When a political analyst gets something wrong and offers an explanation for why they made a mistake, I’m inclined to accept their apology and respect their self-criticism. I’m not sure I can fully do that in the case of Jonathan Chait, however, because his explanation is that he just couldn’t grasp how monumentally “idiotic” most Republicans voters are, so he didn’t think it would be possible for someone like Trump to have so much appeal to them.
That’s a pretty half-hearted blame-shifting apology, although that alone doesn’t make it wrong as an explanation for why Chait didn’t see the Trump train coming.
But it is still pretty much wrong.
It’s not that Republicans are in love with Donald Trump and are too stupid to see his flaws. Sure, you can find people like that, perhaps a lot of them. But the error of analysis here wasn’t in misjudging Trump’s appeal but in missing the severity of the rupture between the Republican Establishment and its base. When you don’t understand that sufficiently, or lend it enough weight, then you focus too much on Trump and not enough on the utter inadequacies of his rivals for the Republican nomination.
To demonstrate my point, ask yourself which of the eleventy-billion alternatives to Trump should have been supported by “smart” Republicans. Was it Jeb, with the legacy of his brother and his support of Common Core and comprehensive immigration reform? Was it Rick “Oops” Perry with his criminal indictment? Was it the bridge-closer, Chris Christie, or the transparent lightweight Marco Rubio?
Surely it wasn’t Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina with their conspiracy theories and foolishness.
You can make a case that a saner choice would have been picking one of the two-term midwestern governors, John Kasich or Scott Walker, but it’s not like either of them were filled with charisma and surefire winners.
What explains Trump is mainly not about Trump. It’s about weak competition combined with a base that heard one too many broken promises.
And a huge part of the problem was that they were told over and over again that the world was going to end and it didn’t end. But the things that were supposed to cause the apocalypse, like Obamacare and our federal finances, didn’t get addressed the way the base expected them to be addressed.
Meanwhile, the wealthy got their tax cuts and their loopholes, and the issues that impacted the Republican base, like job loss and opioid addiction and changing social mores and immigration, didn’t get fixed.
So, to me, Chait’s rant about how stupid Republicans are isn’t just “gauche,” as he puts it. It’s not the explanation for why he failed.
The fault for Trump lies much less with the voters who support him than with the candidates they didn’t support but have supported in the past.
There’s a big part of the answer to the “rhetoric vs. organizing” post below: a central reason for Trump’s victory is the decay of the party and the awfulness of the competition. Trump thinks he hit it out of the park when the party moved the stadium walls in to the baseline.
“What explains Trump is mainly not about Trump.” This leaves too little explanatory power with Trump’s special role in American society. Sure, he’s plenty fascist, but he doesn’t seem THAT bad since we think we know him.
Fame is itself something of an aphrodisiac, and not just to the famous person. So, too, power: both those who seek it as well as those around it crave it. Put them together and you get: Trump.
I’m not a pol or a pundit by background, training or (obvs) temperament. But it does seem to me that we on the left too often fail to see the world in its emotional richness, sticking to things like HRC’s recent family care initiative. (Bernie seems at least to understand that righteous anger is powerful.)
The sense that a couple of hundred Americans have of Trump — based on his long and very public career — is that they think they know him, and like anyone you get to know well enough, it’s hard to suspect them of either base motives or gross incompetence.
Come November, we’ll be biting our nails…once again. (And this time more than some others should be a total blowout by conventional standards…).
Absolutely on power and fame. Even now I strongly feel the pull toward and understand the appeal of Napoleon for instance.
Trump crushed all his enemies, many of whom were also enemies of the base after so many broken promises, why wouldn’t you want to get a piece of that action. Crushing your enemies can be very very fun.
2004 — How Can 59 million people be so DUMB?
Looks as is those “idiots” have moved beyond an occasionally and ever so slightly amusing legacy idiot to an ever so much more amusing celebrity candidate wit a few more working brain cells.
Small businessmen are a big chunk of Trump supporters–over one-third.
Could this have something to do with it?
