From endorsing Jay Jacobs and Andrew Cuomo, to supporting Republican arguments for the shutdown, and now victim blaming Democrats for the impending crackdown on Trump's foes — The Washington Post has completely fallen and aligned itself with MAGA. Democracy dies in darkness.
After scrubbing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, the publisher of the Washington Post announced that the paper was "returning to its roots" and ceasing to publish political endorsements. Now it is not only back to endorsing candidates, but it is taking sides in an election in another city, New York. Will the WP also endorse Emilio Gonzalez for mayor of Miami?
True on both counts, but even then. “Don’t prosecute criminals because one day they might retaliate and crime even harder” is a bitch ass take for a Post editorial to have
They can swat away the gnats that are the contrived indictments fine. It's the other possible targets I'm concerned about being saddled with legal debt.
The new Washington Post editorial page is now a discount version of The Free Press. Mr. and Mrs. Bezos are big fans of Bari Weiss and probably were disappointed they didn't think of paying Weiss hundreds of millions of dollars for her to run the Washington Post.
Pass on the hit piece from Politico about Katie Porter. Brings back a memory of another hit piece about Amy Klobucher throwing a staple at someone in her law firm years before she was running for President.
Pass on anything from Axios too. Both are unreliable, more interested in clickbait than true journalism. Always question their unknown sources.
While I certainly don't endorse anyone being mean to their staff, it's "interesting" how we only ever seem to get news stories about it when it's a female boss.
I still want to know if there's the reverse; any members of congress (Senate or House) who are notably good to work with and stick up for staff members (including disallowing bullying from other staff; I've heard of some senators who are personally nice but do a poor job of stepping in when chiefs of staff/legislative directors are terrible middle-managers).
Every single Klobuchar staffer I've met has told me horror stories across all teams--member office, leadership office, committee office--even while still working for her.
How things are covered can absolutely turn truth into biased coverage.
We can see it easily with 2024. Biden's age issues were real. That it got media attention was not in and of itself an issue. The issue is that the coverage existed in the same world where coverage of Trump's far greater mental degradation was minimal at best. More realistically, that Trump coverage was effectively non-existent in mainstream media outlets. That differential was the problem, and the consistent pattern of it making it willingly or intentionally so made it worse.
Same principle here. Female politicians get the overwhelming majority (damn near exclusivity if we're honest with ourselves) of negative coverage about being "mean bosses." That is a result of media and societal bias. That doesn't mean the stories are untrue, but it does mean the coverage is biased and would not be unfair to call a "hit piece."
She told a staffer to get the f*** out of her frame. When you are taping something and want to make a good impression, I don't see that being an issue.
Living in Irvine, I've run into a lot of office staff and campaign staff, and I haven't heard complaints about her. Is she demanding? Absolutely.
I'm older than most people on this site, and in my younger days women in politics were limited. About every one within short order was a bitch. I was hoping by 2025 we wouldn't hold women in politics or business to an unrealistically different standard.
Before former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao had her legal issues and was recalled from office, she had been bossy to the degree where she was pushing her own staff to think and be smarter.
If a man were doing this, it would be considered normal management behavior. Indeed holding women to a different standard because they are reacting the way they are is indeed sexist.
It should also be noted that women are becoming more and more apart of the workforce and in leadership roles than they did before. Increasingly more are becoming entrepreneurs and founders of their own startups. If they are bossy on the job as managers, employees need to get used to it.
No. It's inappropriate when Klobuchar and Porter do it and it's inappropriate when Josh Gottheimer and Raja Krishnamoorthi do it. The news should report on awful men more too, and awful Republican men especially. It does not excuse Klobuchar and Porter being awful bosses.
Right but I'm referring to specifically Sheng Thao's management style as being an example of bossy behavior, not something that is specifically toxic (even her staff didn't complain about it to the extent where there was turnover). Being bossy doesn't by default mean a toxic culture. It's just how a manager directs and leads people but it can go in any ways. A manager could possess a difficult personality but not be toxic and employees could manage this even while dealing with some drama here and there.
