Kentucky lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to a bill stripping the state’s Democratic governor of any role in picking someone to occupy a U.S. Senate seat if a vacancy occurred in the home state of 82-year-old Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
The legislation calls for a special election to fill any Senate vacancy from the Bluegrass State. The special election winner would hold the seat for the remainder of the unexpired term.
I’m shocked… that it took them this long. They’ve been threatening this for like half a year I think.
Once the latest generation steps up and votes, I plan on listening to the crying and gnashing of teeth by the GQP when the Dems do everything the GQP has been setting precedent for.
I have zero faith neoliberal Democrats would be anywhere near that ruthless (unless they needed to stop some leftists, maybe).
It certainly doesn’t help that the left-leaning ones are told online that voting is pointless and that it doesn’t matter.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
I always remember that Bernie suspended his campaign in April and RFK was shot in June I wonder if Bernie had survived Super Tuesday, if he would have survived June.
That’s what every generation says. Problem is that by the time a generation actually does step up to vote, they’ve become more conservative than when they were younger. Maybe it’ll be different this time.
I’m looking forward to reading Fareed Zakaria’s new book. He argues that we are at the beginning of a new age of revolutions.
My only complaint is that “liberal” in the US is absolutely not the antithesis of conservative.
It’s not a binary scale. There is no “opposite” of conservative. There are moderates to the left of conservatives, liberals to the left of moderates, progressives and social democrats to the left of liberals, and socialists to the left of progressives.
Yes, notice how many of those you yourself say are further left than liberal? That’s the point.
I agree with you, but I think it’s understood what information the graph portrays and it isn’t productive to argue over the labelling semantics.
It’s not “arguing semantics” if the words mean very different things… The false notion that liberals are the opposite of conservatives NEEDS to die. Don’t keep it around over, “arguing semantics”. That’s insanely pathetic.
Unfortunate that this graph starts in 1972, when the oldest baby boomers were already 27. If you compare that first section of the boomers’ line to the corresponding section of the millennials’ line, boomers were to the left of millennials around the same age.
Now, I find it hard to imagine that millennials will have the “Reagan moment” that boomers had in 1980, but this data shouldn’t convince anyone that millennials are some shining ray of hope for the future. Today’s non-voting, politically apathetic millennials could easily be swayed to the right by the time they’re the age of today’s boomers. I see this sentiment repeated a lot lately, but it’s pure foolishness to think that conservatives will die with boomers.
It remains to be seen. The world generally trends leftward over time, but progress has to be fought for.
Just two hundred years ago, republicanism in Europe was viewed as extreme as Americans view communism today. Six hundred years ago, capitalism was viewed as extreme.
I think people who are wealthy live longer, thus the “people get more conservative as they get older” meme.
That’s an interesting hypothesis. I think of it more in terms of human development over the lifespan rather than an artifact of survival bias. In my opinion, the relationship between age and conservatism is mainly because of three reasons:
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As you get older, you tend to accumulate more wealth, responsibility, children, etc. so you have more to lose than when you are younger, which means that you tend to value the system that protects what you have.
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As you get older, you get weaker and slower and lose the physical confidence and recklessness of youth. That feels vulnerable, so you tend to worry more about things like violent crime and disorder. You start to value stability and order more.
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When people are young, they tend to be more prone to simplistic and radical thinking, simply due to lack of life experience. This is both a strength and weakness. It makes youth passionate and energetic, but also more prone to believing that there are simple solutions to complex problems. I say that recognizing that nowadays most Trump supporters are older and are very much embracing Trump’s simplistic solutions, but I think we all recognize that something very radical is happening on the right wing.
I note also that these are general trends across the lifespan, not deterministic or true for every individual.
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This wouldn’t even fucking matter if there weren’t 2 senators per state. The only reason anyone gives a shit is because senators in the US hold an insanely disproportionate amount of power in the government.
Yeah and for good reason.
Any lemmys here from KY? Registered to vote?
Got to register prior to April 22 by 4pm to vote in this May’s primary
Couldn’t the governor veto this bill?
They can override his veto.
If they have the votes to do it then, well, democracy in action.
If the parties were reversed people would be crying foul from the other side of the aisle and cheering (respectively).
I don’t think you are quite right.
Uh, good? Governors shouldn’t be appointing US Senators, even temporary ones. That’s how Kelly Loeffler grifted her way into office.
Yeah. While it would be funny for Mitch McConnel’s operating to finally crash and be replaced by a Democrat, this is entirely reasonable. We were talking about how the legislatures in MA and VT could do this if Warren or Sanders were selected and the Republican governors at the time tried to pull a fast one.
The governor can veto this, right?
Republicans have a super majority in KY senate and house
It’s apt that the abbreviation for Kentucky is KY, cuz they’ve been fucking the country for years.
The governor has denounced the measure as driven by partisanship, but the GOP supermajority legislature could override a veto when lawmakers reconvene for the final two days of this year’s session in mid-April.
Pretty sure they have a supermajority?
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
“So it would be a direct voice of the people determining how the vacancy is filled,” Republican Senate President Robert Stivers said while presenting the bill to his colleagues.
The governor has denounced the measure as driven by partisanship, but the GOP supermajority legislature could override a veto when lawmakers reconvene for the final two days of this year’s session in mid-April.
Rudy refers to McConnell as a “great friend and a political mentor,” and credits the state’s senior senator for playing an important role in the GOP’s rise to dominance in the Kentucky legislature.
Rudy introduced the bill in February and it cleared a House committee a day after McConnell’s announcement that he will step down from his longtime Senate leadership position in November.
In his speech from the Senate floor, McConnell left open the possibility that he might seek another term in 2026, declaring at one point: “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Beshear — who won a convincing reelection victory last November over a McConnell protege — had already seen his influence over selecting a senator greatly diminished by GOP lawmakers.
The original article contains 525 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
