Last night sucked, but it’s all in the game: midterms favor Republicans, presidential election years favor Democrats. And the next redistricting election — 2020 — is a presidential year. So don’t trip, organize. How about top five or ten lists of uplifting quotes from movies, songs, books, whatever.
1. Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well, he eats you.
2. I don’t care whether you’re J.P. Morgan or Irving the tailor– you ride it out.
3. It’s always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.
4. Then they’ll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground / But you’ll stick your head back out and shout “we’ll have another round”
5. Marlowe’s an asshole, he doesn’t get to win – we get to win.
RP
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
DougJ
@RP:
It’s a good one.
greenergood
‘If you are squeamish, don’t prod the beach rubble’ – Sappho
Botsplainer
“Tell Mike I always liked him. It was just business.”
– Sal Tessio
Violet
“Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only. You think I’m fucking with you? I am not fucking with you.”
Oh, sorry. Not the right kind of inspiration?
DougJ
@Botsplainer:
Yeah, I was thinking of that one too.
shortstop
So everyone is comforting themselves with the knowledge that not only is 2016 a presidential year (favoring Dems), it’s also a friendlier Senate map for us than for the GOP. And it’s true that almost all our Senate seats coming up for reelection in 2016 are quite solid. But when I take a close look at the list, I can find no more than seven Republican Class III senators who are remotely vulnerable, and most of those barely so.
Anya
“All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna
crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished. We’re in hell
right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit
kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light.”
-Al Pacino (Any Given Sunday)
RP
Some other favorites that seem appropriate:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been.
What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny”? “Make yourself at home”? “Marry my daughter”? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know…morons.
My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?
Anya
I actually think wingnuts winning the senate will turn out to be good for the Dems and Obama. Now they can be united against a clear opponent. And I am hoping that Dems will learn that running away from their accomplishment and their president didn’t get them anything, so they won’t make that mistake again.
Yoda Dog
@Anya: God I want to believe that soooo baaddd….
raven
FIDO
raven
You cannot become bitter or hostile. You have to keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. This is not a struggle of a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.
John Lewis
Betty Cracker
“Fuck you, you fucking fuck!” (Goodfellas…I think)
beth
Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever. The Replacements.
The Ancient Randonneur
“Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the unexpected, but I don’t like surprises.”–Dragna, The Bag Man
dr. luba
@Betty Cracker: Betty always expresses my deepest sentiments so concisely.
MazeDancer
@raven:
Thank you for the reminder of what’s real. And what a true American Hero and stalwart of Freedom like Mr. Lewis knows.
The GOP has a stranglehold on the media and the siren call of Denial. Most people live in extreme denial of the real world. If they let go of denial they have to see their families, work places, churches, and societies as having deep problems. Often seriously deep. Take Penn State or Clergy Abusers for example.
Denial is a comfort and a drug. The Republicans peddle it all day and night. Mr. Lewis reminds us how long it takes to bring Truth to Light.
srv
Wax on, wax off
I’ll be back
If there is no struggle, there is no progress
It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything
It’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black
Belafon
@shortstop: Seven would put Democrats back in charge of the Senate. So, now we gotta hope that the Republicans destroy the filibuster, though there really isn’t much incentive to with Obama as president.
AliceBlue
“Let’s visit all the stores in this godforsaken shopping mall!” (The Family Man).
Not inspirational, but that line always makes me giggle for some reason.
Eric U.
@Belafon: agreed, they want to be able to filibuster. No way a dem senate leader is going to get rid of it if the republicans didn’t
can we take up a collection to make sure that Obama has a steady supply of veto pens?
shortstop
@Belafon: Yes, seven would. But as I said, most of them are only remotely vulnerable and I might even be too optimistic about some of those. We aren’t going to run that table.
Have a look.
sharl
Bill Murray in Stripes:
Makes you think…
Patrick
Sometimes you’re beaten to the call,
Sometimes you’re taken to the wall,
But you don’t give in.
Sometimes you’re shaken to the core,
Sometimes your face is gonna fall,
Don’t you let it.
Cacti
@shortstop:
Toomey and Kirk are the low hanging fruit of the 2016 Senate map.
catatonia
But I believe in this and it’s been tested by research
That he who fucks nuns, later joins the church
Alex S.
I just realized how much Ted Cruz looks like a young Lyndon B. Johnson.
Chat Noir
@Betty Cracker: Or Creighton Burnette (John Goodman) in “Treme.”
raven
@sharl: “we’re the US Army, we’re 10-1”!
Dexter
@shortstop:
Kirk, Toomey and Ron Johnson seem most vulnerable. After that others like Kelly Ayotte, Burr, Hoeven etc who may be theoretically vulnerable.
Amir Khalid
Un rêve peut mourir, mais on n’enterre jamais l’avenir!*
I thought I’d just post this again in this more appropriate thread.
*A dream may die, but the future is never buried!
shortstop
@Dexter: Ayotte is more vulnerable than Johnson, I think, and Burr may be, too — though maybe not after last night. Wisconsin is pretty much over and North Carolina’s breaking its ass to regress. There’s just not a lot of solid stuff to work with on this list. Maybe we’ll get lucky and some superannuated senators in swing or swingish states will retire, though why would they when they’re in the majority?
Lady Bug
@RP:
:) It’s one of my favorite quotes.
http://www.citehr.com/346028-too-shall-pass-thought-provoking-story.html
mai naem mobile
@Alex S.: seriously, no. He looks like Joe Mccarthy except his nose isnt as alcoholic looking right now.. Dont besmirch LBJs name with Cruz. That is just wrong.
wmd
Another musical pick me up.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: There you have it.
KG
@shortstop: New Hampshire, Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Alaska, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania should be in play. Also, a few more may be looking at open seats: Arizona, Kentucky (depending on what Paul does), Louisiana, Iowa. That’s probably on the optimistic side for Democrats.
Ripley
“Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back.”
~ Al Swearengen
jake the antisoshul soshulist
“pain don’t hurt” ???
I tend to favor Wash Jones in Absalom, Absalom: “They may ‘ve kilt us, but they ain’t whooped us none, yet, ere they Colonel”.
There is an old Vaughn Bode Deadbone Erotica cartoon in which a lizard is eaten piecemeal throughout the entire strip.In the last panel the lizard is armless and legless and missing one eye, but the thought balloon reads: “Tonight, when they go to sleep, I’m gonna escape”.
In a horrific way, I always found that inspiring, and think, in a certain way, it sums up the human condition.
catclub
@shortstop: I read that by a quirk of California and Ohio, that the various classes of the Senate have elections for substantially different fractions of the US.
