Mitch McConnell's toxicity

I know I don't have to interpret that Twitter poll for you, although if you don't know who Shahid Buttar is, he's the progressive Democrat who, along with Nancy Pelosi, came out of the March jungle primary and will face her one-on-one in November.

In his interview with Stuart Stevens published yesterday by the New Yorker-- on the occasion of the release of his new book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump-- Isaac Chotiner asked the former GOP political operative (and now, Lincoln Project #NeverTrumpers), how he came to see that the Republican Party wasn't polluted by Trump but that the Republican Party was polluted by itself.

Worldwide, reported COVID-19 cases were 5,391,485 yesterday, of which 1,666,012 were in the U.S. The 5 countries with the next highest caseloads have, combined, far more people than the U.S. does, but, also combined, far fewer cases:

Starting with Don Jr, the Trumpists lost their collective shit when Greta Thunberg was named 2019 person of the year. Trump really, really, really wanted a legitimate Time Magazine cover to put in his golf club houses celebrating his illegitimate presidency.

Dan McCarthy, a right-wing Arizona Republican skincare company executive who is challenging Martha McSally for her Senate seat next year, told a Phoenix radio audience this week that "the Washington DC establishment, Mitch McConnell... the swamp creatures of Washington, DC-- they've given us two choices, McSally or Kelly. I'm a conservative outsider. I've been looking at this for a little while and I said, 'I'm not so sure if that's acceptable to me; I'd don't know if the status quo's OK...

In his latest ad, West Virginia Republican Don Blankenship strike back at Mitch McConnell by refersring to himl as "cocaine Mitch"-- as in "Ditch Cocaine Mitch." Catchy. The primary is next Tuesday and McConnell is spending millions to make sure Blankenship loses. And it's working.

The other day, in talking about the immense value to Randy Bryce the Bernie Sanders endorsement was. I mentioned in passing how toxic most political endorsements are. No Democrats want endorsements from party leaders like Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley or Wasserman Schultz. And in Republicanville, who would want an endorsement from, for example, Paul Ryan?

Bannon has declared Mitch McConnell the enemy-- and there are plenty of Republican voters who agree. Did you see that stunning new poll from Harvard and Harris this week?

A YouGov poll for The Economist last week showed congressional approval at 8% and disapproval at 71%. Yeah, Congress is not popular. An overwhelming majority of Americans see Congress as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. They're right. And congressional leadership is especially loathed by most voters-- all the top leaders' favorability has been underwater in every poll this year.

Alabama is hopelessly red at this point. Trump beat Hillary there 1,318,255 (62%) to 729,547 (34%). Even the one "Democrat" in the congressional delegation, Terri Sewell, is a conservative New Dem with an "F" rating from ProgressivePunch. There'll be a special election December 12 to fill Jeff Sessions' seat but what's important in beet red Alabama is the primary, specifically the Republican primary.