Weekend thread: Whats going on?

Corporate media thrown by election result, polling in New Hampshire. Biden heads to UAW picket line as GOP hurtles toward shutdown. Another turncoat, Dallas mayor, switches parties.

A New Hampshire poll, as well as a New Hampshire special election result this week, had much of the horse-race corporate media scrambling, as we saw the strengths of Democrats and President Biden heading into 2024. It was nice to see, after all of the hand-wringing over Biden’s age and the economic message supposedly not breaking through—and it’s always great when corporate media is thrown off.

Biden has positioned himself as the most pro-union president in history. And now, at the urging of many Democrats and progressives over the past week, he’ll take to the United Auto Workers picket line, an extraordinary first for a president. Meanwhile, in Washington, the GOP continues to crack up, taken hostage by Matt Gaetz and the loonies, ad the party now seems almost certain to cause a government shutdown.

And in Dallas, Mayor Eric Johnson switched parties after winning re-election in May, becoming a Republican. This is such a deceptive and opportunistic move, fooling the voters while also planning to run for higher office—he’s got to retire as mayor after this term—in a state in which it's hard for Democrats to win statewide.