Class I and III cover 75% of the population of the country, but class II only covers 52%.
We just voted on class II.
Alex S.
I think I’m going to listen to Scott Walker’s ‘The Drift’ now. (The avant-garde singer, formerly The Walker Brothers, not the idiot) That’s how down I am.
Alex S.
@mai naem mobile:
When I saw his wikipedia picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_1960), I was shocked. Then I realized that Ted Cruz probably sees himself as BOTH McCarthy and Johnson in one.
shortstop
@KG: I’d take Indiana and Missouri completely off your “in play” list but keep the rest in varying degrees, depending on the quality of Dem candidates. Wisconsin and North Carolina will be tough going. McCain swears he’s running again (but will he?), Grassley’s vulnerable even if he stays and I think Vitter’s not as Teflon as he’s seemed so far.
The only Class III Dems I see as vulnerable are Reid and perhaps Bennet.
TR
Marlo not Marlowe.
sparrow
@dr. luba: I wish Betty would write a book.
lamh36
Wow, is it afternoon on the mainland already? It’s only 730am here in Honolulu.
Good morning from not so sunny Hawaii! It’s a bit rainy and overcast but hopefully it’s just scattered showers that end by the time the sun is high in the sky, but this rainbow makes up for the rain
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/530051157818105856
sparrow
@shortstop: Well, if they’re really superannuated, we can hope they die?
TR
“I ain’t got time to bleed.”
Violet
@lamh36: Are you having a fantastic time? Which island are you on now? I adore Hawaii. So glad you’re getting to visit it!
p.a.
@raven: :-)
“You fucked up. You trusted us.”
“Let me face the peril.” “No. It’s too perilous.”
“Colonel Dax, you’re a disappointment to me. You’ve spoiled the keenness of your mind by wallowing in sentimentality. You really did want to save those men, and you were not angling for Mireau’s command. You are an idealist – and I pity you as I would the village idiot. We’re fighting a war, Dax, a war that we’ve got to win.”
shortstop
@sparrow: I was trying to be all elegant and shit by not saying so directly! Anyway, better for them to retire if their governors are Republican.
Betty Cracker
@KG: Rubio should be vulnerable since he’s an empty suit who has spent his Senate career stepping on rakes. Now, if only there were some sort of organization in Florida that could identify and groom prospective Democratic candidates for local, statewide and national office! It’s a pity such an organization doesn’t exist.
KG
@shortstop: Vitter is also running for governor in 2015, that’s why I have it as a potential open seat. I really can’t imagine McCain or Grassley staying on.
I went with Indiana and Missouri on the list only because it’s a presidential year and there is a chance of coattails.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: There appear to be flying fish in your rainbow photo! Happy birthday!
gene108
@Anya:
I posted this in an other thread, but what accomplishments will resonate with most Democratic voters?
Drone strikes / killing Osama?
The PPACA, i.e. the death of universal single payer?
Equal pay for equal work? Women get raises, but my pay stays the same or gets cut, so we can all be equal.
There’s no theme to the Democratic Party or what it represents, so it is hard to run towards something that is so spread out and undefined, versus running away from an amorphous blob.
In Presidential years a Presidential candidate can set up something more defined regarding what Democrats represent, but that is not something that gets sustained in off-year elections.
shortstop
@KG: Oh, I forgot about Vitter running for governor. That’s good.
I hope you’re right about Indiana and Missouri — I just think they’ve gone further down the rabbit hole in recent years. Hard to believe we canvassed for Obama in Indianapolis in 2008 and that he actually won the state. It’s a different world there now, and Missouri’s even worse.
Agree with Betty that Rubio could be bested by the right candidate. Who is that? ;)
Violet
Nice:
Of course the GOP isn’t racist. Not at all.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: But is there a theme to what the Republican Party represents? Tax cuts and whiteness?
Keith P
From The Onion: “They say we get the government we deserve, but I don’t recall ever knife-raping any retarded nuns.”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Doug J!!! Thanks, man for the drive by post. Ohio has its own depressing GOP reality today. Not unexpected in the least, but we’d hoped to at least get rid of the slimy treasurer, or the SoS…
Belafon
@Violet: McConnell is probably hoping to get the president to whine about how Turtle won’t talk to him. I suspect Obama’s had to deal with this before.
Adam
We’re all trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.
Citizen_X
@FlipYrWhig:
Ebola and Benghazi.
cckids
@Anya:
Yes, please. Also, learn that they need to draw a bright & clear distinction as to what a Democrat is & stands for. They’ve been largely heading towards Republican lite since Reagan, and it hasn’t exactly gained them much.
ruemara
Americans are the largest collection of morons with weapons.
Not exactly inspiration, but accurate.
Cacti
@cckids:
Still too many Dems in office who came of age during the Reagan era, and feel like they need to apologize for existing.
cckids
@Alex S.:
Ted Cruz looks like a wannabe drag queen on her day off.
Lady Bug
@Belafon:
Or, as an alternative, have the media all up in vapors about how “steadfast” McConnell is, or how “unpopular” Obama is that McConnell won’t even take his call.
IIRC, after the 2012 election, Obama called (after Romney) McConnell and Boehner and neither of them were available to take the call. So yeah, he’s use to it.
RaflW
Uh oh. Prepare for a big, fat bipartisan tax giveaway to multinational corporations:
Senator Klobuchar, America’s Leading Centrist™ certainly has her finger on the pulse of ways to sell out progressives.
NickM
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
cckids
@Cacti:
This. Christ, I graduated from high school during Reagan, I remember just being dumbfounded how many people were taken in by the “morning in America” shit. And the media, the f*cking media. I can’t help but believe that the dismal turnout was at least due in part to the blanket wave of “the Republicans are unvincible”!! that has been beaten into us for the past 60 days.
Also, people who don’t vote suck.
Comrade Scrutinizer
” Hey, maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal! “
gene108
@FlipYrWhig:
But is there a theme to what the Republican Party represents? Tax cuts and whiteness?
Yes.
Plus banning abortions, deporting illegals and making sure you can keep your precious gun without any restrictions.
There are people, who will without question support anybody espousing those “virtues” and the Republicans have identified themselves with those “virtues” in a way the Democrats have not been identified with any specific issue(s) in a couple of generations.
Healthcare reform / universal healthcare could have been the issue that got people to identify with something positive for the Democrats, but I guess that is one reason it has been resisted so fiercely by Republicans and attacked so savagely in the media.
