40 years of progressive change vs. 5 years of senility (while still voting with Dems for progressive change). Who’s a shitbag?
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I’ll put it this way, generally speaking California has top tier federal judges.
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very high bar you’ve set there, maybe she can get “not as bad as Joe Manchin” on her gravestone
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feinstein was the biggest advocate for gun control in congress
her amendment was the federal assault weapon ban in 1994
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And she was ahead of her times in promoting gay rights (though not enough ahead of her time to support domestic partnerships in 1982), and helped uncover CIA torture…
… and she left a confederate flag flying over San Francisco, opposed universal healthcare and legalization of marijuana, shit on climate activists who supported the green new deal, voted for the Iraq war and supported the patriot act… and that’s just from a skim. She was a centrist, better than Republicans but worse than she could have been, just another rich narcissist who loved power and couldn’t let it go.
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both things can be true can’t they? she was a groundbreaking politician for her time and ALSO should have retired 20 years ago.
haven’t we already done this with RBG? it seems totally fair that clinging onto power that you should have vacated decades prior can taint a legacy.
The question is how much taint shifts someone from a non-terrible person with flaws to a terrible person who did some good things. Do we let recency bias give to much weight to latter years in judging one’s legacy?
People either forgot or never knew that Feinstein used to be a reasonable VORP Senator because California was not the Democratic stronghold it is now.
https://twitter.com/CookPolitical/status/1707820067356885046?t=4cFAjBHxtedqIozIZylHZQ&s=19
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If she retired in her early 70s she would deserve to be remembered fondly, but she put herself first.
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Pete Rose having a negative WAR over his last five seasons while putting himself first in his chase for 4192 doesn’t diminish his career before then. (His betting on baseball does, however.) Despite that terrible end, he’s still a non-terrible baseball player.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1707831322922696717
Could go in a number of threads. Feels like this is good news for Dems - at least for President, not sure if it helps or hurts down ballot.
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I’m not sure who it benefits… On one hand, polling seems to show his favorables are higher w/ Rs than D’s. Otoh, I think his campaign is going to be based more around taking shots at Biden and the Democratic establishment which could convince some folks who were going to vote Biden on the “lesser of two evils” theory to just stay home instead.
I think that if he runs as an Independent his handlers will tell him to switch over to being mega progressive and make sure he says the word Kennedy a hundred times every interview, hoping to peel off the disaffected and pull on name recognition. 3 to 5% more libs than Reps is what they need.
Splitting the anti-vax votes seems like a win to me.
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He’s also in a really good position to micro target based on audience. For example a few months back he was on the Math Hoffa podcast, which is a show hosted by a group of Black guys who have a background in hip hop (music journalists, battle rappers, etc.) Kennedy spent hours talking about the family history around civil rights, his work on environmental justice issues, etc. It was a little hard to tell how the group received him, but (1) I could see it playing well with young Black folks, some of whom would probably appreciate that he went on the show even if they disagreed with some of the stuff he said and (2) it was so different from the conversation he would have on something like Rogan that it made me realize that he can scoop up little pockets of voters from different places just by strategically deciding where he goes.
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https://x.com/sirajahashmi/status/1707754008863981980?s=46&t=hUTQWHj9NQWf8Y8RgMv1TA
never saw this before, man she was on one that day. FUCK THEM KIDS 
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what a sociopath.
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Why don’t those kids just shut up?