This is the specific article that referenced Thao's management style as Mayor of Oakland. For everything else, I agree with what you're saying.
Since men have traditionally dominated the workforce and have become thorns in the way of women advancing in their careers, there's still work to be done in holding them accountable for toxic behavior. Case in point, Uber during founder Travis Kalanick's management as CEO.
I will say though, having been a patient of a women-run and founded integrative medicine practice, I found the tone of management and staff to be kind, welcoming and presenting a calm tone. Absolutely no yelling or outbursts by anyone working there.
Tom Steyer's $12M donation to the Prop 50 campaign is fueling speculation that he's going to run for Gov. A reporter called Enviro Voters (formerly Cal LCV) and me yesterday looking for comment, and honestly it was the 1st I'd heard of it. He'll get a good hard look from people dissatisfied with current choices, esp after Porter's bad news cycles.
"Mike Young, executive director of California Environmental Voters, said he wasn’t ready to throw his weight behind Steyer, but noted his founding of climate advocacy group NextGen America, formerly NextGen Climate, as an example of his “strong environmental credentials.”
Young said he is excited about the idea of “somebody who jumps in thinking about climate, if that’s what [Steyer] decides to do, because that’s the kind of conversation California should be having.”
Enviros aren’t ready to abandon the Porter ship yet. RL Miller, president of Climate Hawks Vote Political Action, said that while there isn’t an overwhelming climate champion in the race, Porter does have a “strong record of going after polluters.”
"She’s vastly better than some of the candidates who are either big fat zeros or pro fossil fuels,” Miller said. “The policy matters to me more than the style.”
On the subject of Prop 50 and mid-decade redistricting, have we heard anything more from Colorado about possibly bypassing their commission? Colorado is a high-reward state since Dems can gain three seats there, as opposed to just one in Maryland.
This is at least the fourth time you've responded to one of my comments like this. It's starting to feel like harassment.
And an 8-0 map would require baconmandering Denver into Colorado Springs and the eastern part of the state. I suspect a lot of Democratic state legislators would object to that. And in bad years for Dems, some of the districts would be vulnerable. A 7-1 map is much safer, and would be neat as well to assuage the concerns of Democratic state legislators.
District 6 is the least blue of the 7 at Harris +6, but almost all of the district is trending Democratic (Littleton, Centennial, Highlands Ranch, Colorado Springs). District 2 is the only other one in the single digits for Harris (Harris +9), but its portion in Jefferson County is quickly trending Democratic, and since it seems like 2024 was Dems' low-water mark with Hispanics, it should still be safe.
The other 5 Democratic districts are all at least Harris +13.
Because New York constitutional amendments have to take place across two sessions of the legislature, and thus won't be done in time for the 2026 midterms.
Every notable legislative leader in Albany has signaled they're going to do it, though. It's not just Hochul.
Not that this is my top concern for the state, but I really am hoping this will be the cycle that California elects either a woman or a Hispanic person as governor. It's insane that the state has never had either.
For me, at this point, it's going to be either Porter or Becerra. Realistically, I'll probably vote for Porter. I'm not interested in new candidates, and I don't think Steyer really adds anything to the race beyond having a lot of money.
Yes, if I'm not mistaken, California's history of electing Governors has been almost exclusively white men, even while the state's overall demographics are surging to be more multicultural and more blue every year.
Crazy how Oregon has elected a bisexual women (Kate Brown) Governor and a lesbian Governor (current Governor Tina Kotek) back to back but CA has not had this recent history.
To be fair, CA has had a Hispanic state governor, despite never electing one. Elected Lt. Gov Romualdo Pacheco served as Governor for 9 months back in 1875 after the elected Gov resigned to take his seat in the U.S. Senate.
I decided to try to clean up the Wikipedia articles about the Massachusetts Senate and found myself in a rabbit hole that I thought some of you might find interesting.