JPL
@cckids: I love that! First smile today, thanks.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti:
I think it can be more localized than that. It’s the party machers who were humiliated by Dukakis vs. Bush I in 1988, then latched onto the New Democrat/DLC thing, and started winning again. That’s the ethos behind Bill Clinton, that’s Mark Pryor, that’s Mark Warner, etc. They’ve been trying to run Clinton ’92 for 20 years. They’ve done OK with it, considering. If Clinton ’92 stops working, and maybe it has, they’ve got one template hanging on the hook: Obama ’08. If they don’t think Obama ’08 works, then they’d better come up with something new, and fast.
Dave C
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
“Game over, man! Game over!”
skerry
@FlipYrWhig: Clinton ’92 didn’t work so good in KY yesterday
JMG
Most voters believe, accurately, that the economy is not working for them. The Republicans’ value system prevents them from addressing this belief, indeed, they want to make it worse. The Democrats must devise a coherent set of policies, ESPOUSED BY ALL CANDIDATES, proposing ways of bringing more to more people.
The trick, of course, is that any real means of doing this requires collective action in a nation that worships the self a/k/a the rugged individual.
beltane
@gene108: Democrats used to be the part of the New Deal which served them exceptionally well in congressional races for decades. Now that the party is more of a “lets make a deal” when it comes to Social Security, etc. it will be hard to create a large enough, loyal enough voting base to carry them through midterm elections.
beltane
@JMG:
True, but I don’t see how this could be done without stepping on the toes of the Dems Wall Street backers. Small donations from peons like us can’t compete with either Wall Street or with the “unlimited corporate cash” that flows to the Republicans.
Bobby B.
“Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice.It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forever more the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil.”
Belafon
@beltane: Yes, they were the party of the New Deal and SS, and still are. But, this event happened, sometime in the 1960s, where doing the right thing cost them elections for a long time, and is still doing so. No, they shouldn’t be compromising on SS, but that’s not what hurt them, it’s not even what most people stayed from the polls for.
If I time traveled back to the 60s, I would make sure Democrats passed the CRA and VRA, but they substantially hurt the party’s ability to win elections after they passed.
FlipYrWhig
@skerry: Yeah, I realized, and it didn’t work in Arkansas either. That’s probably why a bunch of Democratic strategists felt a million souls crying out in terror. If that stopped working, they have no idea what to do, and the only ready-mades are the Obama and DiBlasio packets, which probably don’t work in Kentucky or Arkansas. So what’s next? JMG‘s “devise a coherent set of policies espoused by all candidates” is what economists would call assuming a can opener. You can have a standard set of policies and only allow candidates who swear to uphold them into the arena in the first place, I suppose–but who’s designing the policies? This is a pretty serious reckoning for Democratic strategy.
cckids
@JPL: Picture in this article
First thing I thought of.
gene108
@beltane:
The people, who remember what the New Deal did are dying off. The people, who were kids during the Great Depression are in their 80’s and 90’s now. The people, who were adults died years ago.
The question is what can unify disparate interests like the New Deal did?
I thought universal health care / healthcare reform, which would uplift million, would be the issue to unify people behind Democrats, but I am wrong.
I do not know what else can take the place of the New Deal to swing the people, who vote Republican in mid-terms and/or sit out to vote differently or just show up and vote.
What I see right now are Democratic messages that target specific groups, but there may not be overlap on how this would help everyone.
JMG
@FlipYrWhig: Of course you’re right about the problem of devising the policies. There’s really no other forum than the presidential nomination process to validate those policies in the party base. That’s one reason some candidates should run against Clinton even if she crushes them, so that she can steal, I mean, adapt, any of their ideas that seem to strike a chord. That’s far from ideal, but it’s all we’ve got.
Mike E
The future is a total crap hole, and anyone living there is a crap faced sack of crap!
-Bender B. Rodriguez
JPL
@cckids: Thanks. That picture deserves to be on the front pager. Dear Republican voter..you happy now!
btw, the President is going to speak a little before three. Of course there will be concessions and then McConnell will demand more.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: White Northern liberals often fantasize about just letting the South secede already and not being chained to that albatross any more, and it’s understandable just from looking at the math.
But I can’t go along with it. Because, basically, what they’re saying, though they may not realize it, is that they wish they could have a do-over and write off the civil rights movement. The Democrats lost and lost and lost for decades for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they decided to make federal guarantees of black and other minority civil rights in hostile states part of their platform. If the US jettisoned the South, we’d be yanking that away from millions of people, most of whom are loyal Democrats. We’d be gaining a more liberal federal regime for the part of the US remaining, but at an enormous human cost. And I doubt it would go unnoticed by not-white Americans in the North.
JPL
@gene108: The younger generation doesn’t remember when lakes caught fire or woman had to carry unviable fetuses to term. In fact you mention those items and you get a blank stare in return. They have no idea that the whackos want to define what birth control is acceptable.
beltane
@Belafon: It was 30 years between the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Republican takeover of 1994. I agree that this caused the permanent loss of the South, but there is also no denying that the DLC response to blowout defeats in presidential elections was to go squishy on economic issues. “Socially liberal but economically conservative” may have been personally helpful to Bill Clinton’s presidential ambitions, but it didn’t do much to attract a rabid following to the Democrats.
GregB
Now that the election is over the media can boldly declare that the tide is turning against ISIS, the bombing raids have killed many of their leaders, Sunnis are defecting to the Iraqi government side by the thousands!
Link.
Seanly
@Anya:
hahahahahhaha. Democrats have been running away from their accomplishments for generations. Gore ran away from Clinton. It might not have come down to votes in one Florida county if Gore had waged a much better campaign.
CZanne
1)Anger is an energy.
2) Unto the end and back again
Defiant to the last man
Until there is nothing left
to fight against
No surrender
Unto the corners of the Earth
Defiant to the last breath
Until there’s none left standing
No surrender
(tl;dr: f%^k this $#|+. Bring it on. We populist, socialist, liberal progressives look all soft and bleedy, but do the words Blair Mountain ring a bell?)
beltane
@gene108: There is a reason the media shrieks like banshees at the merest hint of what they like to call class warfare. It’s because, in the right hands, the issue of class could prove to be kryptonite to the Republicans. I’m not sure how to craft an effective message that would slip past the media gatekeepers, but someone will have to try. It’s not really an issue between rich and poor, but between those who earn an income and those who harvest profits off of someone else’s labor.
