Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton went on a hike today with their dogs in Chappaqua (h/t @MCappetta) pic.twitter.com/LZzblqWBMW
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) November 10, 2016
What’s on the agenda as we prepare to move forward, however difficult that might be?
.
Knowing what happened & why? Important. Being mad at person X or group Z? Distraction from preparing for catastrophe headed at our democracy
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 10, 2016
When you see hatred and racism, stare in it the face. It probably won't have the courage to look back. pic.twitter.com/px7zoGuoHD
— Jason (@coolmcjazz) November 10, 2016
Trump is entering office with the worst poll numbers of any new president ever. He's not going to get blind popular support.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) November 11, 2016
Turn off cable TV. Boycott it. Follow individual reporters and non-journalist analysts who have a track record of accuracy and perception. https://t.co/CdH937W3iA
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 10, 2016
EBT
No more empty seats for starters. Take over your local PTA, run for the boring hour a month alderman positions. Record everything, and never stop tying bigotry and racism to his administration. This is my Friday morning.
Elizabelle
Cable TV did this. How much unfettered airtime for Trump, and Hillary Emails Clinton was an afterthought.
Turn fucking cable TV off. MSNBC too, it’s not your friend. It did this.
Marcion
Take a look at the Donald’s Hundred Day Plan:
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/10/501597652/fact-check-donald-trumps-first-100-days-action-plan
The ban on lobbyists sounds like the only OK thing on there, and fat chance of that one getting anywhere in the GOP Congress. Everything else is a mix of disappointing to dystopian. For example, his pledge to cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities. Buckle up folks.
Baud
@Elizabelle: Agree. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.
Tokyokie
I stopped watching TV news long ago, but now I can’t even abide hearing it in the next room. My problem is seeing what nationally prominent Democrat could defeat Trump and lead this country forward in four years. Our big-state governors are Jerry Brown, who’s 78, and Andrew Cuomo, who’s a shit bag. Senator Professor Warren? I wonder whether the misogyny this election result revealed render any woman a nonviable candidate for the forseeable future.
Mustang Bobby
I have had the radio and TV off except for jazz and Netflix, so when I turn it on this morning I find out that the poet laureate of my generation, Leonard Cohen, is gone. We knew this was coming, but still, we cannot bear the loss of another.
Bruce K
It’s like 1968 but with no Apollo 8 to orbit the moon.
OzarkHillbilly
@Marcion: Lobbying is a constitutional right:
Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
JPL
Trump campaigned against lobbyists and Wall Street. Will MSM spend days reporting this, or will they continue with Jason Chavitz’s threat about emails? hmmm I’ll go with emails.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tokyokie: Obama came out of nowhere. Hopefully the next one is a mayor of San Antonio or a state legislator in MD or a….
evap
I’m trying to find information about the LA senate race, which has a runoff on Dec. 10. Is there any chance of mobilizing to get the Dem elected? I’m happy to donate $$ or make phone calls, but don’t want to do it if it’s a lost cause. Anybody from LA here?
dlm
I’m crying again. Hillary has more damn courage than 10,000 men. That picture of Obama and Trump speaks volumes. True courage and dignity vs. cowardice and ignorance. POS can’t look Obama in the eyes. Ugh. To think this disgusting low grade human organism is going to be the Commander In Chief of the United States of America.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: We know that he is going to go after the press, and we can assume that he will go after our right to peacefully protest. Of course, lobbyists will be protected, since he was one himself.
rikyrah
Morning Everyone???
Thor Heyerdahl
@evap: Dunkirk was a lost cause too (yeah I went there…)
Baud
@rikyrah: Morning. Still not good.
rikyrah
@dlm:
I hear you
Baud
@evap: They elected a Dem governor.
HeartlandLiberal
We turned off cable TV, in fact all broadcast TV but our local PBS station via digital broadcast signal, over four years ago. We get all news online from trusted sites, and all entertainment via a number of streaming channels. We watch TV from all over the world now.
During this election cycle I had the misfortune of being in homes and businesses a couple of times in which cable TV “news) (sic) was on. I honestly thought I would throw up. The noise. The rage. The meaningless recitation of lies. The yelling. The irrationality. The American people are awash with white noise from an infotainment conglomerate that is owned and controlled by the corporate oligarchy. They will get no truth or facts from the traditional media. None. In fact, they will get the opposite. They have been masterfully manipulated.
And now the march into totalitarianism and fascism begins in earnest. All you have to do is look at the few people already being floated for positions in a Trump administration. Did you know that one of their primary goals asap is to take control of Google search results, and control the flow of information? To totally end Net neutrality, so the corporate giants can choose what you see and do not see? Look around you at the outbreaks of violence against minorities. Look at the planned KKK rallies. Welcome to a dystopia you have not even begun to imagine. (P.S. the blog comment engine does not know the word dystopia, it just got underlined in red. Time to learn it.)
NotMax
Fascinating documentary found on Netflix: City 40.
About Ozersk, a closed (as in secretive, not shuttered) city devoted to nuclear production.