Massachusetts Senate districts have a rather unique naming scheme. They're named for the counties that contain the district, in order of population. If necessary they are also given an ordinal number to clarify. eg."Norfolk and Suffolk", "Third Essex", "Second Plymouth and Norfolk", etc. The order matters, so "Middlesex and Worcester" is a different district from "Worcester and Middlesex".
The question is what happens when the name changes due to redistricting. For example, the old Worcester and Norfolk district shifted westward a bit after the 2020 census and is now the Worcester and Hampden. Does this mean that the Worcester and Norfolk district no longer exists and the Worcester and Hampden is a "new" district? Or is it merely a name change of the existing district? A district could change substantially without resulting in a name change as long as it stays within the same counties and retains the same population ordering. Or it could get a name change even though it has no changes to its lines whatsoever, if another district got the same county configuration, or population shifts necessitated a reordring of the counties in the name. Relevant to task: should I rename the Wikipedia article or should I create a new article?
I'd say to create a new article out of consistency, since that's what happens in the UK and Canada when their parliamentary constituencies change names.
I would make a new article and provide a link to it in the old district's name, saying the district was renamed due to state conventions in the old district's page. The district of X and Y is defunct as of the 2022 maps and was succeeded by the district X and Z.
Redistricting was half a decade ago and it hasn't been fixed yet, so I don't think anyone is watching the pages enough to object to whatever decide to do.
I would sign a petition for Massachusetts and a couple of other Ye Olde Newe Englande States to number their friggin' districts. Short of that, thank you for the thankless job of editing Wikipedia.
This isn't directly elections-related, but there's been a massive explosion at a military munitions plant in Hickman County, Tennessee (entirely within TN-7, where a special election will be held to fill a vacant U.S. House seat), with multiple fatalities confirmed.
I think there needs to be some very specific polling of Texas rural Republicans. Austin and DC have really done a number on them. I don’t think they are going to take that lying down. Talarico is not “Republican Lite” like Allred. But, he is hitting all the marks on the issues harming them. For instance, school vouchers, Medicaid funding, etc.
These Texas Republicans when given a choice between Allred and Cruz, didn’t go for the Republican Lite. They took their Republican straight and went for Cruz. But, at some point, they are going to have to bow to the reality their party is not actually interested in their priorities.
"This from the Washington Post editorial page is so unbelievably offensive … WTF?
https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/08/jack-smith-james-comey-lawfare-phone-records/"
https://x.com/speechboy71/status/1976136068161306785
From endorsing Jay Jacobs and Andrew Cuomo, to supporting Republican arguments for the shutdown, and now victim blaming Democrats for the impending crackdown on Trump's foes — The Washington Post has completely fallen and aligned itself with MAGA. Democracy dies in darkness.
No surprise. They have a right-wing Brit as editor. It’s another WSJ now.
Weird, I thought they were only going to talk about "personal liberties and free markets" on the editorial pages now? /s
The existence of liberals threatens the very existence of "personal liberties and free markets" in these people's minds.
After scrubbing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, the publisher of the Washington Post announced that the paper was "returning to its roots" and ceasing to publish political endorsements. Now it is not only back to endorsing candidates, but it is taking sides in an election in another city, New York. Will the WP also endorse Emilio Gonzalez for mayor of Miami?
This editorial is not about a crackdown on progressive groups. It’s about the persecution of Trump’s personal foes like Comey and James.
I have faith Trump’s crackdowns and persecutions will be mostly unsuccessful though. They’ll all be acquitted in court.
True on both counts, but even then. “Don’t prosecute criminals because one day they might retaliate and crime even harder” is a bitch ass take for a Post editorial to have
Corrected it.
But what about recouping legal defense costs? Those add up.
Both Comey and James have more than enough resources and connections to fend off these indictments.
They do, yes, but not everyone they target will have so many resources.
Alone, no, but if they band together they can push back.
No doubt organizations like the ACLU will help.
They can swat away the gnats that are the contrived indictments fine. It's the other possible targets I'm concerned about being saddled with legal debt.
If civil society bands together to fight then it’s easily manageable. If organizations are left to fend for themselves that’s a lot harder.
