Clay - you be you, not who I or anyone else thinks you should be. Love your cartoons and really enjoy your blogs where you explain and inform.
I'm not a D and not a R. I'm a Radically Independent Moderate who has voted for candidates and positions of both parties when THEY align with ME.
I want to see the R party implode and explode, because they've totally forgotten their primary beliefs and platforms and allowed them to become the RICO (Republican In Claim Only) party.
I'm perfectly fine with the D party going through a major renovation. Pelosi finally, finally, finally bowed out gracefully. Joe bowed out way too late and without any grace or timing. Chuck is still hanging on past his prime. Hakeem seems to have some new energy and an ability to speak. I like Pete. I like many of the middle and younger leaders. But the older ones who are hanging on because they've rigged the system to their own benefit? Not.
I want a multi party system, no more of this binary option of D or R.
I want Ranked Choice Voting.
I want to get rid of Gerrymandering and allowing professional politicians to select the voters in THEIR district, oops....OUR district.
Democracy is hard work and we aren't entitled to anything more than the situations we find ourselves in and how we deal with them.
You cannot have multi party power sharing in a winner take all system. It's just not possible. Political scientists have run thousands of computer simulations and they all boil down to; multi party power sharing is not a stable formation in a winner take all system.
A single step towards changing that would be to make states share their votes for representative by the percentage vote for that party across the state. So in a state with 100 representatives you'd get say, 47 R's, 46 D's, 2 Libertarians and 4 Greens. Which would be representative of the actual state. And no more gerrymanders. Presumably the Greens would caucus with the D's and between them run the state.
Such an amendment has little chance of passing, though the benefits would be obvious.
Of course you can have multi-party government in a winner take all system. Coalition governments are more common than you, apparently, seem to believe. Canada has one. So, too, does France. The UK had one and Denmark nearly always has one. So, too, with Spain. The coalitions distribute ministries among the members (as you suggest in your hypothetical.) They function and they encourage people to vote because they feel seen. Their preferred parties can participate. Only in the USA is there an institutional abhorrence of coalition governance.
I think you don't exactly get the meaning of "winner take all".
"In political science, a "winner-take-all" system is an electoral system where the candidate or party who receives the most votes in a particular district or jurisdiction wins all of the seats or representation for that district. This contrasts with proportional representation systems, where seats are allocated in proportion to the number of votes received."
I had a shorter definition but decided to go with the formal one.
Thus, in a winner take all system, such as the US uses, Greens and Libertarians, who regularly take from 2% to 8% of the vote in every election, have virtually no representation on the national level.
Not gonna scream at you, and I'm damn sure NOT gonna "unsubscribe" to my favourite cartoonist! I'm more sad for Joe Biden at the moment than I am angry at the democrats ... I am angry at the Republicans like Junior and others who will use Biden's illness to further attack him. But mostly I'm just sad for him. He did, as you say, put us back on track after Felon Trump nearly destroyed the nation from 2017-2021 and we owe him a debt of gratitude. Doesn't mean he hasn't made some mistakes, for he surely has, but ... I admire and respect him. And I respect your views, Clay ...
I’m a lifelong Democrat but please do more cartoons criticizing the DNC and aging Dem leadership. If we don’t transition now to youthful leadership with a vision, a plan, who can communicate through social media and podcasts, this country is doomed.
Personal story about cancer. Not me. But my father. My father had ZERO symptoms, none, nada, zip, nothing. But when he was hospitalized after a fall from a ladder, he had a fever. Hospital did a chest X-ray and discovered a fist-sized mass in his right lung up against his aorta. Malignant, inoperable ("If I operate, you're dead in 2 days," said surgeon.). Life expectancy, not so great even with chemo, etc. Lung cancer is vicious - by the time there are symptoms, it's normally too late - that's why it has or had a 2-yr life expectancy. He beat the odds - radiation actually killed the cancer and shrunk it by 75%. He died 12 years later due to aftereffects of the fall, which cause a massive stroke that literally destroyed parts of his frontal lobes. (At the end, he was a 2-yr-old in an 87-yr-old body.) So all those "experts" saying, "See, he was sick." are full of it. Not all cancers have warnings.