Mike E
Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I know of no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…
-V/Guy Fawkes
RaflW
@JPL: The 2015 or 2018 (or some time soonish, anyway) equivalent will be Miami & Ft. Lauderdale basically wiped out by a hurricane. Gone in a flash of $200 billion in lost value.
That might leave a mark on the current voting generations. Maybe.
beth
@GregB: Of course! They heard the Republicans will soon be in charge! (and don’t think the media won’t give them credit)
Seanly
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Eric S.
@Cacti: Illinois just elected a GOP governor. The Democratic incumbent, Quinn, only won Cook County, home of Chicago, and I believe he lost suburban Cook. To be sure, Quinn was an exceptionally weak governor and candidate. I agree Kirk is vulnerable but I don’t know that low hanging fruit is an accurate description.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane:
You don’t need a rabid following to win. You just need 50%+1. It’s not a bad strategy for eking out wins in cracker-ish states. But if it ceases to be a way to eke out those wins, it’s just frustrating.
The problem is that there’s no obvious alternative that doesn’t take a very high risk–like, for example, shaping a campaign around demographic groups that don’t have a good track record of turning out to vote, like youth and Latinos. IOW, if I were a Democratic strategist and was told “As an exercise, design a winning strategy for the electorate that turned out in 2014,” I would have no idea what to do. It’s not winnable. It’s Kobayashi Maru. The only thing to do is reprogram the simulation: change the electorate. How do you do that? Whatever they were trying, and we heard a fair amount about it, was a huge flop.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike E: In 1605, they caught Guy Fawkes. That’s kind of the whole reason for the holiday. This time around, we got Fawkes News. The guys who wanted to blow the place up got away with it.
Suffern ACE
@shortstop: I don’t know who they run against Rubio. Crist is done. If he can’t get people to come out against Scott, how is a rematch with Rubio going to be the same. Maybe Martha Coakley can move to Miami and try her luck.
gene108
@Seanly:
Gore’s fucking problem in running a better campaign was that Bush, Jr. has outraised him by over $100 million. Gore had solid fundraising numbers. Bush, Jr. blew away what was thought possible for fundraising in a Presidential campaign with over $300 million.
Gore did not have the money to push back against Bush, Jr. wherever Bush, Jr. was smacking Gore.
Kerry had the same problem against Bush, Jr.
Obama’s a record shattering fundraising juggernaut the likes of which was thought impossible, as far back as 2004, when people wondered if anyone could to what Bush, Jr did or if Bush, Jr. had set a one of those unbreakable records.
Do not underestimate the importance of having more money than your opponent in winning campaign, in the USA.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I was e-mailing a friend back and forth last night–a guy I went to college with who used to be a Republican, but no more–and we were both pretty surly. He brought up again what he often has said before: That sooner or later, one way or another, the south is going to need to go. I usually agree with him in a kind of vague way, you know, that it might be good (as long as we could get all the minorities out before they go), but that it would be impractical.
After last night, I just don;t know. I really thought about it more seriously, and I have to say, I think that if we;re going to save something of this country, the south really needs to go. Pretty much since 1787, everything that has fucked us over has come from the south.
We had one shot to reform the place, and that was 150 years ago. If the Union had gone all W.T. Sherman on the south, both while the war was still on and, even more critically, after, we might have gotten this behind us. I think Lincoln was a great man, but he got it wrong with the malice toward none and charity toward all thing. Since, you know what? When somebody does shit like this, you need to come down on their necks hard when it’s over. We haven’t had the least bit of trouble from Germany or Japan since 1945.
We should have burned the south to the ground and strung up everybody above corporal. (That would have exterminated a good share of my forebears, so selfishly speaking, I’m glad that didn’t happen, but the country would have been better off if it had.) I mean, when a bunch of assholes start a war like that to keep slaves, when they lose, the winner has to hold them down and explain, “You fuckers lost this. You are never going to try shit like this again. If you even think about it, we’ll come back down here and drown you in a tub of your own shit.”
And because we didn’t do that, we’ve had to deal with 150 years of quasi-fascist, racist, paranoid, the-south-will-rise-again horseshit. I think they’re beyond reformation. Beyond reconstruction, if you’d rather put it that way. If it were up to me, I’d take 5 or 10 years to evacuate all the minorities and anybody else who might be vulnerable from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, 8 of the 11 confederate states, along with Oklahoma, and let them all go. Virginia, North Carolina and Florida–there’s hope for them.
We’d take care of a host of worries. We’d get these useless states out of our hair. A a lot of the assholes from neighboring states, northern Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and maybe even West Virginia and Kansas would look at the chance to live the dream of toothless, ignorant sadism and leave, too. Minorities in what would be left of the U.S. would hardly have it easy, but none of them would live in the truly awful places any longer, and, without this miasma of racism wafting out of the shithole states, maybe we could work through this festering question of racism and justice on our own.
The shit states would be in heaven, at least to begin with, so it seems like it should be an easy sell for them, too. They wouldn’t have to put up with our godless, humaist, liberal ways. They could try all the great social and economic experiments they wanted to. They wouldn’t have no damned freeloadin’ darkies to bother with, or dirty Meckisans. And they’d never have to worry about illegal immigration, since why the fuck would any Mexican or Central American want to go somewhere like that? The only immigrants they’d get would be people just like them.
I don’t think they’d do too well over the long haul, since they’d fuck everything up, but they wouldn’t have the rest of us to clean the country’s mess up afterward. But that would be their problem. I’d feel bad about all the children who would suffer, but I don’t know what anybody could do for them; they don’t have much of a shot with these families as it is, even when they are part of the U.S.
I know this sounds far fetched, and it would be hard to pull off. If we brought it up today, almost nobody would go for it. But these states are just fucking us. They con us into taking some fuckwad like Bush, he reams the country, and then, when the rest of us set about cleaning his mes up, they screech and yowl and bitch and moan and do everything they can to stop us, and then, when they gum things up enough, they can con the country, again, into thinking that the Democrats aren’t getting the job done, and they do the whole thing again. I don’t see how we can break this cycle. I keep hoping for minorities to at last outnumber us whites and then maybe we can get somewhere. But it’s taking too fucking long, and as the asshole whites see themselves slowly losing control, they’re going to get even more dangerous and destructive.