Both-sidesism is a boon for those who want to crime at unprecedented levels. No matter what you do it will be equivocated.
The new Washington Post editorial page is now a discount version of The Free Press. Mr. and Mrs. Bezos are big fans of Bari Weiss and probably were disappointed they didn't think of paying Weiss hundreds of millions of dollars for her to run the Washington Post.
Pass on the hit piece from Politico about Katie Porter. Brings back a memory of another hit piece about Amy Klobucher throwing a staple at someone in her law firm years before she was running for President.
Pass on anything from Axios too. Both are unreliable, more interested in clickbait than true journalism. Always question their unknown sources.
While I certainly don't endorse anyone being mean to their staff, it's "interesting" how we only ever seem to get news stories about it when it's a female boss.
We've heard this before for men. Sestak, for example.
True, but isn't it more unusual to hear it about men?
To me i have no sympathy for either gender in this matter, both men and women should be scorned for treating their employees like crap.
+1
I still want to know if there's the reverse; any members of congress (Senate or House) who are notably good to work with and stick up for staff members (including disallowing bullying from other staff; I've heard of some senators who are personally nice but do a poor job of stepping in when chiefs of staff/legislative directors are terrible middle-managers).
There's a clear double standard. But I hope we've learned that politically you simply have to acknowledge it exists and not just wish-scold it away.
Every single Klobuchar staffer I've met has told me horror stories across all teams--member office, leadership office, committee office--even while still working for her.
Not a hit piece if it's true... why defend people like this when there are plenty of other qualified candidates that aren't awful human beings?
How things are covered can absolutely turn truth into biased coverage.
We can see it easily with 2024. Biden's age issues were real. That it got media attention was not in and of itself an issue. The issue is that the coverage existed in the same world where coverage of Trump's far greater mental degradation was minimal at best. More realistically, that Trump coverage was effectively non-existent in mainstream media outlets. That differential was the problem, and the consistent pattern of it making it willingly or intentionally so made it worse.
Same principle here. Female politicians get the overwhelming majority (damn near exclusivity if we're honest with ourselves) of negative coverage about being "mean bosses." That is a result of media and societal bias. That doesn't mean the stories are untrue, but it does mean the coverage is biased and would not be unfair to call a "hit piece."
She told a staffer to get the f*** out of her frame. When you are taping something and want to make a good impression, I don't see that being an issue.
Living in Irvine, I've run into a lot of office staff and campaign staff, and I haven't heard complaints about her. Is she demanding? Absolutely.
I'm older than most people on this site, and in my younger days women in politics were limited. About every one within short order was a bitch. I was hoping by 2025 we wouldn't hold women in politics or business to an unrealistically different standard.
Before former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao had her legal issues and was recalled from office, she had been bossy to the degree where she was pushing her own staff to think and be smarter.
If a man were doing this, it would be considered normal management behavior. Indeed holding women to a different standard because they are reacting the way they are is indeed sexist.
It should also be noted that women are becoming more and more apart of the workforce and in leadership roles than they did before. Increasingly more are becoming entrepreneurs and founders of their own startups. If they are bossy on the job as managers, employees need to get used to it.
No. It's inappropriate when Klobuchar and Porter do it and it's inappropriate when Josh Gottheimer and Raja Krishnamoorthi do it. The news should report on awful men more too, and awful Republican men especially. It does not excuse Klobuchar and Porter being awful bosses.
Right but I'm referring to specifically Sheng Thao's management style as being an example of bossy behavior, not something that is specifically toxic (even her staff didn't complain about it to the extent where there was turnover). Being bossy doesn't by default mean a toxic culture. It's just how a manager directs and leads people but it can go in any ways. A manager could possess a difficult personality but not be toxic and employees could manage this even while dealing with some drama here and there.
