On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Have the east coasters had their coffee? Good, here are a couple action items to keep us busy while we wait for the shitshow to start.
* I know that a lot of you will not like this, but subscribe to some papers. Choose the Washington Post or the NY Times, and then add a local daily if you have one you can tolerate. The Times especially disgraced itself this year but we need it alive more than dead, and the Post frankly did an excellent job keeping up with Trump. The framers of the Constitution could not have been clearer when they said that our Democracy will survive only as long as we have a free press. Trump already loathes the press, he is a vindictive prick with no moral limits, and he will have the levers of the state in his hands. Do your part to help them survive.
* People have already started with the abuse and xenophobia, and it will get immeasurably worse. Terrible people will try to divide us and make us live individually in fear. Fuck that. Find a vulnerable group and find a way to support them. If you have a gay relative, go with them to their next event if they do that sort of thing. See what the local Muslim or Jewish groups are doing that you might help out with. Volunteer at a women’s shelter or hook up with BLM if they have an event in your area. If you see a case of harassment in the local media, try to find the victim and offer a little support. The 21st century is pretty nice. Let’s stand up for it.
* Finally, this seems like a great time to bring back our old photography series. Email me a link to a few of your favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put them up in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one. If your computer cannot read our email links at top right, my email is (remove the zeroes): portus0jackson0ii at yahoo dot com.
Here’s one that I took a while ago while walking on a foggy day.
gogol's wife
I don’t have time right now to find the link, but I think Khizr Khan gave a good interview to NBC. He remains strong and calm and patriotic, so I’m hoping he can set an example for me before I tumble headlong into despair and apathy.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
I cannot use the President-Elect’s name anymore. Could folks come up with a suitable nickname?
Nazi-in-chief is all I want to say.
Tim F.
@gogol’s wife: Find something you can do for someone else. I am not kidding, that is extremely therapeutic and it has the nice side effect of making the world better.
Dave C
I’m thinking about subscribing to TPM Prime (and no, I’m not attempting to schill for them).
MomSense
I hate to do this but I’m reposting from the dead thread below because maybe my story will illustrate how and why some of us are having trouble but trying anyway to get our shit together.
GrandJury
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Don’t worry, finding names for the shit stain in waiting will write itself.
On the bright side, after a couple years of shit stain in chief, Obama will look like the greatest president since Lincoln.
Corner Stone
This fucking country.
Jonkheer
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Donald Yanukovich
JPL
@MomSense: In case you didn’t see my response, I’ll repost it.
I’m so sorry. It’s the other side that says they are pro life. The truth is they are not. They don’t care about your life.
The pro life stuff is bullshit and they need to be called on it.
ArchTeryx
These are the times that I pull out my worn copy of Madeline L’Engle’s book A Swiftly Tilting Planet. And then it hits me: We just elected our very own Mad Dog Branzillo. The Echthroi have won.
And now we are all faced with a choice: Join the Darkness or be a candle lighting it, until we are guttered out by the coming hurricane.
At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the wind with its swiftness along its path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the Earth with its starkness
All these I place
By God’s almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness…
MomSense
@JPL:
Thank you truly, JPL. Means a lot.
Woodrowfan
@MomSense: that’s one of the things that fill me with such rage that I want to tell very Trump voter to their face “FUCK YOU!” People are going to DIE because the republicans took over.
Jonkheer
@JPL: Don’t think of an elephant. Anti-choice is the word. Pinch yourself whenever you catch yourself saying the other thing.
Corner Stone
@MomSense:
Absolute agreement.
StringOnAStick
@MomSense: This, this is why we needed to win this one. I am so sorry for the uncertain future you face.
More than anything else that the Orange shitgibbon elect will do, taking away healthcare from all the people who finally got some relief is going to mark us as a completely uncivilized country. I will fight back, and I hope all of us here are ready to do the same.
JMG
@MomSense: Contact your local paper and television stations with your story. They wouldn’t do anything now, but when ACA repeal comes up, they might. People’s innate sympathy only kicks in when they can put a face on something. To all too many people right now, you are an abstraction.
GrandJury
I’m remembering those speeches from Obama and Hillary. “…That’s not who we are….we don’t say and do all these horrible things some are suggesting”. Well guess what. That is who we are now.
JPL
Although it’s been mentioned before, Trump’s foreign policy will depend on the location of his hotels. Flynn already wrote an article stating that Imam Gulen should be extradited to Turkey, where he will be killed. Those on a work visa from India should be fine, imo. The call centers will remain in India.
Dave C
@MomSense:
Also, fuck the 47% of eligible voters who declined to cast a vote for President.
Shalimar
My contribution to what to tell Trump voters: “Republicans have complete control now. They get all the credit for things that go well in the next 2 years, and all the blame for things that go poorly. That said, you elected a baboon to design your sewer system. Good luck with all your shit.”
JPL
@Jonkheer: I disagree. They call themselves pro life and they aren’t, and they need to be shamed.
mai naem mobile
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: I have the same problem as you. I’ve been calling him Putin’s Bitch. I am trying to come up with something better. I am sorry but I cannot accept him as my president.
ArchTeryx
@MomSense: And you’re well aware that I’m in that boat, too. I know that I’m not on the sinking ship alone, but this has the exact feel of what happened when the Titanic went down: Thousands of people thrown into the icy water to drown separately. Maybe a very few will be saved by that ultimate euphemism “private charity” but most of us will simply drown.
When my time comes, I know what I’ll be doing.
Hal
Social media posts asking that people respect and support Trump as president are so ironic they threaten the very fabric of reality. I said to a friend on Facebook that I accept (unlike Trump and his supporters would have) the results of the election. But other than that, I will award Trump no more respect than he showed President Obama.
SenyorDave
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: The rapist
JPL
@StringOnAStick: His health plan is actually worse because it also endangers employer related care. State regulations would be stripped, so maternity costs could skyrocket. Pre-existing conditions would be lumped together in a pool. There is no way to sugar coat this.
SenyorDave
My prediction, THE DEMOCRATS ARE GOING TO GET ROLLED. I work for a media measurement company, the big one, you’ve all heard of it. I’m in finance, so I don’t get the nuts and bolts, but I have read some of the material on media campaigns and it is amazing how they can push people’s buttons. I’m guessing from early on, the selling of Donald Trump was a relatively well mapped out campaign. Even a lot of the off script stuff, especially toward the end, might have been on script. Ailes and Bannon are masters at this, they sold Trump. He’s demonstrably unfit to be a zoning board member in a small town, in two month he could launch nuclear weapons. Now that’s a sales job. And there are Democrats who are going to work with him? Bye bye social safety net, hello bootstraps (nice phrase, the public loves it because all those poor minorities need to do is pull themselves up their bootstraps and stop whining).
Corner Stone
Something Suzanne said in the previous thread I wanted to carry over:
It’s the grossness. That is how I feel beyond the despair and rage and just flat out WTF mix of feeling.
I feel gross. It is gross to contemplate this disgusting attempt of a human being is now the president of MY country. As long as I live, and no matter how horrible his presidency is and how much grim satisfaction we may get from pointing and saying FUCK YOU every time he fucks his supporters (and us) right in the ass, I’m never going to be able to outlive the gross feeling I am enveloped in that this happened.
Now, that feeling for me is nothing compared to the emotional response MomSense has shared, or black folk, immigrants, Muslims, people of color and others who starkly realize this is life or death for them. That is understatedly much more real, visceral and right now than my sense of grossness.
But it’s, God, so fucking awful.
geg6
I admire your resilience, Tim. But I’m not there. I may never be there. I’m just so tired and despondent and completely without any sort of motivation to do anything. I know the country is going to go into the crapper and, since it seems to want that, I’m inclined to let it. I’m not young any more, so fuck it. I am going to do exactly what I’ve been doing, refusing to watch anything but local news and when that man’s name comes up, changing it to the Food Network or HGTV. I’m not reading anything other than BJ and LGM. I have no use for newspapers, except my local one’s obituaries, or news blogs. They aren’t to be trusted and I won’t. I’m going to go into a cocoon for a while. I may come out and I may not. I just can’t deal at all with politics or that man. I may never go to another bar or restaurant here because I can’t look at these people. I’m not even sure I can do my job any more because I have to deal with the local community a lot and I despise them. How do I get over this? I don’t think I can.
ArchTeryx
@JPL: They are anything but pro-life. They are, bluntly put, simply anti-woman, and don’t really give two shits about collateral damage.
hedgehog mobile
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: The Thing.
Jonkheer
@JPL: You still think these folks can be shamed for hypocrisy? They can rationalize any inconsistencies to themselves, so long as other people are paying the consequences. Lets focus on how to convince people whose opinions on the subject aren’t set in stone. First step: don’t give the other side’s propaganda terms any more oxygen then they deserve.
JMG
Make it clear to any and all you hold Trump in complete contempt. I think that the best way to channel anger to Trump voters you know is just to say, “you have made a terrible mistake which you will come to regret.” That implies they are not irredeemable, although of course some are, and might make the message stick a tiny bit.
laura
I’m a union business agent and represent public sector employees. I will be out of a job and a career in 18 months – the length of time it takes to appoint a 9th justice and rush to overturn Abood in the next session of the Supreme Court.
Had a very rough work day yesterday. We were mapping the time line and forecasting who can retire and who will be laid off and who may stay on -good times! Right to work for nothing is going to spread like wildfire. And so many of my predominantly male, tradesmen were thrilled to Trump that bitch.
The Moar You Know
The Washington Post did an exemplary job this election. Better than anyone else IMO.
Corner Stone
I am loving how the Dow Jones Industrial setting new all time highs is being used as a normalizer for President Elect Trump. That somehow the markets see him as OK so everything is going to be fine, mmmkay??
It certainly has nothing to do with President Obama’s steadfast leadership through deep crises to lead the nation to low unemployment, record setting job creation, higher median wages, or anything else. Could it?
NOPE!
ArchTeryx
@hedgehog mobile: Considering that’s my favorite horror movie of all time, it’s rather fitting. Trump is nothing more then an Eldritch Abomination hidden under human-looking skin, and what he and the Republican Congress are about to unleash on the country will make Bush look like a Sunday church picnic.
MomSense
@JMG:
Nope. I’m already screwed because I once said something about Sandy Hook. I can’t deal with the harassment and threats again. It was bad enough because of our background check referendum question (which was defeated). I live surrounded by Sov Cit and other groups. Our governor even met with them and agreed on executions of legislators (It was just a joke!!! Ha ha ha ha). My speech will not be protected and none of my friends have guns.
Gelfling 545
Yesterday was a weird day around these parts and everybody I know was reporting the same experience: teachers with classes completely silent except for some students crying quietly, neighbors passing without speaking, people in the grocery store just sort of staring, some wiping away tears, nobody saying very much, everybody sort of turned inward, even very little traffic on the roads compared to the usual. A lot of people told me it reminded them of the day after 9/11. I can’t reliably tell if that’s apt since we were assembling for my mother’s funeral when the attacks were announced so I was kind of out of it then. I imagine it’s partly because this is NY and people turned out nobly for Hilary here. Still, it’s well, weird.
Poopyman
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
Littlefinger?
Tim, great idea about showing support in physical space. And just getting out with like-minded people is uplifting.
MomSense
@ArchTeryx:
I’m going to try to cobble together a wooden raft and get my kids on it first. That’s where I am right now. I’m fucking Leonardo DiCaprio.
ETA I have always hated that fucking movie.
WarMunchkin
Agreed on the this is who we are quote. The “this isnt my America” stuff is a fantasy. President-elect Trump is going to do all these things, and while checks and balances exist, they don’t exist for a minority, they exist for our political system, which has overwhelmingly elected Republicans in 34 states and both Houses.
Major Major Major Major
I always ask for all donations in my name to go to The Trevor Project to help prevent LGBT youth suicide.
For me, in this election the biggest insult is to women. First there are the obvious reasons that shouldn’t need re-stating, like having a serial sexual predator as President. Then, a court that will continue policies like Hobby Lobby and overturn Roe. The normalization, to the highest levels of power, the idea that women are responsible for their own low pay. Parental leave. All the protections of women’s health in Obamacare. As a gay man I’m worried about my own access to healthcare and public accommodations, but nothing like I’m worried for women. We’re talking about actual American shariah if all of this comes to pass.
Betty Cracker
@Dave C: I subscribed to TPM after canceling my NYT subscription in disgust over their failure to vet Trump while over-hyping the email story. I don’t regret it. I do subscribe to the WaPo and my local rag too.
Miss Dashwood
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: “PELT”
Partisan Cheese
Here is an idea, maybe next time commenters here and front-pagers don’t dismiss whoever is the post Bernie candidate in the primary with so much hatred and contempt, and admit to the flaws and weaknesses of the establishment candidate, in order to work on improving those flaws. Bernie thrived in those rust belt states, that should have told Clinton she had a weakness there. Instead, she ignored it, never visited Wisconsin and then got beaten soundly. But people here were so fucking defensive and hostile to any critic, that they were impervious to advice.
The American people have always wanted an outsider. Obama in 2008 was one. Trump is an outsider. Bernie Sanders was an outsider. Clinton in 92 was an outsider. Clinton in 2016 definetely was not. And she lost. If you guys continue down the rabbit hole of blindly following establishment candidates, the democrats will be out in the wilderness for a long ass time. Wake the fuck up and stop blaming others, and realize that Obama’s coalition is unique to him, its not the Democratic coalition. And that abandonment of your traditional constituents to pander to a technocratic urban elite class will make you continue to lose. More Howard Dean, 50 state strategy, Micheal Moore, Bernie Sanders needs to be implemented, less sneering at middle America as deploables, and ignoring half the country. Trump may have conned those middle Americans but the Clintons ignored them.
rk
@Hal:
My response to that on social media was that there is no way I’m going to respect the pussy grabber and respect has to be earned. He has done zero to earn that respect. I’ll respect Trump the same way he respected Obama. I want to see his papers, his grades from Wharton and a medical certificate that says he’s not suffering from dementia and his birth certificate to prove he’s human.
SenyorDave
The NYT did a disgraceful job during the election. They couldn’t be bothered looking into Trump but emails. Go for the WaPo, they had Fahrenhold.
JMG
All politics comes down to the question “what’s in it for me?” The voters who put Trump over the top were people who don’t like him but picked him anyway because he promised them something. Democrats have to make some promises to that group too. We can’t address their racial, social concerns, but we can pitch economic issues.
Corner Stone
@Gelfling 545:
I needed a couple things for school lunch so I had to go to the store yesterday. I purposefully set my resting bitch face to full NFTG mode, grabbed what I needed and went through the self checkout lane. I normally don’t use that lane but I wasn’t sure I could look the young black or hispanic female checkers in the face.
Starfish
@MomSense: How long does your tiny bottle last? Is it available in other countries?
MomSense
@SenyorDave:
NYT is my enemy. I’ll read Krugman again when he leaves that sham of a paper. WaPo and Newsweek are where I will put my money if I have any to spend.
Poopyman
@Poopyman: Can’t edit, but I have to agree “Putin’s Bitch” is superior.
