My recently lost year in Democratic Party politics left me wondering why it was so difficult to demonstrate the need for appeals to white voters, mainly rural and without college degress, who once did and could again back Democrats as the best hope for their economic interest. If nothing else, the numbers in the disastrous 2014 off-year elections proved it. It was baffling to me how so many party leaders dismissed opportunities to make an economic case that bypassed the cultural wedges Republicans have long used to cynically lure these voters away. Some considered it racist to advocate such a strategy.
That’s why the article below from Politico was a bit of an “aHA” moment for me. It turns out Democrats were unwittingly not even finding these voters in their polling. But what’s really sad is that Democrats needed polls at all to see them. It was so painfully obvious to anyone who actually listened to them and made a sincere effort to understand their plight.
For instance, how many national Democratic leaders have seen the all-too-frequent weekends in parts of rural America where folks who can’t afford dental care or insurance show up at a local venue where volunteer dentists pull their teeth? How many even know this is happening? I guess many wouldn’t know unless it somehow showed up in a poll.
There is an old business adage that “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” In this case, measuring should not have even been necessary to manage this problem.
Politico: “The party didn’t just lose among rural white voters, it may have failed to capture them in its pre-election polling as well.… Many pollsters and strategists believe that rural white voters, particularly those without college degrees, eluded the party’s polling altogether — and their absence from poll results may have been both a cause and a symptom of Donald Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton in several states.”
The article quotes a Democratic analyst, John Hagner, who offers a profound point that often skews polls (it’s called non-responsive bias): “The folks who would talk to a stranger about politics just aren’t representative of people who wouldn’t.”
Again, however, the party needs more leaders and candidates who don’t need a pollster to understand these voters, who know in their gut how to win their trust without appealing to their dark side. And those Democrats who don’t get it need to quit assuming that their dark side is all there is to see.
the need for free dental care is not just a problem in rural areas or for white people- free dental clinics are everywhere because dental care wasn’t offered as insurance until Obamarama
I’m sure more goopers don’t care or know about it then Dems…
Democrats did something about it…nationally and in the states where they could
Democrats for the most part can’t get voters who are racist –and that is the problem goopers are happy to have them
craig, another reason rural folks fell off the map or at least a contributing factor was that most analog tv broadcasts ended by 2009. many lost their ability to watch free national broadcast stations on their old rickety antennae. transmissions changed and geographical limitations kicked in bigly. those who had no extra money to spend on dish, directtv etc were cut off from the world they use to hear about on abc, cbs, nbc and pbs. the new world was only for the techno- literate and/or the financially better off in non-urban flyover country. the somewhat civic unifying education factor of the past passed. no longer would a great majority simultaneously hear and share the same major broadcast of an event of national importance (think here, the jfk assassination or challenger explosion).
in most places when the switch from analog took place — free devices were offered fcc offered coupons
continuing to make excuses for people being racists …that is always helpful
kgc, those devices didn’t help if the stations transmissions changed and no antennae (other than satellite/cable) could pick them up. those long-gone shared experiences helped make for a feeling of community, common language and even filial feelings within otherwise diversity. many have been thrown back to the wolves of xenophobia.
xr, thanks for the hint about ellis. here’s excerpt from the atlantic yesterday:
One problem with removing Nunes from the equation is that he obtained the revelations, such as they are, himself from a source, and it’s unclear who else has seen them. On Monday, after CNN broke the news that Nunes had visited the White House complex to view the information prior to his Wednesday announcement, he told Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake that his source was an intelligence official. Nunes has also said that no one in the administration knew about his visit. That claim has been the subject of skepticism from critics, including former Obama officials, who say no one could have visited the White House grounds, let alone used its secure facility for viewing intelligence material, without being cleared by White House staff.
Speculation has begun to focus on Michael Ellis, who was general counsel for the House Intelligence Committee until he was hired as special assistant to the president, senior associate counsel to the president, and deputy national security council legal adviser. Notably, Ellis is also an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve—though if he was the source, it would contradict Nunes’s claims that no administration official was aware of his visit and that the White House did not know of the incidental collection before he briefed Trump.