This is the specific article that referenced Thao's management style as Mayor of Oakland. For everything else, I agree with what you're saying.
https://oaklandside.org/2025/04/09/sheng-thao-boss-office-culture-texts/
Since men have traditionally dominated the workforce and have become thorns in the way of women advancing in their careers, there's still work to be done in holding them accountable for toxic behavior. Case in point, Uber during founder Travis Kalanick's management as CEO.
I will say though, having been a patient of a women-run and founded integrative medicine practice, I found the tone of management and staff to be kind, welcoming and presenting a calm tone. Absolutely no yelling or outbursts by anyone working there.
When male bosses yell at their employees they also being assholes.
Yes, same with women who do that as well. That's a management problem and not something that should be a gender specific problem.
No one wants to deal with an asshole at work, especially when they've got a job to do and don't like being micromanaged.
Tom Steyer's $12M donation to the Prop 50 campaign is fueling speculation that he's going to run for Gov. A reporter called Enviro Voters (formerly Cal LCV) and me yesterday looking for comment, and honestly it was the 1st I'd heard of it. He'll get a good hard look from people dissatisfied with current choices, esp after Porter's bad news cycles.
"Mike Young, executive director of California Environmental Voters, said he wasn’t ready to throw his weight behind Steyer, but noted his founding of climate advocacy group NextGen America, formerly NextGen Climate, as an example of his “strong environmental credentials.”
Young said he is excited about the idea of “somebody who jumps in thinking about climate, if that’s what [Steyer] decides to do, because that’s the kind of conversation California should be having.”
Enviros aren’t ready to abandon the Porter ship yet. RL Miller, president of Climate Hawks Vote Political Action, said that while there isn’t an overwhelming climate champion in the race, Porter does have a “strong record of going after polluters.”
"She’s vastly better than some of the candidates who are either big fat zeros or pro fossil fuels,” Miller said. “The policy matters to me more than the style.”
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-climate/2025/10/09/12-million-reasons-to-start-talking-about-tom-steyer-00601270
On the subject of Prop 50 and mid-decade redistricting, have we heard anything more from Colorado about possibly bypassing their commission? Colorado is a high-reward state since Dems can gain three seats there, as opposed to just one in Maryland.
CO Dems could gain all four R seats on a redraw. It’s a Harris+11 state.
This is at least the fourth time you've responded to one of my comments like this. It's starting to feel like harassment.
And an 8-0 map would require baconmandering Denver into Colorado Springs and the eastern part of the state. I suspect a lot of Democratic state legislators would object to that. And in bad years for Dems, some of the districts would be vulnerable. A 7-1 map is much safer, and would be neat as well to assuage the concerns of Democratic state legislators.
A 7-1 map would also require some baconmandering, at least if you want the make all seven districts about the same level of blueness.
These are the 7-1 and 8-0 maps that I drew:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/633164cf-9c6e-477d-8ecf-63b66afa3cf5
https://davesredistricting.org/join/c752491a-b761-4cb4-ba9b-ca46b43be4cb
Not really. You can draw a pretty clean 7-1 map.
I'm on my phone so I can't post it right now, but I'll post my cleaner map once I can.
Well you certainly love some bacon with those 5-way and 6-way splits of Denver!
It is, however, possible to draw a reasonably safe 7D-1R map with Denver being split only two ways, and with 90% of Denver in one district. Here it is: https://davesredistricting.org/join/c057dbda-449a-4bfa-9900-029e132d6339
District 6 is the least blue of the 7 at Harris +6, but almost all of the district is trending Democratic (Littleton, Centennial, Highlands Ranch, Colorado Springs). District 2 is the only other one in the single digits for Harris (Harris +9), but its portion in Jefferson County is quickly trending Democratic, and since it seems like 2024 was Dems' low-water mark with Hispanics, it should still be safe.
The other 5 Democratic districts are all at least Harris +13.
Hochul made a couple statements on twitter which made it seem like there would be a response from New York and yet there's been zero
Because New York constitutional amendments have to take place across two sessions of the legislature, and thus won't be done in time for the 2026 midterms.
Every notable legislative leader in Albany has signaled they're going to do it, though. It's not just Hochul.