💯 not mad and wouldn’t unsubscribe for truth telling. The Dems and politicos generally need a complete reset — more honest, more humility, more circumspection, more gumption, more vision, more strategy, more entrepreneurial risk taking, more honor. I could go on…
I'm not going to woulda-coulda-shoulda about Biden and the last election; I can understand that he never expected in 2020 that DJT would crawl out of the woodwork for another run in 2024, and that he thought he'd be the strongest opponent against That Creature. What I will say is that the Democrats, along with any remaining Republicans as well as independents, need to grow a spine and lose the deer in the headlights reaction to DJT's egregious abuses of power. If they can't stand up against him and stop him, who can?
Democrats are a minority in both House and Senate. Our system provides that the House, primarily and to a lessor extent the Senate are the check against abuse of power by the sitting POTUS.
Republicans so fear primary challenges that they have abrogated that role to the courts. Which are becoming utterly bogged down due to the enormous number of suits being filed against the administration.
Democrats CANNOT do anything substantial when they hold no power at all over any of the processes meant to control abusive presidents. All they can do is try to arouse the people and ensure that avoiding that primary challenge means losing the general election. And they are doing that as well as they can, while trying to avoid doomed to fail stunts like impeachments that cannot and will not go anywhere. Certainly, they could file an impeachment a day, given Trump's ongoing offenses, which would do nothing but ensure the public thinks it's all a stunt and then they'd lose interest. Not a desirable outcome.
Thank you for always speaking the truth, Clay. You are absolutely right Biden should have stepped down while still president and had Harris take over. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I look forward to a stronger Democratic party. I will keep working as hard as I can for progressive causes because that’s in my blood. I am a Democrat, but I am appalled and embarrassed and ashamed at what happened with Biden. It has to change.
Won't unsubscribe but no like from me today. As other's have said I would have voted almost anyone other than Trump. We all had an inkling of the insanity lurking on the horizon. I am tired of all the Biden bashing, if he was that out of it then kudos to his team for keeping the country going and trying to make it better for all. I was sorry to hear about his cancer diagnosis and was mad when I saw a headline that some lackey at the DOJ is suggesting some kind of criminal proceedings against Jill Biden.
The Dems need to look FORWARD and figure out the best paths to the future. Yes, paths because beyond the national needs, each state has its' own problems to solve.
All the best to Pres Biden and Dr Jill, their future is going to be tough.
Funny thing, I got news about a biopsy on Saturday, and yep, I've got another round with skin cancer. Probably not that serious, it's basal this time, not squamous like the first round, but nobody wants to hear that.
Next day, I hear Biden is down with prostate cancer. Hope he does as well as I expect to.
Thanks. I'm watched pretty closely for skin cancer given my past history of it, and I was fairly certain this one was cancer. It was a while before it was removed, and now it's another five years of exams every six months. And I'd just gotten OUT of that. Augh!
Great toon and post Clay. Anyone who unsubscribes because they don't like this toon and think it's an attack on Biden is dumber than a MAGAT. I would have voted for Biden in a casket before I would vote for Trump, but the DNC, the party AND Biden share the blame for his loss. Biden should have stuck to his word and been a one term President. I admired him for that and was looking forward to a resounding victory for the Dems in November with a fresh younger candidate.
The Dems need young fighters who are not afraid to do and act like the Republicans they are fighting. Bring a gun to a knife fight, a bazooka to a gun fight. They want to go into the sewers then push them in and jump on top of them. Don't worry, the shit will wash off you, just look at Trump, he rolls in shit and comes out smelling like a rose. I've been following Kyle Sweetser in Alabama and I like what I'm hearing, America needs more people like him to get into politics.
Clay, I know what you were doing here, and I feel much the same way about all the secrecy around politicians and their health. It's a load of BS. And Democrats should have their feet held to the fire over it. As should Republicans.
Now, the downside of it. The modern Republican CANNOT keep their evil in check for more than a day or so. This resulted in the usual "best wishes" at first, but then it naturally and inevitably degenerated into the expected insanity. Sadly, this means they, and all the "liberal" media is repeating them piling onto Biden and everyone around him with a ton of nonsense wherein they're pretending Biden is still POTUS and going off like idiots. JD Vance, predictably, was the first and one of the worst. How that man has created a career in politics is beyond my understanding.
And, of course, they're just ignoring the FACT that BIDEN DIDN'T RUN!
So your comic played right into that. And that's not a good thing.