Bernie knew they were there. Bernie understood. Unfortunately, the DNC decided to ignore everyone except Hillary & those who backed her.
Betnie could’ve beaten Trump; he was speaking to those people.
SNL’s Colin Jost made the perfect comment about Bernie a couple of weeks ago. I’ll have to look for the WU clip.
Holy demographic! It is a big country and as a rural resident of this country, I tend to disagree with this broad brush of painting the rural landscape. I live it every day and I was once a resident of the rust belt…it ain’t ever coming back like the 1950’s. It is obvious the dems were digitally doomed the last few election cycles. I have been told that my vote doesn’t matter anyway as the prez is elected by the folks east of the Mississippi. The gerrymandered districts are also too tough to beat and I hope the census is favorable to the dems in 2020. But, to change polling to coax or lie to the trump supporters and hillary haters for their votes? Dishonest and not a dem principle. As I have said, the dems need to be here for the voters as they will be affected by trump….I wonder why he wants to kill-off his own supporters so quickly? Voting and health care and education are rights to me and the repugs are taking them away as fast as possible. Citizen whiplash.
As for medicaid? I was part of the expansion…medicaid for all citizens as it does include dental and vision. It is the single payer system and it takes a holistic approach to health care. Medicare does not. Medicare is still about insurance…not demographics…about actuarians running our life. Hubby and I left the expansion this year as I started collecting my social security and no longer qualify. Medicaid is an orphan program in many states, but the big hospitals love the program. If you can find care, it is the best without any stress of the big bills and bankruptcies for a little health care.
patd you are wrong about the devices that was the purpose to make sure people could still get broadcast television
if anything the increase in diversity of communications options has increased the opportunity for shared experiences…the information just comes in different forms now
bill o’liely is scum. Sad. period.
bernie would not have been able to get those votes
if they hated a black president what do you think they would have felt about a socialist Jew
this election was not about jobs and economics it was about race and hatred and trying to make it into something else – means you will never find away out.
keep talking about jobs….jobs that will never come back instead of what the real problem is…..
The next time someone you know goes all freaky about “Sharia Law”, you might refer them to this article about religious observance and courts that enforce it, but from another religion as Beit Din has to decide what is kosher and what is not.
Pizza Wars
add religious hatred to racial hatred. not about jobs (or even dental care)
crackers – It’s that kind of thinking that put up a candidate who ignored white, rural voters. She didn’t pander to the right folks.
Also, a digital antennae is $40 & it’s all I’ve had for 4 years. It’s cable (Faux v MSNBC, for instance) that allows folks to more easily cherry-pick their info. Not that broadcast news doesn’t show some bias…although that is mostly due to the shallowness of their journalistic ability.
i’m a white rural voter she didn’t ignore me
She didn’t ignore them at all. Unfortunately, they were inundated by dog whistles and emails. You can go to virtually every public & written statements about jobs and see where she was absolutely right and unlike Trump or Bernie recommended specific actions and programs to correct the problems only to get mocked for being too nit picky detailed about such things.
My major bugaboo right now is gerrymandering as it goes directly to locking in one party power. The Democratic party has lost the governorships and state houses. They 2010 census and rights to redraw Congressional districts went to the GOP. Between now and 2020, there has to be a concerted effort to legally ban gerrymandering by state and where that doesn’t happen to take back state house seats to control the redistricting.
during the election …people posted here about how it wouldn’t be so bad if Trump were elected
still feel the same way?
kgc, I wish I were wrong, but reality in the boonies and knobs here is to shell out money monthly for dish/directtv etc (which many can’t afford) or be stuck with only 2 channels neither of which are national…. in the good ole antenna days, multiple broadcasts were received from multiple but faraway urban centers. so these rural-ites have to depend on computer hookups, phones and radio (the latter being the only freebie available for people who barely have enough money to pay for electricity… to say nothing of money for health care or food).
KGC, your strategy of subtraction is fine if you’re fine with continuing to lose elections. Politics ought to be about addition, not subtraction. Blowing off such a pivotal voting bloc in 2014 and 2016 has helped make Dems a minority party, from state houses on up.