JPL
@HeartlandLiberal: The first major company that will be attacked is Amazon. It will take five minutes to load.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Just pointing out that every time one writes their congress critter, they are in fact ‘lobbying’. ‘Lobbyist’ became a one size fits all bad word, but the truth is Planned Parenthood employs lobbyists, the NAACP does too, so does the Sierra Club, etc etc etc. There is wiggle room in the regulations and what Trump and the Repubs do with it I am sure I won’t like, but banning lobbyists is not on the table.
They will just do as they have always done: Ignore the people they don’t like and take money from the ones they do like.
p.a.
3 thoughts
Don’t believe boycotts are usually effective, South Africa an exception, but what the hell: boycott tRump supporting businesses, and states with voter suppression laws.
I know the announced, long standing Rethug plan to undo Ocare, but, for all the good it’s done, it is also a big wet kiss to the insurance and medical industries (one of its main criticisms from the left as it was evolving.) Maybe they’ll have some input with politicians who are planning to turn off the spigot? I’m not too sanguine myself, these degenerates don’t care about their constituents, but they sure as hell care about $$$.
I’m just trying to find some hope in this situation (very contra my own usual psychology.)
Complacency? Low turnout due to sunny HRC polling pre-election? The Dems supposedly vaunted GOTV didn’t. Vote suppression doesn’t seem to explain it all.
Taylor
@OzarkHillbilly: Obama first came to prominence as a keynote at the 2004 DNC. Clinton at the 1988 DNC.
Gillebrand got a noticeable cheer at this year’s DNC, but I really don’t know much about her.
Whoever it is, will need to be a fighter.
Waldo
A) he’s not going to need it.
B) he proved the polls are rigged.
C) he’ll always be popular enough to draw a mob of enthusiastic admirers — and that’s all the support he needs.
OzarkHillbilly
@Taylor: Yep. As do all of us need to be.
Applejinx
@Tokyokie:
I don’t think so. Literally everyone I worked directly for all election long were young women (well, younger than me by at least a decade if not two) and they were all awesome. I think people should not jump to big conclusions about all Americans being super sexist and racist.
To my mind that is a convenient excuse to avoid placing any responsibility on Clinton people and Clinton herself, and it is just too high a price to pay. No, it’s not because she was a woman, and no, women are not doomed to be ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ subservient just because Clinton failed despite everything we could do.
I’d like to un-tie those arguments as quickly and assertively as possible. ‘A woman’ is perfectly, totally fine to run for office. So is ‘a liberal’. In New Hampshire we were arguing people into voting for Clinton when they wanted to write in Maggie Hassan (a woman) for Senator and leave the President slot blank. This is on the Clinton people and don’t let them tell you it means women can’t succeed. That’s a complete 180 on their previous message and it is not okay, not at all.
Baud
@p.a.: Voter suppression explains the battleground losses in the midwest, but not all of it.
On one hand, you could say it’s a steady decline from Obama’s 2008 high water mark. He got fewer votes in 2012. Maybe Obama was unique in his ability to bring out people.
The other thing is, I think our people are less resilient than GOP voters when it comes to ignoring media negativity and spin against our leaders. Maybe it’s because conservatives have their own media and we don’t.
NotMax
@p.a.
Targeted and on a smaller scale, can be very effective as was, for example, the grape boycott organized by Cesar Chavez in the 60s.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle:
I started my boycott last week, I’m a happier person.
rikyrah
What is the Dem plan, besides complaining, to get people the proper documentation in these voter ID states. That needs to be someone’s job at the DNC
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Any morning you’re here is a good morning, Baud.
BlueDWarrior
@evap: Yeah, I’m from Louisiana. I expect the State Party to give it ol’ college try since we did get Gov. Edwards (the other one) elected last year, but it’s going to be extremely tough sledding.
But screwy things happen in low-turnout elections, so maybe $20 can do some good; couldn’t hurt at least.
rikyrah
@Baud:
But, we need to take care of the voter suppression stuff so that we can take it off the table to clearly see other problems
WereBear
The Germans were complacent about their mistake. We seem to be learning from that example.
It is the people in the red states who elected Trump, and there is cosmic justice in the fact that they will also suffer the most. They depend on the federal money that comes from the blue states.
They just voted to turn off that spigot.
It gives our friends in the red states something concrete to point to. Maybe Trump voters cannot be moved by some abstract, but pointing out they just voted to starve their own children might do it.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Thanks, Bill. But I fear not even I can cover up the stench of this election.
NotMax
Had to flee from WoW earlier tonight before blood pressure spiked as the Trumpzoids were out in force, polluting the chat channel with a non-stop stream of half-truths, invective, outright lies and thinly veiled threats.
Baud
@rikyrah: Agree. The laws will be upheld now so we need to get everyone IDs ASAP.
JPL
@Baud: Democrats tend to run on policies, while the public is demanding buffoons. I know people who thought Sarah Palin was great. I just don’t know how you turn it around.
Next time the Duck Dynasty guy can run.
p.a.
@rikyrah: I made the same comment recently. Someone pointed out the closedown of registration/ i.d. entities in Indiana (state cop raid claiming fraud), and I believe closedowns in several other states along the same lines. Acorn was a registration/i.d. vehicle. Look what happened to it (them).
