She’s currently livestreaming a battle between her RA and some old lady in the dorm. It’s got tens of thousands of viewers, more than anything she’s ever done.
Roz is contemplating what she should change her major to in order to accommodate her new plans of being the next Vince McMahon.
He completely ruined his father’s business with crappy “feuds” and buying out all their major competitors. There’s a reason that wrestlers who leave either quit, go MMA, or do movies, and that’s cuz Vince essentially monopolized major league wrestling. Vince cuts corners, and people get hurt. Or worse.
The idea of Roz showing up right now and acting morally superior is, quite honestly, the last thing anyone in this strip needs and the mere thought of it exhausts me.
Robin’s done the right thing before, she just has to get it through her denile what the right thing is. She’s been able to ignore the harm she’s done up until now because she didn;t have to see it and could pretend it wasn’t that bad.
She is not. Robin has done the right thing before impulsively damn the consequences to herself when she found the option offered to her morally objectable and she can do it again impulsively to prove her sincerity goddammit.
… I don’t think resigning from the race would be a good idea.
What Robin needs to do is honor the Becky’s third condition – use her power to vote for good things and against bad things.
OR… she could hire Becky to be her policy advisor and have Becky tell her what to vote for. Forever. Effectively making Becky the congressperson by proxy.
I don’t see why it would be a bad idea. Robin’s opponent was already likely to do that without needing a teenager to demand it and is probably 20x more competent than Robin is.
That sounds really offensive to AOC, given she’s an extremely eloquent, well-spoken woman who knows when and how to call out bullshit, and Robin… very much isn’t any of those things.
But sure, they’re both mixed-race congresswomen (nevermind they belong to different sides of the political spectrum!) so they’re the same thing, right?
I assume they just meant in the sense of an outspoken far left voice, by following Becky’s lead, not just “mixed-race congresswoman”. In that context, they wouldn’t even be on different sides of the political spectrum.
Both are also Millennials, of which there are only 26 in Congress (accounting for just under 6% of the US House of Representatives vs. 31.5% Gen X, 54.25% Boomers, and 8.25% Silent).
I wonder what Robin’s pre-Congress job was in the Dumbiverse. In SP!, she’s clearly working-class, like AOC, but I don’t think we’ve yet learned what she was up to in DOA before getting elected.
If her opponent is a good person, it is by far better to have a good person in congress than someone trying to be a good person in congress. Ideally, they’d all be at least one or the other, but this stuff requires a loser. Let the loser actually be the worse person for once.
Nah It would be better for Becky in the long run if Robin did win the election.
It would be a great bit for the old resume for her.
Plus unlike Becky we the readers have seen plenty of instances where robin has done the right thing, and with currently no party holding her reigns she free to do what she wants to do
I mean there’s still a lot that remains to be seen too. Robin might not win. Maybe Becky had a positive influence on her motivating a change in her politics. But even if its a worse case scenario I don’t think Roz has much room to blame Becky for it. Robin has actually done more for Becky than Roz ever did. I’m not saying its right, Becks probably made a mistake here, but she was also not in the best situation. It would kind of feel like a dick move to me.
It wouldn’t be very nice to blame Becky for it, but I doubt Roz will feel very nice if her sister gets re-elected. Becky has a lot to lose that Roz doesn’t from Robin’s policies and took the risk but Roz also had a lot at risk that Becky doesn’t from Robin’s policies and I think Roz will be understandably upset if Becky wins and less understandably she’ll blame Becky for un-sabotaging her (though that wasn’t Becky’s intent).
I don’t have internet cash, but I’m willing to bet one of my stockpiled Imperial Internet Points or whatever they’re called. Those just don’t get given out any more.
Anyhow, I’m in. Roz prefers to strangle with words and scorn, rather than actual strangulation.
Dang, i can’t edit my comment, so here’s an addendum:
If Robin wins but genuinely becomes better, that won’t stop Roz from shouting “I TOLD YOU SO” for at least another year, which will probably be past the end of the comic.
Roz has known Robin for significantly longer and more deeply than any other character in the strip, I would 1000% take her estimation of things over Becky’s or Dorothy’s or the commentariat’s.
Becky reminds me of my felling what a lot of public figures. It feels like I want to take your word for it but your track record and knowing how you operate leaves me with to much unable to take your word for. Not to mention who knows how many others feel the same way.
I think she could, or at least ignore her party’s marching orders and vote her own conscience on certain select issues. And if she wasn’t TOO open about it and followed the party line on most other issues, it might not even harm her chances in the next election.
I mean, thanks to Becky she’s running to Manely’s left. Sure, she’s got her Republican supporters who want to support “the cool thing” but have her toe the party line after and be a “cool Republican who occasionally votes for cool stuff like Marriage Equality but also confirms Conservative judges (well, if she’s ever a senator; wouldn’t that be rad?) and votes party line on tax and budget bills”, but given that she is, surprisingly, not losing and it’s all Becky, an aisle cross would likely gain her as many votes as it lost her.
Her big issue as a congressperson on either side of the aisle is that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. As we know, she ran as a lark and now it’s the only job she has.
I’ve really got no idea who’s actually supporting her. Given that Becky’s tweeted her positions not only on LGBTQ rights, but some economic issues as well, I don’t see why her Republican supporters would stick around – other than just “checking the box with the R next to it”. Nor, given her track record do I see any but the most naive Democrats or leftists buying her change.
In political terms, this is more unrealistic than any of the superhero antics.
The sympathy vote from the kidnapping might well give her a boost, but Becky’s efforts should have been torpedoing her campaign’s last chances, not making her wildly popular. Maybe in some social media circles, but twitter popularity doesn’t translate well into votes. And even there the right-wing trolls would be out in force.
That’s an interesting question. If switching to a progressive message thanks to Becky has Robin winning the election, does that mean that Manley isn’t a very progressive Democrat? Do we have strong evidence that Manley winning would be a better option than Robin winning?
It doesn’t mean anything because it doesn’t make sense.
Anyone conned by Becky’s tweets into supporting Robin over a Democrat isn’t a reliable judge of what makes a politician better.
We know almost nothing about Manley. Both Dorothy and Leslie support him, which is good evidence he’s at least decent. As does Roz, but that can be written off as her personal conflict with Robin.
Beyond that, it all depends on where you think Robin will go after winning – if she reverts to form, basically any Democrat would be better.
To me, “form” for Robin was simply to do whatever her political handlers told her to do. I’m curious if she can revert to form without those handlers telling her what to do. I can’t see her just going back to them.
Honestly every option here is viable for Robin. As the representative serving Bloomington that puts her in Indiana’s ninth district. Looking at the recent history of that district in the real world, they tend to favor the left most fringe of the GOP and right most fringe of the Dems equally in the house (though they do roll roughly 55:45 in favor of the republicans for president).
She could actually ride through owning the positions each Roz (reproductive rights) and Becky (LGBTQ+ rights) mainly support while otherwise favoring the GOP party line and be fine in the next cycle as a Republican. She could also cross the aisle after the election and merely favor one or two GOP talking points and be fine going into the next election as a Democrat.
I mean, even if she wins there’s no way the GOP would support her in her next congressional race. She’d likely lose the primary to a more genuinely right-wing politician and, even if she won that, the Democrats would put a giant bullseye on her seat in an effort to keep it. The only way she could stay in office past the next election cycle is if she finds a way to actually fight for it and create a political identity that appeals to people.
Actually, Becky’s already done the work of creating a political identity that people like for her. At this point she’s an independent and can say the Republicans betrayed her rather than the other way around. If she spends the next two years caucusing mostly blue, the dems might even be willing to accept her into the fold. Any vote helps them maintain a majority, after all.
Exactly, which is why changing parties (or going Independent) would make sense for her politically. She has no chance as a Republican in the next election cycle, but she might have *some* chance as a Dem or Ind.
She lost the party’s endorsement and there’s pictures of her leaving a lesbian woman’s apartment without any pants on. The odds of her not getting the Republican nomination next round is just about zero even if she returns to being a good little GOP foot soldier.
If she’s screwed either way, she might as well go out on her own terms.
