(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Reevaluating Nancy Pelosi and political violence [1]

['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags']

Date: 2022-10-31

x The phrase you're looking for is "Domestic terrorist made second assassination attempt on the Speaker of the House in less than 2 years" — Kevin Collins (@kwcollins) October 30, 2022

WaPo:

Paul Pelosi recovering as attack renews focus on toxic politics The brazen attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is renewing concerns about the toxic political atmosphere and is prompting calls to beef up security for lawmakers and their family members. Paul Pelosi, 82, was recovering in Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital on Saturday following surgery for a fractured skull and other injuries from an attack early Friday by a hammer-wielding intruder. Nancy Pelosi made her first public comments about the matter on Saturday night in a Dear Colleague letter to members of Congress, referring to how "a violent man broke into our family home, demanded to confront me and brutally attacked my husband Paul.” She thanked supporters, saying that “the outpouring of prayers and warm wishes from so many in the Congress is a comfort to our family and is helping Paul make progress with his recovery." The letter didn’t make any political attacks but quoted a Bible verse from Isaiah 41:10 that begins “Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God."

x Literally shaking my head at Fox's Jesse Watters saying, "A lot of people get hit with hammers." — James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) October 29, 2022

WaPo:

Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her A man with right-wing views who broke into the House speaker’s home yelled “Where is Nancy?” before assaulting Paul Pelosi with a hammer, police say. For many Democrats, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband represents the all-but-inevitable conclusion of Republicans’ increasingly violent and threatening rhetoric toward their political opponents — a phenomenon that escalated under former president Donald Trump, who prided himself on his inflammatory oratory and who was often reluctant to denounce white nationalists and others spewing hate speech. “Sadly this attack was inevitable. Political violence is on the rise,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said. “And instead of GOP leaders condemning it, they condone it with silence or, even worse, glorification.”.. After the Friday hammer attack, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tweeted, “Horrified and disgusted by the reports that Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his and Speaker Pelosi’s home last night.” McCarthy said he contacted the speaker “to check in on Paul and said he’s praying for a full recovery and is thankful they caught the assailant,” according to a statement. But McConnell and McCarthy declined to respond to Democratic accusations that GOP rhetoric has crossed the line into fomenting violence. For a wide swath of Republicans, Pelosi is Enemy No. 1 — a target of the collective rage, conspiratorial thinking and overt misogyny that have marked the party’s hard-right turn in recent years.

x "Where was he radicalized?" rarely has such a clear answer.

Tucker specifically?

Maybe in part. But it's the ecosystem, not one figure.

Did Pelosi's attacker have mental health issues?

Maybe. But that means he's more susceptible to influential conspiracy theory pushers, not less. https://t.co/K2GcxPFWg7 — Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) October 29, 2022

Jonathan Weiler/Substack:

A rising tide sinks all boats Seeding the atmosphere for more political violence In discerning the relationship between climate change broadly and extreme weather events, one cannot “prove” that every specific hurricane is a consequence of atmospheric changes induced by increased carbon emissions (perhaps someone will correct me about that). But it is certainly possible to draw a relationship between climate change and the heightened frequency of extreme weather events. Likewise, it can be a fool’s errand to try to discern specifically what motivates individual acts of political violence. I don’t mean that we can’t hypothesize that DePape wanted to harm (or worse) Pelosi for political reasons. I just mean that millions of people share at least some of DePape’s views, most notably the myth of the stolen 2020 election, without deciding to break into the Speaker’s home. It still takes a special kind of person to actually go that far. But we can say with greater confidence that GOP elites, starting with Trump, and including Tucker Carlson, MTG, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Alex Jones, Ron Johnson, Mike Lindell and many others, see it as in their political and economic interests to poison the political atmosphere as much as possible, thus seeding a climate in which political violence like the intended attack on Nancy Pelosi and her husband’s assault is evermore common. I still can’t get over this little-reported incident: x 1) At a TPUSA confab in 2021, someone in the crowd asked Ted Cruz:"Considering all we hear about Fauci, Biden and all the treason of the last eleven months, are they going to take applications for the firing squad? Because I'll be number one." Cruz laughed and nodded approvingly. — Jonathan Weiler (@jonweiler) September 2, 2022 It’s hard to imagine what could de-escalate this rising tide of violence-normalization, since there is no meaningful counterweight in the GOP - Republican officials who did speak out against this stuff risk immediate excommunication

x Our Economist generic-ballot average is at R+0.3. FWIW (but we are not pretending that differences between methods can really reliably capture differences to the tenth decimal place) https://t.co/dcFZRGf91k — G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) October 30, 2022

NY Times:

Senate Control Hinges on Neck-and-Neck Races, Times/Siena Poll Finds The contests are close in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Many voters want Republicans to flip the Senate, but prefer the Democrat in their state.