Major Major Major Major
@Partisan Cheese: Bill Clinton was a governor and Bernie Sanders has been a politician longer than I’ve been alive. That’s your definition of outsider?
FlipYrWhig
@JMG:
We have made all kinds of promises to that group. Fuck that group. Don’t pitch them anything. They hate us. Let them twist in the wind and die unhappy.
hovercraft
@MomSense:
My heart goes out to you and the millions more like you. That is what gets to me, the callousness of the Trump voters, they couldn’t look past their hate to see beyond themselves. The medias bias against Hillary Clinton, the misogyny they displayed was a disgrace. Now that it’s too late some of them are beginning to see what they’ve done, but most are going with the bullshit, change, populism, elitist nonsense. People underestimate how much misogyny there is out there, and many of the excuses and theories are just that, excuses so they don’t have to acknowledge that a great number of our countrymen and woman were not “comfortable” voting for a woman, and they took any and every little thing as an excuse not to do so.
I don’t think you are being overly cautious, planning for the worst is hard, but necessary. Your children should be prepared, but what’s just as important is for you and all of us to keep fighting. What’s important is for all of us and people who share our world view not to roll over and play dead. Walking away from this fight is not an option for people like you and for millions of others. As terrible as we feel we must fight on. Tim F. has some good suggestions on how to do this.
Hang in there, keep your friends and family close, and while we are only a virtual community, we are also here for you. Stay strong.Virtual hugs and kisses.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: See, “outsider” means “politician I like.”
JMG
Let me put my thought another way. A more coherent message of something for people to be FOR is needed besides “we won’t be awful.” People don’t want to believe how bad this is going to be, so they’ll have to experience it. Then their question will be “how do we get out of this mess?”
Corner Stone
@JMG:
I wonder why no one on the D side ever thought of this? Dammit, JMG, where were you in July?!
Betty Cracker
@MomSense & @ArchTeryx: I’m so sorry.
@Corner Stone & @geg6: I’m with you, friends. I haven’t eaten in two days. I can’t. I just feel sick to the depths of my soul. And I’d rather chew an entire roll of tinfoil than listen to some cable news gasbag normalizing the shitgibbon by pretending that this is a regular old election rather than an authoritarian putsch.
JPL
@Poopyman: The first State dinner will be to reward Putin for his hard work during the campaign.
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: well the good news, if there is any right now, is that pretty much the only candidates we’ll have next time will be “outsiders”. So we won’t have to have the same argument in 2020.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
It also means, “Not that bitch”
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: Oh, OK, my bad. A quick Google does in fact reveal this person to be a troll/easily-led Berner. I figured a real troll would know how to spell Michael Moore, but it’s early in the morning.
mai naem mobile
I don’t see LilFinger finishing his term. He doesn’t have the control not to do something really stupid. The problem is the same as we had with Dubbya. Pence is the new Dick Cheney.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Il Duce? Der Fuhrer? Papa Don?
MomSense
@Starfish:
I only take it as needed and I don’t know when I’ll need it. I used to have to take it before and during menses so I used one for two months. Now I need to just buy as needed like when I had oral surgery and for my colonoscopy. Right now I can get it with my prescription benefit for $67 but before the ACA I was paying between $727 and $814. It is available but it needs to be refrigerated so I think shipping might be problematic.
FlipYrWhig
I’m really tired of this lefty longing about how Democrats betrayed the white working class. Republicans do nothing but harm the white working class, and the white working class happily votes for them anyway. Carefully calibrating an appeal to the white working class to vote for Democrats is like carefully calibrating an appeal to evangelicals to vote for Democrats. They’re gone, move on, let them tend their own garden. Let the party of white resentment work itself out while we do something else for everyone else. It’s over. Fuck it.
Gelfling 545
@Poopyman: At the moment I’m making do with That Person.
Jeffro
@mai naem mobile:
I’m going with “Putin’s Puppet” when talking with non-Democrats, and #$&%ing #*@$%@$$% when I hang out here.
@Betty Cracker: gotta turn off that cable TV news, Betty, it’s absolutely horrible
Josie
@geg6: This describes exactly how I am feeling.
Kryptik
@FlipYrWhig:
Just going to repeat what I said at LGF:
FlipYrWhig
@JMG:
The answer will be, as usual, “by sticking it to Those People,” and they’ll swallow it, along with some pills they scrounged from a friend on disability. They’re not looking to us to get them out of a mess. Let them wallow in their mess.
Corner Stone
@mai naem mobile:
And who will remove him? We will be having our ass handed to us in the 2018 Senate races. I’m not even sure the 2020 Census is going to help us, based on complete fucking voter apathy.
narya
I work for an organization that serves LGBTQ folks and folks who are uninsured/underinsured/in poverty, and it was a fucking wake around here yesterday–and we live in a blue area in a blue state. My partner’s family lives in WI, and we usually go there for the winter holidays, and I hope they’re prepared for my anger and my contempt and my calling-them-on-their-hypocracy, especially the ones who claim to be christians, because i am having none of it. I’ve never been overtly political around them before (and I generally like them), but not this fucking time.
Or we could visit my parents, who were doing GOTV for Hillary the last week, AND on election day.
But my bag of fucks is empty. That short-fingered cheeto is not my president.
hovercraft
@Woodrowfan: @Corner Stone:
I spent most of yesterday avoiding cable and this place because I didn’t want to have to talk about what had befallen the country. The first part of my decision was a wise one, I don’t want to commit violence. The second was a mistake, at least here I am able to rage and commiserate with like minded people. Thank you all for being here and for being who you are. I’m sure we’ll still fight, but at the end of the day we’re all Juicers.
Oh yeah FUCK every Trump voter with a rusty razor sharp serrated disease infested pitch fork.
SenyorDave
@mai naem mobile: I don’t see LilFinger finishing his term. He doesn’t have the control not to do something really stupid.
What could he do that’s stupid enough? He’s normalized abhorrent behavior. What’s the old saying, a politician said “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy”. My guess is people would excuse Trump if he got caught in bed with both.
Jeffro
@JMG:
Or, “well, I guess you really voted your values, then”
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
I really like the name our Scottish friends came up with for him: Orange Shitgibbon.
MomSense, please try and keep your head up. We here will do what we can to help you.
There is a post on LGM by Lemieux on the Central Park 5. Those men are in serious danger now. We need to keep track and make sure that they stay alive.
As for newspapers, it’ll be the Washington Post, Columbus Post Dispatch, and as far as indie media is concerned, the Daily Banter for me, thanks.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: {{{ }}} Momsense. I know you were considering moving to Massachusetts, any progress on that front.
Tim F.
@JMG: If you wait, the answer is never. Fascists are very good at dividing people against each other. We unite now or we are all hosed.
Genghis
The best analysis of what happened that I have seen is here, and while few of you are going to like it, it rings true to my ears:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/?comments=1#comments
“When a political party is demolished, the principal responsibility belongs to one entity: the party that got crushed. It’s the job of the party and the candidate, and nobody else, to persuade the citizenry to support them and find ways to do that. Last night, the Democrats failed, resoundingly, to do that, and any autopsy or liberal think piece or pro-Clinton pundit commentary that does not start and finish with their own behavior is one that is inherently worthless.”
Democrats have ignored or taken for granted entire states for decades. Remember the 50 state policy? It was a good idea then and it remains one now.
Joe Bagent’s book prescribes steps liberals can take to become part of the rural community again: https://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/0307339378/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478790050&sr=1-1&keywords=deer+hunting+with+jesus
Enough with the name calling, insults and other self indulgent bs. You want to build a better Democratic Party? That job starts now and it begins with a look in the mirror.
Best…H
Major Major Major Major
I posted this on Facebook:
And literally within 10 seconds somebody commented “The DNC?”
FlipYrWhig
@Kryptik: This wasn’t an election waged on persuasion and close comparative assessment of promises. It was waged on sticking it to The Other and a miasma of apparent scandal around Hillary Clinton. And I still lay a significant, if not decisive, amount of blame on one Bernard Sanders for inducing his fan base to have a profound mistrust of Hillary Clinton. That was a shitty thing to do.
hovercraft
@Shalimar:
One silver lining, the country is overdue for a recession. Economists had been predicting that we’d have one next year, if that happens they hold all the levers of power, so it will be on them.
The Moar You Know
@Gelfling 545: If only that was universal. My wife’s high school, kids were running around with Trump signs and “you’re fired” hats and taunting the teachers that they were all going to be fired soon. Which won’t be the case, but great God, what a depraved little generation we’re raising here in SoCal.
They’ve also been yelling “build the wall” at football games against minority-majority high schools. And they think it’s the greatest thing ever.
Jonkheer
Just throwing this out there, but “End Cable Monopolies” might be a good tentpole to rally around. Nobody likes the Comcast/Verizon duopoly (which functions as localized monopolies, for the most part), and its less abstract than “bring back antitrust”, the technical name for the larger agenda. Thoughts?
JPL
How long before Trump asks Ginsburg to step aside, because of her partisan bent?
Corner Stone
@JMG:
Firstly, they will never realize that where they are is due in some small measure to choices they themselves have made. I have been dirt poor for a large chunk of my life but I could always recognize a hand reaching to try and help me. For some reason others have a blinding sensation of racial animus and white resentment where they either can’t see the hand, or they purposefully slap the hand away because, “you ain’t better than me!”.
So their question will continue to be, “What can we do to fuck *them* over even harder?”
FlipYrWhig
@Genghis:
There is no 50-state strategy without Blue Dogs. You’re not getting 50 states’ worth of leftists. You’re not getting one state’s worth of leftists if Russ Feingold and Zephyr Teachout are also losing. This is fucking stupid.
Brachiator
@SenyorDave:
Stop it. The Times could have hired a proctologist to scope Trump’s butt, and it would have not made a difference. The problem was never who Trump was. That was never a secret.
Every goddam paper and media site, every pundit, almost every poster here, missed the degree to which an electoral majority of citizens desperately wanted what Trump had to offer, and were willing to reject Congress and perhaps even the Constitution to get it. That was the story.
dexwood
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
Since Tuesday night, I’ve been calling him the Orange Overlord in conversations, texts, and emails. Fuck Trump. I will not bow down to the Orange Overlord.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
I can’t find a job from a distance unfortunately and my awesome place to stay has dried up as my 1% er friends are going back to Europe. They had a really nice little guest house in a city with a really nice school system. Even if I could find a job I think I’m priced out of housing in a town/city with good schools. Once I have some time I might start looking for a creative way to do it. I could be an upscale nanny.
geg6
@JMG:
Fuck them. I don’t give a damn about their concerns. And I never will now.
Kryptik
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s why the demand for hagiographies toward the ‘white working class’ and admonishment of Dems for ignoring them to play identity politics is an argument that goes immediately into my ‘fuck-off-with-that-shit’ bin. They got catered to, they just wanted to be catered to exclusively rather than have to share with ‘those’ people.
@geg6:
See above. Those folks had their economic concerns appealed to. They just wanted only their economic resentments appealed to exclusively, rather than share with the rest of the country who isn’t them.
Kathleen
@geg6: I’m with you on the so called news. I used to briefly watch local in the morning but don’t even do that, I’m having to let this. seep slowly into my body. I’m terrified and need to slowly feel power again.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: I am not so ready to absolve the press. They gave him a platform and latched on to the non issue of email. Our candidate was swift boated again. This time by the press and FBI. NYT led that charge in print and CNN on TV.
Betty Cracker
@Genghis: The data does not support the “economic anxiety” argument. Of course structural inequality is a problem, and the only party in modern times that has made any attempt to ameliorate it is the Democrats. Didn’t matter.
Poopyman
@JPL: She’s already got her answer ready.
schrodinger's cat
deleted
ArchTeryx
@MomSense: I’m not really talking about the movie. I’m talking about the actual disaster and how it played out. (That’s the part of the movie I paid attention to anyway – that part, at least, was very well done. Screw romantic plot tumours).
D58826
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Vladimer Putin Jr.
MomSense
@Brachiator:
Do you honestly think the NYT covered Trump accurately or fairly? And no, not everyone did know who Trump was. Guess what the NYT knew exactly who he was and always has been. They could have nixed his campaign before the nomination if they had just printed articles about him from the beginning and they didn’t.
Quinerly
@MomSense:
Great post. I’m in tears.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: Which part of Massachusetts are you looking at? Can you drop me an email at my bloggy site?
WP eated my first comment.
Brachiator
@Genghis:
You should get that ringing in your ears checked.
Greenwald, sitting on the sidelines, spouting his typical bullshit. He is right in some areas, but hopeless elsewhere.
More on this later.
Gretchen
MomSense: I’m so sorry to hear about your situation. One thing that gave me a little hope was a political podcast yesterday saying that the bill repealing Obamacare was for a year later. They wondered, that would put it right before the mid-terms. Would they really do that? Or would they make it 2018, or 2020 so they could say they repealed it without doing it until later, so their constituents wouldn’t actually be harmed. It’s not like their constituents hear anything but the slogans. I know, it’s a tiny glimmer. I’m so sorry.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
As a black woman, the sad thing is that much of this has always been life or death for me and my family. As I’ve written before, BLM is simply voicing what we’ve always lived to the rest of the country. The election of Obama and the possible succession of Hillary Clinton was hope for us, it was finally reaching the top of the mountain, preparing to head down into the golden valley with everyone else, but instead we find ourselves turned away, back to wandering in the desert still trying to get to the promised land. We found our way to the top of that mountain once, now we know the way, they can’t keep us from climbing back up. We will get back there. Since this is just another hurdle in a lifetime of hurdles, it almost makes it easier to cope with, to have lived in that golden valley all your life, and one day find yourself exiled is harder, you don’t have the coping mechanisms that we’ve built up over a lifetime.
Sorry for the tormented mixed metaphors.
Genghis
@FlipYrWhig:
Nothing will change without effort. Blue Dogs survive because they are involved in their community. I’m out in rural Kentucky right now taking a break from Los Angeles and the contrast is striking – these are not bad people here, but they have been ignored by the DNC for as long as I can remember. Of course they voted Trump. These are some of my closest friends so I’ll thank you all not to be insulting. We disagree about many things but we remain civil. Not a bad approach going forward…
Thinking Kentucky can be ignored is shortsighted in my opinion. In fact, we got the results yesterday.
Best…H
ArchTeryx
@Brachiator: Greenwald’s an expat who already Got His and can afford to sit on his privileged duff on the sidelines carping.
Then again, glass houses and all. I’m anything but a 1%er – I’m just a STEM Ph.D., which stands for “Unemployable, Poor, Hungry, and Debt-Ridden.” I’m still going to try to leverage that Ph.D. to save my life and get a decent country to take me in, which I guess makes me an expat-to-be carping from the sidelines, too.
D58826
another analysis of why the blue wall fell in usa today. One thing seems more and more evident and that is Trump may have looked like an unhinged fool in public but he is smart like a fox. This just didn’t happen like bird poop falling from the sky. It was well thought out even if at first it looked like a long shot.