It really is. There are ways to switch parties without losing public support, but it generally requires either a national political realignment (so that you’re not the only one switching parties; instead, the party itself i splitting or losing a large number of similarly-minded legislators), which is not happening, or, sometimes, resigning your seat and then running openly as a member of the other party in the next election. That is rare, but it has been done, and successfully.
But it’s not really open to Robin. Her time and place do not allow for it. CMasta1992 is right—it’s a death sentence.
Two years, reps run on a 2 year cycle. Which means 1 year to do legislation and then run on your record the next year while nothing gets done because everybody is trying to get re-elected.
All Representatives are up for election every two years. Senators have 6 year terms and a 3rd of them are up in every two year cycle (plus some oddities for deaths/resignations/etc.)
Ah, I was mixing them up with senators then. Thanks.
Continuing from yesterday, I have a question:
CAN he pardon himself on the way out the door? I was under the impression that you need to be charged to be able to be pardoned (because accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt), and, despite our disagreement on whether he’s going to be charged or not (with a lot of luck we’ll be finding out who’s right in like 6 months from now), I think we can both agree that nobody’s going to do any charging while he’s still POTUS.
Nobody will be charging him while he’s POTUS because the person in charge of charging people works for him.
You don’t need to be charged to be pardoned – Ford pardoned Nixon after Watergate. Whether a President can pardon himself isn’t clear, but he could certainly issue the pardon and it would be one more legal roadblock to convicting him.
Frankly I think it’s the sheer VOLUME of shit that’ll make him getting completely pardoned difficult. Both because the hypothetical serving documents will probably need to be delivered in binders, and because you can’t actually pardon someone for crimes they HAVEN’T committed yet, and I honestly am not sure the man is capable of not committing crimes while under scrutiny, and he hasn’t managed to COMPLETELY gut the FBI.
By which I mean I’m pretty sure he’s pissed off enough forensic accountants with the ability to do shit about it that committing tax fraud would be a very bad idea.
Becky, you were going to betray your boss? That’s just shameful. Be proud of this terrible evil you have unleashed on the world in the name of selfish gain.
If the boss in question’s is almost certainly going to use the power you’re getting her to hurt a lot of people, then yes, that’s a good time to betray them.
Taking the job to with the intention of betraying her up front, that’s less cut-and-dry. Yes, Becky was in a desperate situation, but she did have housing and a job and options for student loans (the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems) and didn’t actually need the campaign manager job. I think she took it mostly out of a sense of I-don’t-want-to-be-embarrassed-in-front-of-Dina pride, rather than actual need.
She had very sketchy housing and loan options. Living on a couch and imposing on a woman she really barely knew isn’t exactly secure and we’d just seen that emphasized in a scene after Leslie snuck Anna in.
Plus, she was just continuing what she’d already been doing illegally by hacking Robin’s phone.
No one really has any reason to trust Robin. She did support that lgbt duscrimination bill then dismiss it when questioned with “no one would’ve really gotten hurt probably”.
Again, she supported anti-LGBT laws. Not supporting one bit of transparent evil doesn’t mean she gets a pass for supporting a different bit which she still hasn’t repudiated.
It might be best to say that she’s not evil when faced with something that she can immediately see, right in front of her, with no abstractions. With Ryan, it was very personal, right in front of her—-an attempted rapist at the college where her younger sister is going to school. An attempted rapist who was on her campaign staff, or at least as an intern. It’s right in front of her, she acts impulsively to oppose the evil.
Those LGBT people that will be affected by the law coming up to a vote? They’re not her problem. They’re somebody else’s problem. Somebody else will take care of them.
It’s kind of similar to how a lot of anti-LGBT conservatives have a sudden change of heart when it’s *their* kid who comes out of the closet, and suddenly they realize that all the cruel things they used to advocate for are going to be hurting someone *real,* someone right in front of them.
Does that make Robin any less shitty? No, not really. Especially since, being a legislator, all those LGBT people *are* her problem—helping the citizenry is her job.
I think Robin is due for a redemption arc. Basically, she’s one of those people who never actually believed the government does anything and was solely for the perks.
Becky and Leslie are people who have suffered under the laws she helped draft and is a horrifying reality check for her.
Redemption arcs are when the bad person dies at the end doing some minor good that doesn’t actually fix any of the bad and we have to stop hating them because we’re not allowed to speak ill of the dead.
Redemption arcs take most of the series or movie where your begging the bad guy to turn to the side of good because you know they would be happier on the side of good and want them to be happy. And then around the last season they start deciding to make healthy decisions.
This is somewhat of an unpopular opinion but not understanding the plight of others and instead following your gut/what has been taught to you is not inherently evil. Yes, she could and should do better but the fact that she hasn’t done it /yet/ (before she allowed herself to personally meet and be challenged by the people she had ignorantly dismissed) doesn’t mean that she will never be capable of doing it.
I know it /feels good/ to dunk on homophobes either casual or hardcore and for sure some have earned it. However, from a practical point of view, one that accelerates change, it’s even better to convert them to your cause.
How far does it go? Is anything excused if you just don’t understand the plight of others and follow what you’ve been taught?
Helping legalize discrimination against LGBTQ folks is apparently okay. Was supporting Jim Crow? Slavery? The Holocaust? Is there a place where it’s not okay, even if you just don’t understand and were just following your teachings?
I think most of us would agree that doing at least some of these things in the past was evil, even for people who were just raised that way, but where is the line drawn? And does it matter if it’s something many of us were raised with as opposed to those horrible things people in the past were taught that we clearly would have seen through immediately?
I don’t exempt myself here – I was lucky enough to be raised without any explicit racial or homophobic teachings, though I certainly absorbed some from the culture around me. Much easier to break through when it’s not core to your sense of identity though and I’m still finding bits of prejudice I never realized before.
For Robin specifically, she’s also directly profited in her political career from that prejudice and that makes it worse in many ways.
Hmm, no She’s not as bad as a person as people would think. But I guess it’s more like how reliable I’d she? She’s done the right thing before but how often can you count on her to do that? Was the way she handled Ryan a rare thing or can you really count on Robin to care about someone other than herself more often then occasionally.
I think from what we know of Robin, Robin has never had to deal with consequences or the faces of her victims before. She’s getting a reality check that her corruption and dirty politics had real effects on real people.
So self absorbed out of touch congress woman has a Fall from grace in her nongraceful life and then becomes more in touch with the people she didn’t know she was hurting with her policies as she begins to climb her way back up from the bottom.
There is some sort of poetic irony in there somewhere.
She did vet her staff quite well. She found a volunteer that was already by far the most productive member of her staff and promoted her after firing her existing, unproductive staff who also didn’t match her policies or message any more.
The fact that nobody had OKed said volunteer doing the work she was doing (and that she wasn’t at the time an official member of her staff) is largely academic for this judgement.
Poor tactics sure, but SO Dickensian… Something something orphan’s tears something laughter something Something Leslie needs some real people in her life, ….
it is a moral failure of mine that I take Un-Holy glee in politicians like Palin and Gingrich being shown for the hypocrites they are.
After rereading this for a third time I’m, again, struck by how hurt DeSantos looks in the Last panel, and I am unsettled because I cannot parse the face as is informing her of this for the first time. She just doesn’t have the “whuh?“ confused look that she is hearing this for the first time. I wanna hope that she doesn’t mean to hurt Becky, but dang she’s worse at helping then Leslie is.
I understand what ‘get off’ means. That’s exactly why I don’t get the alt text. That has no relation to anything in the strip. (Other than Roz, who is an enthusiastically sexual person, being mentioned, but she’s mentioned in a context which would make that interpretation kind of icky.)
Ah. I think the implication is that Roz is going to be so insufferable that she’ll be physically pleasuring herself to the feeling of being so incredibly right.
I don’t really get it either. It strikes me as the sort of joke as if someone had used the words “get off” in a different context in the strip, like Becky telling Robin to “get off her high horse” or saying Roz will “never get off her case” or something.
Here’s the thing I’ve been feeling about Robin: The extend of her political opinions is that she’s got (had?) an R next to her name and that gets her elected.
Because, seriously, when has she actually shown any actual political opinions? Everything about her screams “I toe the party line because that keeps me in office”. Even her defense of the LGBT Discrimination was a weak-ass “…well, uh, other people aren’t comfortable…”, and her ultimate defense is “I gotta keep people happy”.