I know it’s too early to tear the country in half, but it seems to me we sure as hell ought to begin at least talking about it.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: What happens in the mid-terms going forward if they just throw Hispanics under the bus? (I’m not advocating that at all. But obviously a summer spent screaming about how Hispanic children in need aren’t worth providing for since even the smallest children from those countries are disease carrying gangster terrorists didn’t get enough people riled up in Texas and Colorado to offset the number of white voters in those states afraid for their guns. Do we need to have events where we play “shoot the immigrant and hang the homo” every mid-term until 2050?
beltane
@FlipYrWhig: I will have to be optimistic and believe that some method can be found to turn at least a decent percentage of sporadic voters into regular voters. Unfortunately, the most consistently reliable block of voters, old white people, are solidly in the tank for the GOP. Maybe as that generation of reliable voters dies off, both parties will be left chasing those groups who are less predictable in their habits.
shortstop
@Eric S.: That depends entirely on the candidate. If it’s another Giannoulias, don’t even bother. If Lisa Madigan changes her mind and runs, it’s her seat.
sharl
Ah, DougJ trolling the Third Way and Why-Don’t-You-Just-Lead? folks:
That’s the spirit!! Get back up on that horse!
Matt McIrvin
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): The problem is that you can’t “get all the minorities out”. It’s a large fraction of the whole population. They all come north, and Northern racists would throw such a fit that Massachusetts would turn into Mississippi.
shelley
“KHAN!!!!!”
ARoomWithAMoose
Do we have voter participation rates published anywhere yet?
My guess is this is one of the lowest turnout elections ever. Was a wonderful idea to drop Dean’s 50 state strategy (too disrupting) or to not try to keep OFA’s GOTV machine around. Pretty sure all that sweet sweet campaign cash was instead spent on broadcast media buys. Only the olds watch/listen to broadcast media anymore.
Anecdotally, the only GOTV contact my household had (on the other side of the county from Betty) was the county supervisor of elections mailing each registered adult in the household a sample ballot for the general election.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, I know it would be hard, but…
I don’t know. I guess minorities in the worst states must tally up to, what, 50,000,000? Doesn’t seem like it could be more than that. I know it sounds flippant, but there’s a lot of unlived-on land in the Dakotas, New Mexico, Nebraska… If we had 10 years, I wonder if we could’t work something out. We could even offer to help the northern racists to move to their new all-white haven down south. Maybe they’d trade states willingly…
BethanyAnne
“Say what you want about the tenets of Republicanism, at least it’s an ethos”
shelley
O Liberty, can man resign thee
Once having felt thy generous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts or bars confine thee
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood’s dagger tyrants wield,
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.
Matt McIrvin
I also think the degree to which the South is the problem decreases with time. The South is actually getting browner, and sometimes a minority/liberal coalition can actually swing elections… but not usually, yet. Meanwhile, well-off suburban white voters swing Republican all over the country, and so do white rural areas.
Black people are migrating into Georgia, not out.
Bill
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): This. I’ve been advocating some version of this for a decade now. The American Experiment has failed, and we need to admit it. We are too large and divided to effectively govern. I actually think a split in to something like five new countries is the logical outcome (let’s face it New York and Idaho don’t have a whole lot in common), but the important thing right now is to start by admitting we are all in a bad marriage and it’s time to get out.
Eric S.
@shortstop: Clearly a good candidate will matter. Lisa Madigan could very well do the trick. She’s the best statewide, known candidate the Dems could put out at this point. And she has cross party appeal (or did). After her first term as AG I knew several died-in-the-wool Republicans that voted for her for her 2nd term. I’ve never had a good read on what her further ambitions are though.
gene108
@Suffern ACE:
Since Lincoln died less than a weak after the end of hostilities, we really do not know what would have happened with Reconstruction, if he had not been assassinated.
Betty Cracker
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): How do people like Steve King and Michele Bachmann fit into your regional narrative? Joni Ernst? Jan “Papers Please” Brewer? Scott Walker? Paul LaPage up in Maine? Carl Paladino from Buffalo? Former Canadian citizen Ted Cruz? As with most simplistic solutions, yours is full of…holes.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@FlipYrWhig:
less taxes, less spending, more Jesus (but not Haysoose).
ascap_scab
Over? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Germans?
Forget it, he’s on a roll.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@NickM:
This, especially since my name is Jake.
Matt McIrvin
@Bill: I believe that within ten years of this happening, there would be mass graves, famines, palace coups, UN peacekeepers, the whole nine yards. And a lot of people I care about would probably die.
gogol's wife
Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace, I’m going to paraphrase because I have to get back to work and don’t have time to look it up, but it goes a little something like, “The whole thing is very simple. If bad people can join together and constitute a force, then the honest people have to unite and do the same.”
Also there’s Shirley Temple, “Be optimistic, don’t you be a grumpy, when the road gets bumpy, just smile.” But even I can’t stomach that today.
Belafon
@ARoomWithAMoose: Wendy Davis had a pretty decent GOTV going on (I got visited three times that I know about). Dean’s and Obama’s groups were good, but they were set up during presidential years, and I think everyone treats them as presidential efforts. I think between what I saw here in Texas, and read about for other states, this could be the year Democrats finally start putting something together, if they keep at it.
Amir Khalid
@Bill:
I’m a foreigner, and even I don’t ever want to see that happen.
sharl
@ARoomWithAMoose: I’m suspicious of early post-election punditry in events like this, but I did listen to local radio here in MD.
According to those pundits, a lot of Montgomery County liberal, as well as (Dem voting) Af-Am voters in Prince George’s County and Baltimore, just stayed home. That’s common behavior in non-Presidential general elections in these densely populated parts of the state, since they are so heavily Democratic and all the partisan action takes place during the primary election. There were some warnings that Anthony Brown’s support was a whole lot softer that assumed, but such complacency has bit MD Dems in the ass before (Bob Ehrlich’s 2002 win for that same office). Maybe we’ll stop unlearning these painful lessons…someday.
And if some early reports are true, significant numbers of Dem voters left the Governor space blank while voting other candidates and issues down-ballot. And as I noted in comments in the wee hours, some who normally vote Dem were pissed about high taxes, especially the 2012 “Rain Tax” (as it’s tagged by its critics), and actually crossed over to vote for Hogan.
One guy who called in this morning said that a tough gun bill cost Brown a lot of support. I doubt that changed any minds, but what it probably did was to help rile up the conservative voters in the state and drive them to the polls in greater numbers.
Whatever happened elsewhere in the country, I think it was local issues that did in Brown, rather than Obama Derangement Syndrome (although I’m sure that further motivated the GOP base in the state). Of course, even if that is true, that won’t stop lazy national media or agenda-driven political hacks from making such a phony connection between Obama and Brown’s loss.
