At Least 14 Victims In School Shooting In South Florida
Another school shooting, this time in Florida.
A High School in Broward County, Florida remains on lockdown after reports of a shooting with ‘multiple victims’:
Police have taken the person suspected of opening fire at a South Florida high school into custody, Broward Sheriff’s Office said.
The shooting was reported shortly before students were let out of class Wednesday afternoon. Police had fanned out across the school searching for the shooter as students and teachers remained barricaded in classrooms. There were multiple people killed in the shooting, Robert W. Runcie, the superintendent of Broward County schools, told reporters at the scene.
Runcie said officials did not receive any threats he was aware of made before the shooting.
At least 20 people may have been injured, but that number may be as high as 50 people, according to Dan Booker, a fire chief from a nearby city. Some of those injured are students who were shot, Booker said.
“It’s still an active scene,” he said.
Booker said he is seeking aid from the Coast Guard and other agencies because many victims will need to be transported by helicopter.
Police from nearby Coral Springs, who were also responding to the incident, urged students and teachers to remain barricaded inside the school. Law enforcement officials said they were clearing students building by building.
The school, which opened in the early 1990s, had more than 3,000 students in the 2015-2016 school year, according to federal data.
Gov. Rick Scott (R) said he had been briefed by the Broward County sheriff, whose agency was leading the response, as well as by the county’s school superintendent. President Trump was notified of the shooting, Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said.
“The president has been made aware of the school shooting in Florida. We are monitoring the situation. Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected,” Walters said.
The Broward County school system wrote in a message on Twitter that students and staff “heard what sounded like gunfire” close to the school’s dismissal time.
“The school immediately went on lockdown but is now dismissing students,” the school system wrote. “We are receiving reports of possible multiple injuries.” have confirmed it.
More from the Florida Sun-Sentinel:‘
Multiple deaths were reported Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with a suspect reported in custody.
Coral Springs Mayor Skip Campbell, whose city contracts fire service in Parkland, confirms there were “multiple fatalities.”
There were 14 victims, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. The agency did not say how many were fatalities.
A man in custody, wearing a red shirt, black pants and black boots, was seen being placed on a gurney.
FBI agents were on the scene interviewing students asking for anyone who saw the shooter.
“You’re ok!” One student said as she cried hugged her friend who had just come out. “You’re safe now, don’t worry.”
Samuel Dykes, a freshman, was on the third floor of the school when he said he heard gunshots, and saw several bodies in a classroom.
SWAT told the class to keep their eyes forward as they exited the school, Dykes said.
At around dismissal time at 2:40 p.m., staff and students heard what sounded like gunfire and they enacted a “code red” lock down, according to the Broward School District.
A television news helicopter report showed several people on gurneys being placed into into fire rescue ambulances and groups of children walking across Northwest Pine Island Road. Television news cameras showed a young man with reddish hair wearing a red shirt who was surrounded by SWAT officers and put in handcuffs and being taken into custody.
“It’s a horrific situation,” Broward County Superintendent Robert Runcie said. “It’s just a horrible day for us.”
Students were streaming down Pine Island Road at 3:30. Some of them crying, some were talking on cell phones.
Meghan Walton’s mascara was running as she walked down Pine Island Road with her mother.Derval Walton. She was waiting in the car line to pick her 15 year old freshman daughter up when she got the ominous text from her: “Code Red”
“Kids were running out full of blood,” Derval Walton said. “Kids were falling in the grass.”
Hannah Siren, 14, was in math class on the third floor.
“The people next door to us must have not locked their door,” she said, breaking into tears. “They all got shot”
How many?
“10 or … 7”
As is commonly the case in this day and age, much of the latest information about the incident is coming from the Twitter accounts of the Broward County Sheriff and Broward County Schools:
Shooter is now in custody. Scene is still active. #stonemanshooting
— Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) February 14, 2018
So far we have at least 14 victims. Victims have been and continue to be transported to Broward Health Medical Center and Broward Health North hospital. #StonemanShooting
— Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) February 14, 2018
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is now dismissing students. We are receiving reports of possible multiple injuries. Law enforcement and the District’s Special Investigative Unit are currently on site. The District will provide updates as more information becomes available.