And yeah, that doesn’t exactly make her an ally… but it makes her a complicit fool at worst, and sometimes they can wake the hell up.
That’s not really a defense. According to a friend of mine who works in a neighboring news outlet, the people at Fox News are actually completely absent of politics themselves. They’re all in it for the money. They just have no souls pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Oh, I’m sure some of the fuckers are actually True Believers. A better example would be, say, Cheney’s anti-LGBT stance. It’s not that he had any actual interest in fucking LGBT folk over, it’s just that he didn’t care and that was an expedient path to power considering the Republican base.
Except that Robin’s mostly oblivious and thus nothing like as calculated as Cheney.
And of course that Robin isn’t an LGBTQ ally, she’s queer herself – once she eventually stops denying that. Now obviously some queer politicians keep it secret and still keep an anti-LGBTQ stance for the votes, but Robin’s far too transparent for that.
Robin: (Implication) You did your work perfectly, I do not require your services at this time, in fact I think you’ll be a bit of a liability given the trauma you just went through, so please take this time to rest and you’ll ofc still get fully reimbursed as per our deal.
Becky: (steps on soapbox) Woe is me, I wanted to sabotage your campaign while taking advantage of you, I could’ve freeloaded on an underpaid college teachers coach or hid on campus until I saved up for community college instead.
The fact this is kind action also benefits you makes you a shitty person Robin!
…wait, you mean… the young woman that just lost her father with whom she’s had an extremely difficult relationship with, as well as her best friend and girlfriend being abducted, and being reminded of her mother’s suicide thanks to her savior’s father “committing suicide”…
…might be acting a bit irrationally and overly emotional? Gee, no fucking shit!
Becky assumed that Robin was an awful adult she could mooch off of. Robin has been deliberately trying to be Becky’s best friend. Becky has not been gaslit or brainwashed into ever thinking of Robin other than a POS.
Robin is starting to realize her desire for lesbian friends won’t happen when she’s working for the Republican Party of Evil.
It’s not that it benefits Robin, it’s that it’s going to get LGBTQ folks killed (unless Robin agrees to the 3rd thing) that makes Robin a shitty person.
Also, Becky is literally saying that she shouldn’t have done whole thing this in this strip. Should she have been happy about this? She’s been clear this entire time that she thought it was impossible for Robin to win.
It also is notable just how much Robin misrepresented what she wanted and what boundaries she wanted to cross. Becky has NEVER liked Robin or wanted to be her friend. She pretty much despises her.
Robin has been using this as a weird attempt to buy a lesbian friend and is genuinely flummoxed how much Becky hates her.
There is that but I also think she genuinely likes Becky, all her actions towards her have been at worst cluelessly well intentioned. Not saying sh’e been horrible elsewhere or that this excuses said horriblness but this could be the first signs of Robing turning over a new leaf.
Yeah exactly. Robin is personally hurt by Becky rejecting her. Which isn’t Becky’s fault or anything, since Robin’s really done little to overcome the reasons Becky can’t trust her.
I also think it’s still all tied up in Robin’s feelings for Leslie – in this case trying to be a better mom-figure for Becky than Leslie was.
Fuck you, Bob. A homeless, broke kid with no family taking advantage of a wealthy bigot is perfectly ethical. So is accepting help. So fuck you again for calling her a freeloader
Bob doesn’t appear to be saying that Becky *is* freedloading, just that Becky is saying that she could’ve freeloaded off of Leslie while she got on her feet some other way instead of accepting this job.
Accepting help you need from someone offering it isn’t god damn freeloading.
Bob’s ENTIRE premise is that Becky is being a shit for not being naively won over by Robin PAYING HER and being generally decent to her personally, even though she literally refused to promise she would change her actual policies, which have included supporting homophobic legislation in the past. Even without that last explicit bit, bigots being nice to marginalized people in person and then voting to hurt them is extremely common
I like Robin and think she can and will change for the better, but she’s done jack shit to prove that. Becky is extremely justified in her mistrust of her.
Anyone who sees a situation like this and is more critical and skeptical of the marginalized person for not leaping to forgive and praise a bigot than they are of the bigot who has put in NONE of the work to be better is a giant asshole
Proxy exploding on Robin isn’t going to fix your screwed up family, Becky. But I’m at least liking the self-awareness of your past actions, if not your current ones.
In a cast of great snarkers, Dorothy far too rarely gets to be the one with the funny line in the last panel. I’m so glad she got one here – and over Becky, no less!
Judging from Robin’s expression, I assume she can also imagine Roz’ reaction.
In all honesty, if this was a safe Republican district, which I believe it’s supposed to be in-universe, then Robin’s probably the best bet the district actually has – completely ineffectual, and in no way actually committed to any of the party’s legitimately cruel policies. If the district isn’t going to go Blue under normal circumstances, better that the person it consistently sends to Congress can’t usually make things worse.
And if it did go Blue for an election… Well, I hate to say it, but I question whether that would be much better even in the short term – if a race is viewed as hopeless, it doesn’t usually attract the best candidates. It attracts clowns, kooks, and con men. Less so for Democrats than Republicans, but… Is her opponent remotely competent? Or is he the kind of guy who hands the Republicans all kinds of clips to make Democrats look insane, while he wastes his time railing against his own party rather than the people destroying the government? If Robin’s meltdown had happened a year ago in-universe, her challenger would probably be legitimately good, but if it’s just whatever sacrificial lamb happens to be handy… There’s a good chance that he’s the Blue version of one of those QAnon idiots.
The truth is, Robin hasn’t had any real power beyond voting for Speaker of the House – she doesn’t even bother remembering the talking points for her party’s legislation. So long as either side has a healthy majority without her… She’s completely irrelevant. Her successor might not be.
If the district includes the college, it’s probably a swing district. Someone will say it’s gerrymandered, but gerrymandering schemes tend to lump reliable opposition cohorts together – “pack and crack” – so in a red state like Indiana, it’s probably either solid blue or swing. If it were a safe Republican district, the GOP probably wouldn’t have withdrawn their endorsement without running someone against her.
Realistically speaking, it should be the case – but I thought it was previously established in the comic that it was a safe district? It would have been mentioned years ago, so I’m not really sure how to verify that either way…
And, well… I honestly can’t imagine how Robin could win races that were actually competitive, considering how easily she’s knocked off-script. The only way her career makes any sense to me is if she was appointed to a safe district, and just kind of coasted from there on the basis of being an incumbent.
Right, but I’m speaking of Becky’s concern here – that she helped re-elect a woman who votes in line with the Republican party.
Even if she wasn’t currently in conflict with her party, she still appears to be pretty incompetent, and to have little interest in her party’s policy – her holding that seat is objectively better for the country than getting another Cotton or Kobach in there. If they’re not getting a Democrat in there, at least Robin isn’t going to make things worse.
It’s odd, because she did talk about it in her first appearance, back in 2011. Then it was a swing district that she’d won from a Democrat in the 2010 Tea Party wave. Before then it had been solidly Democratic since the 60s, except for a one term Republican elected in 2005. Robin made sense as a Tea Party candidate beating a Democrat back then.
But, the district was redistricted and gerrymandered after the 2010 census and has been solidly Republican ever since – even in the 2018 Democratic wave. That 2018 wave is now when she won her seat, which seems a bit odd, though we can assume it’s just because it was solidly Republican and the previous Rep retired or tried for a higher position.
Dorothy and Leslie both like Robin’s opponent (and so does Roz but he probably has Roz just by virtue of not being Robin) so I feel like that’s a good sign for him being a solid candidate.
Wait, Becky intended to take the benefits Robin offered, pretend to work for her, then to hurt Robin’s election chances before the elections..? Not nice, Becky. :\
Remember that before Robin hired her, Becky had hijacked her twitter and was posting pro-LGBTQ and left economic positions. She was hired basically to continue that.
There was no reason at all to think that was going to win the election for her.
Becky’s not worried about that.She’s worried about Robin continuing to support homophobic legislation that will hurt people like her despite being nice to Becky herself.
Bigots pull that shit a lot and Robin has done nothing so far to convince Becky otherwise
I think Roz is too good a person to say “I told you so” to Becky, but I’m not too good a person to say it to the comments section because MAN did y’all tear us Roz advocates apart back then.
