Sat: Something Democrats and Republicans Have In Common

Something Democrats and Republicans Have In Common

The scenarios Republicans find themselves fantasizing about range from the far-fetched to the morbid. In his recent book Thank You for Your Servitude, my colleague Mark Leibovich quoted a former Republican representative who bluntly summarized his party’s plan for dealing with Trump: “We’re just waiting for him to die.” As it turns out, this is not an uncommon sentiment. In my conversations with Republicans, I heard repeatedly that the least disruptive path to getting rid of Trump, grim as it sounds, might be to wait for his expiration.

But After He Loses the QOP Nomination and Runs As a Third-Party Candidate in 2024

This Guy Explains the Insane Gun Ruling Better Than I Did

A man beating his wife was legal across the United States until 1871, when Alabama and Massachusetts banned it. That fact has new relevance in today’s gun laws thanks to the Supreme Court.

Following the logic of Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2022 opinion in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal law banning the sale of guns to people subject to restraining orders in domestic violence cases. In striking down a New York law requiring proper cause for concealed handgun permits, Thomas explained that the law was illegitimate because it was not “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” In other words, if there was no such law in 1791, it’s unconstitutional now.

Which brings us back to how a man beating his wife was fully legal back then, so there were no laws saying that men who beat their wives (or kids) couldn’t have guns. And therefore, the Fifth Circuit ruled, following Thomas, there can’t be such laws now.

This is What Happens When You Put "Logic" and "Clarence Thomas" in the Same Sentence.

You Mean There's a Better Job Than Dealing With Difficult Diners for Crap Wages?

A Mexican restaurant in Oakland, California, is closing because it can't find enough workers. A Las Vegas restaurant needs 12 people to be fully staffed but is struggling to get by with just three or four. Some restaurants are "getting creative" to attract workers—if you count better pay and benefits as creativity.

There’s a reason for all of this, and, despite what you may have been told, it’s not that no one wants to work anymore. The leisure and hospitality industry remains 500,000 workers short of where it was before the pandemic, The Washington Post’s Abha Bhattarai and Maggie Penman report, and 2 million short of what it needs, but for the most part, those people are working. Just not in restaurants and bars.

Many former restaurant workers found other jobs when they were laid off early in the pandemic—and ended up deciding to stick with their new lines of work. Related, there are now 1.4 million more people working in professional and business services, a category that includes a range of office jobs, and it’s not the only industry that’s seen increases.

“There’s this reshuffling going on that is explaining why lots of industries can’t find workers,” economist Betsey Stevenson told the Post. “Their workers have left to go somewhere else.”

And in a lot of cases, the somewhere else was better enough that people didn’t want to go back to the unreliable pay, difficult customers, and awkward hours of the restaurant industry. Around 2.5 million people did leave the labor force during the pandemic, which has killed more than a million people in the U.S. and prompted many others to retire early. That opened up a wave of good jobs.

“When older workers—who were in relatively high-paying jobs at the top of the ladder—retired, everyone else was able to climb up a step, from a worse job to a better one,” Stony Brook University economist David Wiczer said.

WinRed is in the Red

The GOP’s much-touted, small-dollar fundraising platform WinRed, created in response to the Democratic-aligned ActBlue, lost millions of dollars during the midterm election cycle, according to top Republicans.

One Republican familiar with the privately held entity’s finances said it lost about $6 million over 2021 and 2022. A second confirmed the loss but believed the total was not quite that high. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

In either event, a seven-figure loss would be a stunning turn for a company Republicans just two years ago pointed to as their answer to the fundraising behemoth ActBlue, which has helped progressive candidates and causes raise many billions of dollars over the past dozen years.

“If you don’t understand payments, it’s easy to go broke,” said one online payment processing expert who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Unlike ActBlue, which was set up as a nonprofit, WinRed was organized as a for-profit, privately held company. Profits were to be split 60-40 between two other for-profit enterprises, Revv and Data Trust.

ActBlue is in the Black