Both Gaetz and Carlson are low-performing daddy's boys whose entire existence has been bankrolled by others - Gaetz's dad bought into a hospice care organization that was basically sued out of existence and Carlson's dad married into the Swanson fortune (after Tucker's mom left him for being a virulent homophobic muckraker asshole). Mother Jones did a great profile on Matt Gaetz.The meanest member of Congress hails from a town called Niceville, a sleepy enclave of about 15,000 nestled on Choctawhatchee Bay, just off the Gulf of Mexico. When Gaetz was growing up, it was 90 percent white, solidly middle class, and best known for hosting the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival—in honor of the plentiful local fish, not the hairdo. The Gaetzes owned a second home, in the nearby town of Seaside, where The Truman Show was filmed. Gaetz, who has devoted his career to getting on television, spent much of his childhood in a house made famous by a character trying to get off TV.
Madison Cawthorne has also built his "career" on a foundation of lies. What a creep.
I just finished Emily Guendelsberger's On the Clock. I highly recommend it. While the basic frame of the book is "out-of-work journalist takes three minimum-wage jobs, hates it" she does a lot of deep-diving into "how did we get here." One of the factoids she brings up towards the end is this little gem: In order to establish whether a person is worthy of official backing, DCCC operatives will “rolodex” a candidate, according to a source familiar with the procedure. On the most basic level, it involves candidates being asked to pull out their smartphones, scroll through their contacts lists, and add up the amount of money their contacts could raise or contribute to their campaigns. If the candidates’ contacts aren’t good for at least $250,000, or in some cases much more, they fail the test, and party support goes elsewhere. So. Fundamentally: Can you gamble a quarter million dollars on a chance to do nothing but attend meetings for two years? No? Then fuck right off. That's the democrats. It's like paying up front for an Ivy League graduate degree with no guarantee you'll even get in. Can we be surprised by the type of candidate attracted to this process?The way to win party support is to pass the phone test.
San Antonio has a twice-elected mayor who ran as an independent, and he's probably gonna win again in a month due to his relatively excellent handling of the pandemic. He's got my vote. Of course, it's a nonpartisan blanket primary election. Shit, if we could even have that setup for Congressional elections or even POTUS, things could probably marginally improve. Not as much as they would improve under your First Amendment project. Still think it needs a rebranding targeting the least common demoninator demographic. "Demoninator" was unintentional, but I'm keeping it. Seriously, it's a great idea, and it's further enabled by the internet, no need to book the Superdome to hold a vote or hearing. The only way I'd ever run is as an independent. Fuck being indebted in any way to your friends/donors or either of the two national political parties.