Eh, Roz has a solid tendency of calling people on their shit (see: Joyce) and a serious sensitive spot/Deep Issues with Robin, so I do think she is gonna bring it up. (And while Becky is/was a homeless queer teen – I still consider her housing damn tenuous, given Robin’s immediate moving in – we’ve also seen Roz talk over Leslie during that confrontation with Joyce, which is why the day Leslie gave her control of the class had the prepared material of ‘Performative Allyship: De-Amplifying Marginalized Voices’ that Roz recognized as a ‘well played’ moment. And while I’m super sympathetic to Becky – she had a couch to crash on and a job paying pretty much exclusively in tips, which does not a particularly stable living situation make, acceptance as a transfer student tends to mean less shots at scholarships, and given the Twitter exploiting she didn’t really have the option of saying no* – I do think Roz has a point that this was always a risk she was running and should have been worried about. I will not blame her for that I told you so.)
* Robin started that whole exchange by showing up at Galasso’s, waiting to get a table Becky was waiting, and pointing out she could get Becky arrested. I can see Robin being oblivious enough to say ‘well obviously I didn’t MEAN I would call the cops on her if she didn’t work for me! Why would Becky ever think that?’, especially given how buddy-buddy she tried to be since and how Becky doesn’t generally bring it up… but given it’s Becky ‘nobody likes a Debbie Downer’ MacIntyre, it is actually possible it was still on her mind and she pushes it down.
** COMPLETE sidenote: Tag-trawling included reminding me that Ryan appeared, clearly present, in the last panel of the ‘presidential’ strip where Joe and Dorothy discuss Joe’s list. Just before – like, the same day as – he ultimately showed up at the dorm with a knife and had his second date with sharp objects. While he may well have stalked her the rest of the day, and isn’t THAT a terrifying thought… Yeah, I think when Rachel pointed out that the list presented a serious risk to women in the dorm and that’s why she didn’t leak it, it might have been a risk even before the leak. (Which I think someone – Cerberus or BBCC, maybe? – suggested at the time, but the benefit of hindsight.)
The biggest reason I have trouble blaming Becky for Robin getting reelected is that I just can’t take seriously the idea that Becky tweeting pro-LGBTQ and UBI positions is going to help a Republican get reelected in Indiana. She started doing it to tear her down before Robin hired her!
If Becky had actually done real serious campaign work, trying to repair the damage she’d done earlier, that would be one thing, but there’s nothing Becky did that should have helped her.
Roz was always pretty up-front that Robin was good at finding ways to use people, and Robin has done so. Becky willingly endorsed Robin. That’s going to make the difference here.
Becky is the Queenmaker. Lives will end and begin on her sayso. Her career in politics is tremendous. I foresee her being the one who elects Joyce as the first bisexual President with First Lady Dorothy.
Its interesting how Becky and Robin completely misread each other.
* Becky sees Robin as a disgusting bigot she’s mooching off of and conning.
* Robin sees Becky as her surrogate sister and bestie that she’s bought and paid for.
I can’t believe it took me this long to comment here; I’ve been reading this comic for MONTHS now, and I only NOW decide to say talkwords? Ah well. At any rate, very intrigued to see where things go from here, though I could easily say that of every page; DoA has this magnet-like pull on me, I’ve always gotta get caught up each day because virtually every one of these characters has a story that interests me, and keeps me wanting more.
I admit, I hope Becky will realize that it is her destiny to be evil. Like I wanted Catra to take over the Horde and lead it on a campaign of galactic conquest.
We need more fully realized female villains as a lifepath! 🙂
I miss Shortpacked! Robin so much. Keep hoping DoA Robin morphs more into her alternate self.
She was my favorite, so the rebooted version not being able to be in the same age level as the main cast was already a bummer, let alone her being a Sarah Palin-type.
Agreed. Shortpacked Robin was the best and I felt personally betrayed when Malaya was a recurring character the main cast’s own age and Robin was relegated to this.
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sudden implications of the Roz-based repercussions of this decision
She’s currently livestreaming a battle between her RA and some old lady in the dorm. It’s got tens of thousands of viewers, more than anything she’s ever done.
Roz is contemplating what she should change her major to in order to accommodate her new plans of being the next Vince McMahon.
She’s gonna exploit, abuse, and underpay her employees while simultaneously ruining the respectability of an entire genre of entertainment?
Elderly Woman beating won’t require much effort to ruin its respectability. It’s kinda unambitious of her, but hey, if you find a way to win easy…
eeeeeeeeh I don’t know that I’d say ruined the respectability of it, considering even in the territory era, advertisers believed fans could not read.
He completely ruined his father’s business with crappy “feuds” and buying out all their major competitors. There’s a reason that wrestlers who leave either quit, go MMA, or do movies, and that’s cuz Vince essentially monopolized major league wrestling. Vince cuts corners, and people get hurt. Or worse.
The idea of Roz showing up right now and acting morally superior is, quite honestly, the last thing anyone in this strip needs and the mere thought of it exhausts me.
But think how satisfying it would be for Rox.
I’d rather deal with Roz than M
*Mary. Feckin’ shite, my phone keeps thinking that I’m clicking where I’m certainly not.
I like how it looks like you so didn’t want to deal with her that you couldn’t even type her name.
do it Robin.
Announce you’re resigning from the race.
Then enjoy all the various talk show stuff later on once you’ve helepd becky as her “weird older sister’ figure.
That might actually work out well. That or she has to be like “I WILL DO THE THIRD THING’
Resigning is not an option. Robin would starve in the real world.
Actually, as a former member of Congress, she gets a permanent pension and income for the rest of her life.
From my understanding that is only true if you have been in office for a number of terms. Robin is too young to have been in office long enough.
She is far too shallow to do “the right thing.”
Robin’s done the right thing before, she just has to get it through her denile what the right thing is. She’s been able to ignore the harm she’s done up until now because she didn;t have to see it and could pretend it wasn’t that bad.
She fired her campaign staff for protecting Ryan
So what’s left?
She is not. Robin has done the right thing before impulsively damn the consequences to herself when she found the option offered to her morally objectable and she can do it again impulsively to prove her sincerity goddammit.
I think she’d be better off trying to win the race to try and make actual positive changes to make it up to becks
I think then it becomes a ‘if I resign, I can’t help Becky’ vs ‘if I stay in power, then I might be forced to doom a million Becyks’ kinda deal.
Solution: become a puppet figurehead and put Leslie in power.
Becky should ask for that third thing now.
… I don’t think resigning from the race would be a good idea.
What Robin needs to do is honor the Becky’s third condition – use her power to vote for good things and against bad things.
OR… she could hire Becky to be her policy advisor and have Becky tell her what to vote for. Forever. Effectively making Becky the congressperson by proxy.
This ^^
This x 10
I don’t see why it would be a bad idea. Robin’s opponent was already likely to do that without needing a teenager to demand it and is probably 20x more competent than Robin is.
That’s assuming he’s actually a good person which we don’t know. I’d prefer Robin to be the Dumbingverse AOC.
That sounds really offensive to AOC, given she’s an extremely eloquent, well-spoken woman who knows when and how to call out bullshit, and Robin… very much isn’t any of those things.
But sure, they’re both mixed-race congresswomen (nevermind they belong to different sides of the political spectrum!) so they’re the same thing, right?
I assume they just meant in the sense of an outspoken far left voice, by following Becky’s lead, not just “mixed-race congresswoman”. In that context, they wouldn’t even be on different sides of the political spectrum.
And there’s already an AOC in the Dumbiverse; she showed up in a bonus strip.
Both are also Millennials, of which there are only 26 in Congress (accounting for just under 6% of the US House of Representatives vs. 31.5% Gen X, 54.25% Boomers, and 8.25% Silent).
I wonder what Robin’s pre-Congress job was in the Dumbiverse. In SP!, she’s clearly working-class, like AOC, but I don’t think we’ve yet learned what she was up to in DOA before getting elected.
Yeah, that’s basically all she can do to make this right.
And I’m not entirely unwilling to believe that she will.
But I’m also kind of with Becky on not really trusting that she will, given that she refused to promise that at the start.
