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Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Jul 18

Look, I don’t know for certain what happens next.

I don’t think any pundit or reporter or big donor knows for certain what happens next. I don’t think any senior Democratic leaders know for certain what happens next, except for one.

(thread)

Only President Biden knows what happens next because only he can decide what happens next. There was a primary. He was the victor of that primary. The decision rests with him alone on whether or not he’ll be the Democratic nominee.

It’s certainly no secret that I fully support Pres. Biden and Vice President Harris, and I still fully believe they should be reelected. I believe they can win. I believe they will win, should Pres. Biden decide to remain on the ticket.

Read 21 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Jul 11

It was June of 2019, and I had no intention of supporting former vice president Joe Biden in the primary for the Democratic nomination. It wasn’t personal. Honestly, I wasn’t even considering him enough for it to be personal.

(thread)

Despite the former vice president having a plurality of support among Democratic primary voters in almost every national poll that year, neither I nor any of my friends and colleagues took much notice of his candidacy beyond basic acknowledgment.

The conventional wisdom in my circles—and honestly, I think most of the political circles in D.C.—was that the man endearingly called “Uncle Joe” would likely play the role of king/queenmaker, perhaps the most coveted endorsement of anyone not named Obama.

Read 31 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Jun 27

Four years ago, I stayed at a hotel during a short work trip, and late one night, when I took a brief visit to the lobby to take advantage of their snack bar, I unexpectedly wound up in conversation with a friendly married couple at the front desk.

(long thread)

I forget where they were from or how the conversation got started, but we quickly took a liking to each other.

We stood there at the front desk, the only souls in the lobby save a dedicated staff member, for at least half an hour talking about everything from where we grew up to our favorite sports teams to recent movies we’d seen.

Read 53 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Apr 24

Alright, it’s been a long day in what’s already a long week. Time for some lighthearted, nerdy political fun. My pal @DCHomos got hold of a box of Election ‘92 trading cards and gifted me some. I kid you not. These are 32 years old. They’ve never been opened. Join me…

(thread)

It’s been three decades, so the cards are stuck together. I have to peel them away. The first card I see is for Murphy Brown, which is terribly appropriate for this election.

Here’s the story: sitcom “Murphy Brown” premiered on CBS in 1988. It starred Candace Bergen as a highly-respected journalist and news anchor. It got pretty solid ratings and quickly grew in popularity.

In the 91-92 season, Murphy Brown gets pregnant and after the baby’s father wants nothing to with the child, Brown decides to have the baby and raise him alone.

This storyline caused a HUGE stir with social conservatives, culminating with then-VP Dan Quayle giving a campaign speech in which he criticized Murphy Brown for “mocking fathers.”

You might be wondering: wait, don’t social conservatives want women to go through with their pregnancies instead of getting an abortion?

Yes, but once again, we see hypocrisy and callousness on full display within the anti-choice movement.

Anyway, the show opened their 92-93 season, six weeks before the election, with an episode called “You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato,” taking dead aim at Quayle.

You see, that previous June, Quayle had been visiting a school in New Jersey, and a young student had spelled “potato” on the chalkboard. Quayle then erroneously corrected the spelling by adding an ‘e’ at the end. On the chalkboard. On camera. During an event about education. Pretty embarrassing!

So, with the controversy over Murphy’s pregnancy already making enormous waves, the season premiere with THAT title was clearly gonna be about Quayle.

44 million viewers tuned in and watched as Bergen, as Murphy Brown, responded to Quayle by featuring diverse families in the episode, which ends with her having a truck dump a pile of potato aplenty on the Vice President’s lawn. It was nominated for an Emmy.

Bergen herself was later magnanimous and said she mostly agreed with Quayle about the importance of fathers.

But his messaging was pretty insulting toward single mothers.

Notice a theme with Republicans moralizing to American families and policing the lives of women?

We got an Ice-T card! This was early in rap’s cultural ascendancy, and it came right as police brutality against Black citizens was, yet again, a major flashpoint after the L.A. protests in response to a group of cops getting away with cruelly beating a defenseless Rodney King on tape. As you can see, @FINALLEVEL was a major activist and artist voice in the national discussion.

Read 6 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Mar 29

It's official: Beyoncé's eighth studio album "Cowboy Carter" has now dropped. It's the second album in her planned trilogy after 2022's "Renaissance."

For funsies, I'm gonna do a first listen review over the next several hours. 27 songs, 79:03 run time.

(thread)

Like many, I have been waiting for this album for so damn long. I grew up on country music. I love Beyoncé. The fact that she's making Texas such a huge theme for this album delights my little Texan heart to no end.

Okay, let's do this! I'll be checking-in on each track.

1. "Ameriican Requiem"

She opens up with the second longest track on the album. Beautiful texture. Gorgeous instrumentation. This is definitely a powerful opening salvo. It builds up to the last third with a response to people who claim she's not country:

Look it there, look it in my hand
The grandbaby of a moonshine man
Gadsden, Alabama
Got folks in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana
They used to say I spoke "too country"
And the rejection came, said I wasn't "country 'nough"
Said I wouldn't saddle up, but
If that ain't country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don't, don't know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song

Absolutely solid opening track. Gauntlet thrown down. I'm so excited for the rest of this.

Read 18 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Mar 8

Alright, friends, I shall be live-tweeting tonight's proceedings. President Biden's 2024 State of the Union, now hyped up to ludicrous levels of importance, the fate of democracy and free world hanging in the balance.

Delightful. Follow along.

Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president shall, from time to time, essentially report on the State of the Union and make recommendations, but it wasn't until Woodrow Wilson that this started to become the very public event we see today.

Wilson gave an in-person speech--rather than sending a report--for the first time in 1913, which was somewhat controversial! Warren Harding gave it by radio for the first time in 1922. Truman was first on television in 1947. Clinton in 1997 was the first accessible live online.

Read 72 tweets

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