And breaking news about the 2020 Census
Trump Administration Omits LGBTQ designations in Data Collection
Not sure until final questionnaire as to how actual gender and households will appear.
We’ll never know if Bernie could have beaten drumpf (god, are we back on that?) He couldn’t beat Clinton. Case closed. On 1st ballot, Hillary won 34 states to bernie’s 23 (who knew there were 57?), and at the convention she got 40 to his 16, picking up rust belt and Rockies states. She took the south, most of the Midwest, and she took ILL., MO., SD & IA – so Bernie didn’t exactly sweep the rural white portion of the country even against her.
Drumpf spoke louder to the prejudices and misinformed beliefs of rural whites. Border security, bringing back jobs lost in the past 30 years, keeping brown people from taking jobs whites should have, cheap health insurance, tax breaks, MAGA caps … None of it was true – but if the model is you have to promise what you know you can’t deliver to woo those votes rather than level with people – I guess that’s politics, isn’t it?
KC, other than BiD & Ping, who posted that it wouldn’t be so bad if trump won? I don’t recall any others, but that could be a failing of my feeble memory.
yayand there people who think the Dems should give up their pro choice position to win
Personally I think the dems lost and have been losing not because they choose the wrong issues but because they made other political mistakes….including not keeping up the 50 state strategy
well Patd you are wrong you can say you are right all you want but you aren’t
Trump’s Executive Order gift to Coal Executives
Don’t expect new coal production or jobs
I’ll just shut up now and let Bill Clinton do the talking …
Bill Clinton’s lonely, one-man effort to win white working-class voters
“There’s a lot of road rage out there because after the financial crash, it took a long time before incomes started going up again. There are still some families that if you adjust for inflation, their incomes are about what they were the last day I was president more than 15 years ago and their costs are going up. And that’s really tough. So when you get up every morning, and you look in the mirror and you don’t think you’ve got the power to make tomorrow better than today, that’s a pretty tough load to carry.
Poobah, from here in the land of the rural whites, there was nothing that could be said to overcome the forces that put drumpf in office. They bought the drumpf lies and bullshit hook, line and sinker. They blamed dems and Obama regulations for killing coal and industry. The subtle (and not so subtle) racism and lies about reversing the death of coal and manufacturing and the MAGA message – along with the rock star bullshit – combined with hatred of all things Hillary and Obama – worked to seal their ears to any argument that the dems could do anything for them.
So what have we gotten from that? A coal baron for a governor, a pugn legislature talking about putting the sales tax back on food to balance the budget decimated by the loss of revenue from coal severance taxes because WV coal can’t compete with MT coal, shitty infrastructure and no sign of an improving economy. Frankly, I think saying that the dems ignored rural whites is not accurate – I saw that they didn’t have a message that rural whites would buy. Remember – we’re talking about folks who have turned to lottery tickets as a retirement planning vehicle even though they are either on or close to the edge of bankruptcy and Medicaid.
He can talk but he didn’t do anything when he was president to make the lives of white rural racists better…..except maybe to encourage toe sucking as cheap entertainment
I certainly hear what Bill was saying – and see it here. But identifying a problem and offering a solution are two very different things. The question for me isn’t what did dems do wrong – the results tell us who we didn’t speak to. I think the question is what message will cut through the noise?
ok pogo said it better
“well Patd you are wrong you can say you are right all you want but you aren’t”
kgc, please tell that to my tv. I am in an area where antennae will pick up only 2 channels neither of which have news of any sort. is this just a delusion on my part and on the part of the tech people at fcc who put out such info? would love not to have to pay dish for the 250 channels i’m not interested in just to get msm and pbs. at least i can afford it but many of my neighbors can’t.