I’m wondering how those stay-at-home Dems are feeling about now. I voted for Brown, though without enthusiasm, so I know how they feel. But goddamit people!!!
shelley
“And now we approach the darkest time of the year, when the veil between life and death tears and the dead walk the earth… Election day”
Another Holocene Human
MIAMI – anyone?
Voting shenanigans.
Dems lost a House seat despite hanging in two seats (Grayson, Murphy) they only got back in 2012, and winning District 2, which was lost in 2012.
Nobody against Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart.
Republican mayor who is on a rampage.
The numbers for Crist in Dade County were not so good. Hell is up with that?
I am in Alachua County. Prior to this election we had: city elections, city runoff election, school board, county election primary. Those were hard fought, we went door to door, labor came out, NAACP came out (labor won it all but NAACP lost theirs by a small margin). I was exhausted by the time this election came up, like physically too, my body wouldn’t cooperate. Turnout in Alachua Cty wasn’t horrible but it was a bit ffffehhh. Where were the students?
What little calls I did, white voters thought Crist was a turncoat and a lot of Black voters I talked to hadn’t made the connections between felon rights restoration, Crist, Scott, also the justice system and Pam Bondi. I know the Dream Defenders group got a lot of new activists energized in Gainesville. They then proceeded to silo themselves, even though they have a broadly appealing message here. Last year was a year of disappointment as different progressive and radical groups all refused to sign onto each other’s causes or support each other or even dialogue. But I will say this, I don’t know any Black youth who were ignorant of where the candidates stood by election day. Can’t say that of a few of their elders, snerk. Maybe Scott’s money drop earlier this year worked because Crist took a stance against SYG and the fuck.politics crowd didn’t even notice.
skerry
@gene108: Don’t let facts get in the way of a good fairy tale.
Juju
@Cacti: Ron Johnson as well.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: It’d certainly solve the problem of the American empire meddling in everyone’s business. But, you know, if everyone in the US suddenly dropped dead of super-Ebola that would solve it too, and I don’t think this is a good outcome either.
Violet
@Bill: Global warming is going to take care of areas of the United States sooner rather than later. The country will be condensing inwards. That will put interesting pressures on the country as people migrate away from areas that are now or soon will be underwater.
Howard Beale IV
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): If you’re going to have a secession vote, it cannot be private, pure and simple. You would think that those calling for such a vote would recognize that fact, but their rage is blinding them.
KS in MA
@shelley:
That’s pretty darn inspiring, right there!
Another Holocene Human
@sharl: Sounds like Brown never got the base excited. As for the gun thing, I’m sure he did motivate the more racist voters. They were letting their racist freak flag fly which is a little unusual, even though the Klan was still around in the 1990s all over MD they tended to be a little more covert.
Also, you know, MD’s exchange was a fuckup. Lotta MD government has been fuckups lately. Silver Spring bus station project anyone?
Sean
Nice sickbed of cuchulainn reference. thx on a shite day
Tree With Water
“There is only one way to look on politicians and that is down”. H.L. Mencken
It’s inexcusable that the democratic party got rolled as badly as it did yesterday. The old bromides that pertain to mid-term elections are not applicable to this election. American fascism is today aided and abetted by democratic candidates conducting themselves as if the GOP is something other than a domestic enemy. For those who recoil at that term, I remind them that the republican party remains proudly defiant at having unleashed the 2003 Iraq War with lies and evasions. And that’s just for starters.
Two reasonable questions the democratic rank and file should ask its party’s candidates. “Do you think the system is rigged”? and two, “was the country big lied into waging the 2003 Iraq War”? At the very least, their answers would serve to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Mnemosyne
I’ll finally link to a different version of the song, but there’s a reason it’s been resonating with me for the past few weeks:
“Hope for the Best (Expect the Worst)”
sharl
@Another Holocene Human: Yeah, I forgot to mention the ACA screw-up – that was major. I know little about the Silver Spring issue, but transportation issues in general are always contentious in these parts.
FlipYrWhig
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Someone’s been funneling arms to the separatists.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Read Sherman’s autobiography. It’s interesting but the thing that leaps out at you, particularly in light of recent events, is that he literally could not imagine anyone ever, for any reason, re-arming the South, or allowing them to vote. And he meant forever.
And he puts a good face on it for political reasons, but he thought Lincoln was insane to basically just let the South walk and resume business as usual.
skerry
@sharl: With regards to the stormwater management fee, using the “nickname” that the critics use is hardly helpful. I posted earlier today, the max fee for a residence in Howard Co is $90/year. Very affordable. Less than I pay for trash pickup.
When the opposition defines the terms, we lose.
Omnes Omnibus
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night.”
Another Holocene Human
@Belafon:
It’s very possible that GOTV held the line more than we know.
Remember: thousands of people –tens and even hundreds in some states– had their civil rights denied by modern-day poll taxes
Real gains in organization and votes in GA and NC. Also, the House seats in FL, some local races in NC, kind of belying the overall bad picture. Obviously some very effective Dem GOTV was being run in some areas.
Hate radio and white supremacists blogs ran a campaign of lies, fear, and hate like you wouldn’t believe, and the MSM helped them on every level, credulously running stories like ‘illegal children going to resort hotel’. #Ferguson was about police accountability and overreach but also convinced a lot of whites, especially in the local area, that the race war was coming, and they voted accordingly.
The bottom line is that those of us who had any involvement in this election past just voting (or not voting and bitching online): we know what we did. And we know what they did. And what they did ended up overrunning our wall this time. But we don’t put down the trowel because 2016 is coming.
Obama has little to do with any of this. I do disagree with his exec order on immigration call but we’ll never know how that would have played out. He had nothing to do with the factors above, although he and Holder have played a role in inspiring and supporting Black politicians and activists in the South who are registering people to vote, through OfA’s efforts in 2008 and 2012 and the Civil Rights division of Justice.
sharl
@skerry: Using that nickname has been VERY helpful to its opponents – it’s short, it sounds ominous, and it would (and maybe actually does) fit nicely on bumper stickers. It’s Frank Luntz framing at its best, and by best, I mean its most awful and insidious.
But yeah, that Wikipedia entry shouldn’t have that “Rain Tax” as its post title. I’ll try to find the time to engage over there about changing the entry title, with the means for redirection of a search on “rain tax” to a properly renamed entry. My Wikipedia editor skills are rudimentary, however, so that may be slow going…
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@BethanyAnne:
“It has a philosophy, Max, that is what makes it dangerous”. Masha in Videodrome.
nastybrutishntall
Hickenlooper!