If her opponent is a good person, it is by far better to have a good person in congress than someone trying to be a good person in congress. Ideally, they’d all be at least one or the other, but this stuff requires a loser. Let the loser actually be the worse person for once.
Nah It would be better for Becky in the long run if Robin did win the election.
It would be a great bit for the old resume for her.
Plus unlike Becky we the readers have seen plenty of instances where robin has done the right thing, and with currently no party holding her reigns she free to do what she wants to do
Unlike the abstinence thing at the party this actually might be best to talk about with Joyce.
When was the last time we even seen Roz?
June 7th 2019 as far as significant presence goes. Otherwise she cameod in one panel this March.
In one panel back in March, she was in the crowd evacuating the residence hall.
Hey, waitaminute. What about Fuckface (the iguana)? We haven’t checked up on him! That better not be a Chekhov’s Gun…
Okay, I have $30 internet cash on Roz strangling Becky if Robin gets re-elected, any takers?
I think if Roz comes for Becky over this Joyce is gonna punt her into low orbit
I think if Robin gets re-elected, there will at the VERY LEAST be an ‘I told you so’.
So, how does this Internet cash thing work?
Rhetorical device.
In that case I meet you’re rhetorical 30 bucks and raise you 30 more rhetorical bucks.
That is how it works, isn’t it?
* your
That’s exactly how it works! 😀
But are you calling or folding?
I dunno what those mean which should indicate the amount of seriousness with which I take this!
I mean there’s still a lot that remains to be seen too. Robin might not win. Maybe Becky had a positive influence on her motivating a change in her politics. But even if its a worse case scenario I don’t think Roz has much room to blame Becky for it. Robin has actually done more for Becky than Roz ever did. I’m not saying its right, Becks probably made a mistake here, but she was also not in the best situation. It would kind of feel like a dick move to me.
It wouldn’t be very nice to blame Becky for it, but I doubt Roz will feel very nice if her sister gets re-elected. Becky has a lot to lose that Roz doesn’t from Robin’s policies and took the risk but Roz also had a lot at risk that Becky doesn’t from Robin’s policies and I think Roz will be understandably upset if Becky wins and less understandably she’ll blame Becky for un-sabotaging her (though that wasn’t Becky’s intent).
I don’t have internet cash, but I’m willing to bet one of my stockpiled Imperial Internet Points or whatever they’re called. Those just don’t get given out any more.
Anyhow, I’m in. Roz prefers to strangle with words and scorn, rather than actual strangulation.
This. Roz doesn’t get physical, she gets RHETORICAL.
My money is on she getting more exasperated than angry, but still not coming for Becky.
I dunno, she was willing to go ‘so much for the tolerant left’ on Becky earlier. 😛
Y’all are probably right, but let me have my fun.
Fine, but if stuff goes sideways for Linda, I’m retor-cancelling the fun you’re having now. Can’t have too much of it, it’ll spoil dinner for you.
You can try to spoil my fun if bad things happen to Linda. I do not favour your odds of success.
Either
a)Robin gives up and lets Manely win, or
b)Roz is going to shout “I TOLD YOU SO!” non-stop for the rest of the series.
Dang, i can’t edit my comment, so here’s an addendum:
If Robin wins but genuinely becomes better, that won’t stop Roz from shouting “I TOLD YOU SO” for at least another year, which will probably be past the end of the comic.
Roz has known Robin for significantly longer and more deeply than any other character in the strip, I would 1000% take her estimation of things over Becky’s or Dorothy’s or the commentariat’s.
Becky reminds me of my felling what a lot of public figures. It feels like I want to take your word for it but your track record and knowing how you operate leaves me with to much unable to take your word for. Not to mention who knows how many others feel the same way.
Maybe Robin could both win and immediately cross the floor?
I think she could, or at least ignore her party’s marching orders and vote her own conscience on certain select issues. And if she wasn’t TOO open about it and followed the party line on most other issues, it might not even harm her chances in the next election.
I mean, thanks to Becky she’s running to Manely’s left. Sure, she’s got her Republican supporters who want to support “the cool thing” but have her toe the party line after and be a “cool Republican who occasionally votes for cool stuff like Marriage Equality but also confirms Conservative judges (well, if she’s ever a senator; wouldn’t that be rad?) and votes party line on tax and budget bills”, but given that she is, surprisingly, not losing and it’s all Becky, an aisle cross would likely gain her as many votes as it lost her.
Her big issue as a congressperson on either side of the aisle is that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. As we know, she ran as a lark and now it’s the only job she has.
I’ve really got no idea who’s actually supporting her. Given that Becky’s tweeted her positions not only on LGBTQ rights, but some economic issues as well, I don’t see why her Republican supporters would stick around – other than just “checking the box with the R next to it”. Nor, given her track record do I see any but the most naive Democrats or leftists buying her change.
In political terms, this is more unrealistic than any of the superhero antics.
The sympathy vote from the kidnapping might well give her a boost, but Becky’s efforts should have been torpedoing her campaign’s last chances, not making her wildly popular. Maybe in some social media circles, but twitter popularity doesn’t translate well into votes. And even there the right-wing trolls would be out in force.
That’s an interesting question. If switching to a progressive message thanks to Becky has Robin winning the election, does that mean that Manley isn’t a very progressive Democrat? Do we have strong evidence that Manley winning would be a better option than Robin winning?
It doesn’t mean anything because it doesn’t make sense.
Anyone conned by Becky’s tweets into supporting Robin over a Democrat isn’t a reliable judge of what makes a politician better.
We know almost nothing about Manley. Both Dorothy and Leslie support him, which is good evidence he’s at least decent. As does Roz, but that can be written off as her personal conflict with Robin.
Beyond that, it all depends on where you think Robin will go after winning – if she reverts to form, basically any Democrat would be better.
To me, “form” for Robin was simply to do whatever her political handlers told her to do. I’m curious if she can revert to form without those handlers telling her what to do. I can’t see her just going back to them.
She’s already been un-endorsed by her party. She doesn’t owe them shit at this stage.
That’s right, good point! She doesn’t even have to worry about her standing within the party.
Honestly every option here is viable for Robin. As the representative serving Bloomington that puts her in Indiana’s ninth district. Looking at the recent history of that district in the real world, they tend to favor the left most fringe of the GOP and right most fringe of the Dems equally in the house (though they do roll roughly 55:45 in favor of the republicans for president).
She could actually ride through owning the positions each Roz (reproductive rights) and Becky (LGBTQ+ rights) mainly support while otherwise favoring the GOP party line and be fine in the next cycle as a Republican. She could also cross the aisle after the election and merely favor one or two GOP talking points and be fine going into the next election as a Democrat.
I mean, even if she wins there’s no way the GOP would support her in her next congressional race. She’d likely lose the primary to a more genuinely right-wing politician and, even if she won that, the Democrats would put a giant bullseye on her seat in an effort to keep it. The only way she could stay in office past the next election cycle is if she finds a way to actually fight for it and create a political identity that appeals to people.
*to take it. Gah, stupid lack of edit button…
Actually, Becky’s already done the work of creating a political identity that people like for her. At this point she’s an independent and can say the Republicans betrayed her rather than the other way around. If she spends the next two years caucusing mostly blue, the dems might even be willing to accept her into the fold. Any vote helps them maintain a majority, after all.
Exactly, which is why changing parties (or going Independent) would make sense for her politically. She has no chance as a Republican in the next election cycle, but she might have *some* chance as a Dem or Ind.
She can do what Republicans have done when Democrats get elected and switch parties.
Just in reverse.
In Canada she could pretty much just announce that she’s switching parties.
She’s in Indiana. That’s a death sentence.
She lost the party’s endorsement and there’s pictures of her leaving a lesbian woman’s apartment without any pants on. The odds of her not getting the Republican nomination next round is just about zero even if she returns to being a good little GOP foot soldier.
If she’s screwed either way, she might as well go out on her own terms.
…odds of her getting the Republican nomination is just about zero. FFS, I need to copy-edit this stuff better -_-.
It really is. There are ways to switch parties without losing public support, but it generally requires either a national political realignment (so that you’re not the only one switching parties; instead, the party itself i splitting or losing a large number of similarly-minded legislators), which is not happening, or, sometimes, resigning your seat and then running openly as a member of the other party in the next election. That is rare, but it has been done, and successfully.