Tokyokie
I’ve been compiling a library of HD .mp4 files of movies in anticipation of the elimination of net neutrality. Streaming entertainment will become prohibitively expensive for effective bandwidth, and the telecoms will realize multibillion-dollar windfalls for doing exactly jack shit. Wonder if Trump’s supporters will notice who’s screwing them in the ass or whether they’ll blame the darkies.
BillinGlendaleCA
Happy Veterans Day to those BJ’ers who served.
JPL
The President-elect is tweeting
This was posted twenty one minutes ago
I assume they will take his phone away again
p.a.
@BillinGlendaleCA: seconded. Also too, Happy Armistice Day. War to end all wars…huh. 100 yrs ago this horrible year: Verdun, Somme
BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah:
Circular firing squad.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Thirded.
Kay
@Waldo:
I think I disagree. He already looks diminished and Republicans have been running on rage since 2008. They won big in 2010 and it didn’t diminish the anger on the Right one bit.
He’s a whiner, too. He’s already whining.
He has to go out and about as President and 50% of the country actively loathe him. The same was true for George W Bush. The thing that changed it was 9/11.
NotMax
@Tokyokie
Wouldn’t fret about that so much as it provides a key part of a policy centered on bread and circuses.
Elizabelle
@BillinGlendaleCA: We will all be much calmer and more resolute, away from cable. If enough of us do it, it will be noticed.
Went to that Quaker meeting last night, and the sitting in silence with a group of people was soothing. The Quakers had called the meeting at the last moment, when they realized how traumatized their community was by the election results.
When are you ever allowed silence in a public setting? Just about never. The idiot box and advertising fills up all the blank spaces.
Some businesses use cable news as background noise, and as a distraction from the wait. Maybe they should turn it off, so we can talk to each other, rather than riffing off whatever shit cable is throwing out in the background. It misinforms by what it chooses to emphasize, or ignore.
Cable normalized Trump. The repetition is the deadly part. Like desensitizing the jury in the Rodney King trial.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: This.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: I went in 50 years ago yesterday. This is the 5oth anniversary of my first day of basic at Ft. Campbell.
PaulWartenberg2016
How can we move forward when Trump and the Republicans are promising to move us back to 1850?
Baud
@Kay: I’m sure they are already in talks with ISIS.
Baud
@raven: Big anniversary of a major life milestone.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PaulWartenberg2016: Look at the bright side, many in his party want to move us back to 1350.
geg6
@Applejinx:
Bullshit. I am not blaming Hillary for anything. Fuck you and all your fellow travelers with your fucking irrational Clinton hate. I’m as sick and tired of assholes like you as I am the GOP. You aren’t my ally. And I suspect that no woman would ever get a pass from you and your ilk any more than she would from them.
Sick of this. Just sick of this crap, blaming the person who campaigned her heart out and who many of us love and admire for her fighting spirit. Fuck you sideways.
I have to take a break from BJ. These ghouls dancing on her and, it sure looks like, our grave. Someone email me when they are done with celebrating burning the witch.
raven
@Baud: Yea, if anyone you know thinks about it, tell them not go go in the military on their 17th birthday (unless the judge says to)!
NotMax
@raven
Drop and give us twenty, just for old time’s sake.
;)
JGabriel
@Tokyokie:
I don’t think so. Clinton won the popular vote. I suspect that if/when all the Congressional votes are counted and added up, we may find that Democrats won the popular vote for the House and Senate too.
There’s misogyny, sure, and all sorts of xenophobia. But we didn’t lose the presidential election because a plurality refused to vote for a woman – the plurality did vote for a woman. We lost for myriad reasons, but the final reason we lost is because of the antiquated electoral college system.
Kay
I don’t read any of the coverage of Hillary Clinton. They are incapable of covering Hillary Clinton fairly and there really has to be some limit to how long this country can make a cottage industry out of attacking this person.
They got what they wanted. The she-devil suffered a humiliating defeat. This ridiculous 30 year pile on should end.
I’m curious which individual Democratic leader will become the target of Right wing rage. I don’t know where they direct all this hatred without Obama or Clinton. Someone should step up as a buffer or they’ll start directing it at ordinary people.
Elizabeth Warren is my bet. We’ll start to see crazy books about her and false criminal allegations. I see a “scandal” in her future.
raven
@NotMax: I don’t think this shoulder will hack it. 20 laps maybe!
satby
Well, it is morning, that’s true. Hello everyone is what I’ll say instead.
I also heard people, reliably likely Republicans in this deep red state, openly starting to worry about the election results. I went to the bank yesterday and withdrew some money from the IRA from my mom, telling the banker it was because I could only look forward to about 20 days of coverage and I needed to get some stuff handled, and they were agog that I might even be worried “because group coverage is cheaper”. I pointed out that I don’t belong to any group and only have a part time job, and that as a low wage worker a subsidy from Obama care is what allowed me to afford insurance in the first place. I think the young guy I mostly talked to (didn’t like Trump, pretty sure he went libertarian) was surprised that a white, working person used the exchanges. And why wouldn’t he be, they only heard it was an expensive failure from the media they hear.