All that said, I personally knew a guy who literally walked out of a physical exam a month earlier and then started coughing blood - and within a couple months were dead of lung cancer. Doctors do screw up or miss things. And sometimes things just progress extremely rapidly. I myself griped at a dermatologist about a spot that had literally popped up no more than six weeks earlier. (I know that because it was right on the shoulder blade and itched like fury.) In that six weeks it had grown enough that they removed several lymph nodes just to see if it was spreading, it was that aggressive. I'm pretty sure that if Biden dropped out because of cancer, he'd have said so, just for the sympathy and support that would have carried over to Harris.
Clay, as I've said before here, I really want a law giving us a full health panel, physical AND mental, of anyone running for federal office. And it has to be made public in full if they continue to run, if not, then their successor has to go for the checkup and theirs is made public.
They don't want to do that, then don't run. Think how much crazy would have been avoided over the last century if that was a requirement.
While I hope Joe survives, I am less sanguine about his chances than the empty platitudes offered by the Obamas and Agent Orange. He has stage 4 (metastatic) prostate cancer. I'd still vote for him given the opportunity. However, his present illness is not newsworthy; it's a distraction from the real threat that the Mango Mussolini presents to a strong economy and global peace.
The only reason I am a registered Democrat is because, in many of the places I have lived, it's the only way to participate in primary elections. And in many (too many) places, primaries determine who will represent the peoples' best interests. Also, I abhor the GCoupP and all that it stands for.
The only positive thing I can say about Mike Ramirez is that he draws well.
I understand having to register with a party in some states. I've been fortunate as an adult that I've only lived in states where I didn't have to do that, except Hawaii...but I wasn't there long enough to vote.
Not all donkeys are the same. The one you drew could declare "Biden 2028" as fake news, but your blog indicates something else. It's a big party with Don Quixotes on strong horses and Sancho Panzas on steadfast donkeys.
I get it...but I would have voted for Biden if he was given last rites...He did a ton of good for this country and the world.
I would have voted for JFK's corpse.
Given the alternative, had the Democratic candidate been Richard Nixon's head in a jar, I'd have voted for Richard Nixon's head in a jar.
Crap, I'd have voted for Al Gore, and I can't stand the guy.
Clay - you be you, not who I or anyone else thinks you should be. Love your cartoons and really enjoy your blogs where you explain and inform.
I'm not a D and not a R. I'm a Radically Independent Moderate who has voted for candidates and positions of both parties when THEY align with ME.
I want to see the R party implode and explode, because they've totally forgotten their primary beliefs and platforms and allowed them to become the RICO (Republican In Claim Only) party.
I'm perfectly fine with the D party going through a major renovation. Pelosi finally, finally, finally bowed out gracefully. Joe bowed out way too late and without any grace or timing. Chuck is still hanging on past his prime. Hakeem seems to have some new energy and an ability to speak. I like Pete. I like many of the middle and younger leaders. But the older ones who are hanging on because they've rigged the system to their own benefit? Not.
I want a multi party system, no more of this binary option of D or R.
I want Ranked Choice Voting.
I want to get rid of Gerrymandering and allowing professional politicians to select the voters in THEIR district, oops....OUR district.
Democracy is hard work and we aren't entitled to anything more than the situations we find ourselves in and how we deal with them.
You cannot have multi party power sharing in a winner take all system. It's just not possible. Political scientists have run thousands of computer simulations and they all boil down to; multi party power sharing is not a stable formation in a winner take all system.
A single step towards changing that would be to make states share their votes for representative by the percentage vote for that party across the state. So in a state with 100 representatives you'd get say, 47 R's, 46 D's, 2 Libertarians and 4 Greens. Which would be representative of the actual state. And no more gerrymanders. Presumably the Greens would caucus with the D's and between them run the state.
Such an amendment has little chance of passing, though the benefits would be obvious.
I'm no expert and I agree that there would need to be many structural changes, and that the professional politicians would fit them all the way.
Of course you can have multi-party government in a winner take all system. Coalition governments are more common than you, apparently, seem to believe. Canada has one. So, too, does France. The UK had one and Denmark nearly always has one. So, too, with Spain. The coalitions distribute ministries among the members (as you suggest in your hypothetical.) They function and they encourage people to vote because they feel seen. Their preferred parties can participate. Only in the USA is there an institutional abhorrence of coalition governance.
I think you don't exactly get the meaning of "winner take all".
"In political science, a "winner-take-all" system is an electoral system where the candidate or party who receives the most votes in a particular district or jurisdiction wins all of the seats or representation for that district. This contrasts with proportional representation systems, where seats are allocated in proportion to the number of votes received."