— Broward Schools (@browardschools) February 14, 2018
At this time, law enforcement is clearing students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School one building at a time. We will continue to provide updates, as more information becomes available.
— Broward Schools (@browardschools) February 14, 2018
And there have also been photos and videos from inside the school itself:
My school is being shot up and I am locked inside. I’m fucking scared right now. pic.twitter.com/mjiEmPvGNb
— Aidan (@TheCaptainAidan) February 14, 2018
Student says alleged school shooter was a “troubled kid” pic.twitter.com/O0zZ6An2XM
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) February 14, 2018
JUST IN (warning, disturbing video): Cell phone video inside the school as shots were going off at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High https://t.co/wHWo6XjccX pic.twitter.com/3ovf5LhzBs
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) February 14, 2018
#BREAKING QUICK video of suspect being arrested by police @wsvn pic.twitter.com/f5wdtlP3jT
— Franklin White (@FranklinWSVN) February 14, 2018
Additionally, President Trump has made a statement on his Twitter account:
My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2018
Just spoke to Governor Rick Scott. We are working closely with law enforcement on the terrible Florida school shooting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2018
Obviously, we don’t know much at this time about what happened or who the shooter was other than official confirmation of the fact that he is in custody. It has also been confirmed that the shooter was a student at the school, although we don’t know whether he had graduated from the school, dropped out or been expelled or suspended for some reason or another at the time of the shooting. The scene remains an active shooter situation both because police have not yet confirmed that there isn’t more than one shooter and because the school itself, which is quite large and consists of at least two separate buildings with up to 3,000 students total all of whom are hidden in different areas of the school buildings. Evacuating the school and verifying that there isn’t another shooter at large will likely take a considerable amount of time. In the meantime, students are being released as warranted and slowly being reunited with their parents, but that’s about all the information we have.
Update: CNN is reporting 16 people dead:
At least 16 fatalities in the Florida school shooting, law enforcement sources tell @evanperez
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) February 14, 2018
Just a few more human sacrifices to the NRA god.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.
enough with the “thoughts and prayers.” Will someone in authority dare to do something other than nothing to try to prevent future school massacres?
Here is what we do know: this mass murder was carried out with guns.
This is about guns. Guns, guns, guns, guns, guns. So long as we have a nation saturated in instruments of murder, they’ll be used to blow holes in children. The NRA is a terrorist organization responsible for far, far more dead Americans than ISIS, Al Qaeda and MS-13 combined.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of schoolchildren.
Parkland is in Broward County. I lived in Broward from 1976 to 1979. I live about 50-60 minutes north of Parkland now.
Senseless violence.
CNN is reporting 16 dead
I really have nothing of import to contribute except, perhaps, these quotes from Marjory Stoneman Douglas:
– All we need, really, is a change from a near frigid to a tropical attitude of mind.
– You have to stand up for some things in this world.
– There is always the need to carry on.
NPR reports 17 dead.
As someone who is trying to have children and a gun owner, I know exactly where I stand. Take my guns if that is the extreme case and change the Constitution. Or have mandatory mental health checks every year included in a single payer model, double if you want a gun. Or (and?), armed police (more than 1) and metal detectors in every school. Paid for with a special tax on guns.
Actually i guess I don’t know where I stand. I just don’t like dead kids.
These school shootings are happening with regularity, and I suspect that they will continue to happen periodically into the foreseeable future.
The oversupply of guns in this country is a public health problem, and one which we evidently, collectively through our political system, have no political will to address.
Roll out the “Thoughts and Prayers”…
Add rousing chorus of “how dare you politicize a tragedy!”