Our pot is begrudgingly safe, our Medicare / abortion / microbrew dominance even more so, here in the Square State.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m assuming you saw John Lydon’s response to Russell Brand’s let’s all not vote spoutings?
Elizabelle
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, Complete.
Thank you, Project Gutenberg.
Would love to find the passages about what Sherman thought should happen after the war’s conclusion. Any help, all?
Hildebrand
Time for the press conference.
Elizabelle
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Twould not bother me a whit to have to use a passport to visit the fair state of South Carolina.
Elizabelle
@Hildebrand:
What press conference? TV’s been off today.
mdblanche
@Matt McIrvin: What makes you think the Northern racists won’t be relocated south to their promised land, voluntarily or otherwise?
Elie
@Bill:
baloney.
It takes time and work. It took from 1642 when Columbus landed to 1776 for the US to form into something and develop a constitution. We defended the Union, an imperfect collection of states, some with slaves, about 100 years later. We may need some tweaking and adjustments, but we elected our first black President a little more than 100 years after that. We are a work in progress. A big, complex work that at any time in a snapshot, can look like a lost cause. There is no other country like us — this scale, this diversity, this wealth. We have difficult issues cause we have a complex, unique set of attributes. While we don’t know how it all ends, and what the future holds in its many ups and downs — count me in for the effort…
Tree With Water
@CONGRATULATIONS!: “Read Sherman’s autobiography. It’s interesting but the thing that leaps out at you, particularly in light of recent events, is that he literally could not imagine anyone ever, for any reason, re-arming the South, or allowing them to vote. And he meant forever”.
You should re-read the book. You got Sherman all wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@Hildebrand: “Some people say you’re stupid and ugly and everyone hates you. Your response to that?”
Hildebrand
@Elizabelle: The President is speaking.
skerry
@Elizabelle: President Obama is speaking
jake the antisoshul soshulist
There is always this to get the blood flowing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RaSmassvv4w
We need some Democrats with that attitude.
rikyrah
For all those who weren’t paying attention…the GOP IS
THE PAUL RYAN BUDGET
They are going to pass it and send it to a GOP Senate.
Elections have consequences for those of you who didn’t vote.
And, when that budget comes for you, Kiss My Entire Black Ass.
You were warned.
ranchandsyrup
Aquí todo va de mal en peor. Juan Rulfo
Oh, you wanted uplifting. sorry.
beltane
Uh-oh, McConnell is saying he will bring the Senate “back to normal”. I guess the 60 votes needed to pass anything only applies when Dems are the majority.
skerry
Obama takes dig at voter turnout: “For the 2/3 of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you too”
Elizabelle
@skerry:
Thank you all. And the major nets are covering it; NBC, ABC, CBS.
Elizabelle
“I continue to believe that we are more than a collection of red and blue states. We are the United States.”
shelley
@Elizabelle: Huh. Maybe they were hoping Obama would burst into tears.
Elizabelle
Today’s Borowitz Report:
Take that, Nobama.
Alex S.
College debt relief….not with the republicans. Probably a hint to young voters that not voting can have and will have consequences…
Elizabelle
@shelley:
They are seeing the adult in the room.
skerry
Reporter: “What changes are you going to make in your administration?”
Obama: “Didn’t you listen to what I just said?”
schrodinger's cat
This is depressing, most depressing elections results since Bush won his second term.
beltane
Sheesh, people on DKos are being overly cynical and nasty.
Tommy
@skerry: Yeah. I joked yesterday I got a little dressed up to go vote. Voting is so easy where I live. I see on the news long lines for voting. That is a foreign thing for me.
How about a happy story. I vote in the gym of a primary school. In 2008 the teacher brought her class to the stage at the end of the place. As I voted I heard her tell the children they were watching us vote. That this was important. When I was done I went and gave a few of those kids a high five!
Alex S.
@beltane:
It would all have been better with John Edwards.
JPL
@Elizabelle: It only matters what they report on their network.
Fox news.. Obama defiant
shortstop
@Eric S.: She wanted to be governor after her father stepped down. Since it doesn’t appear that he’ll leave the capitol without lying in state there first, she might as well check out life in Washington.
It’s really interesting how well she does across the board. She and Jesse White each got upwards of 2 million votes yesterday.
Llelldorin
I’m really trying to take solace in the actual election that I voted in here in California. We passed a tax hike to fund transportation in Alameda County, and maintained Democratic dominance in statewide office. (We also have roughly twice the population of the combined total of the states that flipped senators.)
OK if I just spend the day focusing on the giant 135° angle that I live in, instead of the country as a whole? It’s better for my mental health.
mdblanche
@Tree With Water: So what should have we done? Cancelled the elections? Suspended habeas corpus and interned the Republican leadership? You have a point about the GOP being a domestic enemy, but the traditional methods of dealing with domestic enemies have little to do with constitutional niceties.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Worse than 2010? No. 2010 was bad, really bad.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane: In other words, “Wednesday.”
shortstop
@Tommy: That’s a nice story. I kind of sort of really needed that.
Elizabelle
@JPL:
Fuck Fox News.
New thread on the presser.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: We still had the Senate in 2010.
beltane
@Matt McIrvin: This feels much worse than 2010, and in 2010 we at least held the Senate. This does feel like 2004. On the bright side, the despair of 2004 was quickly followed by one Republican scandal after another and then the absolute euphoria that was 2006.
AliceBlue
@Matt McIrvin:
I was looking at the numbers in the Nunn/Perdue GA senate race and Michelle Nunn lost by slightly less than 200,000 votes. That’s not a small number but several years ago it would have been 2 or 3 times that. She also carried Henry and Douglas counties, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. So yeah, things are headed in the right direction.
skerry
@Tommy: I voted early this year. Took an elderly neighbor who uses an aid to walk and didn’t want to encounter any lines with her. #humblebrag, cuz I am just such a nice lady.
Anyway, 2 years ago, I waited in line for over 30 minutes. That was the first time I’d ever waited so long. The schools close around here for election day so strangers aren’t walking in/out of the building while kids are there – so no high fives.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Betty Cracker:
Well, to be fair, this ins’t quite what I’d call a “solution”; it’s too far off to be talking about doing it tomorrow. But there’s no way to go anywhere if we can’t even begin talking about it. I think this is something we need to begin talking about like we’re serious about it.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: It’s nonsense. White supremacy is a borderless state. Wherever there is fear of “illegals”, wherever men say “they took er jawbs”, wherever they need to defend the purity of the white wimminfoke, or the segregation of the schools.