I had a shorter definition but decided to go with the formal one.
Thus, in a winner take all system, such as the US uses, Greens and Libertarians, who regularly take from 2% to 8% of the vote in every election, have virtually no representation on the national level.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages.
https://secondratedemocracy.com/winner-take-all-elections/
Not gonna scream at you, and I'm damn sure NOT gonna "unsubscribe" to my favourite cartoonist! I'm more sad for Joe Biden at the moment than I am angry at the democrats ... I am angry at the Republicans like Junior and others who will use Biden's illness to further attack him. But mostly I'm just sad for him. He did, as you say, put us back on track after Felon Trump nearly destroyed the nation from 2017-2021 and we owe him a debt of gratitude. Doesn't mean he hasn't made some mistakes, for he surely has, but ... I admire and respect him. And I respect your views, Clay ...
I’m a lifelong Democrat but please do more cartoons criticizing the DNC and aging Dem leadership. If we don’t transition now to youthful leadership with a vision, a plan, who can communicate through social media and podcasts, this country is doomed.
Look what they're doing to force David Hogg into line. It's crazy.
And boy, they've tried to keep all that low key.
Personal story about cancer. Not me. But my father. My father had ZERO symptoms, none, nada, zip, nothing. But when he was hospitalized after a fall from a ladder, he had a fever. Hospital did a chest X-ray and discovered a fist-sized mass in his right lung up against his aorta. Malignant, inoperable ("If I operate, you're dead in 2 days," said surgeon.). Life expectancy, not so great even with chemo, etc. Lung cancer is vicious - by the time there are symptoms, it's normally too late - that's why it has or had a 2-yr life expectancy. He beat the odds - radiation actually killed the cancer and shrunk it by 75%. He died 12 years later due to aftereffects of the fall, which cause a massive stroke that literally destroyed parts of his frontal lobes. (At the end, he was a 2-yr-old in an 87-yr-old body.) So all those "experts" saying, "See, he was sick." are full of it. Not all cancers have warnings.
💯 not mad and wouldn’t unsubscribe for truth telling. The Dems and politicos generally need a complete reset — more honest, more humility, more circumspection, more gumption, more vision, more strategy, more entrepreneurial risk taking, more honor. I could go on…
I'm not going to woulda-coulda-shoulda about Biden and the last election; I can understand that he never expected in 2020 that DJT would crawl out of the woodwork for another run in 2024, and that he thought he'd be the strongest opponent against That Creature. What I will say is that the Democrats, along with any remaining Republicans as well as independents, need to grow a spine and lose the deer in the headlights reaction to DJT's egregious abuses of power. If they can't stand up against him and stop him, who can?
Democrats are a minority in both House and Senate. Our system provides that the House, primarily and to a lessor extent the Senate are the check against abuse of power by the sitting POTUS.
Republicans so fear primary challenges that they have abrogated that role to the courts. Which are becoming utterly bogged down due to the enormous number of suits being filed against the administration.
Democrats CANNOT do anything substantial when they hold no power at all over any of the processes meant to control abusive presidents. All they can do is try to arouse the people and ensure that avoiding that primary challenge means losing the general election. And they are doing that as well as they can, while trying to avoid doomed to fail stunts like impeachments that cannot and will not go anywhere. Certainly, they could file an impeachment a day, given Trump's ongoing offenses, which would do nothing but ensure the public thinks it's all a stunt and then they'd lose interest. Not a desirable outcome.
Thank you for always speaking the truth, Clay. You are absolutely right Biden should have stepped down while still president and had Harris take over. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I look forward to a stronger Democratic party. I will keep working as hard as I can for progressive causes because that’s in my blood. I am a Democrat, but I am appalled and embarrassed and ashamed at what happened with Biden. It has to change.
Won't unsubscribe but no like from me today. As other's have said I would have voted almost anyone other than Trump. We all had an inkling of the insanity lurking on the horizon. I am tired of all the Biden bashing, if he was that out of it then kudos to his team for keeping the country going and trying to make it better for all. I was sorry to hear about his cancer diagnosis and was mad when I saw a headline that some lackey at the DOJ is suggesting some kind of criminal proceedings against Jill Biden.
The Dems need to look FORWARD and figure out the best paths to the future. Yes, paths because beyond the national needs, each state has its' own problems to solve.
All the best to Pres Biden and Dr Jill, their future is going to be tough.