For singing in a round, throw in “too soon to discuss”
And… people forget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV5-DaI5ULg
The sun shines
And people forget
The spray flies as the speedboat glides
And people forget
Forget they’re hiding
The girls smile
And people forget
The snow packs as the skier tracks
People forget
Forget they’re hiding
Behind an eminence front
Eminence front, it’s a put on
It’s an eminence front
It’s an eminence front, it’s a put on
An eminence front
Eminence front, it’s a put on
Eminence front
It’s an eminence front
It’s an eminence front, it’s a put on
It’s a put on, it’s a put on, it’s a put on
Come and join the party
Dress to kill
Won’t you come and join the party
Dress to kill, dress to kill
Drinks flow
People forget
That big wheel spins, the hair thins
People forget
Forget they’re hiding
The news slows
People forget
Their shares crash, hopes are dashed
People forget
Forget they’re hiding
Behind an eminence front
An eminence front, it’s a put on
It’s just an eminence front
An eminence front, it’s a put on
An eminence front
An eminence front, it’s a put on
Eminence front
It’s an eminence front, it’s a put on
It’s a put on, it’s a put on, it’s a put on
Come on join the party
Dress to
Come on join the party
Dress to
Come on join the party
Dress to
Come on join the party
Dress to kill
Dress yourself, dressed to kill
I don’t know what we can do about the guns. We have something like 1.2 guns for every man, woman and child in the US. If we somehow banned guns starting today there would be plenty for 100 years.
But I do know a problem that we can tackle, but not with laws. We need to change our sick, sick, sick gun culture in the US. People fetishize guns. They repeat every carjacking, home invasion and deadly assault in the US (provided it is a brown person on a white person) to each other over and over, and go home and stoke their weapons and fantasize themselves into hero mode where they would whip out their unstoppable killing machine and mow down the darkies.
Most gun owners, albeit absolutely wrong about the safety benefits of owning a gun, are not evil or stupid. But unfortunately way, way too many participate or are at least indifferent to this endless fetishization and the talk of “stopping power” and “kill effectiveness” and on and on. By normalizing this kind of language to the point where every arm chair Rambo feels free to drone on about street sweeper multi chambered shotguns and the benefits of various specialty bullets, it makes it difficult for the normals to recognize the psychopaths vs. the bloviators.
The Las Vegas shooter bought armor piercing bullets from a guy who made them in his basement. According to gun culture and the modern NRA, this is the normal behavior of hobbyists and patriots. It’s not. It’s the behavior of sick psychopaths. The fact that it’s been embraced by millions of gun owners simply means it’s all too easy for the psychopaths to hide among them.
@Bnut: I appreciate the dilemma, but bear in mind that your children aremuch more likely to end up being killed by that gun than being saved by it. That’s the real statistics, not the nonsense NRA made up stuff.
Daryl’s other brother Darryl: The Carthaginian civilization used to sacrifice children to their gods Ba’al Hammon and Tanit. Like all ancients, they did this to gain the gods’ favor.
What are schoolchildren in America being sacrificed randomly for?
@Kathy: To the profits of the gun industry. To the personal wealth of Wayne LaPierre et al. To the Republican Party’s need to find any social difference they can exploit.
@MarkedMan:
I don’t think it’s necessarily “gun culture” that needs to change but culture overall. Gun collectors don’t bother me. We have a culture that is casual about real violence in any form — violent drug raids, violent police tactics, violent wars, violent drone strikes. We are ramping up our war in Syria and no one notices. We have 100,000 SWAT raids a year and no one cares. The most likely way to be killed by a stranger is to be killed by a cop and no one bothers. We put mass murderers name in headlines as though they were celebrities. And we wonder why delusional young men think life is cheap and violence is the path to glory.
Gun control is an easy answer and its efficacy and article of faith among the Left. Unfortunately, the answers to this seem far more complicated.
@Kathy:
The patron gods of stupidity.
Gun bans and mental health services. That’s all we’ve got in our toolbox on this one. No wonder this kind of thing keeps happening.