White supremacy hotbeds: Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, wingnutty parts of MN, Wisconsin ex-Milwaukee, downstate Illinois, all of Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah ex SLC, Nevada tumbleweed country, empty parts of Oregon, populated parts of Oregon, Norcal, Maricopa County AZ, Albequerque, NM, Colorado Springs, Aurora, and empty parts of CO, Tex-ass, Arkansas, every white person in Oklahoma, Misery, damn near every white person in Louisiana, every damn white person like except 1% who can read and for some damn reason didn’t move away in Mississippi, every cracker in Alabama, lower Alabama (this is in Florida), Jacksonville/Duval County, Levy/Gilchrist (Rosewood massacre region) counties, Big Bend, Bradford county (state prisons!), rich bitch enclaves in Miami (where Cubans and Brazilian plutocrats are the only good immigrants), Seminole County (Sanford!), SE Georgia, Atlanta outer ring, South Cackalacky (all of it, Katie), whoever voted for Tillis in NC, all of goddamn Tennessee, SE Kentucky, central Kentucky, West by god, voted for a felon over Obama Virginia, all of VA but NoVa’s nonwhite population and the Black voters in Richmond, all the shitty parts of Maryland and Baltimore County, central PA and the outer Philly suburbs (Main Line, etc) and all of Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Upstate NY, Vermont in their freaky privileged smug way, NH can’t gauge because they’re voting on “fuck you, children” and “fuck you, women” right now, Maine rich and poor, North Shore and western exurbs around Boston, also Fall River/New Bedford, also Worcester (not the city but everything around it), also municipal govt’s in Brookline, Cambridge, Watertown, Waltham, Dedham basically every NIMBY’d up shithole ‘burb who thinks they’re the shit (don’t believe me? too bad, Cambridge whites are racist as shit, see schools, public, Dedham was fucking redlined into the early 90s, Watertown fucked themselves for fear of blacks riding transit), RI jesus fuck, CT it’s a rich/poor divide, NYC ethnic resentment is alive and well but credit where due, you elected deBlasio, South Jersey, Delaware (the “No, fuck YOU” state), DC where you’re vote doesn’t count because those people don’t deserve to govern themselves, OH from the suburban rings outwards, IN and their smug know-nothing sense of superiority ex-Indy, Bloomy, and PoC trapped from Gary to South Bend, most of fucking Michigan, Erie PA, lots of hosers across the border, Alaska’s entire on-welfare white population, HI’s white wealthy elite.
The GOP is not going to be a regional party. The GOP is on track to lose national elections but it will be everywhere as the white racial resentment party.
Tommy
@shortstop: I can walk right in the gym to vote. I don’t. I walk in the main entrance of the school. I don’t have any children, but voting gives me the chance to walk the length of the school. To see all those little happy faces in their classes. Their finger paints on the wall. As I walk there I think how important it is I will soon vote.
I need a hug because for the first time in 70 years we elected a Republican in my district. Let me say that again, it has been since the 1940s we last elected a Republican. The guy we elected is bat shit crazy and I have no idea how he got elected. I am almost speechless.
shelley
A WH reporter actually listen? Hevens’ no. They just wait their turn until they can ask their question; several times untill they get the answer they want.
Bill
@Elie: “We have difficult issues cause we have a complex, unique set of attributes.” This is really my point. Our complex and unique attributes make us too unruly too govern. Do you honestly foresee a government that effectively deals with the problems we face given how divided we are?
We are headed for a slow death anyway, let’s figure out a way to do it sooner rather than later in a way that makes sense for everyone.
Would it be messy? Yup. Will it take a lot of work to figure out how to make it work? It sure would. But if the end result is both sides getting a government more to their liking, I don’t see why we shouldn’t start the discussion.
Mnemosyne
@Llelldorin:
And yet, just as Apple is perpetually “beleaguered” no matter how many iPhones they sell, California will perpetually have the reputation of running at a deficit, even though Jerry fixed that, like, two years ago.
Tommy
@Bill: I got slammed here the other day because I noted I know a lot of sane Republicans. My father who voted for Rauner isn’t stupid. That PhD he has makes him realize global warming is a reality. One place we start! Little things.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Yeah. I think this is something we should at least be talking about, if for no other reason than to wake everybody the fuck up to what our problems are.
Two years ago, I thought that we were heading the right way. I knew we wouldn’t get much done without the House, which is out of reach for at least 8 years, short of some unforeseen freakish twist of events; but I kept my hopes up that that the slow, steady climb in minority population would get us out of the woods in 10 or 15 years. I guess what I hadn’t thought about was how tightly Republicans would cling to every last shred of power they have. I wasn’t cynical enough to see these voter suppression laws working, or holding up to the light of day.
As far as I can see it, we just can’t keep going on this way, with the Republicans burning half the country down, and then doing all they can to keep the Democrats from cleaning the mess up, pointing out the inevitable failures the Democrats suffer (as the Republicans helpfully undermine all the Democrats are doing) and then taking over again when they con people into blaming the Democrats, followed by the Republicans burning more shit down.
Maybe I’m just not seeing it, but I can’t understand how we can break this routine. The Republicans are just too good at it, they keep getting away with it, and learning that they can get away with it, and, to make it even better, the Republicans get crazier and crazier every two years. At some point, I fear everything will break down altogether.
Splitting a third of the country off is no great answer, I know that. But I have a hard time seeing how we can get over this hump. And, let’s not forget, the kind of people we’re dealing with here are people who already went to war with us once already. I know it sounds crazy to cast Ted Cruz as John C. Calhoun or Jefferson Davis, but he is essentially of that mold. And he’s far from the only one. And there are more of them each two years.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I can’t believe I’m pining for “reasonable” Republicans from ten or twenty years ago, like John Ashcroft, but I am.
Llelldorin
@Mnemosyne: Wow, that takes me back. I don’t think I’ve heard Apple called beleaguered since I left MacAddict.
Aaron S. Veenstra
“Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!”
Mnemosyne
@Llelldorin:
I think that specific word has worn out but, let’s face it, stock analysts are constantly claiming that this move means the end of Apple … no, wait, this one will be the end of Apple … okay, okay, this one …
stoned stats
“It’s better to eat shit than to not eat at all.” -Rube Baker from Major Leagues 2
PIGL
The President and Vice President should resign and give the electorate the 100% Rethuglican governance it plainly hungers for. That would be Going Galt for reals.
Mark
Musical interlude in the current political madhouse.