Governor Reddit is too busy commenting on r/neoliberal, r/supportICE and r/antivax to fight back against the Trump admin.
Not that this is my top concern for the state, but I really am hoping this will be the cycle that California elects either a woman or a Hispanic person as governor. It's insane that the state has never had either.
For me, at this point, it's going to be either Porter or Becerra. Realistically, I'll probably vote for Porter. I'm not interested in new candidates, and I don't think Steyer really adds anything to the race beyond having a lot of money.
Yes, if I'm not mistaken, California's history of electing Governors has been almost exclusively white men, even while the state's overall demographics are surging to be more multicultural and more blue every year.
Crazy how Oregon has elected a bisexual women (Kate Brown) Governor and a lesbian Governor (current Governor Tina Kotek) back to back but CA has not had this recent history.
To be fair, CA has had a Hispanic state governor, despite never electing one. Elected Lt. Gov Romualdo Pacheco served as Governor for 9 months back in 1875 after the elected Gov resigned to take his seat in the U.S. Senate.
I decided to try to clean up the Wikipedia articles about the Massachusetts Senate and found myself in a rabbit hole that I thought some of you might find interesting.
Massachusetts Senate districts have a rather unique naming scheme. They're named for the counties that contain the district, in order of population. If necessary they are also given an ordinal number to clarify. eg."Norfolk and Suffolk", "Third Essex", "Second Plymouth and Norfolk", etc. The order matters, so "Middlesex and Worcester" is a different district from "Worcester and Middlesex".
The question is what happens when the name changes due to redistricting. For example, the old Worcester and Norfolk district shifted westward a bit after the 2020 census and is now the Worcester and Hampden. Does this mean that the Worcester and Norfolk district no longer exists and the Worcester and Hampden is a "new" district? Or is it merely a name change of the existing district? A district could change substantially without resulting in a name change as long as it stays within the same counties and retains the same population ordering. Or it could get a name change even though it has no changes to its lines whatsoever, if another district got the same county configuration, or population shifts necessitated a reordring of the counties in the name. Relevant to task: should I rename the Wikipedia article or should I create a new article?
I'd say to create a new article out of consistency, since that's what happens in the UK and Canada when their parliamentary constituencies change names.
I would make a new article and provide a link to it in the old district's name, saying the district was renamed due to state conventions in the old district's page. The district of X and Y is defunct as of the 2022 maps and was succeeded by the district X and Z.
Probably rename and redirect, but start a discussion on the relevant talk pages and see what other Wikipedians think.
Redistricting was half a decade ago and it hasn't been fixed yet, so I don't think anyone is watching the pages enough to object to whatever decide to do.
You could still post to note what you are doing and why, in case someone wants to revert it for some reason.
I would sign a petition for Massachusetts and a couple of other Ye Olde Newe Englande States to number their friggin' districts. Short of that, thank you for the thankless job of editing Wikipedia.
This isn't directly elections-related, but there's been a massive explosion at a military munitions plant in Hickman County, Tennessee (entirely within TN-7, where a special election will be held to fill a vacant U.S. House seat), with multiple fatalities confirmed.
https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-blast-military-explosive-plant-3c26b71217a2ebe7fb4ca4e21b4edcd7
I don't have all the facts, but it makes me wonder if the inspectors who could've prevented this were furloughed because of the government shutdown.
If so, then Trump and the Republicans have blood on their hands here.
That's definitely a factor that should be taken into consideration with the investigation.
Inspectors for facilities like this have been understaffed and underfunded for decades, realistically.
I think there needs to be some very specific polling of Texas rural Republicans. Austin and DC have really done a number on them. I don’t think they are going to take that lying down. Talarico is not “Republican Lite” like Allred. But, he is hitting all the marks on the issues harming them. For instance, school vouchers, Medicaid funding, etc.
These Texas Republicans when given a choice between Allred and Cruz, didn’t go for the Republican Lite. They took their Republican straight and went for Cruz. But, at some point, they are going to have to bow to the reality their party is not actually interested in their priorities.