A modest proposal: in light of the news that the shooter apparently had been flagged by the FBI for posting about how he wanted to be a school shooter, and was suspended from the school for making threats, maybe require adults arrested or teens suspended from school for violence or threats of violence to surrender their guns.
Note, I say surrender not lose. The police should hold the weapons, the way they hold evidence or impound a car, until an investigation has been conducted including interviews with community members, checking social media posts, and a psych evaluation. If the person is deemed not to be a threat, they can have their guns back. If they are a threat, but haven’t done something that will land them in prison, they can undergo therapy and after a set period of time be re-evaluated. If they pass, they can apply to get their guns back.
For teens I’d add that if they are released to parents/guardians’ custody and those adults have guns, they can keep their guns, but only if certify that they will keep the guns secured in a way that the kid can’t get to them and sign off on accepting responsibility for anything junior does if he does get hold of their gun(s).
@Hal_10000:
I’m coming around to the idea that gun control, as currently envisioned, is part and parcel of the left’s intellectual and societal laziness. Just pass a law and watch all the good things that will follow.
Their unending trust in government makes zero sense in the Age of Trump.
@bookdragon: I’ld Be happy to take it a step farther. If you have threatened someone with a gun then you lose the right to possess a gun. Full stop.
@James Pearce:
It’s not as if there aren’t any examples in other countries.
But you always ignore everything that may interfere with your vision from your high horse.
@MarkedMan: I know the stats and I won’t argue with them. My thinking may change over time, everyone evolves. But we let children drive every day, and my guns come out only a few times a year from their very expensive safe that only me and the misses know the combo to.
@Bnut:
The critical “stats” here are: After Sandy Hook, More Than 430 People Have Been Shot in 273 School Shootings
How about we tell those parents that there kids are just “stats” and that they are a rounding error for good gun owners?
Your choice to retreat to the fact that YOU may be a good gun owner does not address the fact that the USA has a serious problem with the availability of weapons.
By the way… I can understand a hunter having a single shot or even multiple-shot rifles for hunting deer, bear, or even home protection. And I believe that when the NRA began, its focus was to promote safe hunting and gun safety.
But semi-automatic or bump-stock weapons potentially with high capacity magazines no longer addresses the needs of hunters or home protection. These are weapons of war and mass carnage.
@Hal_10000: not sure by your last comment if you were including me as part of the gun-control crowd but if so I suggest you reread my comment.
I agree that our society as a whole is violent and that is an overall cultural problem. But I disagree when you minimize the level of disfunction in gun culture. Here’s a practical example of what I mean. Several years back a neighbor of my brother in rural PA started collecting military style guns. He started wearing camo everywhere. He talked about protecting himself and his parents, with whom he lived. He went on and on about weapons and techniques he would use for those who came after him. He talked about how the government wanted to take his guns away. He talked about how they would send black helicopters to get him. And then one day he beat his elderly parents half to death and ran off into the woods with his guns. The father was able to call the police and they went off to look for the son. He had dug out under a fallen tree and secreted himself in this Rambo-hole with branches and leaves. And when one of the cops came within range he put a bullet through his chest and killed him.
Now, at the same time, I spent a fair bit of time with a couple of other guys from the same area. These are guys I like and trust and have no problem with. But they are gun nuts. And everything that the guy above said, I have heard them say. Black helicopters? Heck, they once told me that the mysterious numbers on the backs of stop signs were put there by the UN to indicate which houses on a particular street had guns so when the blue berets invaded they could take them away.
The US gun culture has devolved into such a morass of nine year old melodrama and fantasy that it is impossible to tell the psychopaths from the merely overdramatic sorts who never outgrew the fantasies of battling alone against terrible odds but saving the day and dying a heroes death! (“And then you’ll all be sorry I’m gone! [Wipes tear from corner of eye]”) And there are literally millions of the latter. We need to shake some sense into these goons and get back to the state where if someone is talking and acting like a psychopath, well, they are probably a psychopath.
