150: The GOP is Libbity Bibbity Blowing It feat. Nikki McCann Ramírez
The GOP is spending big enough on TV ads that you’d think they were in a strong position headed into the midterms. The opposite is true. They are lost in a sea of dogshit and running out of scapegoats to attack. To the average swing voter, they have now entered… the Libbity Bibbity Zone of the terminally insufferable.
On this episode, Jared and Mike are joined by Nikki McCann Ramírez, political reporter at Rolling Stone and cohost of the American Friction podcast, to talk about MAGA’s scattershot closing argument: migrant caravans, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-Muslim attacks, conspiracy theories about James Talarico, and whatever else they can pull out of their money-stuffed asses. They dig into the Trump/Vance road tour through red states, an administration drowning in cartoonish corruption and self-inflicted wounds, and leaked audio of Ken Paxton sounding worried about Texas. Plus: how realistic is a Democratic sweep of the House and the Senate, and if MAGA gets wiped out in November, what does the “post-MAGA” right look like?
So look out for Mayhem. You’re in good hands with Posting Through It.
Links for Nikki
‘Corruption to Go Around’: How Dems Are Preparing to Investigate Trump After the Midterms
‘Abbott Is Struggling’: Ken Paxton Gripes About Texas GOP and Campaign Woes in New Leaked Audio
X: @NikkiMcR / Bluesky: @nikkimcr.bsky.social
Join us in NYC on Oct. 28: RSVP Here
Transition Music: "LEMONBRAIN" by Bergie and the Magic Bag
Comments (8)
Mike, you can't kill Bibberty that way. Neither the Day of the Guillotine nor the Day of fhe Rope holds any fear for a reckless, spherical being.
I maintain my optimism for the midterms. It's just a matter of how much dirt the GOP ends up eating.
How dare you give me hope that these Chuds might be blowing it😉
Sometimes I think this stuff is as simple as I want someone who will make our lives better and not make specific people's lives worse for no reason.
The ONE thing that could get me to support Trump would be if he ended the Liberty Bibberty commercials and it’s scary how much of me saying that isn’t just joking.
I love you guys, and this show, this is the first time I’ve had an issue with anything in this show. First, Nicky said at the top that people were sick of “career politicians” and not 10 minutes later says that JD Vance was only a senator for 5 minutes and we should be very suspicious of that. Which is it? Should we be suspicious of non-politicians who seek high office? Or career politicians who seek higher office? Second, I assume you’ve seen the DSA’s national platform. The 27 person board of the DSA has at least 12 straight up Tankie/Communists on it. They identify as Maoists, Trotskyists, Marxists, Marxist-Lenninists, and more. I’m all for “Democratic Socialism” if “socialism” means “liberal (small l) government that does things for the people” (which is how a lot of the rank and file DSA would define it) But the DSA LEADERSHIP doesn’t mean it that way. They mean straight up illiberal socialism. I hope you guys are in the first camp and not the second.
I think what Nikki was saying related to JD Vance was different than what she was saying about what voters feel about their elected officials. Clearly people are fed up with people who have been in office forever. It’s a different thing to say JD is essentially inserted into the American body politic by powerful forces. A.k.a. Thiel I understand some of your concerns about the DSA and its current composition. I was in DSA in the 90s when it was a boring and largely useless and ignored socialist book club. I know that it’s different now and it has a lot of elements that would never have been there during the Harrington years or the 90s. I had DSA comrades including my brother who spent long careers in organizing, especially in the labour movement As professionals and volunteers. It’s essentially a big tent organization now that has a pretty high bar for expulsion and a pretty low bar for inclusion. I think we should remember the DSA members themselves picked the people to be on the NPC. We used to run into these sectarian types in the 90s you know Leninists etc. While some of them may harbour ideas that put Venezuela on a pedestal as a model or North Korea. I don’t think they seriously are trying to push that line. They know American workers are not interested in that. In full disclosure, one of my best role models when I was a young organizer with SEIU was a boomer organizer who was a member of a Maoist organization in the 1970s known. as the October league. Our politics are very different and I would point out the crimes of Stalin, etc. he understood my viewpoint, but he was probably the best person I knew who could talk to workers. He put in 100 hour work weeks and spent most of the year away from his family. He was that devoted to labor, organizing. He some sort of big wig at SEIU now. Jimmy Hoffa, with all his faults, learned to organize from a Trotskyist named Farrell Dobbs. The CPUSA did a lot of great things like pushing for Black rights and fighting in the workplace while stanning for a pretty ugly version of state socialism that they constantly had to defend. I don’t think I would get too stressed out about the direction of DSA or the composition of its leaders. I don’t live in the US anymore, but I always hoped the United States would have a real social Democratic Party that could plant the Democrats. We have a couple in Canada, but they have lost their teeth since they gave up on actually being socialists. I wish you luck. Cheers Check this out https://baseandsuperstructure.com/did-entryists-take-over-dsa/
Love Nicky McCann Ramirez. American Friction MVP in the house.