Close to a decade after the start of the Great Recession, money remains tight for many small-business owners. According to Biz2Credit.com, an online lending platform, as of this March, the nation’s largest banks are approving less than 1 in 4 (23 percent) loans for small businesses, while smaller regional banks and credit unions are approving just under half. Forty percent can’t even raise money from high-interest alternative lenders. If they get money, they’re probably personally guaranteeing the sum. The Federal Reserve Bank’s 2015 Small Business Credit Surveyreports a majority of small-business debt is secured by the personal assets of the owner–something that’s even true for firms with $10 million in annual revenues.
“Whether or not small-business owners can rattle off such figures, they certainly have a sense of economic pain.” (Helene Oden’s article at Salon)
Another person suggested this to me recently. I think this is some of it.
I’ve heard and read this a number of times over the past few months. While it is true, that for-real small bus owners have been given the shaft for many years, they still want to buy into the convoluted lack of logic that the R Team is “better” for them that the Ds. There’s this pervading notion that the Rs will lower their taxes, reality to the contrary. What can I say?
Now this faction believes that Trump is their new real “savior.” I’ve forced myself to listen to Trump more times than I want to, but I have yet to be convinced that Trump will somehow magically be “better” for small bus owners. IOW, I think it’s bait and switch, yet again. That said, I’m not even sure that Trump has “promised” anything factual. I think it’s just magical thinking yet again.
Frankly, nobody has done them much good for the last decade. We have inflated assets for Wall Street and the Market with QE that was supposed to loosen credit, but it did not happen with demand in the toilet. Banks can sit back on their free Fed funds and get paid 0.5% on excess reserves by TAXPAYERS.
Who wants to destroy government the most? The small businessmen close to the edge of bankruptcy who think that it’s because of government regulations or having to actually pay their employees instead of the fact that they were under-capitalized from the beginning and are surviving without admitting actual under- or unemployment on dumb luck and being one step in front of creditors.
Or those who love to squander other people’s money without consequences. And see how Trump operates.
In other words, Rich Dad/Poor Dad fans.
American Poujadism, in other words.
Hey, thanks for the new term for me:
a conservative reactionary movement to protect the business interests of small traders
they spent 8 years declaring the end of the world because of Barack Obama…..
and, the world didn’t end…and, he was RE-ELECTED in 2012..
pretty much by ‘ THOSE PEOPLE’….
And they watched POTUS win…and win…and win…
add in that the only folks that the GOP came through for were the Oligarchs…
they were ripe for a Con Man that didn’t speak in dogwhistles.
When in 1946, Richard Nixon began building a base of marks, he did his job well.
The media ranting about Republicans voting for Trump is like the National Association of Kindergarten Teachers ranting about kids peeing on the carpet.
If only there were an adult around …
America’s kindergarteners beg you to strive for a better simile and resent the false stereotype.
Because only the most out-of-control kindergarteners-with-issues would ever pee on the carpet, and if it became a huge national issue we’d wonder what was going wrong in the classrooms, see, where the teachers were supposed to be … oh, forget it.
Obama’s Gorgeous Goodbye
Frank Bruni
MAY 11, 2016
In this twilight of his presidency, Barack Obama is unlikely to deliver much in the way of meaningful legislation.
But he’s giving us a pointed, powerful civics lesson.
Consider his speech to new graduates of Howard University last weekend. While it brimmed with the usual kudos for hard work, it also bristled with caveats about the mistakes that he sees some young people making.
He chided them for demonizing enemies and silencing opponents. He cautioned them against a sense of grievance too exaggerated and an outrage bereft of perspective. “If you had to choose a time to be, in the words of Lorraine Hansberry, `young, gifted and black’ in America, you would choose right now,” he said. “To deny how far we’ve come would do a disservice to the cause of justice.”
He was by no means telling them to be satisfied, and he wasn’t talking only or even chiefly to them. He was talking to all of us — to America — and saying: enough. Enough with a kind of identity politics that can shove aside common purpose. Enough with a partisanship so caustic that it bleeds into hatred.
Enough with such deafening sound and blinding fury in our public debate. They make for entertainment, not enlightenment, and stand in the way of progress.
At some point, revisionists will document what actually went down during the Obama presidency and how that compared with what most Americans absorbed from a rapidly changing media.
When a picture (or cover) says a thousand words:
http://nypost.com/covers/
See, I go the other way and embrace the “bunch of idiots” argument, but with the caveat that idiocy can be taught; it’s a top-down phenomenon.