@Bnut: I made a different decision then you, but I believe you should have the right to make your own decision.
@michilines:
Pick a country with better gun laws and you’ll probably find a country that has a healthier relationship with its young men.
I’m not ignoring anything. I’m thinking two steps ahead of you. Ban the guns. But what are you going to do with these dudes who want to kill random people?
@James Pearce:
I actually laughed out loud at that one…
@MarkedMan:
Did you finally realize your politics is a joke?
@James Pearce: Sure James, whatever you say…
@Liberal Capitalist: Yeah, the answer is not and will not be easy. I fear that it will never be addressed logically or in good faith let alone solved, so I can only do my part.
We actually did have metal detectors at my high school. They got used maybe a few times a year, otherwise sat in the corner collecting dust. They made everyone switch to clear or mesh backpacks after Columbine (like you couldn’t hide a pistol in a trapper keeper). It’s just such a mess.
Too bad Wayne Pierre didn’t have any kids that were killed yesterday. You see, if Wayne is willing to sacrifice more innocent lives on the altar of gun rights, make his kids the first to go.
Sorry, that sounds horrific, but then so does the headline “17 killed by gun toting psychopath”
And, as we all, know, repeat, rinse that headline many times more in the future to the point that 4 or 5 killed doesn’t even register anymore.
@James Pearce:
Well, getting rid of the guns would make it far more difficult for them to kill 20-30 at once.
Not impossible, but that’s only a strawman standard. Dudes kill random people in countries with strong gun control, too. They just kill far fewer at one time, and far less frequently.
You might argue this only takes care of a symptom, and you’re right, but when the symptom is 20 dead kids and 50 people out at the club and 60 dead concert-goers (and…and…and…ad infinitum), we need to take care of the symptom posthaste.
@James Pearce:
And here’s where your intellectual and societal laziness comes into play: YOU CAN’T. You literally cannot stop every person who wants to commit murder. Society knows, understands and accept this but people like you reach for this fallacy without fail every. damn. shooting. we have in this country. It’s as trite as “thoughts and prayers” at this point. This logic doesn’t seem to fly with any other type of crime but god forbid someone take a gun into a gun free zone, those things clearly don’t work and should be eliminated!
Here’s the thing: doing nothing clearly isn’t working. Ignoring the fact that young males are killing people left and right isn’t working. We are having this discussion every damn month and nothing’s changed at all. Why not do something to stop it? Why not try? I mean, scientifically speaking, has sticking your head in the sand achieved the desired result?
The only solution is to change the gun culture, and that isn’t something that will be fast, easy, or 100% effective. But because something won’t solve everything or necessarily prevent the tragedy that just happened, is no reason to throw up our hands and do nothing.
I’ll go with Stone kettle on this.
@MarkedMan:
If you want to disagree with one of my comments, just do that. Why must it always be a battle of the wits thing?
@Mikey:
I totally agree. I just recognize that in a post-Heller world, writing gun laws that can survive a constitutional challenge in court is a tricky endeavor and, politically, Democrats aren’t going to put any serious effort into any kind of gun bans anyway.
So, when I hear after the latest gun massacre more “now is the time for gun control” stuff I just roll my eyes.
There has been an incredible number of mass shootings these last few years, many of them rather shocking, and every single time, lefties and liberals say, “this is the one, this is the one we’ll finally exploit ”
And yet….they don’t. Some awards show comes up and they go SQUIRREL, and its back to the superficial BS.
What about the right’s approach to this –organized and consistent as it is— makes you think it’s going to be vulnerable to some disorganized emoting?
@KM:
That’s true, but we’re not talking about mere murder here. These are basically acts of self-destruction in which other people are the collateral damage.
Gun control isn’t going to solve that problem.
@James Pearce:
It’s not vulnerable to that, but it’s vulnerable to voting.