We need to tackle the propaganda problem in this country first. How do we get anywhere when basic reality is different for different groups?
Side note: any juicers going through tough times who might need a place to stay or live, I have some room. Must love animals ?
Stronger together!
Waldo
@Kay: I don’t agree, but I hope to Jebus you’re right.
Elizabelle
@geg6: I’m with you, geg. The Hillary disparagement is beneath this place. She did her best.
I think Bernie fatally wounded her, by attacking her and putting false and incomplete information out for his supporters. In retrospect, what stands out from going to that Bernie appearance months ago was the late 20s-something woman who told me that Hillary “had done nothing for women, and would not do anything for them in office.” I wondered how the hell she had come to that conclusion. Should have asked her. I was just stunned.
Big money? This was the first post-Citizens United campaign. And the first after the voting rights act was overturned. Those might have a lot to do with “lack of enthusiasm.”
Besides: emails! I still don’t get why that was a big thing.
JPL
Happy Veterans Day!
@satby: Yesterday there were so many stories about the ACA, and how it saved lives. It won’t help, but I’ll write my Senators.
Applejinx
@geg6:
Don’t you dare, Geg. I just told you that is bullshit. This is on Clinton, not ‘women’.
If I could go the rest of my life never voting for anyone who isn’t (a) female, (b) black or (c) both, that’s sounding really good right now when I look at what’s moving in to the Oval Office. Don’t you dare. My bias is actually in the other direction, which isn’t any more fair but I think it’s somewhat justified. This is on Clinton. You disgrace the women I worked my heart out for.
satby
@geg6: thank you.
And let’s not forget all those holier than thou progressives who repeated discredited right wing propaganda and subverted their own team. Which was B.S.
Elizabelle
@satby: Excited about your India trip! Are you all set with pet-sitting? And when do you return?
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Do what you have to do for your own peace of mind, but FWIW, I look forward to your comments and will miss you while you’re gone.
Morzer
The GOP have never had widespread popular support for their most cherished policies. That doesn’t seem to have stopped them. Protests didn’t stop Dubya – and Trump is on record as saying that the Chinese were right to slaughter the students at Tiananmen. Consider that he’s brought Kobach onto his transition team and ask yourselves why he would want a voting rights destroyer to be part of his future plans. Ask yourself where that purulent blend of fascists and racists and a would-be tyrant might be going, especially now that the hard right can achieve their dream of wrecking everything you care about and love simply because they hate you and intend to make sure that nothing stands in the way of a white, male Christian America being the only America on offer for the future. What stops Trump from mandating an extremely expensive voter ID as being a national prerequisite to participation in “democracy”? At some point, he’s going to have the Supreme Court packed enough to achieve that – and then how do you win elections against God’s Own Party, especially when white male militias are watching to make sure that people vote the “right” way?
Think it’s impossible? How much money would you like to stake on that confidence? How much money would you have bet against the possibility of Trump winning?
Above all, don’t start by assuming that the hard right will not be utterly ruthless in their crackpot pursuit of “God’s will”.
Kay
@Tokyokie:
It’s made me wary. Especially because everyone is denying it and it seemed pretty damn blatant to me.
I was talking to my son yesterday. He works in the building trades and he said his co-workers were upset about the election. I asked him if they voted for Clinton and he said “they say they did- come on, mom- you know they don’t want to vote for a woman”. He’s right. I do know that.
OzarkHillbilly
As one who is sick and tired of the blame game I want to say I don’t blame Hillary for the loss. I don’t blame the DNC. I don’t blame the volunteers or the donors. I don’t even blame the MSM.
I blame the unreconstructed assholes who voted for Trump and all the lazy fucks who sat on their asses Tuesday because they just couldn’t bear voting for someone they didn’t like/want to have a beer with/promise the right magic ponies/make shivers run up and down their legs..
There are plenty of reasons for why we lost this election and much we can improve on (somebody smarter than I will have to figure that out) and will have to do the next time around, but I know what I believe in and am willing to fight for and the fact of the matter is a rather large minority of Americans disagrees with me and another much smaller minority takes these things for granted. The choice was clear and yet so many chose to vote for a racist misogynistic shitgibbon and so many others couldn’t be bothered. That is not my, yours, or our fault. It is theirs and we are all fucked because of it.
And every time they complain I will say “You asked for it.”
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Agree. I also blame Comey. It’s clear he did just enough damage to swing this thing.
Tokyokie
@Applejinx: @Applejinx: I hope you’re right. And although the Clintons themselves deserve most of the blame, and most of that is for the apparent lack of enthusiasm that killed turnout. But I can’t help but feel that misogyny (as well as racism) was a major driver for the other side.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I read just enough of the Hillary coverage in the NY Times to decide it was off the rails. I hope they lose subscribers, big time, over this. And they are told why. Tell the publisher and editor. The ombudsman/public editor is a Village on steroids. Don’t bother there.
This is as bad as Judith Miller. You could see it happening, in real time.