Senate control is within reach but far from a lock. Two wild cards, especially in NV: indies and late voting youth demographic.

By the way, nothing screams “debates don’t change minds” like this PA poll.

And also by the way, check out this CBS battleground poll:

Republicans today remain in good position to win a majority of seats in the House. However, voters' current intentions suggest anything from a sizable GOP majority to a bare Democratic one possible. Our latest model indicates a range of possibilities, which you can explore using the interactive tool below. … So what, politically, does the scenario look like in which Democrats manage to hold the House? We ran our estimates through a turnout model in which younger voters turn out in much higher numbers than our baseline model indicates, bailing Democrats out late in the game. This would run counter to what we've seen in recent weeks, both from what young voters tell us in surveys and from early ballot returns, but it isn't impossible. It's more akin to what happened four years ago, with voters under 45 and people of color voting in droves. Since they are heavily Democratic groups, matching 2018's record setting turnout would stem Republican gains, turning House control into a toss-up around 218 seats. Were this scenario to materialize, it would take days or weeks into November for a handful of close races to settle and reveal the new balance of power.

x Exactly. The takeaway here is that the generic ballot is close, and RCP is an outlier. https://t.co/3uSAjiyuXz — Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) October 30, 2022

Religion News Service:

As Christian nationalism digs in, differing visions surface As Christian nationalists get more specific, ideological and theological divisions have reemerged. When Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke took the stage at the ReAwaken America Tour in Pennsylvania over the weekend, the throngs who had come out to hear conspiracy theories and inflammatory rhetoric about Democratic candidates instead heard Locke aim some of his sharpest criticism at a surprising target: Pope Francis. “If you trust anybody but Jesus to get you to heaven, you ain’t going,” Locke said, his voice rising. “You say, ‘Well what about the pope?’ He ain’t a pope, he’s a pimp … He has prostituted the church.” It was an odd note to strike at a rally where perhaps the biggest name on the speaker’s roster was retired Gen. Michael Flynn, a Catholic who later made it a point to mention his faith while voicing support for Christian nationalism. “I’m a Christian — I’m a Catholic, by the way,” said Flynn.

x Oh, look, it's one of the Good Republicans https://t.co/Bd1587Ppgl — Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 29, 2022

Jen Fifield/Twitter:

I filled out a web form for Clean Elections USA, the AZ drop box watchers accused of voter intimidation, expecting to get on an email list. Imagine my surprise when I was given access to a discussion board & nationwide contact list w/ 4500+ names/emails. Here's what I found:

x "He voted twice for Barack Obama. Then he voted twice for Donald Trump...he explained that Mr. Fetterman had won him back, not just because of his working class 'curb appeal,' but because of his stances on abortion and medical cannabis" https://t.co/aWtvbE3Nwz — Nick Field (@nick_field90) October 30, 2022

Nilay Patel/The Verge:

Welcome to hell, Elon You break it, you buy it. You fucked up real good, kiddo. Twitter is a disaster clown car company that is successful despite itself, and there is no possible way to grow users and revenue without making a series of enormous compromises that will ultimately destroy your reputation and possibly cause grievous damage to your other companies. I say this with utter confidence because the problems with Twitter are not engineering problems. They are political problems. Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.

x 2/ As important as it is to talk about this one defendant and his crimes, the Judge also emphasized something we must never normalize or lose sight of: the fact that the insurrection didn’t end when the mob left the Capitol on January 6. It’s still ongoing. — Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 29, 2022

Dr. Rebekah Tromble/Twitter:

My take on what to expect on Twitter: short term chaos wrought by trolls, influencers, and uncertainty, followed by a return to something that’s more or less like the status quo. (Hedged by a big caveat at the end.) Why short term chaos? First, because the trolls are ready to do their thing. Organizing on 4chan and elsewhere, they’re going to get their kicks out of testing Twitter’s limits. We’re already seeing hateful terms spiking on the platform. Expect more of that for awhile.

x “The emails that the committee finally has accessed include four communications between Trump attorneys that appear to indicate they knew details they submitted to courts to challenge the election were false …”



Story here via @kpolantz https://t.co/ywAPAuD0S8 — Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) October 30, 2022

Grace Segers/TNR:

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/31/2132269/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Reevaluating-Nancy-Pelosi-and-political-violence

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/