Which is why I’m glad my fellow lefties have finally realized “emoting” (disorganized or not) isn’t the answer. Voting is. We’ve already started to see what happens when we actually organize and vote.
Organize and vote, so we can flip Congress and fix the problem of the minority of voters having the majority of representation. And while we’re at it, we can flip some state houses and fix the GOP’s gerrymandering.
Organize and vote, so we can carry more states and elect a Democratic President despite the Electoral College allowing the minority to elect the President.
Organize and vote, so the next SCOTUS Justice who retires or dies doesn’t get replaced by a Trump-nominated right-wing lunatic.
Organizing and voting is extra vital this November because the electoral map favors the GOP. It will take a lot of work to flip the House, and more to flip the Senate.
It’s only by organizing and voting that we solve this, and other, problems. As long as the bought-and-paid-for-by-the-NRA Republicans hold majorities, nothing will change because nothing can change.
@bookdragon: As I was reading that Stonekettle piece, I realized something I find a bit unbelievable.
The National Hockey League places more responsibility on hockey players for where their sticks go than the United States of America places on gun owners for where their guns get pointed.
@Mikey: I’m for all of that, but with one major caveat.
I’ve lost confidence in the Democratic party. It’s not enough to organize and vote. We’ll need better Democrats.
Republicans started a war in Iraq that was supposed to stabilize the region, but blew it up.
Republicans just passed a tax reform (sic) they say will stimulate the economy and grow tax revenue, even though everyone knows it won’t.
Trump wants to build a wall that won’t have much effect on illegal immigration or smuggling.
Why is perfection a standard only for anything Democrats might want to do? Let’s say we do implement better background checks, as one obvious example, and it doesn’t reduce the violence? OK, what great harm is done?
For another example, let’s say the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act currently pending in the Senate failed to pass, what great harm would be done?
This item from Newsweek includes this paragraph:
Fetal alcohol syndrome?
@James Pearce: Well, to steal from that underestimated wit, Donald Rumsfeld, you don’t go to vote with the Democrats you want, you go with the Democrats you have.
So we vote for the Democrat every race we’re eligible to vote in. None of this “I vote based on the individual candidate” ticket-splitting bullshit. Every Democrat is a better choice than his/her Republican opponent. Period.
Gun control will work like a charm! Just like Drug regulations….
While it might feel good and seem prudent–all this will create… is a black market where very powerful psychopaths will share a hundreds of million dollar underground market for guns. There will be turf wars and casualties for market share in America’s cities. While well meaning–its a stupid idea in the context of unintended consequences. You think MS-13 and other gangs/cartels are ruthless now??? Wait till an underground gun market is up for grabs.
My problem with liberals is they never think through the policy propaganda they’ve been conditioned to parrot–like the conservaDunces they claim are they are smarter than.
What is the acceptable number of gun deaths per year? Zero? 10,000? There is a resource requirements for each of those policy endgames. What current law enforcement priorities should officers be diverted from to devote to enforcing the policy engame? We don’t have enough law enforcement to deal with drugs…..How many more resources will needed to wage the inevitable ‘War on Guns”?
Is this a good use of law enforcement resources despite school shootings overall, while terrible, terrible, terrible, are statistically on par with lightning strike deaths in America–50ish per year in a country of 300+ million people.
You want to know how to reduce school shootings? Stop the national reporting on it by the media, stop the tv cameras, stop covering the vigils, STOP. Its become clear to me that the sense of infamy IS the incentive for the shooters. Most of these people are sick enough to forfeit their freedom for life—for the sheer satisfaction of waking up every day and savoring the chaos and tragedy they were at the center of. Each one tries to outdo the next–to up the sense of national tragedy. Its like when a serial killer takes a trophy from victims to forever trigger the rush they got from victims fear and terror. In a twisted way, these devils feed off the sense of being known by name, being hated, being an anti-celebrity. These people are looking for their own twisted version of fame and we provide it in spades.
