-issue spending largely attacks values Dems claim to hold. See: George Latimer's total is largely from when Jamaal Bowman's district was re-boundaried, becoming much whiter, so George Latimer ran for the seat. Latimer won the primary overall, but Bowman won the black-majority part of the district. So AIPAC effectively spent $19M to help white voters and a white Democrat silence black voters and kick out a black Democrat for being critical of Israel. Republican primaries are less consequential for AIPAC, so they spend less, but they have no issue spending in favor of Republicans against a Democrat if the Democrat is even slightly critical. In 2024, they spent nearly $5m for Scott Baugh (R) in CA-47 against Dave Min that would have flipped the district from blue to red.

Liberals trying to negatively and positively polarize themselves wrt to leftists when it comes to random Maine politicians. Them not realizing Platner was so popular that nearly every single Maine politician hitched themselves to him. The woman (Hannah Pingree) who won the Governor primary literally boasting she was so likable that she was the only candidate endorsed by both Platner & Mills. Even when she largely had Graham's endorsement technically because she + Jackson + Bellows literally formed a RCV slate to keep an outsider like Shah out but also running on that slate being backed by Platner and a slate of progressives. (He also got Bellows' current job wrong)

...according to Track AIPAC's financial audit of current members of Congress. Current members of Congress to receive at least over $1M in spending from the pro-Israel lobby: $20,225,600 - Haley Stevens - MI-11 [D] - Facing primary challenge for Senate in August from left-wing challenger $19,155,439 - George Latimer - NY-16 [D] $13,135,269 - Wesley Bell - MO-01 (D) - Facing primary challenge in August from left-wing challenger $7,315,890 - Glenn Ivey - MD-04 [D] $5,609,345 - Adam Schiff - CA-SEN [D] $5,040,382 - Shontel Brown - OH-11 [D] $4,202,687 - Sarah Elfreth - MD-03 [D] $3,962,892 - Don Davis - NC-01 [D] $3,479,345 - Valerie Foushee - NC-04 [D] $3,255,652 - Adriano Espaillat - NY-13 [D] - Lost primary challenge to left-wing challenger $2,852,335 - Mark Messmer - IN-08 [R] $2,641,199 - Jimmy Gomez - CA-34 [D] - Facing left-wing Democrat in general election in November $2,597,354 - Susan Collins - ME-SEN [R] $2,474,414 - Shri Thanedar - MI-13 [D] - Facing primary challenge in August from left-wing challenger $2,382,203 - Henry Cuellar - TX-28 [D] $2,291,197 - Josh Gottheimer - NJ-05 [D] $2,253,099 - Jacky Rosen - NV-SEN [D] $2,212,990 - Maxine Dexter - OR-03 [D] $1,899,654 - Ritchie Torres - NY-15 [D] $1,654,229 - Diana DeGette - CO-01 [D] - Lost primary challenge to left-wing challenger $1,542,327 - Debbie Wasserman-Schultz - FL-25 [D] - Facing primary challenge in August from left-wing challenger $1,534,149 - Pete Aguilar - CA-33 [D] $1,495,512 - Hakeem Jeffries - NY-08 [D] $1,439,265 - Janelle Bynum - OR-05 [D] $1,411,545 - Ted Cruz - TX-SEN [R] $1,291,908 - Don Bacon - NE-02 [R] $1,224,703 - Juan Ciscomani - AZ-06 [R] $1,190,464 - Brad Schneider - IL-10 [D] $1,161,274 - Yassamin Ansari - AZ-03 [D] $1,127,943 - Tom Cotton - AR-SEN [R] $1,123,557 - Mike Johnson - LA-04 [R] $1,115,690 - Ken Calvert - CA-41 [R] $1,071,069 - Jared Golden - ME-02 [D] - Retiring $1,069,875 - Mike Lawler - NY-17 [R] $1,033,286 - Mike Rogers - AL-03 [R] $1,025,461 - Mario Diaz-Balart - FL-26 [R] $1,024,183 - Brad Sherman - CA-32 [D] $1,022,626 - Lindsey Graham - SC-SEN [R]

Not it maybe being Donavan having the mandate from heaven with an incumbent like this.

I hope people understand that, in the same way keeping Platner on the ballot in Maine would have entitled women to stay at home, putting this creature on the ballot in Michigan will entitle the state's wide reach of Arab and Muslim voters to stay home. Genuinely I don't know why there's not a bigger discourse over such. This woman is not Gretchen Whitmer. She's not even Elissa Slotkin. I don't think there's another national politician running for Senate who has antagonized Arab voters to the degree this woman has with her Zionism. It's about to become a new race war when they so heavily frame her as the choice of conservative black aunties in Detroit who vote Dem while then Trump puts up massive billboards up all over Dearborn about "ISRAEL COMES TO ME IN MY DREAMS" to help Mike Rogers.

Again, anyone who frames anything like this just simply has nothing of merit or of note to say. The only way you can even begin to understand the Maine primary is by first accepting the reality of Graham Platner's tattoo as not "supporting Nazis" but "someone who made careless and bad decisions due to severe personal issues". The idea of framing someone as pro-Nazi who espoused explicitly anti-Nazi views to tens of thousands of people while preaching about policies they have been begging politicians to push is exactly why the vast majority of Maine Democrats not only rejected the corporate establishment but then gave Platner the honor of receiving the most votes in a primary ever for the state.

I think the kind of takeaway from all of this is that the criticisms of how Platner was embraced by populist progressives are true but that the criticism should probably be more measured and it be reminded that this idea of a populist progressivism isn't even a majority of the electoral left at this point. The left didn't run any candidates like this besides Platner. In fact, the only other candidate like him was run by the same people in Iowa and whose campaign was short lived due to a lack of cash (Nate Sage). The DSA left doesn't really have the reach yet to run Senate candidates, so those are more so CPC pushed candidates, and even then…look who they picked! A Rhode Scholar Egyptian doctor! A Native American LT Governor who says defend trans kids! Those upset at Platner have a chance to donate instead to a Bangladeshi biochemist and peace activist instead of letting a white gay career politician be coronated in New Hampshire! This should be seen as the last breath of a not-explicitly-socialist progressive punditry hoping for a populist movement, while the socialist left and left progressive movements build out a voting bloc that looks like; I think it's also a natural shift in generations. Millennials, we as a cohort, genuinely believe in the ethos of diversity. White Gen X'ers across the left lib spectrum (from Krystal to Ana) liked Platner. Millennial icon Hasan "God is a black woman" Piker's initial reaction was "…okay but did this guy like…do war crimes? Did anyone check??". I actually think the military status thing is just as unsavory to young leftists as the rural masculinity trope. I don't think the socialist left has embraced any explicit military aligned figure. Even Adam Hamawy really emphasized his time in the military was as a medic and that he focused more on being a medical professional in war zones than a veteran, and referenced his volunteering in Gazan hospitals trying to save people's lives. There is very little hunger for these types of candidates amongst anyone on the left born after the 80s! (I just looked it up and - oh look - Maine is the state with the highest median age!)

Ain't it funny that Hasan is framed as some macho misogynist yet he's the only leftist commentator not infatuated with this idea of some rural macho masculine mountain man as a candidate. Like none of this is shocking from some people, even those I like. People forget that Krystal came to public notoriety as a pundit (after her failed Congress bid) by championing Richard Ojeda run in 2016 before supporting Bernie.