Funny thing, I got news about a biopsy on Saturday, and yep, I've got another round with skin cancer. Probably not that serious, it's basal this time, not squamous like the first round, but nobody wants to hear that.
Next day, I hear Biden is down with prostate cancer. Hope he does as well as I expect to.
Good luck, Paul. My best wishes to you and your family.
Thanks. I'm watched pretty closely for skin cancer given my past history of it, and I was fairly certain this one was cancer. It was a while before it was removed, and now it's another five years of exams every six months. And I'd just gotten OUT of that. Augh!
Good luck with your treatments.
Thanks. I doubt I'll have any real issues besides the notation of frequent doctor visits.
Great toon and post Clay. Anyone who unsubscribes because they don't like this toon and think it's an attack on Biden is dumber than a MAGAT. I would have voted for Biden in a casket before I would vote for Trump, but the DNC, the party AND Biden share the blame for his loss. Biden should have stuck to his word and been a one term President. I admired him for that and was looking forward to a resounding victory for the Dems in November with a fresh younger candidate.
The Dems need young fighters who are not afraid to do and act like the Republicans they are fighting. Bring a gun to a knife fight, a bazooka to a gun fight. They want to go into the sewers then push them in and jump on top of them. Don't worry, the shit will wash off you, just look at Trump, he rolls in shit and comes out smelling like a rose. I've been following Kyle Sweetser in Alabama and I like what I'm hearing, America needs more people like him to get into politics.
Clay, I know what you were doing here, and I feel much the same way about all the secrecy around politicians and their health. It's a load of BS. And Democrats should have their feet held to the fire over it. As should Republicans.
Now, the downside of it. The modern Republican CANNOT keep their evil in check for more than a day or so. This resulted in the usual "best wishes" at first, but then it naturally and inevitably degenerated into the expected insanity. Sadly, this means they, and all the "liberal" media is repeating them piling onto Biden and everyone around him with a ton of nonsense wherein they're pretending Biden is still POTUS and going off like idiots. JD Vance, predictably, was the first and one of the worst. How that man has created a career in politics is beyond my understanding.
And, of course, they're just ignoring the FACT that BIDEN DIDN'T RUN!
So your comic played right into that. And that's not a good thing.
All that said, I personally knew a guy who literally walked out of a physical exam a month earlier and then started coughing blood - and within a couple months were dead of lung cancer. Doctors do screw up or miss things. And sometimes things just progress extremely rapidly. I myself griped at a dermatologist about a spot that had literally popped up no more than six weeks earlier. (I know that because it was right on the shoulder blade and itched like fury.) In that six weeks it had grown enough that they removed several lymph nodes just to see if it was spreading, it was that aggressive. I'm pretty sure that if Biden dropped out because of cancer, he'd have said so, just for the sympathy and support that would have carried over to Harris.
Great blog.
Clay, as I've said before here, I really want a law giving us a full health panel, physical AND mental, of anyone running for federal office. And it has to be made public in full if they continue to run, if not, then their successor has to go for the checkup and theirs is made public.
They don't want to do that, then don't run. Think how much crazy would have been avoided over the last century if that was a requirement.
While I hope Joe survives, I am less sanguine about his chances than the empty platitudes offered by the Obamas and Agent Orange. He has stage 4 (metastatic) prostate cancer. I'd still vote for him given the opportunity. However, his present illness is not newsworthy; it's a distraction from the real threat that the Mango Mussolini presents to a strong economy and global peace.
The only reason I am a registered Democrat is because, in many of the places I have lived, it's the only way to participate in primary elections. And in many (too many) places, primaries determine who will represent the peoples' best interests. Also, I abhor the GCoupP and all that it stands for.
The only positive thing I can say about Mike Ramirez is that he draws well.
I understand having to register with a party in some states. I've been fortunate as an adult that I've only lived in states where I didn't have to do that, except Hawaii...but I wasn't there long enough to vote.
So issues:
- transition/bridge
- cover up (although he was riding 21 miles up until august 2024)
- not giving Kamala Harris enough time
- good summary of all that he did (and what the orange one has destroyed)
- donkey is panicked because of its lack of coherency/strategy/way forward
-yell (good cartoon though because it is so on point)
Not all donkeys are the same. The one you drew could declare "Biden 2028" as fake news, but your blog indicates something else. It's a big party with Don Quixotes on strong horses and Sancho Panzas on steadfast donkeys.