Elizabelle
@Baud: And Comey keeps his job. Because who wants Trump or Giuliani making a ten year FBI appointment.
Be interesting to see what Obama does in the next few weeks. He’s got to be trying to protect us as much as he can.
satby
@Elizabelle: you know I should be excited too, and I’m trying to be, but a lot of the joy got sucked out of it. I almost don’t want to go now, but I leave tonight and hope that it will give me some perspective.
I did sort out the petsitter situation and am excited that I have a good one to fill the gap. I come home on the 19th, though late enough that it will be the wee hours of the 20th when I get all the way home from the airport.
I hope it’s a great trip. Right now I’m having a hard time leaving.
Phylllis
Apologies if someone else has posted this, but here’s the address to send Hillary Clinton a thank you note: PO Box 5256, NY, NY 10185-5256.
Mine is ready to mail. It’s a tiny gesture, I know. But sometimes tiny gestures mean a lot.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Trump will fire him if Obama doesn’t.
Baud
@Phylllis: Thank you. I was thinking of doing that.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: The email thing hurt alot more that folk here think it did. When I talked to the kid about voting(she was voting for HRC); the first time she said she didn’t trust Sec. Clinton because she lied about the emails, last Sunday she said that Sec. Clinton would be the first President entering office with a criminal investigation. It hurt alot with enthusiasm.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Why would Trump fire him?
But if that’s the case: go for it, President Obama. Fire that sorry ass.
@Phylllis: Thank you! Writing to Hillary would be compassionate and therapeutic.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Like I said above, our side doesn’t have the same resilience as the GOP.
Elizabelle
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yup. I was hearing that they didn’t like the way she’d handled emails from Hillary volunteers in North Carolina.
And I still don’t see the scandal. But I didn’t pay much attention either.
Davey C
Last night, Josh Marshall reported that Paul Ryan announced they will be eliminating medicare.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/and-here-we-go–9
I haven’t seen this reported or discussed elsewhere. Anybody know any more details?
satby
@Phylllis: Thank you. I’m going to get that done today if I can.
Baud
@Elizabelle: It was manufactured but effective. Matt Yglesias had an excellent summary of the whole thing just before the election.
Betty Cracker
@Morzer: All depressingly true, which is why we really can’t afford to point fingers and snipe among ourselves for much longer. We’ve got an honest-to-dog authoritarian to oppose.
satby
@Davey C: Here
OzarkHillbilly
@geg6:
Do what I do: Don’t read them.
Davey C
@satby: Thanks!
Kay
@Waldo:
Trump’s a fragile personality. Presidents have to function even when people don’t like them. How would Trump handle the crazed rage that was directed at Obama for 8 years? Not well, I don’t think. He’s already whining. He’s insulted that people are protesting.
The thing that worries me most is the increasing disconnect from reality. There’s no touchstone- no objective facts in Trumpworld. It was nuts to watch in a campaign. Imagine that in a Presidency.
It’s already happening. Trump said over and over the election was rigged. Now that he won that has completely disappeared. It’s as if he never said it. His Presidency will be like that. There will be what he says and what happened and this huge gulf in between. I don’t know how a society survives that. We’ll have videotape and some smoking crater and he’ll be out there denying he said it or denying what just happened. It’s scary to me, how crazy that is. It defeats me, in a way. I don’t know what to do with it, how to fight it.
Judges say “he said/she said” – that’s what they don’t want. That’s the point of evidence. They want something solid. This is he said/she said when there are piles of objective evidence. I don’t where to go with that.
Applejinx
@Tokyokie: I’m refusing to let that become the explanation. It’s a betrayal of everything we stand for and also a horrible tactical mistake to conclude this was all about sexism and woman candidates aren’t good to run for office.
Clinton has been a political actor for DECADES. She was in the White House for years, has been a driving factor for many many things, including the Third Way politics that liberalism turned into when it was completely outflanked by right wing politics, back in times when general opinion polls showed the country was VERY different than it is now. Public opinion has changed. Clinton’s politics were formulated in an era totally hostile to liberalism (and, women in politics).
You cannot take someone who has been defined by decades of political activity, run her for President while she brazens it out and continues to act just as she’s always done (with all good and bad factors unchanged) and then, when she loses, blame all women.
You cannot make demands that all women tie themselves to Clinton’s personality and define themselves in terms of her, in order for them to be acceptable, and when Clinton loses, continue to demand that women must define themselves in terms of Hillary and run for office in her spirit.
Doing so and then attributing failure to misogyny is like saying Clinton has no personality or history or purpose and is just a stand-in for all women, and I’m not going to go on a rant about how she is not a good surrogate for all women, but I am going to insist that women must stay in politics and running for office, and reiterate that my bias is that I’d honestly rather be voting for women than men. Unfair, but I’ve seen men be absolute bozos, and just because a woman exists who I think has not chosen well over her whole career, doesn’t mean women shouldn’t run.
satby
@Baud: or the same rabid tribalism or blind obedience to authority.
But those are buttressed by the propaganda machine, and breaking that has to also be a priority.
gf120581
@Davey C: Ryan may want it, he won’t get it. That’ll never get out of the Senate.