As to the blue wall article. I said yesterday Hillary’s loss was a perfect storm opf all the variables and black swans breaking in Trumps favor. One or two breaking in Hillary’s favor in PA, MI, Wi and she is president-elect. She underperformed Obama in Milwaukee by more than the margin of her loss at the state level is one example. She also underperfortmed Obama in all three states, WHY? Surely the folks who stayed home could not have been convinced that Trump was the answer or did they?
This is why I think trying to single out this group or that message or whatever misses the larger picture. The D’s, if they survive, have a number of things to work on.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-clinton-lost-blue-wall-states-of-mich-pa-wis/ar-AAk79Sl?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
MomSense
@ArchTeryx:
I’m just in a gallows humor mood. I probably need to eat something because too much coffee, no sleep, and no food does not make for a happy tummy. Weirdly, I enjoyed a glass of wine early on Tuesday night and then felt so sick I didn’t have a second. Now I can’t even look at the bottle of wine on my counter without feeling sick so I’m going to drain it into the sink and focus on getting into fighting form.
Only thing I’ve found semi comforting enough to sleep for an hour or two is to watch my tai chi videos endlessly, close my eyes and imagine I’m doing my form. My youngest is a karate protege so he has offered to start teaching me – sword forms and everything. I said Tuesday night I’m going to become a ninja and right now that is the only thing that gives me joy. May do boxing again, too because I loved that.
One of my ballet teachers showed me some pictures of her during WWII when she was in the resistance. Every day she dressed up, did her makeup, looked like a million bucks. I’m going to do the same. Horrible as I feel I actually am styling (as much as possible) my hair and wearing my war paint. I’ll never be a 10 in donald’s raccoon eyes but I am going to put my best forward even on my worst day. Seriously fuck them. I’m not dead until I’m dead.
Quinerly
@Partisan Cheese:
Go. The. Fuck. Away.
D58826
Another good day so far on Wall Street. They certainly love their Trump.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, I will later today. Thank you.
Major Major Major Major
@MomSense: I don’t think they could have stopped him before the nomination–the NYT hating him would have helped, if anything.
Betty Cracker
@Genghis: How has the DNC ignored them? How has the RNC addressed their concerns?
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: Thanks. That is exactly what it was.
Genghis
@Brachiator:
Spare me the insults – and the ad hominems. If you want to argue the points Greenwald made, go for it. This is not about personalities, it’s about realities.
More from Greenwald:
“Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate (for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently. That, as Matt Stoller’s indispensable article in The Atlantic three weeks ago documented, is the conniving choice the Democratic Party made decades ago: to abandon populism and become the party of technocratically proficient, mildly benevolent managers of elite power. Those are the cynical, self-interested seeds they planted, and now the crop has sprouted.”
Best…H
ArchTeryx
@MomSense: And just as a follow-on: I do apologize for not seeming more sympathetic. I should be, as we truly are in the same boat and living the same movie. Heck, we’re even kindred spirits: I’m a freelance tutor, which is part of how I kept from going bankrupt and starving out in 3 years of unemployment. (Temp clerk work was the other part).
Gretchen
One thing I’m going to be doing is trying to reach people who think differently from me. I was encouraged by the post below this saying that social media changes minds. My brother is always posting wingnut memes, and I kept asking him where he gets his information – our house always got 2 newspapers and Time and Newsweek so we got a variety of viewpoints. I realized to my horror that he gets most of his news from Facebook and email forwards. So I started responding. One of his friends flew in and attacked me. I gave a calm and fact-based answer, and she deleted the attack and started a conversation about it. Turns out she has a 25 year old diabetic son. She claimed that “Obamacare” doesn’t provide the more modern treatments so they pay $1100 a month to keep him on his dad’s insurance. She wasn’t aware that Obamacare is why he can be on his dad’s insurance, nor that without Obamacare nobody has to sell insurance at any price to a diabetic. I don’t know that I penetrated, but it’s a start. I realized that every time I reply to my brother all his wingnut friends see it too, so I’m posting comments or links to articles every time he posts a lie. This morning he complained that you can’t trust either side for Social Security. I posted a link to Paul Ryan’s plan.
DesertFriar
In 2012, the country votes overwhelmingly for Democrats for Congress. While Democratic candidates received a nationwide plurality of more than 1.4 million votes (1.2%) in all House elections, the Republican Party won a 33-seat advantage in the state apportioned totals, thus retaining its House majority by 17 seats.
In 2016, for the 2nd time this century, the person receiving the 2nd most votes, became President.
In 2008 ~69M people voted for a Democrat for President, In 2016, it was 59M.
Yet the vote total for Trump is in line with Romney.
WHERE ARE THE 10 MILLION! (If I knew the interwebs I’d start one of them # thingies).
We can fight among ourselves and do navel gazing for the next four years, but until we address and fight real voter fraud (the ability of one party to keep people from voting) together it does not matter.
That’s the big story in the elections. That’s the elephant in the room.
WHERE ARE THE 10 MILLION!
ArchTeryx
Yay, lurker diarrhea. At least I’m not some arsehole Trump troll coming to spread my triumphalist shite here. I’m just some arsehole bum instead, looking at the premature end of my life, and the lives of a lot of my fellow citizens. Maybe this is my way of bearing witness before the end.
Major Major Major Major
@Genghis: everything greenwald writes is about personalities: his. I’m happy to address a different writer’s take.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
This is garbage, out and out garbage. Trump is a complete fucking cypher. We know nothing about what he actually believes or wants. One fucking guy at one paper spent some time on the phone asking about Trumps fucking charitable giving. One guy! And we are all giving him the fucking Pulitzer for doing that much!
Where are Trump’s taxes? Why didn’t every “reporter” lead the interview by asking and then if they didn’t get an answer walk off? And start doing some god damned investigating on their own?
Because they already had a nicely wrapped story, that’s why. Clinton Scandals. Takes no work, easy to summarize, slap a good headline on it and go our for afternoon martinis with the crew.
The media absolutely fucking failed us, including the NYT. They gave him $2B of free airtime because it got them rich, too. In all that time we only know about his charitable giving, thanks to one guy and a phone, and 3 pages of 20 year old tax returns thanks to a leaker. A leaker! Thanks, NYT!
geg6
@Genghis:
Joe Bagent and you can take his stupid book and steps for liberals to become part of the rural community and stick it up your fucking asses.
I hate to break it to you, but I am and always have been a part of that community. I may live close to Pittsburgh, but the county I live in is purely Appalachian in sociological terms. I was born here, I grew up here and I still live and work here. I know these stupid mother fuckers inside and out. I don’t need a fucking book or some arrogant asshole telling me what I need to do to appeal to the cretins I have lived with, around and known all my life. Hate of everything that they are not is basically what you need to do to appeal to them, which is why Trump is their god. Are you educated? They hate you. Are you a woman who isn’t cowed? They hate you. Are you black/brown/Asian/Native American? They hate you. They thrill at the idea of shooting any of those groups. They thrill at the idea of those groups cowering and groveling in front of them. They practically orgasm when they use the n-word or call an accomplished woman a c**t or a gay man a f*g. They are disgusting, mean, bitter, cowardly bullies. That is who they are. Are there good people here? Hell, yes. But they are already on our side and we are outnumbered. So fuck this shit that we need to talk to these assholes. No, we don’t. There is nothing we can do to attract them to our side unless we become exactly what they are. And even then, they will always suspect us. So fuck them. I hope they all suffer horribly from this. I am cutting myself off from all my acquaintances and neighbors who supported this man and this party (I will never use their names again). I have nothing but the deepest of contempt for them and always will.
MomSense
@D58826:
Again, look at the new restrictive voter laws that took effect in OH PA WI MI before this election. Omnes has talked about it here too. He says that 10 x the margin of loss was because of a new voter ID law in Wisconsin. I’m all for learning the lessons of this loss but that means actually looking into it past blame the woman for not exciting the base or some wistful sympathy for the white working class. Guess what, they went for Hillary in the rust belt states at over 50%. The wealthier exurban and suburban whites with median incomes over 72k went for Trump. Let’s not be lazy in our analysis or feed into tropes about more progressive being better. Feingold fucking lost and Bernie would have too – even worse.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Genghis: We had Blue Dogs in NC. A lot of them. They got crushed by Art Pope.
We cannot give them what they want. Every time we offer what they say they want, they move the goalposts because they won’t admit that what they really want is for us to abandon minorities.
The Silent Majority is, as it always has been, racist whites.
InternetDragons
@Tim F. – Since the election, I cheer up a bit every time I see you pop up on the front page. You are offering a perfect balance between my sorrow and anger and my need to be proactive about what comes next. Thank you.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: I feel like what Trump stumbled on, and not because he was smart like a fox, was that no one was going to change their minds over what he said or did, so he’d never need to explain himself and burn news cycles with any particular story. Neither a good one nor a bad one. Not a campaign promise; not a scandal; nothing. And Hillary Clinton can’t get away with that. She _likes_ to explain things. She feels a _compulsion_ to explain things. That’s the way political figures handle such matters. No one else but Trump has EVER been able to get away with behaving this way. No political consultant would LET their client ATTEMPT to get away with it. But he’s a bull in a china shop who doesn’t listen, which turned out to be brilliantly successful.
Betty Cracker
@Genghis: The narrative from Greenwald is just demonstrably false. Trump has promised tax cuts for billionaires and will actually raise taxes on the poor. Trump promised to kick 20 million people off healthcare and throw them to the tender mercies of the insurance sharks. Clinton ran on the most progressive platform a Democrat has proposed since LBJ. Trump offered his voters a chance to Trump that bitch.
nastybrutishntall
@Partisan Cheese: If you think no one was criticizing Hillary, or no one in the beginning here was supporting Bernie before he began fucking up, you’ve been reading the wrong blog. Also, fuck you.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
I can’t tell you how many people really didn’t know about just the fraud case. New witnesses came forward in the child rape case but the poor Plaintiff received so many threats she became frightened for her life and dropped the case.
Woodrowfan
I had a quiet talk with one of my Muslim students today. I told her that we’re entering a very dark time, but if she or her friends ever feel threatened or unsafe, I am there to help them. I’ll provide a safe space. I’ll be having the same talk with a Muslim neighbor with whom I am friends. My wife will not let me buy a gun, but I am scared. I’m a history prof and am teaching WWII right now. I know where fear and demagoguery lead, and it’s a dark, dark place.
mai naem mobile
Seceding and creating a western country is the only thing I got. Take CA,WA,OR and NV and create Pacifica or something. Or take the West,the Plains,Illinois,and NE to creat a contiguous country. I don’t have time for the rest of flyover country to catch up.
MomSense
@D58826:
Here is a link to the NYDN on the subject.
States with new Voter Restrictions Flipped to Trump
Genghis
@Betty Cracker:
In Bagent’s book, he details growing up in West Virginia, hunting on the same land as his grandfather, using the same rifle his grandfather used as a child. He went to Vietnam, and after the war was given money to go to school. He wound up in Berkley, which of course changed him tremendously. He stayed away from WV until his parents got older and returned to care for them. That was when he realized how completely liberalism had vanished from his home. It’s a good read – I’d suggest you start there. I was able to exchange a few emails with him before he passed away which I might share if I can find them. He was encouraging liberals to move back to where they came from – advice I couldn’t follow – but I do spend several months a year here in Kentucky. They know I’m a California liberal and while they disagree, they will engage from time to time. Engagement, which involves as much listening as anything, is where to start.
Thanks for your civil tone. I used to be here on a daily basis but the personal insults got tiresome.
Best…H
ArchTeryx
@Woodrowfan: Good for you. I think I’ll be having the same talk with a Muslim student of mine, along with it being made crystal clear that I see him as a human being and a person, no matter what a quarter of this country believes. Salaam.
Maybe I need to check out our local Halal market and fix him up a treat or some kind. He probably could use it about now.
WesternPALurker
Hoping to help “Hold the Line.” If you are financiaaly able, donate to organizations that protect causes you believe in. I know I’m privileged to be in a stable financial position to do so. I just cut back on some monthly expenses & made recurring monthly donations to Planned Parenthood, SPLC, and National Resources Defense Council.
I rarely comment but Balloon Juice has sustained me these past months. If anyone in dire need does lose insurance, I hope they will comment here and let us know how to help. I’d gladly contribute.
nastybrutishntall
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I’ve already pledged to never vote for a Dem unless they are with the whole Dem platform. I.e. Goddamned Democratic Socialism. We literally have nothing to lose by voting for the only thing that we know will help. I was a pragmatist and leaned Hillary, but the script has flipped. We’re at war. Clarity of ideas is our only hope now. Unless we continue to speak out at the horrors of Trumpism and offer a clear alternative, we will not recover.
And fuck Bernie and Warren for preemptively appeasing.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Genghis: And when did the Democrats abandon “populism”? When we passed the Civil Rights Act.
Greenwald’s speaking in dog whistles.
PhoenixRising
@Partisan Cheese:
That is untrue and this is not the time for victim-blaming.
Hillary’s platform and policies were designed to take a little bit of cash from the 1%, using taxes cooked into their rapacious profits on globalization that they cannot ‘earn’, and create a future for white people whose manufacturing jobs are never coming back.
But you never heard about that because she sent emails.
The autopsy of the republic is going to find Maureen Dowd jammed into a once-great nation’s femoral artery, mumbling about emails.
To Tim’s point, exercise self-care, y’all. I’m looking at options for getting health care in civilized countries once I lose my ACA coverage, so…little busy right now.
If you see a Trump voter–I won’t as I long ago structured my life so that selfish white people aren’t in it–let them know that they have made a terrible mistake and will hopefully live long enough to regret it profoundly.
nastybrutishntall
@mai naem mobile: Take NV, CO and NM too and you’ve got a deal!
hovercraft
@Gelfling 545:
That is what happened in Britain after Brexit, they young and the educated were horrified by what old white people did. They get to die soon having delivered one last gasp for a return to a whiter more patriarchal nation. But try as they might they can’t turn back the clock, they will die, and we will continue to multiply. It’s true that many of them are being replaced by their progeny, but not at a fast enough pace, we are outpacing them and that is why they are so filled with rage and fear. Yes they won this battle, we will win the war.
Felonius Monk
@Genghis:
I’d be interested to know how the Republicans have made their lives better.
geg6
@Genghis:
You go right ahead and be friendly with horrifyingly immoral people. I’m not going to do it. I’ve done it all my life and this is the last straw. I hope they all die. Due to Trumpian policies. Which they probably will.
Pearls101
Are you guys having a hard time getting over this election result? I’m trying hard, but I’m having a hard time seeing anything positive.
MomSense
@ArchTeryx:
I didn’t take you as unsympathetic at all. You and I are family now. I’m rooting for you. We will do our best to get through this.
CaseyL
@MomSense: @ArchTeryx: and every other BJer in that boat: I’m so sorry; this is exactly what we were trying to avoid.
When Bush was (re-) elected in 2004, I had a similar sense of thundering dread, which is far worse this time because now we know exactly what the GOP has in mind, and now they have a unified government to do it with.