Go back and look at the history of these occurrences– the jump strangely correlates with the rise in Cable News. A person that would shoot up a school to be the national villian would ABSOLUTELY utilize the black market if necessary to commit their acts–because infamy is what they desire. BTW, I realize my suggestion is as feasible as gun control. But the difference is–mines would work.
Vultures… Stoking the fires of controversy to destroy America.
Wonder how much of the GOP platform is a result of Russian disruption.
It would explain a lot.
Trump:
So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!
4:12 AM – 15 Feb 2018
Heard a radio report today that citizen Cruz had on a Trump cap at one time.
By Pud’s own logic anyone seen wearing the MAGA baseball cap should be reported to the authorities, again and again.
@Mister Bluster :
No – attempting to invoke “youth” as excuse. The current science is brain development as a biological process isn’t complete until your twenties. However, this doesn’t mean the ability to not be a murderous psychopath isn’t achieved by your teens. Even individuals with development disabilities understand you don’t go shoot up a school so this is a pathetic attempt at defending the indefensible.
@Mikey:
Some of the Democrats we have are Orin Hatch-level juiced in.
Despite a few noises, they’re not fighting for black people or immigrants or the LGBT community or for gun control or pro-union policies or anything you care about because what they’re fighting for is to keep their seats. There are entire regions of this country they are afraid to even travel to, and they certainly aren’t going to live there or represent the people who do.
And I disagree with this:
Most Republicans are pretty awful, that’s true, but the idea that Dems are, by default, better gives a lot of ineffective Dems….and there are a lot of ineffective Dems….cover.
@James Pearce: They vote the way we want on the issues 99% of the time. That’s what matters.
Sometimes I think Americans believe our system is far more parliamentary than it actually is. Unfortunately, first-past-the-post and single-member districts mean party identification is much more important than the individual politician. If you disagree with most of the GOP platform but split your ticket because “your” Republican rep is decent, well, you’re just putting another vote on Capitol Hill for a platform you disagree with, because they’re going to vote with their party 99% of the time.
This is the political reality for Democrats today: every Democrat is a better choice than his/her Republican opponent simply because they’re a Democrat.
Get a congressional majority and a Democrat in the Oval Office. Then we can worry about whose nits to pick.
@Mikey:
@James Pearce: “We were 8 years in power” is a quote by a Reconstruction politician. TNC’s use of it is meant to evoke the fact that progress can slip backwards.
@James Pearce: If there’s one thing we can all count on from you, it’s that whatever anyone proposes we do, you’ll say “it can’t be done.”
@Monala:
Progress has definitely slipped backwards…
My reference was meant to evoke the idea that electing Democrats is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
@Mikey:
Ha! That’s how I feel. “Run black candidates in the south.” Can’t be done. “Run Dems in Utah.” Can’t be done. “Quit being so superficial.” Can’t be done.
What I’m trying to say is that electing a Democratic majority and a Democratic POTUS is just the start. It’s not the end.
@James Pearce:
Where have I said anything different? You’re beating on a strawman.
We can’t even begin to make the necessary legislative changes without a legislative majority. Electing Democrats is where everything starts. That’s what I’ve been saying this whole fecking time.
@Mikey:
And what I’m trying to say is that electing Democrats is not enough when those Democrats are utterly useless carbuncles on the ass of democracy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to start voting Republican. But I am going to start voting, mercilessly, against crap Dems.
@James Pearce:
If there’s a primary and crap Dem runs against great Dem, vote for great Dem, absolutely.
But if crap Dem wins the primary and goes to the general, you vote for crap Dem, because when the legislation comes up for a vote, the crap Dems will vote with the great Dems 99% of the time.
@James Pearce: l’ve told you this before but I’ll say it again a bit differently. Get off your fat ass and run for office so you can show all us simple folks how to get things done. You keep saying the Dems are ineffective while ignoring the elephant in the room, namely the GOP. I don’t know if you noticed but right now they control all 3 branches of government.