As a Kentucky resident, having Andy as governor is about the only good thing happening in this state.
KYGOP has a veto-proof majority which they have used often to overturn Andy’s veto. The Republicans in the state are the same as everywhere else, unfortunately.
I have learned from direct contact our legislators don’t really do homework on issues. No surprise. They basically work off ‘word of mouth’ and confirmation bias and news clippings to decide how they think.
Anecdote: the legislature passed an anti-tenure bill last week. The bill was sponsored by a rep whose son was upset his professor had stale notes. The rep decided to create a bill to mandate all public state unis evaluate all faculty every 4 years. This is a good idea. However, all state unis already perform YEARLY performance evaluations even after tenure. Most, if not all of the reps, had never even bothered to checked current university policies; “I never really thought to check. I just assumed since Rep X wrote legislation to mandate evaluations there were no evaluations.” And then there was testimony to confirm in fact evals exist. And yet it made no difference even after evidence was presented evals exist.
Andy vetoed the tenure review bill but it will probably be overturned. The bill gives every uni board the power to remove the president and any faculty person, with cause. No criteria for cause, really, so it is possible cause could be “The faculty member made comments at a workshop about DEI which are not compatible with the university mission and thus the university has separated itself from the individual” which is their way of saying “fired.”
Great governor who vetoed Conversion Therapy and anti-DEI and tenure review. Conversion Therapy was overturned by the Republicans. We’ll see about the other two by Friday.
As GOP has a super majority in Kentucky, they can override the veto the next time they meet.
Kentucky is weird. Kentuckian politicians need to tread lightly or they will get voted out. Kentucky is a red state that usually has a dem governor, they like a mix in politics.
If Republicans get too frisky they know they are out the door.
Gov. Beshear could absolutely be president if we still have free and fair elections in 2028. I, personally, wouldn’t be thrilled by a centrist Democrat bringing us further to the right via compromises where the left gets a shit sandwich. But he’s very good at being a politician.
We need to stop seeing governors and senators and representatives and saying, “they would be a great president!”
Instead we need to see teachers, co-workers, and neighbors and say, “they would be a great on the city council or county government or as a state representative.”
We need to stop thinking in terms of only one chance of victory every four years and start putting people who care about us in places where they can help.
Of course, that means we have to be prepared to run, and that is hard as hell. So many of us are stretched to the absolute limit just trying to survive. I honestly don’t understand how anyone can do it.
Would it be better? Or worse… than what we have now.
I think it’d be better but not ideal. America obviously needs reforms but a 4 year reprieve from the dumbest dumbfucks in recorded history trying to annex Greenland and cut off funding for cancer research would be nice.
I’m in agreement with your comments, but this is basically what Biden ran on and it brought us here. I listened to his recent interview on Pod Save America and he is definitely cut from the same “move past our differences and bring America together” cloth. While I’d vote for that in the general, I’d volunteer for a candidate who promises accountability such as deporting Musk and investigating and impeaching Trump’s cronies who remain in office.