As for newspapers: I canceled my sub to NYT over its shameful coverage of Clinton v. Trump, but kept my sub to the local rag. Haven’t watched TV news in ages, and am not about to start now.
Eric U.
I thought you could subscribe to Wash Post through amazon prime, but all I see is the app, which is free. I would like to be able to log into their web page
Peter
I purchased a subscription to the WaPo a couple weeks ago, but as far as I’m concerned the New York Times is dead and buried. Talk about fiddling while Rome burned. What a fucking massive abdication of their journalistic responsibilities.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@MomSense: I can’t even imagine. I wish I had words that might offer comfort, but of course there aren’t any. You and your family will remain in my thoughts.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brachiator: I will never forgive either the NYT or Bernie Sanders for setting the “Crooked Hillary” idea so firmly in the national psyche.
Never.
geg6
@Genghis:
What the fuck does Glenn Greenwald know about these people? He meets with bunch of them in Brazil, I guess. The day I take his advice on who to make friends with is the day I should just slit my wrists and let myself bleed out. Same basic result.
Felonius Monk
@Eric U.:
That’s how you do it — the app. The first 6 mos are free, then $1 for the next six. At least that’s how it worked for me.
D58826
@JMG: The D’s gave many of the folks in this group access to medical care, in some cases for the first time in their lives. And they listened to Caribo Barbie and the death panels.
There is the story of thew voter who will happy sit under a bride in the ran cooking a sparrow on a coat hanger if the OTHER has neither a coat hanger or a sparrow. The white working class in the south was happy to vote for any political leader who would insure that they could continue to better than the OTHER no matter how small that difference. And then there is the continuing example of Kansas or Wisconsin home of Bob LaFollette and the progressive movement of the early 20th century.
Just not sure what it is that you have to say to these folks, while still maintaining core democratic party principles, that will make a difference. Do we really want to run a democratic version of Trump?
GrandJury
I know it’s like putting lipstick on the rotting corpse of a pig but keep in mind that Trump used to be quite liberal in some ways. It remains to be seen how much of his hard right stance was just an act.
He will have to pander to the right for them to put up with him and the inevitable corruption for any length of time without impeaching him. Since he has never governed before it’s completely unknown what he’s gonna do. I’m quite sure he doesn’t know either. Other than making everything personal and going after his enemies.
Genghis
@Betty Cracker:
Betty Cracker says:
November 10, 2016 at 10:31 am
@Genghis: The narrative from Greenwald is just demonstrably false. Trump has promised tax cuts for billionaires and will actually raise taxes on the poor. Trump promised to kick 20 million people off healthcare and throw them to the tender mercies of the insurance sharks. Clinton ran on the most progressive platform a Democrat has proposed since LBJ. Trump offered his voters a chance to Trump that bitch.
I think you are applying your own perspective to others. (We all do this.)
Here’s the crux of it – Trump (and Brexit) were very bad answers to real problems Democrats have ignored for 30 years.
Greenwald: “But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.”
So, voting Trump made sense for them.
It’s worth noting that no major Democratic office holder (Obama, HRC, Biden etc.) has been seen in rural Kentucky since – ever. Sure, there aren’t many folks here, but a visit from PBO would have sent shock waves through the state. Imo.
Best….H
Woodrowfan
@Genghis: Democrats got them health care they needed and they voted in a Republican governor, legislature, and members of Congress, and now Trump who will deny them the health care they need. I have family in rural Kentucky (Taylor County, Junction City and that area). I’d lost contact with them until Facebook. (it my our parent’s generation and grandparents that kept the family together, as second cousins were drifted apart when the older ones died). They shoot themselves constantly in the foot because of Jeeezus and because they are scared of black and brown people in cities. (their black neighbors are the “good ones.”) . Of course they voted Trump because he’ll protect them from ISIS! (Like ISIS is about to attack the Danville Walmart). I am sooo very tempted to write them off and say “Fuck you, fuck your ignorant mega-church, fuck your damn ignorant hick town where the only book store sells nothing but Jesus junk and books by Pat Robertson and Glen Beck,, and your pathetic schools where they turn out barely literate kids that think the Earth was created in 4004 BC. YOU ARE DESTROYING ALL OF US@!
Major Major Major Major
@Genghis: I’m sympathetic to the argument but I know for me and a lot of my friends, we’re queer and many are PoC too and anywhere outside of deep blue cities in deep blue states is just not an option.
ETA: Also the idea of strategically choosing where to root one’s life based on long-term, reach political goals, rather than where you’ll be happiest and most successful, is kind of dumb.
Peter
@Genghis: They decided they were to blame completely irrespective of reality. How the fuck do you propose Democrats meet in the middle with people totally perpendicular to reality?
Timurid
@Woodrowfan:
I was supposed to lecture on the prelude to World War II yesterday. I couldn’t do it.
And ‘History Professor’ is not a marketable skill abroad. It’s certainly not in any theoretical blue state safe haven.
I’m stuck in the South, likely for the duration.
The Moar You Know
6,101,777 Dems who thought Obama was a good idea in 2012 DID NOT SHOW UP.
You guys are overthinking all this to a dangerous degree.
We couldn’t deliver the votes. Those with reasons as to why are full of shit in one way or another, and right in one way or another. We’ll never actually know.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
How does one parody the phrase “President Donald Trump”?
Anyway, Trump-in-Chief is my offering.
Barbara
I contacted two of the three candidates for statewide office in 2017. It’s important for redistricting that Virginia stay blue at the top and if we possibly can, retake the State Senate. Virginia is one of the most gerrymandered states, even if we only have 11 House Reps. The off cycle statewide elections are almost always closer than the presidential. That’s how Bob McDonnell won for governor (that, and having a weak opponent and a faux moderate exterior). A lot of states are important, but Pennsylvania is also usually an off-cycle crash. I think the governor there is up again in 2018. Again, important for redistricting. Rs did not get to where they are overnight. I think one issue for Democrats is that we believe in the federal government, and want programs and policies to be uniform across the country, which makes us deliver less effort than we could at the state level. But that’s where it all begins and for now, I see that as the most fruitful effort.
ArchTeryx
@MomSense: More looking at the cold water below and realizing I’m about to get thrown into it, rather then peering across the railing at the people next to me facing the same thing. Maybe not unsympathetic, but self-centered.
Part of what made the Titanic such a tragedy was because it was filled with poor immigrants escaping pogrom and depression and horror in their own countries, trying to start a new life here. I remain convinced that the story has such power with the populace because the richest people on Earth drowned right alongside the poor when the boat went down. If it had just been a boat full of poor immigrants, few would have cared. Few *did* care about the hundreds of the poor who died there – we don’t even know most of their names, not names like John Jacob Astor or Benjamin Guggenheim. But a life is a life…
And that’s the only bit of the movie that followed me home. It finally gave at least a bit of voice to the many poor who died that night, even if it was bloody Leonardo diCaprio that was picked to carry that message.
Now many of us find ourselves on that same boat, facing the same choices those poor people did. We never thought we would, but here we are.
Patricia Kayden
@MomSense:
This a million times. It’s easy for some of us to be flippant about Trump’s election because it won’t really harm us although we’ll be horrified to see what his regime does to our fellow Americans. But it’s going to hit some Americans on a personal, gut wrenching level.
I hope the media which pumped up Trump’s candidacy will thoroughly cover the damage and distress his Presidency causes to millions of Americans. He’s going to be worse than Reagan and Bush combined. His Cabinet appointments are going to be horrific and I say this as someone who works at a federal agency and have already seen the name of a bigot being floated to lead my agency. Sigh.
waysel
@JPL: Any reason they can’t appoint 3 RWNJ justices to the SC on Jan. 21st? I think they will, if it’s a legal option.
FlipYrWhig
@Genghis: Kentucky had a Democratic governor who helped people, and then they replaced him with a nutball who specifically promised to hurt them. Fuck Kentucky, fuck the people of Kentucky, and I hope they continue living in the squalor they evidently prefer.
NR
@DesertFriar:
I, and many other people, told you that Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate who inspires no one. We warned you about how turnout among core Democratic groups, like black voters, was way down in the primary. We sounded the alarm about her weaknesses as a candidate for months.
You ignored us. You smugly told us that none of it would matter. You told us that people would show up to vote for her despite all the evidence to the contrary. You told us that it didn’t matter that voters didn’t like her because they liked Trump even less.
We were right. You were wrong. It’s really that simple.
Betty Cracker
@Genghis: You didn’t answer my question. I don’t think you can. The fact is, the Republicans haven’t done jack-shit for rural Americans, and neither will Trump. They pander to their racism, sexism, religious intolerance and xenophobia to gain their votes so they can loot the Treasury. Trump will do the same.
I don’t need to read a book to understand rural America. I grew up there and still live in it. I understand Trump voters a helluva lot better than Glenn Greenwald. He is wrong.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: Well, someone should be looking to figure out the broad themes as to why, but I agree — we are overthinking. The numbers tell the story everywhere. Trump did not match earlier Republican voter levels. It’s important to keep that in mind.
FlipYrWhig
@Genghis: BTW, ask Glenn Greenwald how the saintly people of the white working class feel about drones, suspected terrorists, and their privacy.
ChrisB
@Corner Stone: To me, the silver lining is that 4 years of Republican rule should lead to Democratic victory in 2020 in time for the next census. Don’t forget that Clinton got more votes than Trump overall and demographics will continue to favor us. My fear was that Clinton would win now and lose in 2020 to give the Republicans another decade of gerrymandering. She was a lousy candidate and it’s almost better that she lost now instead of in 2020.
The next 4 years will be difficult. Like I said, this is a silver lining in a very dark cloud. I expect to lose my health care and my heart goes out to people like MomSense, to those who face deportation, to those whose reproductive freedom will be affected, to those who must now face the worst aspects of American society with less illusion and less governmental protection, to say nothing of those who might die in America’s next war or, God forbid, wars). And whoever wins in 2020 will probably have to fix the economy again.
There are lots of recriminations on our side right now. People are genuinely angry and depressed and understandably so. That’s fine as long as we’re all ready to go next time around.
schrodinger's cat
@Peter: Same here. I have even deleted it from my book marks.
Daulnay
They’ve already started — putting three parens around peoples’ names online ((( name ))) if they’re Jewish or suspected of it.
(((Daulnay)))
P.S. (I am half Danish. My mother was very proud of the story that the Danes resisted Nazi attempts to single out Jews by all wearing the star. It is unfortunately not true, although the Danes were able to protect and then rescue 99% of the Danish Jews during the occupation.)
Woodrowfan
@The Moar You Know: How many were prevented from voting. Not all 6 million, but I bet a significant number were in key states.
Genghis
@geg6: geg6 says:
November 10, 2016 at 10:41 am
@Genghis:
What the fuck does Glenn Greenwald know about these people? He meets with bunch of them in Brazil, I guess. The day I take his advice on who to make friends with is the day I should just slit my wrists and let myself bleed out. Same basic result.
Ok, you don’t like Greenwald. Try to divorce your dislike for him from what he is saying. I started reading Scott Adams months ago, and while I didn’t like much of what he said, the guy called the stages of the election with uncanny accuracy. I could feel a Trump victory coming in the days before the election. Even still, I thought (head) HRC would win. I was wrong.
Look on the bright side, Republicans and Trump will have a very brief time to start to make things right for the working class. A reinvigorated Democratic Party that has the interests of the working class at heart will get a chance, and it will be sooner than any of us think.
More Greenwald (sorry): “For many years, the U.S. — like the U.K. and other Western nations — has embarked on a course that virtually guaranteed a collapse of elite authority and internal implosion. From the invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis to the all-consuming framework of prisons and endless wars, societal benefits have been directed almost exclusively to the very elite institutions most responsible for failure at the expense of everyone else.
It was only a matter of time before instability, backlash, and disruption resulted. Both Brexit and Trump unmistakably signal its arrival. The only question is whether those two cataclysmic events will be the peak of this process, or just the beginning. And that, in turn, will be determined by whether their crucial lessons are learned — truly internalized — or ignored in favor of self-exonerating campaigns to blame everyone else.”
Best…H
Applejinx
@Genghis: If you can’t take Greenwald, you can always watch Mark Blyth’s take on all this, which is not entirely bleak. Blyth predicted both this and Brexit would happen, which I’m not sure Greenwald can say.
Betty Cracker
@NR: You were right about the final outcome of the election, Stillwell Angel, with an assist from Russia, the FBI, WikiLeaks, the Beltway press and voter suppression initiatives. But you didn’t have a better alternative.
GrandJury
This might sound a bit conspiratorial but ever wonder what happened with that rape case?
First the lawyer puts a letter on twitter that the woman accusing Trump of rape when she was 13 has decided to give a press conference. They did it at the worst possible time for Trump. Just a week before the end of the campaign.
Next day the press conference is suddenly cancelled just before it is scheduled to begin. The reason given was the the woman was afraid for her safety and didn’t want to give up her anonymity.
The next day (or maybe a couple days later) she withdraws the lawsuit. Anyone connecting the same dots I am?
That was probably the lawyers plan. She probably got a call, some people showed up with a bag full of money and some paperwork, and the problem went away. Any of it gets out and the woman forfeits all the money.
If only there were people like Woodward and Bernstein still around in the media to do their fucking jobs. There is WaPo but they are now going to be constantly harassed by Trump.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: The important thing is, people will suffer needlessly, but NR will get to have a little dance around them while they’re in their agony.
bystander
Just canceled our decades long subscription with the Times. Very satisfying to go on record with them about their campaign of smear and innuendo against Clinton. Singled out the b/s from Maureen Dowd.
We will probably subscribe to WaPo because Farenthold.
gene108
August 2017, Summer of Rage II: Democrats Got Something to say
Seriously, we need to start laying the ground work to mobilize people, like the Republicans did right after Democrats won, in 2008.
As we don’t have billionaires to fund a movement, what do you suggest are good ways to get in touch with people to start gearing up?
Elie
I haven’t read all of the comments above, so don’t know if this has already been stated. I am extremely alarmed. With the revelation as well that Putin was indeed in communication with Trump during the election, I am sure that his influence will be felt. Our system is more fragile than I had dreamed. I am scared that revenge will be the order of the day, up and down stream. Chaffetz is already bragging about continued investigation of Clinton. She may not be safe in the US due to the criminalization of politics that will become more and more the practice. I would argue that Obama may also be under some hazard. Do you actually see Trump handing over the Presidency to anyone ever? Do you think we will see national elections again (at least clean ones) within 4 years. I am hopeful but not certain. At lot has changed for good in the last two days… we have lost something very profound — a trust in our system and that everyone is in this together. It is quite clear that half of this country is quite comfortable with fascism and authoritarianism packaged in any package at all– ugly, brutish, mean and hateful is just fine thank you…. because of some sense of their entitlement to be superior to everyone else. We are in very dangerous times.
While I think that Clinton and Obama gave beautiful and elegant speeches highlighting nobility and optimism, what we need now is a call to arms and a call to justice. I like Bernie’s response much better: that he would work with Trump on things that they mutually agreed upon but that he would oppose him vigorously on those things he felt were wrong. THAT is closer to what I want to hear from Democrats and all others who care about this country.