But it’s not really open to Robin. Her time and place do not allow for it. CMasta1992 is right—it’s a death sentence.
Actually, you can just switch parties after election. Robin doesn’t need to be elected NOW she can build a new consensus over the next four years.
Two years, reps run on a 2 year cycle. Which means 1 year to do legislation and then run on your record the next year while nothing gets done because everybody is trying to get re-elected.
I thought they ran on a 4 years cycle, and every two years half of them are up for reelection?
All Representatives are up for election every two years. Senators have 6 year terms and a 3rd of them are up in every two year cycle (plus some oddities for deaths/resignations/etc.)
Ah, I was mixing them up with senators then. Thanks.
Continuing from yesterday, I have a question:
CAN he pardon himself on the way out the door? I was under the impression that you need to be charged to be able to be pardoned (because accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt), and, despite our disagreement on whether he’s going to be charged or not (with a lot of luck we’ll be finding out who’s right in like 6 months from now), I think we can both agree that nobody’s going to do any charging while he’s still POTUS.
Nobody will be charging him while he’s POTUS because the person in charge of charging people works for him.
You don’t need to be charged to be pardoned – Ford pardoned Nixon after Watergate. Whether a President can pardon himself isn’t clear, but he could certainly issue the pardon and it would be one more legal roadblock to convicting him.
Ah, I see. Thanks.
See also: George H. W. Bush sweeping up after the Iran-Contra scandal. (I swear that’s the only reason he ran. Dammit, Dukakis, ya blew it…)
Frankly I think it’s the sheer VOLUME of shit that’ll make him getting completely pardoned difficult. Both because the hypothetical serving documents will probably need to be delivered in binders, and because you can’t actually pardon someone for crimes they HAVEN’T committed yet, and I honestly am not sure the man is capable of not committing crimes while under scrutiny, and he hasn’t managed to COMPLETELY gut the FBI.
By which I mean I’m pretty sure he’s pissed off enough forensic accountants with the ability to do shit about it that committing tax fraud would be a very bad idea.
*plays Joan Jett’s recent cover of T.Rex’s “Jeepster” on the P.A. speakers*
Becky, you were going to betray your boss? That’s just shameful. Be proud of this terrible evil you have unleashed on the world in the name of selfish gain.
Um….
I think that is supposed to be a joke but yeah. It’s not really flagging to me as funny either.
To me it reads as anti-humor.
If you’re going to do wrong, do wrong right.
She’s technically terminating her at the moment so.
If the boss in question’s is almost certainly going to use the power you’re getting her to hurt a lot of people, then yes, that’s a good time to betray them.
Taking the job to with the intention of betraying her up front, that’s less cut-and-dry. Yes, Becky was in a desperate situation, but she did have housing and a job and options for student loans (the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems) and didn’t actually need the campaign manager job. I think she took it mostly out of a sense of I-don’t-want-to-be-embarrassed-in-front-of-Dina pride, rather than actual need.
She had very sketchy housing and loan options. Living on a couch and imposing on a woman she really barely knew isn’t exactly secure and we’d just seen that emphasized in a scene after Leslie snuck Anna in.
Plus, she was just continuing what she’d already been doing illegally by hacking Robin’s phone.
No one really has any reason to trust Robin. She did support that lgbt duscrimination bill then dismiss it when questioned with “no one would’ve really gotten hurt probably”.
She then fired her entire campaign staff when they tried to protect Ryan the Rapist.
Robin is impulsive, but she’s nor a bad person.
Again, she supported anti-LGBT laws. Not supporting one bit of transparent evil doesn’t mean she gets a pass for supporting a different bit which she still hasn’t repudiated.
It might be best to say that she’s not evil when faced with something that she can immediately see, right in front of her, with no abstractions. With Ryan, it was very personal, right in front of her—-an attempted rapist at the college where her younger sister is going to school. An attempted rapist who was on her campaign staff, or at least as an intern. It’s right in front of her, she acts impulsively to oppose the evil.
Those LGBT people that will be affected by the law coming up to a vote? They’re not her problem. They’re somebody else’s problem. Somebody else will take care of them.
It’s kind of similar to how a lot of anti-LGBT conservatives have a sudden change of heart when it’s *their* kid who comes out of the closet, and suddenly they realize that all the cruel things they used to advocate for are going to be hurting someone *real,* someone right in front of them.
Does that make Robin any less shitty? No, not really. Especially since, being a legislator, all those LGBT people *are* her problem—helping the citizenry is her job.
But it does explain her behavior.
I think Robin is due for a redemption arc. Basically, she’s one of those people who never actually believed the government does anything and was solely for the perks.
Becky and Leslie are people who have suffered under the laws she helped draft and is a horrifying reality check for her.
What are you talking about? This hole partnership with Becky is her redemption arc. It just doesnt feel that way because it’s finished yet.
Wait a minute, how do people think redemption arcs are supposed to go?
Redemption arcs are when the bad person dies at the end doing some minor good that doesn’t actually fix any of the bad and we have to stop hating them because we’re not allowed to speak ill of the dead.
….. wait, they aren’t? Has anyone told Hollywood?
A redemption arc is a two-parter where Worf resigns from Starfleet and Tasha Yar turns out to have a Romulan daughter.
Redemption arcs take most of the series or movie where your begging the bad guy to turn to the side of good because you know they would be happier on the side of good and want them to be happy. And then around the last season they start deciding to make healthy decisions.
Also involving a lesbian romance with a catgirl and Amazon.
They don’t all involve that but that was the one foremost in my mind.
This is somewhat of an unpopular opinion but not understanding the plight of others and instead following your gut/what has been taught to you is not inherently evil. Yes, she could and should do better but the fact that she hasn’t done it /yet/ (before she allowed herself to personally meet and be challenged by the people she had ignorantly dismissed) doesn’t mean that she will never be capable of doing it.
I know it /feels good/ to dunk on homophobes either casual or hardcore and for sure some have earned it. However, from a practical point of view, one that accelerates change, it’s even better to convert them to your cause.
That’s why every civil rights movement finally succeeded when people stopped saying ‘killing us is wrong!’
How far does it go? Is anything excused if you just don’t understand the plight of others and follow what you’ve been taught?
Helping legalize discrimination against LGBTQ folks is apparently okay. Was supporting Jim Crow? Slavery? The Holocaust? Is there a place where it’s not okay, even if you just don’t understand and were just following your teachings?
I think most of us would agree that doing at least some of these things in the past was evil, even for people who were just raised that way, but where is the line drawn? And does it matter if it’s something many of us were raised with as opposed to those horrible things people in the past were taught that we clearly would have seen through immediately?
I don’t exempt myself here – I was lucky enough to be raised without any explicit racial or homophobic teachings, though I certainly absorbed some from the culture around me. Much easier to break through when it’s not core to your sense of identity though and I’m still finding bits of prejudice I never realized before.
For Robin specifically, she’s also directly profited in her political career from that prejudice and that makes it worse in many ways.
Hmm, no She’s not as bad as a person as people would think. But I guess it’s more like how reliable I’d she? She’s done the right thing before but how often can you count on her to do that? Was the way she handled Ryan a rare thing or can you really count on Robin to care about someone other than herself more often then occasionally.
I think from what we know of Robin, Robin has never had to deal with consequences or the faces of her victims before. She’s getting a reality check that her corruption and dirty politics had real effects on real people.
So self absorbed out of touch congress woman has a Fall from grace in her nongraceful life and then becomes more in touch with the people she didn’t know she was hurting with her policies as she begins to climb her way back up from the bottom.
There is some sort of poetic irony in there somewhere.
Uh…I think Newllend(henryvolt) just described a redemption arc.
In the future, Robin should do a better job vetting her staff. Picking up homeless children so they can work your campaign is generally poor tactics.
Worked this time tho.
She did vet her staff quite well. She found a volunteer that was already by far the most productive member of her staff and promoted her after firing her existing, unproductive staff who also didn’t match her policies or message any more.
The fact that nobody had OKed said volunteer doing the work she was doing (and that she wasn’t at the time an official member of her staff) is largely academic for this judgement.
