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Pinback's JournalAlexandra Petri: Forget Hungary. Tucker Carlson is all about Mordor now.
I am honored to announce I will be speaking next week at the Mordor Summit in Barad-dur at the invitation of Dark Lord Sauron! This is the future of conservatism, and I’m excited to throw open the Overton Window and let in the nazguls.
It was wonderful to spend time in Hungary, a country Freedom House describes as “sliding into authoritarian rule” — but why stop there when I could be in a land Freedom House describes as “under authoritarian rule for two-and-a-half thousand years"? That’s two-and-a-half thousand times more aspirational! That’s 10 times longer than the United States has been a country at all, and hundreds of times longer than we’ve been deliberately sliding away from at least theoretically embracing representative democracy.
Freedom House says that in Hungary, “authorities have … interfered with opposition figures’ peaceful political activities” and that the country suffers from ”unequal access to the media”; Freedom House’s report on Mordor states that “opposition figures have … been eaten by the great spider Shelob." Freedom House warns that the governing coalition in Hungary has “worked to close or acquire critical media outlets since 2015,” but in Mordor, Freedom House reports, “there are no critical media outlets, only the battle cries of the fearsome Uruk-hai.”
More at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/11/tucker-carlson-hungary-trip-mordor/
Petri is a treasure. I'm in the middle of reading her fantastic collection of essays and columns from the TFG years, titled Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why. Her combination of gut-busting humor, white-hot rage, and bizarre surrealism always makes for an entertaining (albeit sometimes pretty dark) and cathartic read. Absolute genius.
I hope DUers realize what a tight race this is.
I love Sen. Warnock -- that's why his photo is my avatar. And as a Georgia Democratic voter, I'll be working hard and contributing $$ in the coming months to help him get re-elected. But it's going to take a monumental effort to keep him in office.
This isn't like the Doug Jones re-election campaign in Alabama -- far from it. But it's not going to be easy, either.
This poll of a few hundred Georgia voters (not exclusively registered voters or likely voters) shows Warnock barely beating Herschel Walker, a very popular retired football star with a +13 approval rating who nevertheless has a couple of significant negatives: Walker is currently a Texas resident, and he suffers from multiple personality disorder.
The same poll shows Warnock only 3 percentage points ahead of the disastrous Kelly Loeffler, who was Trump's second choice to replace Johnny Isakson when he retired for health reasons. (TFG preferred rabid attack dog Doug Collins, but Kemp appointed multi-millionaire and big-time Republican donor Loeffler... funny how that works.)
Loeffler, who's generally regarded by everybody but die-hard Republicans as a self-dealing, robotic country club socialite, could still win back her old seat if she chooses to run. Why? Because there are a lot of die-hard Republican voters in Georgia. And both Collins and David Perdue (who lost his re-election bid to Jon Ossoff) could both still enter the race and would be formidable contenders.
What really helped Warnock get elected in January -- aside from being a great person, a highly respected faith leader who's hard to attack, and a broadly appealing figure who really inspires the Democratic base -- are a confluence of factors:
- He was running at the same time as Jon Ossoff, who is hugely popular among young voters who aren't necessarily tuned in as a rule.
- Georgia Democrats (and activists and donors all over the country) put out a huge effort to reject everything Trump in this runoff election.
- And a bunch of the Republican nutbag voters, who unfortunately are statistically significant -- as evidenced by the election of idiots like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andrew Clyde -- stayed home for the January 2021 runoff election, believing that "the whole thing was rigged" since their God Emperor Slobfather was "cheated" out of re-election. How engaged they are in 2022 remains to be seen, but I'm guessing it galls most of them no end to have to call a Black man their U.S. Senator.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm happy about this new poll, and I'm happy that Georgia has attained a new status as a battleground state. I do not agree with the pessimists who say it's impossible to overcome the voter suppression and subterfuges of the state's Republican machine, or that this race is unwinnable Because Midterms, because January 2021 was an anomaly, et al. Nor do I agree with those who think Georgia has "turned blue" and is now a safe state for Dems.
I hope DUers will contribute to Warnock's campaign and help any way they can. We're going to need it, big-time.
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