PhoenixRising
@hovercraft:
This is very important for progressives. Spend some time at TheRoot, AwesomelyLuvvie, etc quietly drinking from the fountain of wisdom passed down through the generations.
We LGBT folks–who have immediate lived experience being used as the piñata by a GOP desperate to turn back the demographic tide that they rigged this election to favor–can also be useful resources if you’re feeling despair. We’ve been down in this hole before, and we know the way out.
Step 1: Stop digging. The blamestorming, from Greenwald to your area BernieBro, is irrelevant to what we’re facing. This country hates a lot of people.
Trump managed a real feat by aligning that hatred with the end of the Voting Rights Act. This election was in fact rigged, by the states that Obama won before SCOTUS issued Shelby County, and that turned the trick. Progressives don’t need to re-examine our values or decide whose concerns to throw overboard.
Our responses to this must be organized and collaborative, but they need not happen this week. The contempt for Them, which is why we have the electoral college, isn’t going anywhere quickly.
Gretchen
Remember, we won the popular vote. We did something right, just not enough. It didn’t help that Bernie put out some memes that Trump picked up later. All that stuff about her being crooked and untrustworthy dented enthusiasm – fewer young people turned out, and they could have put this over the top. The media talking about her emails more than all other issues combined didn’t help – imagine if they’d asked them each about climate change at each debate instead of the damn emails? What if the media had investigated Trump’s Russian connections before the election rather than after. There are a lot of moving parts to this loss, and a couple of things breaking our way would have made all the difference.
ArchTeryx
@NR: And how much bitter triumph does it give you to say that and be such a green cockwhistler to folks who are simply trying to survive what’s coming?
Go off and wank somewhere else, rather then contaminating our funeral, you piece of orange cornshite.
D58826
@MomSense: Oh I agree. Voter ID was just one of many things. Federal judges order states to regfister people and they were just ignored. In NC they could not enforce voter-id but they could cut the number of polling places or early voting hours.
On nit – the PA law was ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court so it didn’t apply. And at the govenor is a democrat so at the state level the election machinery was not rigged in favor of Trump, but not sure what local offices could still get away with. Two more data points on PA and the perfect storm. Hillary came out of Philly with a bigger margin that Obama and still lost the state. Way to many of the suburban Philly white women who were supposed to be horrified by a serial sexual abuser still voted for him.
waysel
@Brachiator: The NYT alone may have swung it for DJT. The relentless articles and op-eds about Hillary emails,’shadows and clouds of suspicion’, etc. They not only didn’t vet Der shitstain appreciably, but actively promoted the H smear campaign. This race was tight. We’ll never know how many points they shaved. They’re deplorable, really.
Major Major Major Major
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: I’m just going to call him Il Douche until he gives me reason to do otherwise.
NobodySpecial
Disagree. We don’t need the press. We need face to face contact with allies instead. That’s how the conservatives work. Their press ops are entirely about undermining unity, not about informing their side.
Corner Stone
@NR:
And a huge congratulations to you and your fellow travelers!
Eadgyth
@MomSense:
You said everything I am thinking. I can’t get to hopeful.
SgrAstar
@Genghis: Oh, please. How do you define a “nice person”? I have family in Kentucky, and they are not nice people. They are steeped in racism and blinded by religious fundamentalism…and they are very typical of their community, a prosperous suburb of Louisville. Nice people would never vote for The Thing. Period. It’s not the DNC’s fault. It’s THEM.
Elie
@GrandJury:
Oh, you think it was money? I heard she and her lawyers were threatened. Either way, that is quid pro quo, is it not? Get ready for a lot more of this…
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Genghis: “I think you are applying your own perspective to others. (We all do this.)”
Yes, this.
Everyone has to remember “Liberal” is a collation of ideas and groups like “conservatism” is. To those Rust Belt workers “Liberal” means government guaranteed job security for your family, generation after generation. By promising this crap (and never explaining how he would do it), Trump outflanked the Democrats by the left, with that specific constituency.
Here is something else to consider; a lot of those Rust Belt workers are German-Americans. They go back to the old country and see their relatives working in the same company generation after generation and wonder “WTF, America supposed to be the greatest country on earth”
Corner Stone
Kentucky is something like 90% white people, in the South. Give me a fucking break.
WereBear
Just got finished re-allocating my rather small 401k (rolling like a grownup!) and upping my contribution, all channeled into what I hope are safer harbors. Moving the majority into Bonds. Moving out of US concentrated stuff and trying to be more global and tech. Tweaking as I go.
Also concentrating on paying down our credit card. So, cutting expenses as much as I can, and we were already at the “Yay, after years we are indulging in winter coats!” level, which doesn’t leave much wiggle room. Have to see if I can get another season out of my winter shoes, boots are ok.
Thanks in part to the great discussions right here at BJ, I dodged the worst of the 2008 recession and it built up instead of vanished. WORDS TO THE WISE, folks. Think about your own if you have them.
ArchTeryx
@Eadgyth: Hope and $3.50 gets you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. There is no hope at a funeral. There’s only loss, mourning, grief, and if you’re extremely lucky, closure.
NR
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know why you would be focused on refighting the primary when you should be looking ahead.
You have two choices: Clean house in the Democratic party and get rid of the corrupt establishment that foisted such a horrible candidate on us, or keep losing elections until you finally figure out that people aren’t going to vote for what they’re offering.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Major Major Major Major:” I’m just going to call him Il Douche until he gives me reason to do otherwise. ”
hehe “Il Combover” ?
Woodrowfan
@Elie: I am a pessimist so right now, in the dark place where my mood is, I think we may have seen the last truly free presidential election the US will see for decades. The repubs will rig EVERYTHING to make sure they are the ruling party and the Democrats will be the token minority party that shows we’re “free.”
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: Reach out to people you personally know who will be affected by this or friends and family who will lend a sympathetic ear.
Barbara
@Genghis: How do you move back home when you can’t make a living there? Sure, I might consider retiring to where I grew up, maybe, but I am not going to make myself willfully poor and cheat my children out of the ability to get something out of their own lives and put them at much higher risk of opioid abuse, by slotting my life into one of the saddest trends of the last three generations here in the U.S. and nearly everywhere else — the slow death of truly rural culture.
One of the funniest and most ironic things is when Congress decided to torture the Postal Service into cost cutting and found out that the most obvious targets are rural post offices, where they lose huge amounts of money. They can be served by far fewer facilities, but then, you eliminate one of the last places for people to meet and chat.
So:
1. I am not doing this to them. They are doing this to themselves or at least making it worse than it needs to be.
2. We — I — you — my kids are just as much America as they are. We are not required to move there in order to find our authentic national identity.
Walker
I am giving an exam for my class tonight. Just about every woman of color in my class has asked for a make-up on another day. They are getting it.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: And by “foisted” you mean “allowed millions more people to vote for in a months-long open competition that turned out the opposite 8 years before.” Fuck off.
Timurid
@hovercraft:
White America just climbed on top of the tiger, slid their feet firmly into the stirrups and dug in the spurs…
They were desperate enough to take this insane risk because of a shapeless fear of what might happen several decades hence when the math finally turns against them and they are outnumbered. Projecting their own past behavior onto Others, they expect themselves… and their children… to be terrorized and oppressed. But the problem is that a Trumpist state is the one thing that is guaranteed to make that vague fear into reality. White people will not be forgiven for what happens under the Donald and his successors. Once the tiger is off and running, they cannot dismount, no matter how scary the ride becomes. Falling off means falling into their worst nightmare. So they’ll cling to the saddle as their monstrous steed sprints at a full gallop toward apartheid.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: I feel bad for them. You, on the other hand, are a different story. You can use this as a learning experience and change your behavior going forward, or keep doing what you’ve been doing while Trump and others like him destroy what’s left of the country.
It’s up to you.
Woodrowfan
@NR: yeah, because spending so much effort maintain ideological purity worked so well in the past, see “Second Spanish Republic: 1931-1939”
Eadgyth
@geg6:
My thoughts exactly.
elm
What possible good could come from contributing to the NY Times and its shitshow?
Fuck them with a rusty rake.
Peter
@Elie: Honestly, Clinton should probably move to France or somewhere and run the Clinton Foundation from there. As of January, she is not safe in America.
As for working with Trump: insofar as ‘working with him’ means ‘keeping the government’s lights on and supporting anything he offers that will actually do some good’, sure. Let’s not follow in McConnell’s disgraceful footsteps. But the vigorous opposition is by far the more important of the two. Congressional democrats should use every single tool at their disposal to slow down, block, and otherwise oppose his agenda. For years now, we’ve been saying that Republicans would obliterate the filibuster in a second to get their agenda through: well, let’s make them do just that. Let them bear whatever political cost comes from dismantling these blockers, so Democrats can more freely get the country back on course when we finally manage to take Congress again. Between working with him on areas of mutual interest and opposing him in all else, the former must never impinge on the latter.
Patricia Kayden
@NR: Secretary Clinton won the popular vote so I’m not understanding your oft-repeated mantra that nobody liked her. She lost partly because some of the minority voters who would have voted for her couldn’t because of voter suppression tactics such as ID laws. She also lost because Trump was able to get out a maximum of the White poorly educated vote which wasn’t reflected in the polls.
Secretary Clinton is not a bad person. She wasn’t unqualified to be President. She didn’t lack the demeanor and character to be president. She shouldn’t be demonized because she lost this election. Just like President Carter shouldn’t be derided and demonized because he lost badly to Reagan in 1980. Ditto Gore and Kerry for losing Presidential elections.
I’m not sure what you’re expecting to get out of attacking Secretary Clinton. Many of us here voted for her and were proud of her candidacy. If you think that a Jewish, 74-year old Socialist would have beaten Trump, you must know something about the electorate that I don’t.
Genghis
@FlipYrWhig: FlipYrWhig says:
November 10, 2016 at 10:49 am
@Genghis: BTW, ask Glenn Greenwald how the saintly people of the white working class feel about drones, suspected terrorists, and their privacy.
He addresses racism in the article. On my current visit to Kentucky – and I am out in the state, not in a city – I have heard racist comments from dear friends, over the dinner table. I gently criticized and got an appropriate response of agreement. If all they do is watch their comments around me it’s a step in the right direction. My own racism has taken much of my life to consciously counter. It’s tough (at least for me) to overcome what you learned as a child.
So, on those issues you raise, expect it to take some time. Like, years. One step at a time…
Greenwald on racism is found under this heading in the article:
“2. That racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are pervasive in all sectors of America is indisputable from even a casual glance at its history, both distant and recent.”
I want to make a gentle suggestion – instead of looking for things you disagree with in the Greenwald article, look for something you agree with. It’s too easy to find something you don’t like (and can ideally disprove although that’s often optional) so you can then conclude it’s ok to ignore everything he says.
Thanks to all for your civil tone.
Best…H
Felonius Monk
@Betty Cracker: I asked @Genghis pretty much the same question and got no answer either. Maybe there isn’t one.
Corner Stone
@Genghis:
Up until the last couple years, I routinely had lunch with R friends of mine. Several of them purportedly Christian. We could, and would, discuss all kinds of political topics except abortion. That ended many a pleasant lunch so we stopped doing that.
Anyhoo, we would talk again and again. I would debunk their RWNJ talking points and after lunch send them factual backup about what we mentioned. You know what happened? Every 6 weeks or so the exact same RWNJ talking point would come out of their mouth. Like it was true. And they believed it. Again.
I did this for some amount of time and with a number of R’s. They smile politely, nod at your silly liberal facts and then go into the voting booth and pull the lever for the racist.
That is who they are.
Applejinx
@GrandJury:
Think about that for a moment. He doesn’t pander to anyone because he’s insane, totally narcissistic. He is literally becoming the most powerful man in the world, and he did it by rabble-rousing the Rust Belt manufacturing workers. The Republican establishment has not helped him at all and in fact has repeatedly tried to take the nomination from him, and I’m sure they would like to impeach him and just use Pence, and I think he probably knows that. He already makes everything personal and goes after his enemies, but I think far more of those enemies are on the Republican side of the aisle.
We should subvert him and Sanders-ize him, and watch the Republicans’ heads explode. He did, after all, defeat them first. And now they want to come around and tell him what to do?
This can be done through reverse psychology. Let’s fill all media with talk about how Pence is the real power and Trump is nothing but a puppet mouthpiece for the very Republicans that were trying to undermine him in the primary. He won’t be able to take that for two weeks. Even if Pence is utterly craven and subservient, Trump will still get rid of him if enough other people are claiming Pence is the power guy.
Trump could well be the Republicans’ worst nightmare. Remember those pictures of him hobnobbing with Hillary Clinton? And his sympathetic remarks about Bernie, who will never be an electoral threat to anybody again, outside of Vermont? Trump is a tabula rasa. There is no reason to assume he trusts or will work with Republicans just because ‘they are in control of three branches of government’. HE is in control and will hastily break them of that notion.
Everybody’s gonna be trying to sway this airhead. It’s gonna be strange.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@ArchTeryx: My thoughts are with you as well. The fuckers that think this is great have no understanding that real people whom if they knew them, they might actually like (since they look like the fuckers) will die, because all they can see if fucking over the people they hate, mostly because those people are different. The difference may be that they’re educated, or brown, or not Xian, or gay, but the key is the difference.
None of what I wrote is useful – or news – to anyone, but it’s therapeutic to write it.
JPL
I’m with Aaron Sorkin.. http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/aaron-sorkin-donald-trump-president-letter-daughter
Apologies if this has been linked to before.
Sufferin' Succotash
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Dump.
Aleta
from Charles Blow at NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/opinion/america-elects-a-bigot.html?_r=0
Major Major Major Major
@SgrAstar: I have family in Nebraska. Farmers. They’re nice people. They’re also democrats already. Coincidence?
Kay
Just imitating the President-elect and his followers.
Maybe Mr. Trump could gather his courage and ask his supporters to stop targeting people. God knows no one in the GOP leadership has the spine to do it. It’s Trump or nothing.
What an awesome movement he created. He must be proud.
NR
@Woodrowfan: It’s not about ideological purity, it’s about being able to get enough votes to win.
The establishment has shown it can’t do that. Maybe it’s time to start listening to the people who turned out to have been right all along?
Genghis
@Barbara:
Barbara says:
November 10, 2016 at 10:59 am
@Genghis: How do you move back home when you can’t make a living there?
I absolutely agree. Our solution was to buy a very inexpensive vacation home at a lake. This allowed us to visit family on a regular basis. I love it here – rural Kentucky is heaven on earth and indescribably good for the Los Angeles soul.
Fwiw, one friend calls LA “Hell with a beach and the water’s too cold”. A co-worker revised this to “Hell with a job”.
Best…H
Patricia Kayden
@Genghis:
So some of your closest friends just voted for a bigot and you expect us to be polite about that. When your friends start to cheerlead for Trump as he destroys the lives of our fellow Americans, then can we criticize them? Or are you okay with whatever your friends do because they’re your friends? I suppose Hitler and his supporters had friends like you too. Screw your close friends.