Look what happens in the best schools: even the kids everyone was most dismissive of, who seemed to have no potential or interests because they were quiet or combative or sullen or mired in video games or whatever…after four years of osmosis and expert encouragement and challenging environments and good friends and teachers, they’re on the model UN, they’re off to some great job; they’ve discovered a talent for drama or the trombone or football or debating; they now regularly frequent museums and bookstores; they can quote Nietzsche.
What happens to Republicans in the American heartland is the exact opposite of this. They’re fed awful food, shown awful entertainment and “news” (and endless, endless advertising), sold crap products at bad stores, encouraged to spend money on pointless products, herded around like cattle, forced to live in cookie-cutter homes in bland environments surrounded by malls, churches, and fast food outlets — all the pearls of our modern agressively-profit-based society. The result? Idiots.
But it’s not just those sorts of citizens who are going for Trump. Believe me, I know several – yeah anecdotal and small sample but I think there’s plenty out there the same – who were raised in what are considered “nice” homes with good education and good jobs, who have traveled at least some and are at least somewhat sophisticated and smart… just like all the GOP/Tea Party.
What the bullshit media shows us is all the White supremacists bc they are click bait. But I have a strong feeling that there’s loads of “average” people with decent jobs who aren’t totally stupid. They’re going for Trump, as well. I still don’t get it, myself, but be careful of over generalizing.
It really is worse than that. They are sold the idea that this situation is their “cultural tradition” of which they must be proud and must protect from those who seek to improve the quality of nutrition, education, and social life.
And further sold the notion that “THEY are snickering at you.”
That creates an environment of wanting to self-create that which is ever more idiotic. Mandating guns in churches, for example. Allowing high school students to carry mace in school to defend themselves from transgender students in restrooms. The largest statue of Jeee-suss wrapped in an American flag ever put by an interstate highway.
It is the ground for a special kind of Guinness book of World Records to build pride and angry, self-defensive simulacra of self-esteem.
There seems to be a deep self-consciousness of how false it all is but unwillingness to face that they, above all, were responsible for the legitimating in 2004 the worst President in US history to this point, George W. Bush. With Trump, they can lose that stigma. If he wins. It’s not them, it’s all the other candidates who never seriously thought about coalescing around a reasonable anti-Trump candidate. The emotional power of anger that is motivating the Trump candidacy is coming from somewhere that prevents seeing what Trump is about.
Most of these people live as best they can afford and are ticked off about folks who have options looking down on them. And especially when these same outside people are the salaried folks who make their living creating and delivering the very things these outsiders think so culturally atrocious.
I saw that report.
Quite astonishing that in every reporting I’ve seen of it, nobody has noted, or even raised, the utterly ridiculous backwardness in the notion as reported of who is most likely to need self-protection from whom in such a scenario!
*pretty sure the reports I saw said “pepper spray” (which we here in MT tend to think of as “bear spray”); don’t claim to know how significant a distinction that is: is “mace” just one commercial brand name for “pepper spray”? I don’t know.
As Driftglass has stated, 9/11 was a “Get out of the 90s Free” card.
Electing Trump is a “Get out of George W. Bush Free” card.
I know plenty of southern, southern Baptist Republicans, and very few of them are “idiots”, as much as they’ve very highly trained to believe whatever their handlers tell them (authoritarians). Their handlers told them that Bush was the greatest President ever, and they had to constantly swallow that load of bullshit…which takes a very large toll on your psyche.
The same handlers then told them that Obama would cause the total destruction of the US. And here we are, still breathing.
This election is the Republican base effectively washing their hands of the Republican establishment, and George W. Bush. Until Trump came along, they still had to pretend out loud that Bush wasn’t a total fucking failure, because their handlers hadn’t given them permission to call Bush a total failure.
Trump has freed them of this burden on their psyche. Trump essentially locked up the GOP nomination as soon as he focused on Jeb(!), and said that W. had broken the country.
Ever been really, really constipated? Well, Trump was the enema that the Republican base needed to rid itself of George W. Bush’s bullshit. As soon as Trump told his authoritarian followers that they could now officially call Bush a failure, he had it all locked up. When you can stop believing something you know is untrue, publicly, you instantly feel better.