and, kgc, i may exaggerate at times but i try not to outright lie. you calling me a liar sure hurts my feelings 🙁
I guess you didn’t get the free device when they handed them out in 2009 or by choice like we do live in a place that gets NO signals for anything no cell service, no radio, nothing. there is no right to tv in the constitution or anywhere else we don’t have gas or electicity either. That is what happens when yu choose to live in rural area whatever happened to rural electrification
do you still have an analog tv
no one is calling you a liar I think you are wrong if you can’t tell the difference that is your problem
If you want alacart cable services you should be talking to Sen John McCain that’s been his big issue for years. andit is coming but it won’t be cheap-er
Bill Clinton the man who will save the white rural poor did more damage to the communication system and poor people in general with the act of 1995 …words mean nothing
I wonder if distributing Kindles, IPads etc in rural areas would improve the situation. I’m ridiculously fortunate in having access to Xfinity and use of my computer as a feed to my TV and reception for on line programs on my Kindle that can also pair up with the TV. Add in Netflix, Acorn & Amazon it is a wealth of sources most of which I don’t have time for.
Still if you have access to the internet & have a notebook of some sort, it becomes a matter of education on how to use rather than cost to receive.
Enough squabbling: Birth Announcement
DC5 has arrived. DC6 still being incubated
I can foresee a la carte cable costing me more to get 20 channels I watch and not getting the other couple hundred that what I pay now for all of them. If the infrastructure wasn’t such a hassle and and costs for additional boxes for additional tvs weren’t so much I’d get on the Dish or Direct TV bandwagon. I’ve thought about one of the internet based tv providers but have been to lazy to look into those – plus, we’ve got several tvs so I suspect it wouldn’t be practical regardless of the price. But like I said – I’m too lazy to look into it. Jamie on the other hand…
KGC
The free device only works if you are close to the broadcast tower. The digital signal doesn’t reach out as far as the old analog signal did. It broadcasts at about 1/5 the power of the old signal. In addition in mountainous areas the terrain interferes with the signal.
So Pat has a point about TV. I’m not sure I agree with her conclusions how ever. Many of those areas were already trending toward the Republican /anti urban direction well before the change in TVs.
Jack
satellite tv and internet are a lot more consumer friendly then it used to be still a long way to go
My understanding of the analog to digital boxes was that you would the same channels. It is not going to operate the same as cable or dish, although people in the bay area who got them actually got more channels then they had previously received.
I’m sick of hearing how great Bill Clinton is…he is not that great
I keep reading about the voting habits of rural whites here. What is the definition of rural voters? Does it apply to the overwhelming Republican voters in, say, Phoenix or Omaha or other cities of 500k or more? Do you have to be completely isolated from big cities, say, more than 100 miles? Is there a rural/urban concept for towns and cities like mine of 50k but 50 miles from both Phoenix and Tucson and tied into urban and national media?
Take your pick. I’m going with all of the above.
Media Must Choose If Trump Is a Liar or Delusional
I think KGC is right if we are talking about why the former Democratic rural areas switch over to Republican. Race was a major factor. From out right racism to the belief that urban America is getting all the help are all indicators of racism.
When a state like Missouri starts down the low tax road what happens is that resources become more scarce and competing groups always believe other groups are getting more than their share. Add in racism and you have the modern rural Republican party.
Jim Webb’s solution of accept the racism(his flag position) and blame the Chinese was of course already taken by the Republicans. Bill Clintons position of coordinating public and private resources to help rural areas compete with the world was opposed by the wing nuts in both parties, As the election primaries were driven by the wing nuts any centrist proposal was doomed from the start.
Jack
The politico piece while interesting has nothing to do with The Democrats and rural policy.
It was strictly about polling and how polls missed the rural voters in their polls. As Democrats already knew they were only going to get 25% of the rural vote at the most of a small voting population. So no they didn’t have a rural strategy. What the problem for the Democrats is t wih the 75 to 85% of that small population missing from the polls, they didn’t have an accurate picture of the other voters. This lead to bad allocation of resources. Given the closeness of the election it may have been the difference,
Jack
Yeah! eProf2 is here. Always a good day when you comment.
I grew up in the New York State County with the largest % of public assistance recipients per capita. Part of the Appalachian range, bordering on an even more rural, poorer region of Pennsylvania. Pogo would feel at home there: spectacular scenery …. few living wage jobs. The racial makeup is literally 98% white, many communities 100% white. Pretty much everyone is related somehow. I remember a thriving daily/weekly newspaper scene as a kid. Print media was big; it was accessible & relevant, it was delivered to your mailbox at the end of the driveway. You knew what neighbors were doing on the other side of the valley. Digital is grand but if it is limited, whether by topography or $ issues, it is exclusive rather than inclusive. Newspapers tied communities together. End of old-timey Luddite rant.