Poopyman
@D58826: Defense stocks have soared since the election. I wonder why?
Kathleen
OT. Hearing that downtown cincy in lockdown in anticipation of tensing verdict. my young aa coworker said community already angry about. trump and fear is city will explode. dubose family in protective custody. hgh schools in my neighborhood closed. I’m praying.
Daulnay
@Corner Stone:
Why not? We won’t give them what they want, but that’s because their concerns are unwarranted. We can try to address their concerns other ways, if we understand them.
FlipYrWhig
@Genghis: Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m not going to listen to a paranoid libertarian anarchist tut-tut me about the proper interpretation of class and race in the American heartland.
MomSense
@Genghis:
How do you explain that precincts in rustbelt states in which the employment numbers improved the most since 2010 went for Trump?
Look at Elkhart Indianna. The President literally saved them and WTF was their response?
Let’s stop trying to recast racism and misogyny as economic insecurity. For FSM sakes if we are ever to be successful or evolve as a nation we have to be honest. I think that for some whites we evolved way too fast with a black president, black people pushing back against the tyranny of the state (where the fuck are the tyranny tea party mother fuckers on police violence???) and demanding that their lives have full and equal value, women who want to be treated equally and have autonomy over their bodies, and LGBT people who want to live as full and equal citizens including the rights and responsibilities of marriage. They wanted us to go back to a time when we knew our place and it was beneath them. Take our country back and all the iterations of that have always been about white male supremacy and I am not going to play even the world’s tiniest violin for them.
Peter
@Daulnay: They won’t accept anything but total acquiescence. If we don’t give them what they want, they throw an eight-year tantrum. So, no, we can’t address their concerns.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay: Also, after that, we can try to woo evangelical Christians! I’m sure there’s a lot of common ground to be found.
Fuck all of them and let the Republican Party find ways to satisfy their longings.
gene108
@ChrisB:
All cool hipsters, who vote for Democrats, in Brooklyn, aren’t going to help in West Virginia and Kentucky. We’ll pile up votes in urban areas, but that doesn’t matter much, because American government is skewed to favor rural areas.
The demographic trend is overrated in terms of spelling doom for Republicans.
@Genghis:
White working class folks aren’t voting Republican because it helps them economically. If they voted their pocket books they’d never vote for Republicans. They are voting for Republicans, because Republicans promise to kick the ass of the urban folks – prosperous white liberals, blacks, immigrants, etc. – a good bit harder than they’ll kick a white working class folks.
Sure. This would be great, but how do Democrats get their message out? The biggest boost for the working poor, in generations, was Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. It has largely been ignored, at best, and the plan – overall – is considered a failure by most Americans.
Plus it takes a certain level of money to compete in politics. And who has the money to fund a political party? It ain’t the working class.
Edit; WTF more can Democrats to for working people? Obama saved the auto industry, and thus many jobs in the Midwest. Medicaid expansion has helped millions of working poor, even with Roberts’ ratfucking. If Medicare, Social Security, Family Leave, saving the auto industry etc. aren’t enough, what the hell is left to try?
Kay
@Aleta:
Also. He’s making no effort to reduce those fears. He’s appointing the guy who promoted FBI interference in the election on his behalf.
Trump has choices. If he wants to rehab his (earned) bad reputation he could do so. Instead he’s making it worse.
It’s really past time to start treating this 70 year old toddler as an accountable adult. He’s making absolutely no effort to be President of anything except his white supporters.
amygdala
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you for this. It’s very much how I’ve been feeling, but I also know i’m hypersensitive to it after getting retaliated against at work for calling out gender-based salary inequity. It’s validating to know someone not as raw about these things as I am sees it, too. In the early years of marriage equality I got asked a lot why I, a straight woman, cared about it so much. I said that I had lost too many patients to HIV/AIDS, isolated from their partners because our laws wouldn’t recognize relationships that lasted longer than the average straight marriage, not to care. And that maybe as that boring straight woman, someone who might not otherwise listen might actually do so. And failing that, at least my patients would know I had their back on this.
I like what Tim has laid out here. I have found myself spending more time keeping up with the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Columbia Journalism Review because we need a free press. The Guardian is doing this thing where you can just make donations, rather than subscribing. That might be a plan, until my annoyance at the NYT calms down.
For MomSense, geg6, and others who are thinking this is the last straw, well, then it falls to the rest of us to stand and fight. It is completely understandable how this is too much for people who have been struggling so hard for far too long. We support and protect each other as best we can, and those of us who are able to do more, we go do it.
The thing we have over Trump is compassion. Mine is hiding under the bed right now, but I know it’ll find its way out fairly soon. In the meantime, I’m surrounding myself with people who keep me in touch with my better angels and try to return to favor to them. My heart broke watching the young women at Hillary’s speech so distraught. We help them grieve, invite them to join us, and we keep going. Churchill said it best: when you’re going through hell, keep going.
D58826
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: And I seem to remember a good bit of ‘good riddance to bad trash’ from some of the BJ’ers, esp the Bernie Bros.
As for thew missing 10 million voters, why would they need a messiah to tell them that Trump was a disaster?
As to the ‘it would be different if Bernie had been the nominee, baloney. Jane and Burlington college would have been his e-mails and his 1979 support for the Iran hostage takers his Benghazi. Comments 136 and 157 described a mind set that exists in much of the America that you say Hillary/DNC didn’t listen to. Well I don’t think those folks were going to pay one lick of attention to an avowed socialist. The cold war may be over but millions of Americans think socialism=communism=stalin.
Look at how much hay the GOP made out of the claim that Obamacare is socialized medicine. And the irony is they also criticized Obama for the failures of the VA (many of which are legit) which really and truly is socialized medicine
NR
@FlipYrWhig: After they had cleared the primary field for her and ensured that her only competition would be a 74 year old socialist who nonetheless got way more support than anyone ever expected him to. Fuck off yourself.
elm
@Daulnay:
You speak as if we do not understand them, but we understand them.
They hate brown people, black people, non-Christian people.
That is their concern.
Their concern is that we do not exalt White Supremacy as the highest calling in the land.
Those are their concerns. They do not see us as human. There is no means to address that, only resistance.
Gretchen
Here in Kansas, we were devastated when Brownback and his cronies won reelection in 2014. But they owned the damage, and people contested every seat and we got a lot more Dems and moderates in, and retained all the judges that he was trying to unseat so he could install his flunkies. Even a red state can make progress if people care. We really need the 50 state strategy re-instated.
gex
@Shalimar: Yep. This. What I posted the day after the election:
ArchTeryx
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Ignorance or malice, it’s all the same going down.
I’d say welcome to the wake. My keyboard diarrhea isn’t any more informative (even if I’ve finally dusted off some of my old profanity that I thought lost forever) but it is therapeutic to cry into the wilderness once in a while, whether anyone hears the tree falling or not.
oldgold
The analysis of the vote is just effing astounding. I need to question every damn thing I thought I knew about this election.
It looks like 30% of Latinos voted for Trump. Several points higher than for Romney.
In some ways worse, Trump got 42% of the women’s vote. McCain in ’08 got 43%. Romney in ’12 got 44% Running against a woman this “pussy grabber” lost only 1 or 2 % of the women’s vote. Just crazy!
Poopyman
@Corner Stone: In my perfect world inside my beautiful mind, every journalist would start out with the same question: “What are your financial ties to Russia?” And then dig for the whole story.
MomSense
@Elie:
Wasn’t there a letter she wrote to Comey saying that he had outed her? I may be confusing her with another of the alleged victims.
Also, too the poor woman is saying that one of the threats was to disappear her like they had with her 12 year old friend. Think about that for a second.
JPL
@Kathleen: I didn’t follow the trial, but I assumed it would be easy to convict based on the amount of evidence.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: THIS BITTERLY CONTESTED MONTHS LONG PRIMARY ELECTION WASNT CONTESTED ENOUGH
Peter
@gene108:
Until the boomers start dying off in droves. That is going to cause some serious seismic activity.
Miss Bianca
I’m finding comfort this morning in some sick humor a fine upstanding member of our BJ community shared with me:
At this point, if a clown invited me to go into the woods, I would just go.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@WereBear: Already thinking in those terms. Seriously considering getting out of US debt entirely, down to the savings bonds I still have. I don’t trust that they’ll be worth the paper they’re printed on.
elm
@Peter:
That will not necessarily be good seismic activity. Young Nazis have shown themselves as a serious force in US politics. That should frighten you.
NR
@elm: Trump got a higher percentage of the black and Hispanic vote than Mitt Romney did, but hey, don’t let facts interfere with your narrative.
Eadgyth
@FlipYrWhig:
I love you. Every post in this thread. Have to tell you that after reading this one:
Steve Crickmore
The Democrats chose the most Establishment, inside candidate possible. Probably the only Democrat candidate who could have lost to Donald Trump was Hillary Clinton. Voters wanted change and the Democrats gave them Hillary, the ultimate insider. It wasn’t the press that blew her candidacy open, it was wikileaks.
gene108
@Kay:
But that’s largely how Republicans have been winning. I grew up in NC. Jesse Helms was a master of this. He won elections with 50%+1 of the vote, but that was enough to keep him in office for decades. He froze out groups that didn’t support him.
The rest of the Republicans have adopted Helms’ playbook.
Kryptik
@Steve Crickmore:
Casting Trump as some maverick outsider while he’s surrounded by the GOP’s greatest hits of the 90s and 00s is hagiographic bullshit.
Patricia Kayden
@oldgold: 93% of Black women voted for Secretary Clinton while 53% of White women voted for Trump. Astonishing that so many White women were okay with a misogynist but I suppose they don’t care about the women who will be harmed by his anti-contraception, anti-abortion policies because Jesus or other reasons.
geg6
@Genghis:
And you throw around Scott Adams as someone worth listening to? Are you for fucking real? I’m to take the advice of the king of the MRAs? Fuck!
I’m not taking your advice or that of the likes of Greenwald or Adams. Jesus. You are one sick bastard.
Barbara
@Genghis: My husband already has a family farm but NOBODY in his family lives there full time and most of the people who actually do live in the county are African American. But then, we all know that they don’t count when we start thinking about “red” America, especially the South. This subject just exhausts me. The perception that rural white Americans are being left behind may be true but it’s not because of other ethnic groups it’s because the economy has fundamentally changed, and quite understandably, they love the places where they live and they resent the notion that they need to leave to fit into that economy. I have a 1000 doses of sympathy and all I ask in return is an acknowledgement that the fundamental issue here is not the fault of African Americans, Hispanics, Teh Gays, or Move Aways like me.
Major Major Major Major
@Gretchen: there was a diary at kos’s place talking about the stuff Dems did in Kansas in recent years. I don’t have it handy but it was a good read, in what can actually be done in a place with limited resources and a lot of awful people. Not every R voter is a deplorable, some just feel lost and unheard.
Genghis
@Felonius Monk:
Felonius Monk says:
November 10, 2016 at 11:02 am
@Betty Cracker: I asked @Genghis pretty much the same question and got no answer either. Maybe there isn’t one.
I’m trying to keep up, wish the threads were set up in a hierarchy. I will need to leave the discussion after this, have to achieve something today. (It’s a working break.)
Anyway, whether Greenwald understands rural Americans better than any of us is beside the point imo. Let’s just say he has no idea. But he is correct (imo) in pointing out that Democrats have ignored their concerns for too long.
Again, I want to gently suggest that you all read every critical article you can (there are several linked in the Greenwald piece) and look for what you agree with rather than the flaws. There will always be flaws and inconsistencies, but they do not justify rejecting everything that is said. Personal distaste for any of the messengers doesn’t meant they are always wrong, or right.
And try to take note of your own perspectives. It is a wrenching experience to leave the Los Angeles *bubble* to come to the rural Kentucky bubble – I arrive here with one set of values that in several ways simply don’t apply. Returning home, the opposite happens. While it is wrenching, I treasure the experience every time.
Have a great day and thanks for chatting. Best…H
MomSense
@D58826:
They were asking for IDs and refusing people. Lots of articles about it.
Phylllis
@Betty Cracker: I”m the opposite. I’ve eaten everything that hasn’t outrun me. Unfortunately, that’s one of my ‘Up next, your old friend clinical depression’ warning signs. I’ve been fine the last few years with only the occasional mild anti-anxiety drug, but I think I may have to go back on something for preventative measures.
Peter
@elm: Young white people are no more or less racist than their parents. The good news is, there are a lot fewer of them.The alt-right shitheads are monstrous, but they don’t actually move that many votes.
Millennial voters overwhelmingly rejected Trump. Until other evidence presents itself, I will continue to be optimistic about the longterm future.
elm
@NR: I’m glad you’ve accounted for post-VRA-nullification vote suppression and controlled for gender.
White people made Trump President. Don’t go blaming ethnic groups that rejected him as a whole.
gene108
@Steve Crickmore:
Everybody lost to Trump.
Maybe Trump’s just one of those super gifted politicians, who somehow keeps on winning, when no one expects him to.
At some point, it’s worth looking at where Trump succeeded and why, rather than saying Hillary failed, as if Trump had no agency in the matter.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay:
Giuliani will also reinstate the stop and frisk policy on a national level. Think about what that will mean for millions of Black and Brown men whom the police will have carte blanche to harass. Police – Black community relations are about to get so much more ugly.
geg6
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
You obviously don’t know any actual Rust Belt workers. “Liberal” does not mean anything like government guaranteed job security. It means “ni**er lover.” Period. There is no other meaning to them.
Kryptik
@Peter:
How many of those millenials will be actually allowed to vote come 4 years from now? Hell, 2 years from now?
Demographics will not save us if the demographics get locked out.
MomSense
@Genghis:
How have Democrats ignored their concerns? The stimulus, fucking auto bailout and health care reform helped them directly, massively. This is just absolute horse shit.
FDRLincoln
I called my congressman and senators today (all Republicans) and expressed my fears about ACA repeal, with personal examples, as well as worries about the cabinet and the Ryan budget.
All three staffers I spoke with were respectful, but subdued.
Call them. Be calm but firm. They don’t have to listen to us, but if they don’t listen, it is on them.
elm
@Peter: Now that Trump has demonstrated how naked racism and misogyny is the path to political power in the US, I expect a change in attitudes of young people. The future is not necessarily bright.
Linnaeus
I would add to Tim’s list: join your local party (if you haven’t already). Maybe not now, because I can understand why folks don’t want to think about politics right now, but soon. The Republicans wasted almost no time opposing Obama after the 2008 election. Take a page from them.
Felonius Monk
@NR:
Oh please, Wise One, enlighten us about this large and vigorous Primary Field that was laid low for Hillary. Names, please.
waysel
@D58826: Thanks, James Comey.
Hill Dweller
@Kryptik: It also ignores Obama’s popularity. If possible, he would have wiped the floor with Trump(or any Republican), and likely regained Democratic control of the Senate. I don’t buy this “change” bullshit.