Yes, Ryan is that stupid. The backlash from that would be akin to how Bush’s SS privatization scheme went.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: You need it. You deserve it. Enjoy it.
Quinerly
Hard to move forward when Ed Meese is back. After criticizing Trump pre election, he’s now on the Trump transition team. Ed Fucking Meese. Think about that.
Tokyokie
@Davey C: The elimination of Medicare will end the Republicans’ chances of ever winning another election. And a party that screws over its staunchest supporters, doesn’t deserve to win elections. Except the cost will be cataclysmic. Our country will require another FDR to rebuild the smoking ruin these assholes see as their legacy.
satby
@Applejinx: you need to just shut up about Clinton, you have always shown your bias against her and it’s not contributing anything at this point. The factors that swung the electoral college included voter suppression by enough to swing the race in what were reliable blue states. The drumbeat of misinformation from the media, which you constantly parrot, did the rest. She was popular enough that she won the majority of the vote, she was robbed by an antiquated system that thwarts the will of the people.
Taylor
@Kay:
This stuff is strategic. Gore was a boy scout, but they went after him (“Al Gore invented the Internet, hur hur”) in preparation for 2000. The hate machine is now going to swing around and aim itself at prospective candidates for 2020. The whole point is to define someone for the electorate, before they get a chance to define themselves.
So my guess is we’re going to be hearing negative stuff about Gillebrand from CNN, MSNBC and of course Fox.
ETA The seeds of Clinton-bashing (Whitewater) and Gore-bashing (He claimed credit for Love Canal) were laid in the NYT, so my guess is that the attacks will start there.
Elizabelle
@satby: India is famous for taking people right out of their own heads. This might be the perfect time to go.
Look forward to hearing about your trip when you get back. With pictures.
Kay
So what do we do if that happens? Say there’s a hurricane and the Trump Administration response is bungled and incompetent or non-existent and they just deny it. You know they will. These are people who could go on tv and deny the hurricane occurred. What’s the plan for that? Do you call witnesses? Take depositions? Will it matter? Can’t he just do what he did during the campaign and make things up? Who is going to stop him?
Elizabelle
@satby: Yeah. The propaganda machine. Gonna be my focus.
Otherwise, they won’t even hear. The post-factual world is not going to work out for us.
Baud
@Taylor: Right. Obama came up so swiftly in 2008, they really didn’t have time to plan the attacks in advance.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Who is going to stop him?
I guess average people, with cell phone videos and photos.
We sure can’t trust the MSM. They’re too easily co-opted. Money!
Chat Noir
@dlm: Yes, me too. Krugman was right when he wrote that he was afraid that Hillary was going to be “Gored” as in what happened to Al Gore in 2000. The similarities between then and now are eerie. I’m still having a hard time with what’s happened and I can’t shake this feeling of foreboding.
Keith G
@Kay:
Being just an OK president is such an amazingly difficult job. Even the presidents who we think have been pretty good at it run into difficulties early on that thoroughly test them. For Trump, I look to younger Bush as an example of someone who is going to be in over their head much of the time. The thing about it is that W had many advantages over Trump and still ended up performing poorly. Someone mentioned the difficulty of finding someone to run against Trump’s second term. Assuming Trump is able or willing to run for a second term, and there will be at least some advantages to his opponent.
Jeffro
@Taylor:
Right. So unless we want another 40-year hit job…or even a 4-year one…we’d all better be prepared to push back hard on slime like this.
Also, this kind of stuff takes money…Koch-level or Mercer-level money. Until Citizens United is overturned, we need to get our own billionaires on board funding the counter-attacks (and attacks of our own) on an ongoing basis. And a boycott of all things owned by right-wing nutbags, to depress their own finances, would be a good idea too.
Kay
@Taylor:
My husband was telling me that as soon as the tax cuts come in we can expect “the economy is GREAT!” from the finance cable channels. I don’t watch them but he has for years and he says they’ve basically turned into Right wing propaganda. Says they down-talked the Obama economy thru the entire expansion and they’ll promote the Trump economy, the key driver being “giant tax cuts for CEO’s”
This is what I mean about the scariness of fact-free living. Your feet aren’t on the ground. That sets me off balance. I’m not..equipped for it. I get mad and then don’t know what to do after that. It’s like fighting smoke or fog.
Baud
@Jeffro: I thought we were prepared this time.
Tokyokie
@Applejinx: I have no use for the Clintons’ Third Way bullshit, and the way it infected the DNC. (I also long for Howard Dean’s return as party chair.) But I have difficulty separating the hatred for Hillary for his last name from the hatred for her gender. Nobody seeking the presidency does so without possessing a lot of ambition, but no woman can have nearly that level of ambition without being considered a castrating you-know-what. Hillary has a 30-year history of being demonized, and I’d argue she’s reviled to a far greater extent than her husband, and considering she’s always been seen as being to Bill’s left, that leaves her gender as the distinguishing characteristic that drives that hatred. And my contention is that the misogyny that we saw directed at Hillary will fall on Gillibrand or Warren or any other woman who may have the temerity of displaying political ambition. (Unless they’re right-wingers.)
