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- Hakeem Jeffries and Texas
Last night I was watching Ari Melber on MSNBC with the old man, and Hakeem Jeffries was the marquee guest. I want to drill in on a couple of things that I think are endemic about establishment Democratic messaging, and if Jeffries is anything, he’s an establishment Democrat.
First, he railed against the “Big Ugly Bill,” doing a good job of listing the harms it will cause. He couldn’t call it the Big Billionaires Bill because that might offend a donor, but I digress. Anyway, during his discussion of the bill, he didn’t present a positive vision from Democrats. He just assured Melber that the bill would hurt folks and that would lead to a Democratic victory in 2026.
Second, he totally weaseled around in a discussion of Zohran Mamdani. His first gambit was to say something like he’d need to talk further with Mamdani to understand his positions, blah blah blah. Melber pressed him on that, listing a few of the popular positions Mamdani holds, and Jeffries said that of course he thinks that it’s important to talk about issues like the cost of housing, etc., and he welcomes the new energy of youth in the party. Melber didn’t ask him, and Jeffries didn’t say, whether he would support the nominee of his party for mayor in the city where he lives.
When people talk “distraction,” this is legitimately a distraction and a self-inflicted wound. He wasted a bunch of TV time dancing around what should be a no-brainer for a party leader. Dude, your faction lost, just take the L. Instead, the Times, machine Dems and rich fuckers in NYC are working overtime to try to paint a horn and tails on Mamdani, and it’s so obvious that a parody site that shits out Times headlines is making the rounds.
Frankly, the response that they’ll support Mamdani as the party nominee would garner less attention about Cuomo’s shellacking than their current weasely talking points. Unfortunately for them, the only thing these “leaders“ truly care about is that everybody takes their turn, and that their chosen candidate, even if he is a piece of shit, must be elected. So, they waste time on what should be a done deal.
Third, and most important: Establishment Democrats are asleep on the Texas floods. Jeffries’ response on Texas was tots and pears, plus we need to “investigate” what went wrong. Well, dude, right now the news is wall-to-wall Texas. We watch the ABC News at my old man’s, and their anchor is on site and they’re asking good questions. Such as: Why the fuck didn’t these towns have warning sirens? To me, this is unimaginable. Our little town has had warning sirens since I was a kid, for tornadoes and also to call the volunteer firemen (which I believe doesn’t happen anymore, since I haven’t heard a siren in a while).
ABC interviewed a fireman in Comfort, Texas, which is near Kerrville. Comfort has sirens. This fireman’s dad died in a flood in the 1970’s, and he was happy that his town has them. It’s like $79K to put in sirens, and Kerrville was so fucking Republican that they started thinking about it in 2015 or so, and finally decided to do it sometime this year, but the contract hadn’t been let. This is in an area known for both flash floods and tornadoes.
If the shoe was on the other foot — the LA fires being a great example — Republicans would be second-guessing the shit out of these towns. They’d be relating the natural disaster to their narrative about libtards in some way or other. But I’m sure Jeffries’ consultants constantly tell him not to do that, because some poll phrased a certain way finds that people are offended by that. A more adept politician could have pointed out that beast starvation and the general Republican approach to government leads to dead children. Harsh, but, in my opinion, fair.
A second part of the Texas issue is what’s shaping up to be a FEMA failure that can be laid at the feet of DOGE, Noem and, ultimately, Trump. Sepideh linked to this excellent piece of reporting by Marisa Kabas in the comments yesterday:
In June, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem sent out a memo announcing she’d have greater control over FEMA operations moving forward. The memo, first obtained by CNN, said that every contract and grant over $100,000 must be personally approved by Noem. “Officials inside FEMA warn the new approval process could severely disrupt the distribution of emergency funds during natural disasters,” CNN reported at the time.
Now a month later, while not a hurricane, the first big natural disaster since Noem tightened her grip has struck–and it shows.
“We would have hundreds of people on scene in FEMA jackets registering people for assistance, regional coordination center fully activated, national at least partly activated,” a current FEMA employee whose identity is being protected for fear of reprisal told The Handbasket. “Setting up disaster recovery centers with federal partners, we’d have our search and rescue there already. We would have mission assigned other agencies like USACE (US Army Corp of Engineers) to clear debris and establish power.”
Despite Trump officially activating FEMA on Sunday, FEMA has just 86 total staff deployed at this point, according to figures shared with staff Monday evening. That includes a national incident management team, plus regional and headquarter staff. In the past it would normally be in the several hundreds at this point in the disaster recovery process. “We are doing a lot less than normal,” the FEMA staffer said.
Jeffries was appearing on the most friendly of networks. Couldn’t he at least say he was concerned about reports that FEMA response is far less than it should be because fuckups like Noem are in charge? He certainly was well-briefed on how to weasel out of saying anything positive about Mamdani.
Sorry this got so long but I’m totally fucking disgusted about the inability of our “leaders” to hit slow pitches right across the plate. They’re inward-focused, poll-driven, inauthentic and low-energy. They must be replaced.
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