Dave Weigel

Dave Weigel had observed for the Washington Post hours before Paul Ryan's fake CNN town hall-- in reality a deceitful infomercial gifted to his campaign with pre-screened questions and a pre-selected audience by CNN-- that the staged event had "turned into a marketing opportunity for progressives. Randy Bryce, Ryan’s likely Democratic opponent in 2018, has purchased time for two 30-second spots that will run during the broadcast in the Republican’s district. The first spot is designed like the sort of question-from-voters videos that are often used at town halls.

You probably remember how excited we were to see progressive icon Zephyr Teachout take on corrupt conservaDem Andrew Cuomo for governor of New York in 2014. She did remarkably well outside of Machine-controlled parts of New York. She won 30 counties, some with over 70% support. This week she announced that she's running for the open congressional seat-- Republican Chris Gibson isn't seeking reelection-- encompassing an area she swept when she ran against Cuomo.

Many people were shocked when Bernie came in tied for first place in Vermont's presidential contest-- no not among Democrats (he's at 70% in that race), but among Republicans! They shouldn't have been; Vermont Republicans like him. In 2012, when he was up for reelection, he took 208,253 votes (71.1%), while Obama, also on the ballot that day, did very well but with only 199,259 votes (67.0%). Governor Peter Shumlin took only 170,767 votes (58.0%).

We keep getting told not to demean Trump because if you do, you'll be demeaning his supporters. Yeah, so? Isn't that the point? No one with an ability to exercise a modicum of critical thought would take Trump seriously for two seconds. Every word out of his mouth is a lie or is so twisted that its relationship to reality is approximately equivalent to the reality on reality TV-- mixed with the prescription drugs that inhabit the tiny brains of the people who drool over Trump's simple-minded nonsense.