OzarkHillbilly
“No, no, no, jokes don’t right themselves. Jews write jokes and right now they’re scared shitless.” -Samantha Bee
Morzer
@Betty Cracker:
I knew something bad had to be coming when the Fins won three games in a row.
Joking aside, arguing Clinton/Sanders is a waste of time. We can’t get a do over of the election, never mind the primary. What we can do is rethink the Democratic party’s approach, its negligence at the local level and its feckless embrace of lobbyists, big money and the rest of the Beltway swill-trough. That means, frankly, rooting out the remnants of Clintonism and finding a way to reconnect with the country as a party that works for and represents all Americans. We can’t do that if our default reaction to defeat is to scream at the voters for being misogynists or racists or scum. We offered them an out-of-touch party and an unconvincing campaign that never put a big economic offer on the table to match Trump’s parade of promises and magic ponies, much less showed any sign that the party cared or understood why they were angry. We believed that good jobs reports = good jobs. They don’t. There are lots of jobs with poor hours and poor pay out there – and many voters don’t feel that they are going anywhere. Cautious incrementalism plus “the other side is evil”, offered by someone who seemed unconvinced by half her own promises, simply didn’t cut it. One person I know (a lifelong Democrat from Ohio) voted for Clinton, but said that it felt weird to vote for “Romney in a pantsuit”. I don’t think that my friend was the only person to get that vibe.
Three myths that we shouldn’t believe:
1) This was a change election so Democrats were destined to lose
2) Everyone who voted against Clinton is an evil, misogynist fascist
3) Trump will destroy himself and the voters will have nowhere else to turn so steady as she goes is the right approach
Chat Noir
@OzarkHillbilly: I agree with everything you said.
Jeffro
@Baud:
Me too. But given the impact of the EMAILZ! non-scandal, it sure seems like millions of voters were predisposed, at the drop of a hat (or letter to Congress), to believe sinister things about an otherwise open, caring, inclusive, hardworking (I could go on) individual. They sure ‘prepped the battlefield’ here, and they’ll try it again if we don’t push back hard every time.
MomSense
@dlm:
I finally had the courage to look at a photo of their meeting and I lost it. It’s an abomination that that crass, low class, racist, deadbeat, unintelligent, ugly sexual predator was even in the same room with PBO. Oh and now we will have a porn actress for first lady which is so rich given their freakout about our president wearing a tan suit and putting his feet on the desk.
Tokyokie
@Quinerly: Yeah, these guys seems to be rehabilitating every horrible actor still alive who was too awful for even the Bush II administration to contemplate. Let me know when they release Kissinger from his crypt.
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx:
I don’t think that’s a fair interpretation of what’s happening, and maybe you and your critics are talking past each other. Step back for a second and realize that, while no one is demanding what you outlined above, women — many of us, anyway — feel Clinton’s loss personally and perceive attacks on her as attacks on ourselves, our mothers, our daughters and our future aspirations. And when you deny that sexism played a prominent role in this, you deny our lived experience.
Now, that’s not to say that sexism was the only cause of this debacle, or that Hillary Clinton is above criticism or that future female candidates owe her their fealty or any of that. But please realize that for some of us, this is deeply personal, perhaps in a way you just don’t get. And maybe give us some space to process it without jumping directly into people’s tribunal mode.
Kay
Here’s another example of the gas-lighting and how it gets much more serious when we go from “campaign” to “Presidency”.
Melania Trump gave a speech about bullying. Her husband was elected and we’re watching kids mimic Trump and bully other kids. This will now happen over and over and over. There will be “the Trump Presidency” (fictional account) and the Trump Presidency (actual events) and it will be a coin toss over which is true.
You’ll be staring at the smoking crater and here comes the President on tv to say there’s no crater. Now what?
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m with you.
gene108
Reagan’s, Bush, Sr’s, Clinton’s, and probably Bush, Jr’s DOJ’s kept a watchful eye on violent white supremacists. As a large chunk of Trump’s base are violent white supremacists, I wonder if his DOJ will try to keep them in check or will turn a blind eye to the threat of possible violence?
This is one thing that scares me about the Trump Administration.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I’m with you too.
Joel
I haven’t visited here in a while. I probably won’t for another while.
The human cost of this election could be enormous. As a country, we might be walking down a path that we can’t come back from. I have to put faith in our institutions to hold the line against hatred, cruelty, and tyranny. They were designed to do so and now face their greatest test in living memory.
I am focusing on local interactions, with friends and family. I don’t have the heart for this anymore.
Jeffro
@Morzer:
I sure don’t see the Democratic Party’s positions as ‘cautious incrementalism’…and a lot of it would have provided direct “pocketbook” benefits to college students, working families, etc. Let us know what you think was too cautious. Or maybe put it another way: what non-cautious policies should we have pursued, and how would you have ‘sold’ them to the American people? I’m not seeing it. And again, Hillz won the popular vote just ‘as is’.
That’s nuts policy-wise; perception-wise…if your friend means ‘not inspiring’…there may be a ‘there’ there.