Throw on top of it the fact that Trump is a very good social dominator (the kind of people that authoritarians inherently follow), and his attack on Political Correctness (which is basically society’s shunning of bigotry) and it’s clear as fucking day why Trump won the hearts and minds of the Republican base.
Shit, I predicted Trump being the Republican nominee as far back as July 22nd 2015. And it isn’t me bragging, it’s me having read about authoritarians, and having a basic understanding of cognitive dissonance and how it is one of the two twin pillars of American conservatism. Here and elsewhere I figured that Trump as Republican nominee would likely destroy the Republican party, at least nationally, for a few election cycles.
Trump prepared to keep tax returns hidden from public
05/11/16 12:42 PM–UPDATED 05/11/16 12:54 PM
By Steve Benen
…………………………………….
And what of this fine physical specimen’s tax returns? The Associated Press reported this morning:
Despite pressure, the billionaire also doesn’t expect to release his tax returns before November, citing an ongoing audit of his finances. He said he will release them after the audit ends. But he said that he wouldn’t overrule his lawyers and instruct them to release his returns if the audit hasn’t concluded by November.
“There’s nothing to learn from them,” Trump told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. He also has said he doesn’t believe voters are interested.
I can’t speak to what voters may or may not find interesting, but if the AP report is correct, it appears Trump will be the first major-party nominee in the modern era to simply refuse to disclose his tax returns. Mitt Romney spent months delaying disclosure and making excuses, but in his 2012 race, even he eventually released his 2011 returns and a topline summary, including his effective tax rate, for the previous 20 years.
Trump, in contrast, is prepared to move forward with no disclosure in this area at all, prompting all kinds of questions about what, exactly, the Republican may be hiding from the public. Is he far less wealthy than he claims to be? Has most of his income come by way of television, rather than the purported success of his business?
We could know the answers – even if Trump is telling the truth about being audited, there’s nothing stopping him from releasing these materials – but according to the GOP candidate, we won’t.
It’ll be interesting to see whether or not the media gets tired of asking for the materials Trump doesn’t want to share, or if this will become a major issue in the fall.
Not releasing tax returns really didn’t hurt Lord High Muckity Muck Mittens. I heard loads of excuses from his fans. This won’t hurt Trump, either, sad to say. His fans simply won’t care. And even the tax forms were released and showed all kinds of chicanery and tax cheating? His fans would probably cheer and do happy dances. So I don’t hold out any hope that Trump’s tax forms will do much of anything, released or not.
I would place my bet on the major media eventually shrugging their shoulders and running with his desired narrative that “there’s nothing to be learned here”, and working to convince us that it really and truly is not any of our damn business, and that the tradition of a candidate releasing that information has just been a ridiculous exercise in political correctness that needs to end, anyway. Just another example of Trump’s promise to “shake up the status quo”.
He’s the new Maverick! They will love that!
You should get a paycheck from the “media” for that. No snark. You’re totally correct!
uh huh
uh huh
……………………
Ted Cruz already looking beyond 2016 election
05/11/16 02:02 PM
By Vaughn Hillyard
WASHINGTON – Ted Cruz suggested last month Republicans are “looking at a bloodbath of Walter Mondale proportions” if GOP voters send Donald Trump out of Cleveland as the party’s nominee for president.
Mondale, the Democrats’ 1984 presidential nominee, won just one state over Ronald Reagan.
“This ain’t complicated – if the top of the ticket is blown out of the water by 10 points, we’re losing the Senate,” Cruz said at the time, addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas. “And there’s not a thing that can be done to stop it.”
Cruz, the 45-year-old freshman senator from Texas, has already called Trump amoral, a serial philanderer, a bully, a pathological liar and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.” And he has refused to back Trump after being peppered by reporters at least a dozen times with the question in just the last two weeks.
But Cruz received more than seven million votes across the country in the three months since his Iowa caucus victory.
He repeatedly said on Tuesday the “conservative movement,” as he calls it, “will only continue to get stronger.”
But with Cruz seemingly its shepherd, there’s uncertainty in what the path ahead looks like for the “millions of grassroots activists” who Cruz praised on Tuesday as heralding it.
When will the electorate get beyond their anger and angst and consider actual policy? Do you think six months is enough time for the anger to burn out and sense to return?