Daulnay
@DesertFriar:
They got ignored by the Democrats, and turned to Trump. The handwriting was on the wall in 2012 — look at Pew’s analysis of the electorate then:
Hard-Pressed Skeptics
This group was solidly with Obama in 2008, and helped him in 2012. They were the only unpolarized group after the 2012 election (aside from the totally disengaged non-voters). Trump appealed directly to their beliefs with his anti-immigrant, our best years are behind us, anti-trade, concentrate on the problems at home message. They swung Republican and turned out, because he listened to them and gave them hope. The Democrats offered the ACA but nothing else. The traditional Republicans offered them only the anti-immigrant hatred. The Trumpenfuhrer offered them everything. Political polarization kept the other Republicans mostly in line, and math did the rest.
negative 1
@geg6: Obviously plenty of Trump supporters are racist and only voted for him as a result of that, but what then explains how Clinton did worse among whites in areas that supported Obama? https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/796243185739632640
Corner Stone
@Steve Crickmore: CHANGE ELECTION!! CHANGE!!
gene108
@Peter:
My point is, even if boomers die off, how will it help in Kentucky or West Virginia or other places, where Democrats still need to win, but lose by 30% or more of the vote?
That margin is not just made up of old people voting that will magically reverse, once they die.
Eadgyth
@hovercraft:
This is the first thing I’ve read that has taken me out of a purely negative head space. Thank you.
Your metaphors work great for me.
sam
Thanks for this thread. I may try to lurk less around here too. Here’s what I do…
I have a pass-through subscription to the NY Times – something not everyone may be aware of, but most newspapers let you legitimately add a second user to your account. I assume it’s meant mostly for people with paper subs to let spousal units add each other, but my dad is a luddite so my stepmom added me as her “second” with her “real paper” subscription.
I finally subscribed to the Washington Post this year, largely because I kept hitting the paywall with trying to read articles by folks like David Fahrenthold – it was worth it – I gave my “second” account pass to my brother, who really loves it as well. (although I’ve periodically sent them notes threatening to cancel when Chris Cilizza writes something particularly asinine – having a subscription also gives you the ability to write them nasty notes saying things like that)
Donations – my employer matches donations to charities, up to a certain amount, but we also have a big “giving campaign” every september, so I try to make all of my big donations that month so they get counted towards the fundraising goal. My list of “every year” charities includes Planned Parenthood (not just for the politics, but because they provided me with basic, inexpensive healthcare when I was younger and I want to pay them back now that I earn real money), the International Rescue Committee (my brother is an education coordinator for Syrian Refugees for the IRC – he just finished an assignment in Turkey overseeing an education and child welfare team in Aleppo – yes, THAT Aleppo), and Doctors without Borders (my brother has instructed me that I’m not allowed to give money to the IRC unless I give money to MSF – because he sees them on the ground every day).
I’m going to add the ACLU to my list this week.
(and on photography, my name links to my website, which is all pictures. I’m going to do more of that and less twitter for the time being – some emotional wellness)
D58826
@MomSense: The letter/Comey was about the 15 year old that Weiner was sexting. The 13 ear old rape victim was about Trump.
FlipYrWhig
@Eadgyth: Thanks, I’m in a bad mood today.
Peter
@elm: Young people are not elected politicians. Electoral success does not drive people’s attitudes directly like that.
Maybe you’re right, but there’s no evidence for it, and I don’t have time for baseless pessimism. Too much to do in the meantime.
Kryptik
@Hill Dweller:
I also don’t buy the ‘change’ argument when a lot of the longest suffering red states just returned their do-nothing shitheels to Congress by overwhelming margins.
The idea that this was for vague ‘change’ is bullshit. This was an election for regression.
elm
@negative 1: Misogyny.
Kay
Maybe Trump could give a speech where he promises not to take revenge on his political enemies- half the country.
That would be a grown-up thing to do. Just remember: from here on out Mr. Trump is 100% responsible for his actions or inactions.
Congress won’t hold him accountable and media won’t hold him accountable,but we can. This whole effort to ignore and explain away what giant toddler-man bellowed during his 4 year Presidential campaign can’t be let stand.
People make choices. He’s choosing to ignore that half the country are afraid he’s an unhinged lunatic.
elm
@Peter: They’re not politicians, they’re potential brownshirts. Trump’s America will have plenty of unemployed uneducated shiftless white youth looking to blame their problems on somebody else.
Ian
@Brachiator:
From the article
That is Greenwald. Describing other people.
Corner Stone
@Daulnay: I was quoting something JMG said there. BWTS, we can not address their racial and social concerns. To do that makes women second class citizens, not full human beings. It makes people of color second class citizens, not full human beings. It makes people who love someone fear to be open and true to themselves.
You posit the question of “why” we can’t listen to their concerns so we can understand them, even if we do not move forward in giving them what they want.
We do understand them. I am not for giving them what they clearly want.
Barbara
@Daulnay: Look, Trump’s numbers did not go up. The Democratic candidates — Clinton’s — went down. It is very important not to overthink this, as Moar says.
Peter
@elm: Your comments are becoming more and more disjointed.
JPL
@Kathleen: If you hear that the jury has reached a verdict, please let us know.
O. Felix Culpa
My dear 30-something-year-old lawyer son is devastated by this election and terrified for the vulnerable in our society, for his generation, for himself, and for me, his newly-married mom in a same-sex union. He’s also worried about the rule of law and the legitimacy of our institutions. I’m deeply touched by his compassion and share his fears.
At the same time, I’m trying to help both of us not yield to our fears. For now, I’m taking walks and catching up on paperwork that was neglected during the campaign. I’ve suggested that he take long bike rides and go see Dr. Strange. Then we – personally and collectively – need to figure out what to do next to care for and protect one another and what we hold dear in our society.
Linnaeus
Since we’re all venting, here’s one for you all:
A Facebook acquaintance of mine, who was once a grad school colleague, wrote a post yesterday that was the most laughable exercise in self-justification of his choice to vote for Trump that I’d ever seen. He was “undecided” until the third debate, when Clinton’s statements about guns and gun control convinced him that she was a liar and wouldn’t protect the Constitution (paraphrasing here). He went on to say that, of course, he still supported BLM, LGBT people, etc. etc.
Bullshit, you say? That was my reaction.
Some kind of uneducated redneck? This guy has a Ph.D. In History.
The rot runs deep.
chopper
@schrodinger’s cat:
exactly. the media beat that dead horse until it was just a red stain on the pavement. they reported on the goddamn emails more than everything else combined. or those who think bernie would have been better, it would have been the same for him over some other story.
i guess maybe, just maybe, when someday chuck todd is dragged off to the gulag for insufficient fealty to trump he might stop and have a short moment of clarity as to his and every other media jackhole’s part in all this, but somehow i doubt even that will happen.
Genghis
@geg6:
geg6 says:
November 10, 2016 at 11:19 am
@Genghis:
And you throw around Scott Adams as someone worth listening to? Are you for fucking real? I’m to take the advice of the king of the MRAs? Fuck!
I’m not taking your advice or that of the likes of Greenwald or Adams. Jesus. You are one sick bastard.
And this is how you expect to convince anyone to listen to you? Ad hominem, personal insults, no attempt at reasoning? News flash – you lost the election. Want to do something about it? Great, but the approach you have chosen is worthless and will only extend your time in the wilderness that began yesterday. Insulting me changes nothing and diminishes your own voice in the process.
Attention John Cole.
This is where Balloon Juice needs to grow up, or not. I respectfully ask that this comment (and my response if you like) be removed from the thread. Readers who don’t appreciate this sort of treatment have left for months at a time, myself included.
There are plenty of options for reasoned discourse, free of invective.
Best…H
Betty Cracker
@NR: That’s pretty rich coming from you. From what I’ve seen, 100% of your pre-election contributions to this blog consisted of “Hillary sucks” (after the nomination was over, mind you — relitigate much?), and 100% of your post-election contributions consist of “I told you so.” Whatever. I’ve got no time for your silly ass. Do your end-zone dance and fuck off as usual.
Kay
I’ll also be interested to see if media treat the Trump protesters with the fawning awe they treated the Tea Party protesters.
They won’t, because they believe it too: they believe the Tea party were “real Americans” and these people aren’t.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@D58826: Hells, they took the time to lay groundwork matching Clinton up with International Bankers *winkwink* before unloading the blood libel on her. They’d have started with Bernie on the first day.
Peter
@Genghis:
You haven’t been here long, have you?
Kryptik
@Corner Stone:
Dems have repeatedly had answers for the economic sources of their concerns. Most of them had a pissy fit over not being catered to specifically, as working whites. and instead having to share the space with the rest of the working class.
They don’t want their concerns addressed. They want them addressed in a way that ensures they and they alone get the step up, and everyone else can go suck on a shit-flavored jawbreaker. That’s why we can’t address their concerns, because they’re intrinsically interwoven with all those racial and social resentments.
elm
@Peter: Then I’ll wait until the evidence appears.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
Barbara, I think I missed you in the other thread, but even though Pennsylvania was not supposed to enforce their voter ID law while it was going through the courts, there are widespread reports that pollworkers did it anyway. So, unfortunately, we do have to add PA to the list of states where Republican voter suppression in the form of a restrictive voter ID law was implemented and worked for them.
robert thompson
@MomSense: I am replying to your opening comment on this thread. I can’t say where relief to those millions to whom the repeal of the ACA is, really is, a matter of life and death, will come. You are a treasure on this site. I really believe everyone here will assist you in anyway they can. You also have an open invitation to California.
Corner Stone
@Genghis:
I think this is very instructive on why you are arguing the position you are. Values aren’t something you turn off and on. Call them opinions, maybe. But values, to mean anything, have to actually hold up under stress and change. Not just when they make your friends feel good.
chopper
@Barbara:
yep. trump didn’t even get as many votes as the loser in the last two elections. even mccain beat the guy popular vote-wise 8 years ago.
we lost because dems didn’t come out to vote. for various reasons, but that’s basically all of it.
NR
@elm: The point is that the “It was all just white supremacy” argument doesn’t fly when you consider the fact that a significant number of non-white voters flipped from Obama to Trump. Unless they’re all just white supremacists too?
Barbara
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for letting me know. I did not know that. So frustrating.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: it won’t. Some places are fucked.
Betty Cracker
@Genghis: I’m not Cole, but I’ve got administrative powers, so I’ll respond to your suggestion to censor geg’s comment: If you can’t stand the heat, you are cordially invited to depart from the kitchen. You mentioned that there are plenty of options for reasoned discourse, free of invective. I suggest you take advantage of them forthwith. Now, good day, sir. I said good day!
D58826
@MomSense: If they were, and in red areas of the state I don’t doubt it, they were breaking the law. That’s why I made the distinction between state and local. Outside of the big urban areas Pa. may as well be Alabama. The KKK had a big presence in Chester county well into the 1930’s. Even in Philly Frank Rizzo’s basic appeal was to white people. Eventually the AA sections of the city and a few liberal areas pushed the democratic totals over 50% but the racial hatred is still there.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay: OK, I thought that Pew thing about “Hard-Pressed Skeptics” was interesting and shared it with at least one person who thought it rang true. But I feel like part of what’s happening is that things like Black Lives Matter and the media coverage of police-involved shootings have also had a cumulative negative effect on the minds and sentiments of the “Hard-Pressed Skeptics.” So it’s not like they are or aren’t racist in a simple continuous way that predates Obama, hence having voted for Obama means they were never racists; it’s that–or at least this is my hunch–a lot of the “Hard-Pressed” people who liked the promise and symbolism of Barack Obama, individual in a black body, have grown over time to no longer like the way that black people, LGBT people, Spanish-speaking immigrants, etc., are so visible and seemingly demanding, with protest movements and political correctness, while “people like them” are just slogging through with their heads down and nobody cares. If I’m right, it means that group’s views on race and diversity and inclusion have worsened under the period of Obama’s presidency.
Peter
@NR:
I briefly considered explaining basic statistics to you, but then decided it was a waste of effort, just as you are a waste of air.
Kay
The ludicrousness of this situation just kills me.
Donald Trump and his family will be moving into the White House and running the federal government and they don’t pay federal income taxes.
First President in modern history. They don’t pay for any of it. They’re special snowflakes and it’s our job to pay the bills and they suck up the perks.
negative 1
@elm: Even if they’re women? The voting patterns of whites pretty much held across gender lines.
Steve Crickmore
@Kryptik: I’m not supporting Trump, far from it. Sure ‘Make America Great Again’ comes from an old Reagan campaign button. Even Bill Clinton used it in the 92 election. Wikileaks for one, exposed that journalist hacks contrived with the DNC to cheat Sanders, which is why a lot of progressives were turned off by Clinton and didn’t come out to vote for her. Those journalists and the DNC may have caused President Trump to win.
cosima
@MomSense: I tried very hard not to cry when I went to bed at 3 a.m. (UK time) with a feeling of dread in my heart for the US. I woke a couple of hours later and it was official, and I still did not cry. I did not cry when my daughter could not stop crying (because I had to be strong for her). Now I am crying.
It’s not that I didn’t understand — everyone here at BJ understands the importance of the ACA. My own daughter is covered thanks to the ACA.
Your story is heartbreaking, and my heart is hurting with you and for you. I am hopeful that those horrible people will soon find that repealing the ACA is not simple enough for their reptilian brains to manage, and that they will kick the can down the road until we’ve been able to get them the hell out of there. I am thinking of you.
Patricia Kayden
Mike Pence is scarier than Trump and will probably be in charge.
Emma
@Genghis: Really? The people who voted to strip healthcare from their fellow citizens? I’m supposed to respect and support them?
I read the articles that came out about the election for governor. You know who I remember best? The woman who voted against HER OWN healthcare because her cousin was on disability and “he doesn’t deserve it. Maybe this will get him off his ass and looking for a job.”
It’s on you to fix your state first. Good luck.
Timurid
@Genghis:
You’re mighty thin-skinned for a Great Khan…
Genghis
Betty Cracker says:
November 10, 2016 at 11:36 am
@Genghis: I’m not Cole, but I’ve got administrative powers, so I’ll respond to your suggestion to censor geg’s comment: If you can’t stand the heat, you are cordially invited to depart from the kitchen. You mentioned that there are plenty of options for reasoned discourse, free of invective. I suggest you take advantage of them forthwith. Now, good day, sir. I said good day!
Yes, I’ve been here before, and I understand your mindset and your thin skin as well. Interesting that calls for civility are so irritating, sorry if I raised a rash. As I said, this is a good time Balloon Juice to grow up, or not. Have a great day.
Best…H
schrodinger's cat
@Elie: We are no longer in a functioning democracy, our tactics need to change.
elm
@negative 1: Women can be misogynists.
geg6
@Genghis:
Oh honey, there’s your mistake right there. You think I’m trying to convince you to listen to me. I’m not. I’m deliberately calling you names because you are an idiot. To throw Scott Adams’ name around as a pundit we should all be listening to is the very height of idiocy. Especially when talking to a woman. Scott Adams is a woman hater and MRA. He has nothing to say to me at all. He has nothing to say that is valuable to anyone other than his fellow travelers. Of which you, apparently, are one. Go back to your fucking hellhole in Kentucky.
waysel
@Woodrowfan: I am with you on this. I believe they will gut all constitutional protections and remedies, across the board, and they’ll do it quickly. And quietly, while the press chases shiny objects.
geg6
@Genghis:
Holy shit. I didn’t even read that whole comment. What a fucking whiny ass white boy. Please…email John Cole about me. He especially like his emails in ALL CAPS.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Kay: ah, but the new first-lady (notice the lowercase?) is all about ending “online bullying.”