Poor tactics sure, but SO Dickensian… Something something orphan’s tears something laughter something Something Leslie needs some real people in her life, ….
it is a moral failure of mine that I take Un-Holy glee in politicians like Palin and Gingrich being shown for the hypocrites they are.
After rereading this for a third time I’m, again, struck by how hurt DeSantos looks in the Last panel, and I am unsettled because I cannot parse the face as is informing her of this for the first time. She just doesn’t have the “whuh?“ confused look that she is hearing this for the first time. I wanna hope that she doesn’t mean to hurt Becky, but dang she’s worse at helping then Leslie is.
I don’t get the alt text…
“Get off” as in, well, what the person in the “socially isolate responsibly” advert is doing >_>.
I understand what ‘get off’ means. That’s exactly why I don’t get the alt text. That has no relation to anything in the strip. (Other than Roz, who is an enthusiastically sexual person, being mentioned, but she’s mentioned in a context which would make that interpretation kind of icky.)
Ah. I think the implication is that Roz is going to be so insufferable that she’ll be physically pleasuring herself to the feeling of being so incredibly right.
That’s how I read it. Roz has an “I told you so” kink.
I think it’s about Roz’s reaction.
I don’t really get it either. It strikes me as the sort of joke as if someone had used the words “get off” in a different context in the strip, like Becky telling Robin to “get off her high horse” or saying Roz will “never get off her case” or something.
Roz came down on Becky for supporting Robin‘s campaign and will have a field day with being proven right. Sort of a rightfulness-orgasm.
Here’s the thing I’ve been feeling about Robin: The extend of her political opinions is that she’s got (had?) an R next to her name and that gets her elected.
Because, seriously, when has she actually shown any actual political opinions? Everything about her screams “I toe the party line because that keeps me in office”. Even her defense of the LGBT Discrimination was a weak-ass “…well, uh, other people aren’t comfortable…”, and her ultimate defense is “I gotta keep people happy”.
And yeah, that doesn’t exactly make her an ally… but it makes her a complicit fool at worst, and sometimes they can wake the hell up.
That’s not really a defense. According to a friend of mine who works in a neighboring news outlet, the people at Fox News are actually completely absent of politics themselves. They’re all in it for the money. They just have no souls pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Oh, I’m sure some of the fuckers are actually True Believers. A better example would be, say, Cheney’s anti-LGBT stance. It’s not that he had any actual interest in fucking LGBT folk over, it’s just that he didn’t care and that was an expedient path to power considering the Republican base.
Except that Robin’s mostly oblivious and thus nothing like as calculated as Cheney.
And of course that Robin isn’t an LGBTQ ally, she’s queer herself – once she eventually stops denying that. Now obviously some queer politicians keep it secret and still keep an anti-LGBTQ stance for the votes, but Robin’s far too transparent for that.
Robin: (Implication) You did your work perfectly, I do not require your services at this time, in fact I think you’ll be a bit of a liability given the trauma you just went through, so please take this time to rest and you’ll ofc still get fully reimbursed as per our deal.
Becky: (steps on soapbox) Woe is me, I wanted to sabotage your campaign while taking advantage of you, I could’ve freeloaded on an underpaid college teachers coach or hid on campus until I saved up for community college instead.
The fact this is kind action also benefits you makes you a shitty person Robin!
…wait, you mean… the young woman that just lost her father with whom she’s had an extremely difficult relationship with, as well as her best friend and girlfriend being abducted, and being reminded of her mother’s suicide thanks to her savior’s father “committing suicide”…
…might be acting a bit irrationally and overly emotional? Gee, no fucking shit!
Becky assumed that Robin was an awful adult she could mooch off of. Robin has been deliberately trying to be Becky’s best friend. Becky has not been gaslit or brainwashed into ever thinking of Robin other than a POS.
Robin is starting to realize her desire for lesbian friends won’t happen when she’s working for the Republican Party of Evil.
It’s not that it benefits Robin, it’s that it’s going to get LGBTQ folks killed (unless Robin agrees to the 3rd thing) that makes Robin a shitty person.
Also, Becky is literally saying that she shouldn’t have done whole thing this in this strip. Should she have been happy about this? She’s been clear this entire time that she thought it was impossible for Robin to win.
It also is notable just how much Robin misrepresented what she wanted and what boundaries she wanted to cross. Becky has NEVER liked Robin or wanted to be her friend. She pretty much despises her.
Robin has been using this as a weird attempt to buy a lesbian friend and is genuinely flummoxed how much Becky hates her.
There is that but I also think she genuinely likes Becky, all her actions towards her have been at worst cluelessly well intentioned. Not saying sh’e been horrible elsewhere or that this excuses said horriblness but this could be the first signs of Robing turning over a new leaf.
Yeah exactly. Robin is personally hurt by Becky rejecting her. Which isn’t Becky’s fault or anything, since Robin’s really done little to overcome the reasons Becky can’t trust her.
I also think it’s still all tied up in Robin’s feelings for Leslie – in this case trying to be a better mom-figure for Becky than Leslie was.
Fuck you, Bob. A homeless, broke kid with no family taking advantage of a wealthy bigot is perfectly ethical. So is accepting help. So fuck you again for calling her a freeloader
Eat shit
“Freeloader” is the most ridiculous accusation that can be thrown Becky’s way, considering she actually, y’know, WORKED.
Not just worked. Worked really well. Girl was killing it.
Bob doesn’t appear to be saying that Becky *is* freedloading, just that Becky is saying that she could’ve freeloaded off of Leslie while she got on her feet some other way instead of accepting this job.
Accepting help you need from someone offering it isn’t god damn freeloading.
Bob’s ENTIRE premise is that Becky is being a shit for not being naively won over by Robin PAYING HER and being generally decent to her personally, even though she literally refused to promise she would change her actual policies, which have included supporting homophobic legislation in the past. Even without that last explicit bit, bigots being nice to marginalized people in person and then voting to hurt them is extremely common
I like Robin and think she can and will change for the better, but she’s done jack shit to prove that. Becky is extremely justified in her mistrust of her.
Anyone who sees a situation like this and is more critical and skeptical of the marginalized person for not leaping to forgive and praise a bigot than they are of the bigot who has put in NONE of the work to be better is a giant asshole
Sorry, Bob. Thought you were presenting an interesting, althernate point of view, but I just can’t figure out your last sentence.
Proxy exploding on Robin isn’t going to fix your screwed up family, Becky. But I’m at least liking the self-awareness of your past actions, if not your current ones.
In a cast of great snarkers, Dorothy far too rarely gets to be the one with the funny line in the last panel. I’m so glad she got one here – and over Becky, no less!
Judging from Robin’s expression, I assume she can also imagine Roz’ reaction.
In all honesty, if this was a safe Republican district, which I believe it’s supposed to be in-universe, then Robin’s probably the best bet the district actually has – completely ineffectual, and in no way actually committed to any of the party’s legitimately cruel policies. If the district isn’t going to go Blue under normal circumstances, better that the person it consistently sends to Congress can’t usually make things worse.
And if it did go Blue for an election… Well, I hate to say it, but I question whether that would be much better even in the short term – if a race is viewed as hopeless, it doesn’t usually attract the best candidates. It attracts clowns, kooks, and con men. Less so for Democrats than Republicans, but… Is her opponent remotely competent? Or is he the kind of guy who hands the Republicans all kinds of clips to make Democrats look insane, while he wastes his time railing against his own party rather than the people destroying the government? If Robin’s meltdown had happened a year ago in-universe, her challenger would probably be legitimately good, but if it’s just whatever sacrificial lamb happens to be handy… There’s a good chance that he’s the Blue version of one of those QAnon idiots.
The truth is, Robin hasn’t had any real power beyond voting for Speaker of the House – she doesn’t even bother remembering the talking points for her party’s legislation. So long as either side has a healthy majority without her… She’s completely irrelevant. Her successor might not be.
If the district includes the college, it’s probably a swing district. Someone will say it’s gerrymandered, but gerrymandering schemes tend to lump reliable opposition cohorts together – “pack and crack” – so in a red state like Indiana, it’s probably either solid blue or swing. If it were a safe Republican district, the GOP probably wouldn’t have withdrawn their endorsement without running someone against her.