Also will say that even though I now live in a very large city with access to not only US but Canadian media I basically watch the same 3 channels. Don’t think I’m alone. A person skews where one will skew.
No local papers — sad but true. There used to be several here too. Great fun reading the sheriff’s reports. You really get to know your neighbors!
eProf, welcome back. This article on rural job losses gets at some of what you ask:
Ha, Miss Graham Cracker, the police report was addictive & mother’s milk to the gossip mongerers & holier-than-thous. Ever notice the usual suspects tended to be part of the same families? Some things were just predestined. Bad genes, bad eggs … & kin folk 😉
jack, and if Dems could get back to Obama’s 41% of non-college whites in 2008, instead of Hillary’s 29%, they’d be in good shape. Nobody says Ds have to win these blocs, just stop the bleeding and key states, particularly in the rust belt, come back
universal subsidized broadband is the answer to all our problems
Well…. this has been interesting reading. Glad to see KGC and sjwny posting…. I always get the feeling that when someone mentions “white rural voters” that for some reason they leave out the word “Southern”. I guess it’s one of those “we all understand the code”, or some such thing.
I like Jack’s point about bad allocation of resources. IMO, that’s exactly what it would be for Democrats to spend money on trying to woo back “Southern white rural voters” who left the party because the 1964 civil rights Act.
I also really liked Pogo’s 9:39 post. Seriously… I don’t think there’s much that anyone can do or say for people who are entrenched in their beliefs. I feel that way about the far left too.
nope RR, politically speaking I am talking about rurals and non-college whites in swing rust belt states such as Pennsylvania. Other than a few border states the South is not the big game for Dems winning elections, at least not presidential races. So it would actually be inaccurate to add “southern” to this analysis, at least at the presidential level.
“The free device only works if you are close to the broadcast tower. The digital signal doesn’t reach out as far as the old analog signal did. It broadcasts at about 1/5 the power of the old signal. In addition in mountainous areas the terrain interferes with the signal.”
jack, thank you for explaining it in tecky speak. yes, that is what happened here. as for the other thing i proffered – we lost something of community when we lost the communal communications – i didn’t mean it as the reason for dissention and distrust if not downright racism. i meant it may be a contributing factor.
kgc, sorry my incoherent comment caused so much hostility.
sjwny, we luddites seem to speak a dying language. your rant was on point and very welcome to my bruised ego.
Craig… you confused me and here’s why….
For instance, how many national Democratic leaders have seen the all-too-frequent weekends in parts of rural America where folks who can’t afford dental care or insurance show up at a local venue where volunteer dentists pull their teeth?
Maybe I’m misremembering…. but I recall you mentioning seeing this while you were in some southern state with Mudcat. If you meant a specific defined area, my suggestion would be that you should mention it.
I agree about the rust belt states… no reason why the Democrats shouldn’t target these people and do their best to try to woo these voters back.
rr, that just happened to be the one I saw, in sw VA — but its a phenom not limited to the South.
Did anyone see a sample of this on CNN? It’s an off broadway play of Clinton Trump debates but with the gender roles reversed. Fascinating how different the same words sounded when the opposite sex said them
Swapped Genders
Craig. The article was very interesting and the map revealing. The six categories left only one category as rural, the rest urban or rural with adjacent contacts. The number of rural counties was only a fraction of the total population. Of course, I focused on the southwest where it would appear that all of AZ gained employment, urban and rural.