Nope. Dream on.
I’ve had loads of people on both sides of the aisle ‘splain me why policy simply doesn’t matter.
I don’t think US citizens care about policy anymore. It’s all hype, glitz, glamor and entertainment (not even infotainment).
Trump’s fans – the ones I know or whom I’ve encountered online – all seem to say the same thing: once Trump is elected, he’ll “figure it out.” This is verbatim from quite a few people (still a small sample, but still…).
When politicians are serious about policy discussions instead of just using it to spin their candidacy in an election and failing to deliver.
A lot of the anger is, as was mentioned above, broken promises and non-performance.
For the Trump voters, this is the legacy of Mitch McConnell and the Freedom Caucus. And Grover Norquist’s idea that you can just drown government in a bathtub.
Monumentally idiotic is not hyperbole. There was once a GOP culture where a man married a woman of his own race and religion, had children, owned a non-franchise hardware store, owned his home, supported his wife and family on a single income, sent his kids to college without a loan, went to church on Sunday, loved his country, was passively racist, misogynist and homophobic without ever having questioned it, and so on. This was the “American Dream” and those millions who felt they had achieved it had good reason to vote GOP to “conserve” the status quo.
When Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, he declared all-out war on that way of life and by the time the corporations were deregulated and the monopoly laws repealed there was no going back.
Now, that proud, clueless, happy, successful white American conservative has lost everything. His hardware store has been forced out of business by Home Depot, where he works if he’s not so strung out on booze and painkillers that he’s on welfare. His wife, if she hasn’t left him, is working an equally horrible job. His kids will never go to college unless they take out six figures worth of crippling loans. He has a mountain of 20% credit card debit that he’ll never be able to get out from under. He will never have a prayer of owning a house. Everything he loved is gone and he’s still voting GOP.
This was apparent from the beginning to the people paying close attention, but it reached the level of “monumental idiocy” by the end of the 1990s. It’s almost 20 years later. It’s now something categorically beyond monumental idiocy.
But but but… Trump let’s them say the “n” word!!! Kewl!!! It makes Murka Great AGAIN!!!
Tradition! Heritage! Legacy!
Also too, trickle down’s gonna work any second now… aaaannnnyyy second now… keep clapping louder for Tinkerbell!!!11!!!
And after 20-plus years of reinforcement by the right-wing wurlitzer, their synapses are so calcified that their brains are biologically incapable of making the connection between policies which were enacted and the facts surrounding their long term suffering.
Billmon
@billmon1
I feel that in the post-revolutionary museum of Liberal Smugness, this should have a place.
In a sense W. Virginia primary was just what elites needed to infantilize, marginalize opposition to neoliberalism.
“THE BIG IDEA: The success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is really not about ideology. It’s about disaffection.” (https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/05/11/daily-202-west-virginia-r
esults-show-disaffection-not-ideology-fuels-sanders-and-trump/57322d0b981b92a22d72af0d)
Loving, Lamenting, Losing, Obama.
As a boy, I’d often be taken aback whenever my father would express his platonic love and appreciation for different men in many ways. He loved Jim Brown. The pro football player, actor, and activist who embodied the ultimate in black manhood and machismo. Sydney Potier held for my father, grace, elegance and uncompromised sophisticated black maleness. Singer Eddie Kendricks, represented fun, independent spirit, and inner-city smoothness. Although he would never use these words, he adored them. It was always strange for me to watch someone so brainy, manly and athletic as my father gush over men. My youthful perception of manhood I’d acquired, taught me to like or appreciate with aloofness other men.
Enter Obama. Now I get it. As black men, we are often conditioned to display a limited range of emotions. Now, I see why my father broke all the rules of displaying openly black male affection and adoration. President Obama broke all the rules of black men for me and in large part the world. He held the grace of Portier. The spiritedness of Kendricks. The power, activism and the manliness of Brown. What he did in this way was nothing new. We grew up with men equally as regal. Obama had the opportunity to put it all on display and modernized it. He emotes. For many grown ass men, this is taboo. He steps around anger, as presidents do, but he will go there as well. And like Jesus, Obama wept. It’s oxymoronic to say, but he’s no punk about his emotions. Perform a random Google search for images of our President. You’re walloped with a vast display of emotion, character, and personality. His sincerity towards us makes him easy to love. And will make him easy to miss. we’ve lived through our own Camelot. A shining, rich, Black Camelot. And era replete with an iconic queen and not one, but two darling princesses. Now my son spies my gush.