Not so much the in person bullying, though.
Kryptik
@elm:
Ann Coulter and the late Phyllis Schlafly, for starters.
Patricia Kayden
@Steve Crickmore: 89% of Democrats voted for Secretary Clinton. 90% of Republicans voted for Trump. I’m not sure why you keep saying that our side didn’t rally around her because we did.
Peale
Well the Good News is that the Clintons are out and since they aren’t going to be seeking office again, we don’t actually have to deal with her issues any longer. I wish people, though, would stop talking about the WWC as if it is some kind of racist hellhole and and that the ones that are are the ones that we’re talking about appealing to. I really doubt that anyone is going to accept Anti-Abortion Extemist David Duke wannabe in the Democratic Presidential Primary in 2020 in hopes that those voters who went to Romney, McCain and now Trump are going to turn things around for us.
I will put it nicely. The vast majority of the people who voted for Trump are republican voters who have been voting Republican for a long time. So that’s not really who we are talking about when we talk about expanding. Unless the Democrats suddenly do a 180 on abortion and gay marriage, are willing to take huge losses for a few cycles as they get abandoned by people who are currently voting for them while waiting for some reachable republicans to catch on, I don’t think we have to worry about that. The value of those WWC voters who voted for Trump is that they vote but I don’t think we are going to be able to spend a lot of time trying to attract them be without blowing up the party and the Democrats do actually try to survive.
However, it does appear that the compromises the Democratic establishment made with Republicans and the compromises that they made with Wall Street to raise money in the 1990s and avoid complete electoral annihilation have come back to haunt the Democrats in a big way. Those compromises might be driving away voters. Those 9 million voters who came out for Obama in 2008 but didn’t turn out for Hillary didn’t actually go over to Trump (some, maybe) or start voting republican. They simply stopped voting. I doubt that those potential voters are stewing in a big pile of racist poo. Maybe some are, but maybe there are substantial numbers of them who just aren’t going to buy that they need to vote for the Wall Street wing of the party. There’s lots of voters in that 9 million and they aren’t a uniform mass. I don’t know what the problem is trying to figure out what will get them voting again.
Sab
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): NOT the Columbus post dispatch. It saw reason for about one week this year. Normally it is a Republican rag. Has been for as long as I can remember (back to 1980)
Corner Stone
@Kay:
There are a couple
too manyblack people in these protests for them to be real Americans.ChrisB
@GrandJury: I agree with you. I hate Donald Trump and hate the campaign he ran even more for reasons that are obvious to us all. But he’s the ultimate BSer and he uses people only for so long as he needs them. He has more in common with Chuck Schumer than Mitch McConnell (faint praise, I know).
He’ll do some really awful and some really stupid things. He’ll be an embarrassment, though less so than we now expect, since he was a total embarrassment throughout his entire campaign. And his personal peccadilloes will remain.
But on some things he’ll be better than any real Republican.
MomSense
@cosima: @robert thompson:
Thank you both. Means the world to me to have the support and to try and support people here. Kisses and hugs to both of you.
Kathleen
@JPL: I pray that justice is served for dubose and s been his family. jury has been out for second day.
Patricia Kayden
@SgrAstar: Thank you!! I’m getting sick and tired of people defending Trump supporters by saying that they’re friends or family or nice people or kind people or whatever. No. If someone voted for Trump (I don’t care what color they are), he/she is an awful person who voted for a dangerous bigot. Period. Some of you may have to defend Trump supporters because they’re your family or friends but don’t expect us to play along.
chopper
@Genghis:
nothing says “internet hack” like using “ad hominem” as a noun.
Steve Crickmore
@Patricia Kayden: @Patricia Kayden: The turnout was less than 50% of eligible voters. Democrats didn’t come out to vote, at least not in enough numbers. The following thread talks about this. I wonder why?
mai naem mobile
@MomSense: I am sure you already have thought of this but can you go to Canada or Mexico for the medication? I don’t know where you live . Also, can you get a job that offers insurance?
chopper
@geg6:
if there’s one thing cole really worships it’s comity and civility. and yes, ALL CAPS.
Aleta
@Kay: That’s also the guy who laughed off Trump’s history of assaulting women. For decades, too many women to accurately count, very few of whom risked speaking out, and they are now threatened by the future head of government and his lawless followers.
Seriously, what Trump wants from the job:
to see his name in the headlines
to be saluted every time he walks
paintings of himself on walls forever
taxpayer-funded furnishings, parties, limos, planes, copters
The work he will graciously delegate.
Any time in meetings will be spent giving orders to fire those people.
D58826
@chopper: And we have to figure out those reasons. Hillary’s massive and expensive GOTV missed something.
@NR: . OK one last time. Who would you have put up?
1. The basic thing that has to be understood is there are not enough Bernie/Warren type social/economic progressives to win consistently in state and local elections, let alone a national one.
2. The second thing that has to be understood is the system, esp the US Senate, is structured in favor of the small, mostly rural and now red states. Ten small red states with a combined population not much greater than NYC send 20 senator to DC. The state of New York sends 2. Twenty small to middling red states with a combined population of Calif. send 40 to Calif. 2. Add one large red state and you have 42 senate votes to sustain a filibuster. End of story. End of progressive legislation. End of your Bernie dream
3. Warren is from progress MA, that frequently elects GOP governors (has one now) and on occasion a GOP senator Scott Brown anyone). Ten small red states with a combined population not much greater than NYC sends 20 senators top Washington
4. O’malley is from progressive Maryland which has a GOP governor.
5. Webb a warmed over republican who latched onto the democratic party out of convenience.
6. And then we come to Bernie. It’s true the DNC cleared the path for Hillary in 2013 but it certainly wasn’t with the idea to make her only opponent a 74 year old socialist. No one expected Bernie to run even as an independent or to make the impact that he did. And Bernie was a carpetbagger also, joining the democrats to use their campaign apparatus for his own benefit. And lastly the democrats have been clearing the field for Bernie in Vermont for years. Could they beaten him with a strong challenger – who knows but they didn’t try after he won his first couple of elections.
Patricia Kayden
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): Melania is married to a man who got up at 3:00 am to encourage his twitter followers to search out a (nonexistent) sex tape of a former beauty contestant because she supported his opponent. Yet Melania wants us to believe that she’s against cyber bullying? I can’t even laugh.
Kathleen
@JPL: will do. thx.
D58826
@Poopyman: and so apparently have the stocks of the private prison industry.
gogol's wife
@MomSense:
Your story is heartbreaking. I am praying that somehow the ACA gets saved.
FlipYrWhig
@Peale:
I really don’t think working-class people give a specific shit about Democrats and Wall Street. Their gripe is that Democrats and/or The Government, which seem to be one and the same, help everyone else but them, and “Wall Street” is a small subset of that much larger and more amorphous gripe. IOW, the people who complain about Democrats and Wall Street would, in the absence of Democratic ties to Wall Street, be complaining instead about Democrats and welfare, or Democrats and teachers’ unions, or something of that sort. The Wall Street thing is just additional evidence for something they already believe. Kind of like how “Hillary something something Benghazi” isn’t really about Americans dying in Benghazi but actually about how Democrats let terrorists literally get away with murder.
Omnes Omnibus
@Genghis: Populism can have some ugly sides. See the Trump campaign for some examples.
Busybody
I feel that the broadcast media deserves much blame for the current disaster.
If as much time had been spent on Trumpian scandals as on Clinton’s imaginary faults the election might have been saved. I respectfully suggest that everyone who voted for Hillary turn off all the television news programs (and I meant them all, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc.) for a while and let them know we’re doing it. The boycott of Rush L. has hurt him mightily. This might be a useful tool.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: Obviously Democrats should have run a young, attractive, charismatic person with unimpeachable left-progressive credentials, with experience but untainted by it, ideally a person of color or if not that entirely conversant and comfortable _with_ people of color, and with nothing in his or her past privately or publicly that could be exploited. Also, they should have grown that person in a test tube in 1981.
geg6
@FlipYrWhig:
This is exactly right. I had an argument this past summer with a fucking high school teacher/coach who was complaining about how unions only protect the lazy. Hope he’s happy in the new GOP world where there are no unions. Especially public sector unions. Stupid mother fucker.
bmoak
@ArchTeryx:
I just finished re-reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet for the first time in about 20 years (I bought the whole L’Engle series on Nook). Unfortunately, I finished reading it on Sunday, when I was still optimistic enough to consider it science fiction.
Aleta
Woke up convinced I cannot go on.
But will try to carry out Hillary’s platform (in an individual way. Small ways, but ‘each vote matters.’)
Aleta
@ArchTeryx: Thanks for this.
D58826
AQnd the ever insightful Bill Polman on Hillary’s baggage: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/98795-the-fatal-weight-of-the-clinton-baggage
I disagree with him that some of the items should have been baggage but they were. If it hadn’t been the e-mails it would have been Benghazi. If she hadn’t give the Goldman speeches the GOP would have made an issue out of the fact that Bill did not retire to a monastery after leaving office. One of the reasons I voted for Obama in 08 was I had hoped it would avoid the Clinton drama of the 90’s. Clinton fatigue was the term at the time. Obviously didn’t work out but seemed like a good idea at the time. Equally obvious that in a sane world the Clinton baggage is the equivalent of an overnight bag and the Trump baggage a container ship. But it’s not a sane world.
He is also right it’s time for the Clinton’s to graciously retire from the political stage as respected elder statesmen and continue to do the good work of the Clinton Foundation. Both are well respected enough internationally that can can continue to raise money for the various humanitarian efforts that the Foundation is engaged in.
WereBear
I am very happy to point out it is actually one quarter of the country. Sad to add that fully HALF were too apathetic (or suppressed) to vote.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: Hmm maybe they had such a candidate right in from of them only Michelle can’t wait to get out of the WH.
NoraLenderbee
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Buzz Windrip.
chopper
@D58826:
if the beltway media was able to spin the email bullshit into wall-to-wall coverage for 6 months, they would have done the same with anything at all from bernie’s past, or o’malley’s or really anybody else’s.
clinton ran a very good campaign but she was fighting on two fronts.
as long as we have the political media we have in this country, obama is basically the archetype of a winning democrat going forward. unfortunately that’s too high a bar. either that or we have to find someone with serious political talent but absolutely no past whatsoever.
texasboyshaun
Can I ask for some quick advice? I’m gay and live in Texas. My family down here will be ok (and we all voted for Hilz), except for my sister. She’s on disability and Medicaid, and I know Trump will cut those as soon as he can. I just got through my divorce so I really can’t afford to leave the country (plus would another country even let me bring my sister?) I used to live in CT so I know things are better in the blue states (well, as best as can be imagined under Orange Jell-O.) I have a BA and an entry-level position in higher ed, but very little financial resources for a move within the next year or so. Any suggestions? Sorry for the long comment.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Patricia Kayden: She also said that a female reporter who did a piece on her “provoked” people who threatened her- online.
She’s gonna be totally awesome. The first first-lady on the cover of Playboy. /s
D58826
Please Please make it stop. CNBC is reporting that Trump is considering Jamie Dimon for Sec. of Treasury. You know the CEO of Goldman. The banker that Hillary gave all of those boilerplate speeches for. I can’t even think of something snarky at this point. If someone had written up this election as a novel or sci-fi book, the publisher would have had that person committed.
D58826
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): Aren’t there some nekked photos out there from her illegal immigrant modeling days.?
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@D58826: yeah, but that doesn’t really matter. She could be on the cover with her legs wide open, that’s her choice.
She will bring nothing to the table, and will do nothing for women or children. She will stay in the White House with her son, like she has been through the campaign. Again, her choice. She can’t even vote without her husband looking over her shoulder.
Jonas
This is late in the thread, but maybe we work to get Foster Campbell elected in the Louisiana Senate runoff on Dec. 9. I don’t know if he has a chance, but I made a contribution to his campaign today.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Genghis:
Or a bullet through his head. Dallas, JFK, etc.
NoraLenderbee
@Betty Cracker:
This.
@FlipYrWhig:
This is exactly how I feel. Let them get exactly what they voted for again and again. Let them lose their federal benefits and depend on their right-wing state government and private charity for sustenance.
debit
@NoraLenderbee:
I’m looking forward to the reaction when everything promised them doesn’t happen. He unleashed the beast, and now must feed it or it will turn on him.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
They’re misogynists. They could not accept a woman as their leader. It’s mostly driven by evangelical Christianity, which preaches that it’s against God’s will for women to be in leadership positions over men.
We told you stupid fucks that misogyny exists and that a lot of the hatred for Hillary was due to sexism and misogyny, not her policies, but would you listen? No. And now you’re going to keep your heads up your asses and stay in denial because you refuse to examine your own visceral dislike for Hillary that stems from the fact that she is a woman.
Mnemosyne
@NoraLenderbee:
I’m in a similar argument with my cousin in Wisconsin. She voted for division and hatred, and now she’s shocked that there’s division and hatred! I keep pointing out, over and over again, that she chose this. Now we all have to live with the consequences of her choice.
The Lodger
@FlipYrWhig: The problem is, we can give them what they need, but we’ll never give them what they want,
geg6
@D58826:
I think they need to leave the country for their own safety myself. The Obamas, too. Perhaps just Hawaii is far enough for them, though.
Elie
@Poopyman:
We will be ramping up in Syria soon. Trump will be the neocon dream. We will again have our resources and attention focused on being the worlds cop
Applejinx
@D58826:
Hillary was talking to a Wall Streeter (forget the name, but ex-Goldman) who turned out to be an apostate. Guy’s been a longtime reformer. It’s possible that Dimon listened to Hillary’s likely moderation and is capable of averting catastrophe. You’d prefer Alex Jones or somebody?
Also, Trump got less Republican voters than either McCain or Romney.
Steve in the ATL
@D58826: he’s the CEO of JP Morgan, not Goldman, but in this situation it’s a meaningless distinction.
DesertFriar
@Daulnay:
2008 (McCain) 59,948,323
2012 (Romney) 60,933, 504
2016 (Trump) 59,229,191
2008 (Obama) 69,498,510
2102 (Obama) 65,915,795
2016 (Clinton) 59,413,445
Trump got about what both McCain and Romney got. Clinton got 10M less than Obama the 1st time. Those missing voters DID NOT go to Trump.
Maybe they were Raptured? Or maybe; just maybe, they were part of the “voter fraud” scheme by the Republicans to eliminate them from voting.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
So let it be written, so let it be done? I’m not throwing in the towel this soon or that easily.
SiubhanDuinne
@Genghis:
Heard earlier this evening that Howard Dean may be lobbying to return to his old job, head of the DNC.