IMHO, I think it would be a mistake for Democrats to swing policy debates toward the rural voter as the backbone of their campaigns. Their strength is still in the other five categories and would be well positioned to flip Republicans in urban/ suburban districts in and around metropolitan areas such as Phoenix and Tucson where Republicans hold sway. Gerrymandering is not an issue in AZ as we have an independent commission to draw district lines right now. We have a 5/4 split in the congressional representation. Of note is that the Democrats control three districts usually marked as rural. Jobs and the quality of life, including health care and education, should be what Democrats focus on in upcoming elections.
digital signals are stronger..there is different issue and the too far thing is kind of a myth. When an analog signal is bad you can still get a shitty picture ..the digital picture shuts down completely.
whatever.. I think I am tired of people blaming everything but the facts about why certain blocks of voters went for Pussy Grabber and none of the reasons have to do with the lack of common television viewing or not.
Everyone seems to agree Pussy Grabber campaigned on racist themes and yet no one wants to admit the people who voted for him are racists.
You folks might want to start memorizing your favorite books. Trump administration deleting scientific data.
Hi RebelliousRenee,
How are your Art Shows going?
I grew up among “poor white rural” voters in the Northeast. My Mother’s ancestors left New England after the Revolutionary War & settled the upper Susquehanna/Chemung River Valleys of NY & Pennsylvania. The designation of poor, white, rural is not so much a region as much as it is a national reality which stokes resentment & despair among a certain segment. Heck, many of these people are descended from the men & women who put their all on the line for Independence & later from those who fought in the Civil War. These aren’t just memories or stories. This is blood.
This is an old picture of the area my Great x 4 Grandparents (both children of Revolutionary War soldiers) settled in the early 1800s: Rock Rift (outside of Walton), Delaware County, New York. Why is it under water now? Because New York City needed another reservoir. This one is called Cannonsville. Ah, progress.
A less waterlogged view of ye olde ancestral valley.
Rock Rift, New York. RIP.
If by Southern we mean TX, we’d better start thinking about it. By 2020 TX will be close to majority non-White, and with a little help from the poor Whites there, Dems could flip the state to Blu-ish purple.
With a more serious Dem effort among working Whites in NC, that state could become a Blu-ish purple too.
The addition of TX and NC to the Dem side would mean a great huge deal in 2020. bigly.
Also, there is no acceptable reason for rural areas of Northern WI & MI, Southern OH, and Western PA & NY to be bright red.
eprof, that’s why I keep adding non-college whites to the discussion. A mere uptick in the two voting blocs could flip a few swing states. So no, not necessary to make rurals a backbone agenda, just something more than Clinton’s one overwhelmed staffer in Brooklyn dedicated to rural outreach.
Sp. Craig, how do we get more non-college educated white people to go to college? A GI Bill for everyone? From the literature and from my own experience prior to retirement a decade ago, the male student population was dropping like a rock.
a thought, eProf, is to keep growing community colleges as bill clinton did, he was obsessed with that, one of his big achievements
In theory expanding education all levels was a cornerstone of Clinton Gore
wht they really achieved was the student debt crisis
Isn’t Bill Clinton on the board of a diploma mill
Senate Intel Committee May Interview Ex-UK Spy Christopher Steele
The Senate Intelligence Committee is in talks to interview Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who compiled the dossier that alleges a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, three sources with direct knowledge told NBC News.
Steele, however, remains concerned about his safety and is not inclined to leave London. He is also concerned about how he might be treated by the Trump administration, according to the sources. The FBI was poised last fall to pay Steele, a former officer with the British Secret Intelligence Service, for information, but that deal fell through, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Two Congressional officials told NBC News that the Senate Intelligence Committee has not yet reached an agreement on how and when to interview the Trump associates who have volunteered to testify, including Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Roger Stone. If any of those men seek criminal immunity for their testimony, the committee would not be inclined to grant it, officials say. The committee could then subpoena them, but they could assert their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions.
(CNN) The Senate intelligence committee has asked 20 people to be questioned in its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the panel’s chairman said Wednesday.
“This one is one of the biggest investigations the Hill has seen in my time here,” Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said at a news conference with committee vice-chairman Mark Warner. Burr’s been in the Senate since 2005, and served in the House since 1995.
Burr and Warner say they have 20 witnesses they plan to interview and have scheduled interviews with five of them so far. The committee leaders said that they are happy that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort have agreed to testify, but they have not yet decided when they will bring them in.