Lobbyists: NC Lawmakers turn up pressure to quiet HB2 opponents
Posted 6:00 p.m. today
RALEIGH, N.C. — While Republican state leaders have complained about being “bullied” by the federal government over House Bill 2, lobbyists in Raleigh tell WRAL News they and the businesses they represent are being bullied by state lawmakers seeking to silence business opposition to the new law.
Lobbyists say they’ve been told – either directly by legislative leaders or by lawmakers’ staff – that, if they or the businesses they represent speak out publicly against House Bill 2, they can expect retribution from House and Senate leaders.
Legislation they want won’t move, and other bills could actually target them.
WRAL News spoke with 11 lobbyists who have experienced or are aware of such actions, but none would speak on the record for fear they would lose business or be targeted for retribution. One has already lost business.
One long-time lobbyist called the pressure a “gross abuse of power.” Another veteran lobbyist labeled it “vicious,” adding, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
People forget..
Harry used to feed himself through boxing…
he ain’t scurrred…
BWAHA HA HA HA HA HA H AH HA
……………………………………..
Rep. Alan Grayson angrily confronted Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday, disrupting a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in front of dozens of staffers and members of Congress.
Grayson (D-Fla.), who Reid vehemently opposes in his bid for the open Florida Senate seat, arrived at the meeting with Reid’s February statement in hand, according to two sources in the room. In that statement, Reid said Grayson has “no moral compass” and “used his status as a congressman to unethically promote his Cayman Islands hedge funds.”
As each member took a turn to speak to Reid, it was Grayson’s turn. He asked Reid if the Nevada senator knows who he is. After Reid answered in the affirmative, Grayson went on the attack.
“Say my name, senator. Say my name,” Grayson told Reid as Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) tried to shut the confrontation down. Ellison chided Grayson, asking him what he was doing and why he was distracting from the meeting’s goals.
Grayson responded by angrily waving a printout of Reid’s searing February quote that called on Grayson to drop out of the primary race against Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.).
“Why’d you say that?” Grayson said, insisting Reid’s statement was false.
Reid calmly faced his inquisitor: “I want you to lose. It’s true.”
Ellison and other Progressive Caucus members then shut the questioning down, turning it over to Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). One source in the room said that members rarely get meetings with Reid and were frustrated that they were unable to strategize over the Supreme Court, Donald Trump’s nomination and other issues due to the outburst.
People forget..
Harry used to feed himself through boxing…
he ain’t scurrred…
BWAHA HA HA HA HA HA H AH HA
……………………………………..
Rep. Alan Grayson angrily confronted Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday, disrupting a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in front of dozens of staffers and members of Congress.
Grayson (D-Fla.), who Reid vehemently opposes in his bid for the open Florida Senate seat, arrived at the meeting with Reid’s February statement in hand, according to two sources in the room. In that statement, Reid said Grayson has “no moral compass” and “used his status as a congressman to unethically promote his Cayman Islands hedge funds.”
As each member took a turn to speak to Reid, it was Grayson’s turn. He asked Reid if the Nevada senator knows who he is. After Reid answered in the affirmative, Grayson went on the attack.
“Say my name, senator. Say my name,” Grayson told Reid as Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) tried to shut the confrontation down. Ellison chided Grayson, asking him what he was doing and why he was distracting from the meeting’s goals.
Grayson responded by angrily waving a printout of Reid’s searing February quote that called on Grayson to drop out of the primary race against Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.).
“Why’d you say that?” Grayson said, insisting Reid’s statement was false.
Reid calmly faced his inquisitor: “I want you to lose. It’s true.”
Ellison and other Progressive Caucus members then shut the questioning down, turning it over to Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). One source in the room said that members rarely get meetings with Reid and were frustrated that they were unable to strategize over the Supreme Court, Donald Trump’s nomination and other issues due to the outburst.
And people wonder why I pegged him as a no character loser after actually meeting him and talking with him.
You called this one a LONG time ago. And backed it with warnings.
.
You did nail him long before anyone else.