Realistically speaking, it should be the case – but I thought it was previously established in the comic that it was a safe district? It would have been mentioned years ago, so I’m not really sure how to verify that either way…
And, well… I honestly can’t imagine how Robin could win races that were actually competitive, considering how easily she’s knocked off-script. The only way her career makes any sense to me is if she was appointed to a safe district, and just kind of coasted from there on the basis of being an incumbent.
Robin isn’t a Republican candidate. She’s Independent, as her part is no longer endorsing her.
Right, but I’m speaking of Becky’s concern here – that she helped re-elect a woman who votes in line with the Republican party.
Even if she wasn’t currently in conflict with her party, she still appears to be pretty incompetent, and to have little interest in her party’s policy – her holding that seat is objectively better for the country than getting another Cotton or Kobach in there. If they’re not getting a Democrat in there, at least Robin isn’t going to make things worse.
I’m just saying she doesn’t have a safe seat right now.
It’s odd, because she did talk about it in her first appearance, back in 2011. Then it was a swing district that she’d won from a Democrat in the 2010 Tea Party wave. Before then it had been solidly Democratic since the 60s, except for a one term Republican elected in 2005. Robin made sense as a Tea Party candidate beating a Democrat back then.
But, the district was redistricted and gerrymandered after the 2010 census and has been solidly Republican ever since – even in the 2018 Democratic wave. That 2018 wave is now when she won her seat, which seems a bit odd, though we can assume it’s just because it was solidly Republican and the previous Rep retired or tried for a higher position.
Politics on comic time is weird.
It really is. I mean, we’re not even talking about how whether Robin refusing to wear a mask will help or hurt her re-election chances!
Dorothy and Leslie both like Robin’s opponent (and so does Roz but he probably has Roz just by virtue of not being Robin) so I feel like that’s a good sign for him being a solid candidate.
Wait, Becky intended to take the benefits Robin offered, pretend to work for her, then to hurt Robin’s election chances before the elections..? Not nice, Becky. :\
No, she intended to work, she just thought Robin was so far in the holoe it wouldn’t matter.
Remember that before Robin hired her, Becky had hijacked her twitter and was posting pro-LGBTQ and left economic positions. She was hired basically to continue that.
There was no reason at all to think that was going to win the election for her.
It’s going to be a weird demographic that carries her to victory if she DOES win, that’s for sure.
Sabotaging bigoted rich people’s political aspirations is praxis. Getting paid to do so is a nice bonus.
I mean, let’s be honest. Roz is always insufferable.
Roz and Marcie seem to be the only characters that can actually see how actions cascade into consequences.
Marcie sure, but I dunno about Roz. Then again she’s never really done anything big in the first place because being kind of a jerkface.
*besides being a jerkface, not ‘because’
Becky…. Robin really cares about you ♡.She has just a hard time changing everything she has thought for years, but she’s on the right track.
Becky’s not worried about that.She’s worried about Robin continuing to support homophobic legislation that will hurt people like her despite being nice to Becky herself.
Bigots pull that shit a lot and Robin has done nothing so far to convince Becky otherwise
The homophobic equivalent of “I have a black friend”, then?
Kinda. There’s a lot of bigots who think they’re not so bad as long as they aren’t personally mean to the people whose rights they would take away
I think Roz is too good a person to say “I told you so” to Becky, but I’m not too good a person to say it to the comments section because MAN did y’all tear us Roz advocates apart back then.
Eh, Roz has a solid tendency of calling people on their shit (see: Joyce) and a serious sensitive spot/Deep Issues with Robin, so I do think she is gonna bring it up. (And while Becky is/was a homeless queer teen – I still consider her housing damn tenuous, given Robin’s immediate moving in – we’ve also seen Roz talk over Leslie during that confrontation with Joyce, which is why the day Leslie gave her control of the class had the prepared material of ‘Performative Allyship: De-Amplifying Marginalized Voices’ that Roz recognized as a ‘well played’ moment. And while I’m super sympathetic to Becky – she had a couch to crash on and a job paying pretty much exclusively in tips, which does not a particularly stable living situation make, acceptance as a transfer student tends to mean less shots at scholarships, and given the Twitter exploiting she didn’t really have the option of saying no* – I do think Roz has a point that this was always a risk she was running and should have been worried about. I will not blame her for that I told you so.)
* Robin started that whole exchange by showing up at Galasso’s, waiting to get a table Becky was waiting, and pointing out she could get Becky arrested. I can see Robin being oblivious enough to say ‘well obviously I didn’t MEAN I would call the cops on her if she didn’t work for me! Why would Becky ever think that?’, especially given how buddy-buddy she tried to be since and how Becky doesn’t generally bring it up… but given it’s Becky ‘nobody likes a Debbie Downer’ MacIntyre, it is actually possible it was still on her mind and she pushes it down.
** COMPLETE sidenote: Tag-trawling included reminding me that Ryan appeared, clearly present, in the last panel of the ‘presidential’ strip where Joe and Dorothy discuss Joe’s list. Just before – like, the same day as – he ultimately showed up at the dorm with a knife and had his second date with sharp objects. While he may well have stalked her the rest of the day, and isn’t THAT a terrifying thought… Yeah, I think when Rachel pointed out that the list presented a serious risk to women in the dorm and that’s why she didn’t leak it, it might have been a risk even before the leak. (Which I think someone – Cerberus or BBCC, maybe? – suggested at the time, but the benefit of hindsight.)
The biggest reason I have trouble blaming Becky for Robin getting reelected is that I just can’t take seriously the idea that Becky tweeting pro-LGBTQ and UBI positions is going to help a Republican get reelected in Indiana. She started doing it to tear her down before Robin hired her!
If Becky had actually done real serious campaign work, trying to repair the damage she’d done earlier, that would be one thing, but there’s nothing Becky did that should have helped her.
OBVIOUSLY, you’re forgetting the fact that Becky went around buying votes via giant velociraptor plushies, duh.
/tongueincheek
Roz was always pretty up-front that Robin was good at finding ways to use people, and Robin has done so. Becky willingly endorsed Robin. That’s going to make the difference here.
Robin: Doc, my conscience is doin’ that thing where it swells up again! It really hurts!!
Doctor Republican Party: That’s OK, we’ve been treating swollen consciences for a long time.
*Injects 40m$ of PAC funding*
Robin: Thanks, Doc! I feel much better!
And what happened then?
Well, in Bloom-ville they say
The Robin’s conscience grew
Three sizes that day!
This probably makes me a terrible person but I *am* looking forward to how insufferable Roz is going to be.
Becky is the Queenmaker. Lives will end and begin on her sayso. Her career in politics is tremendous. I foresee her being the one who elects Joyce as the first bisexual President with First Lady Dorothy.
Joining a political campaign for the sole purpose of completely screwing over your employer at the last minute?
Wow Becky has a good talent for politics for sure.
Screwing over rich bigots is not only ethical, it is a moral imperative
Its interesting how Becky and Robin completely misread each other.
* Becky sees Robin as a disgusting bigot she’s mooching off of and conning.
* Robin sees Becky as her surrogate sister and bestie that she’s bought and paid for.
I can’t believe it took me this long to comment here; I’ve been reading this comic for MONTHS now, and I only NOW decide to say talkwords? Ah well. At any rate, very intrigued to see where things go from here, though I could easily say that of every page; DoA has this magnet-like pull on me, I’ve always gotta get caught up each day because virtually every one of these characters has a story that interests me, and keeps me wanting more.
I admit, I hope Becky will realize that it is her destiny to be evil. Like I wanted Catra to take over the Horde and lead it on a campaign of galactic conquest.
We need more fully realized female villains as a lifepath! 🙂
I miss Shortpacked! Robin so much. Keep hoping DoA Robin morphs more into her alternate self.
She was my favorite, so the rebooted version not being able to be in the same age level as the main cast was already a bummer, let alone her being a Sarah Palin-type.
But…maybe at least that last part is changing?
Agreed. Shortpacked Robin was the best and I felt personally betrayed when Malaya was a recurring character the main cast’s own age and Robin was relegated to this.
FUCK YEAH BECKY YOU GO GIRL