“To date, we have made 20 requests for individuals to be interviewed by the committee,” Burr said. “As we stand here today, five are already scheduled on the books, and probably within the next 10 days the remaining 15 will have a scheduled date for those individuals to be interviewed by our staff. We anticipate inviting additional individuals to come and be interviewed, and ultimately some of those interviewed individuals may turn into private or public hearings by the committee, but yet to be determined.”
Among those the committee appears to have talked to: Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned after he misled administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
“It would be safe to say we have had conversations with a lot of people, and it would be safe to say Gen Flynn is a part of that list,” Burr said.
[….]
The panel will hold its first public hearing Thursday.
wapo: Senate Intelligence Committee to start Russia probe interviews next week
The Senate Intelligence Committee will begin as soon as Monday privately ….
[…..]
“We’re not asking the House to play any role in our investigation, we don’t plan to play any role in their investigation,” Burr said.
While much of the House Intelligence Committee’s political infighting has taken place in public, the Senate so far has conducted the entirety of its Russia investigation behind closed doors — except for a public hearing in January with FBI Director James B. Comey, NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers, then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan.
[….]
Though the committee leaders declined to comment directly Wednesday on the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation or its chairman, Warner offered some thoughts about Nunes earlier Wednesday, telling reporters that if Nunes was onto something with the information he gleaned from his White House visit, it was a mystery to every other intelligence investigator in the Capitol.
“None of us, Republican or Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, has any idea what he’s talking about,” Warner said, wondering aloud why, after the Trump administration denied any Russia connections and railed against leakers, Nunes would act in a way to raise suspicions about both.
“There continues to be more and more smoke about contacts between people related to the campaign and foreign officials,” Warner added.
Published on Mar 28, 2017
With his own party abandoning him, is this a preview of Donald Trump’s demise?
sjwny…. I retired from doing shows last year. I now only sell my scarves through galleries. The Xmas season was very good. I’ve made decent sales for January and February. Now sales will hit a lull and will pick back up in summer.
I did this because Rick retired a little over 4 years ago. I don’t weave as many scarves… so I don’t work as hard. I now have time to do things I haven’t done in years… such as helping with our gardens and going fishing. We even started going to matinee movies in the middle of the week…. what a luxury! At this point in my life, time is much more important than making money…. I LOVE it!
Now that the republicans have decided your ISP can sell your internet voyages a Go Fund Me Page has been set up to buy the data of those who want yours sold. Good idea. American enterprise at work.
Busy, busy, busy. What do you do when you have nothing to base your future on. The federal government has not been in a situation like this, including when reagan was president. Much of what is happening is idiotic and psychotic. People in power doing things that make absolutely no sense.
Ivanka is supposed to be a fed now. That is funnier than diarrhea in a clown wearing a union suit with casts on both hands.
RebelliousRenee,
Enjoy everything 🙂
In honor of your artistry, I share this portrait of a fellow artist: a cousin from my Dad’s family. He was Hans Hansen (1769-1828).
This handsome fella was Constantin Hansen (1804-1880), Hans’ son. He was also a painter – much more successful than Hans. The “Constantin” in his name was in honor of his Godmother, Constanze Mozart. Yes, the widow of that Mozart.
This side of the family is neat-o.
fun family history
George Lakeoff believes our political parties reflect two family models Goopers -strict father and Democrats nurturant parent. So what is Pussy Grabber the psycho step father?
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/13/493615864/when-it-comes-to-our-politics-family-matters
Back in the 60s, Craig. there was a huge growth in community colleges. That growth occurred in Alabama under the governorship and political control of George Corley Wallace. He devoted great resources to the development of a junior college system in Alabama. I even went to one of those for a summer. I certainly support the development of junior colleges and community colleges in rural areas to make education beyond high school more accessible, but I haven’t noticed that the availability of junior college in Alabama has led to any kind of growth in Democratic Party strength in that state or any real increase in Dem participation among non college rural whites there.
I see that on the day the shithead governor of NJ was made Cheeto’s drug czar (which certainly has a more poignant meaning in the Cheeto administration than it ever has) two of his top aides – Kelly and Baroni- were sentenced to jail time for their roles in Bridgegate.