1) Good point…again, Hillz won the popular vote.
2) Good point…not all Republicans are racists, but all racists are Republicans.
3) Good point…I mean, he very likely will destroy himself with a few the hold-your-nose Rs who voted for him, but he’s probably still going to get 57-58M votes in 2020. If his voters were willing to turn to him this time, in all his manifest unfitness for the job, they’ll do it again once they’ve seen him as Prez for four years.
Morzer
@gene108:
When you see Kobach and Bannon both being put forward as members of Trump’s future team, I would be more inclined to fear that his White House will actively encourage white men to “take back” “their” country.
debbie
Colbert was on fire last night. Trust me, stick through to the end of the clip.
MomSense
@Applejinx:
Are you a woman? If not, then please consider that those of us who have lived being a woman recognize things about this election that reflect experiences we have had in our lives.
Kay
I was talking to a gubmint employee friend last night and he told me the Trump kids won’t be able to have actual jobs in the administration.
They won’t be able to because there are reporting requirements and they would have to provide financial and conflict checks on the family business and that would have the effect of exposing President Trump to some actual scrutiny.
We’re going to see a LOT of “shadow cabinets” and figurehead appointments and “power behind the throne”. Trump has to keep a tight lid on transparency. He successfully thwarted every effort to find anything out by bellowing at people. He isn’t going to let anything slip now.
gene108
@Kay:
But it won’t just be President Trump saying there is no crater, but his lapdogs at Fox News, Wall Street Journal, the right-wingers retained by CNN and MSNBC and other media outlets, including the opinion pages of the WaPo and NYT.
We got here in large part because the MSM went out of their way to paint Hillary, a fundamentally honest person, as a pathological liar and Trump as a guy, who speaks his mind.
I see no reason for them to quit this altered reality for President Trump.
They mainstreamed a bunch of outright lies by Bush & Co, until Katrina hit and the pictures of people stranded on rooftops became too hard to ignore. But even then you had Hannity blaming it on mayor Nagin, for not using school buses to forcibly evacuate people.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Yes they did, but the fly in that ointment will be the coming inevitable recession*. They will blame it on Obama but when the recovery** doesn’t come people will blame them.
* we are due for one
**I really have a hard time seeing what Repubs could possibly do to help the country recover. They won’t do stimulus, they will have already cut taxes to the bone and any more cuts will have limited to no effect, the Fed can’t cut interest rates anymore. Maybe they will declare war on Mauritania. And no, that is not a joke.
Poopyman
@rikyrah: It’s a wonderful morning, rikyrah! The sun came up, the crows are yelling at the cats, and we’re set to embark on a task greater than ourselves. This is living!
Morzer
@Jeffro:
What was the big offer, policy-wise, to the Rust Belt? What was the plan to rehabilitate communities devastated by job loss and opioids? Sure, Clinton put policies out there on her website (which some voters might have checked out) – but that’s not the same thing as a big, easily understood offer to the voters. Good intentions count for nothing if you don’t communicate them effectively and after watching the campaign fairly obsessively for months, I am honestly not able to tell you what the big plan was,other than a vague sense of all the nice people coming together against nasty Trump oh and we have lots of policies on our website. Which, to be fair, is justifiable enough in terms of good intentions, but I don’t see what a Rust Belt voter from a crumbling town was going to get out of it in terms of a better future. Put a big offer on the table and convince the voters that you mean it – and you can win. Otherwise the door is open to a serial fraudster to pitch fantasies of a Bigly Greater America.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer:
Maybe not but they voted for one so fuck ’em.
Keith G
@Kay:
I am so worried about government records and necessary government disclosures. I want Obama to find a way to disgourge as much information from the federal departments as possible before he leaves office. This is particularly the case concerning statistics about Obamacare. I’m sure that any favorable information about what has happened will be buried by Trump and GOP.
WereBear
What happens is:
The free ride stops.
Conservative voters have been living in a custom crafted fantasy land. Where they are really the True Amurricans, and all these “lesser” people are the problem. Where slashing social programs would only apply to those Others, not them, the deserving. Where those stifling rules and regulations are only there to annoy their precious selves, not keeping them and theirs from being poisoned, mangled, and electrocuted.
Ironically, the Democrats have been so successful at guarding social programs, people took them for granted. Which meant Trump voters didn’t realize that Paul Ryan was planning to go after their mother who needs Medicare and their special needs kid and their sister with the pre-existing condition.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Other people were supposed to suffer. Not THEM.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: That’s exactly what I’ve done since Election night. No more MSNBC. I never watched CNN or Fox News so it’s easy to give up cable news. Let them have their fun covering Trump without my attention. I subscribe to Washington Post so that will be my news outlet along with lefty websites like this one.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sure they will and you know it. Conservatives are full of shit on deficit spending. They borrow like drunken sailors when they’re in power. Every single time. The Trump debt will be staggering. I anticipate we’ll hit records. He’ll literally be sending checks to people, like Bush did. They’re absolutely horrible on debt and have been my entire adult life. No exceptions.
Trump’s entire career is based on borrowing and then discharging debt. That’s what he’s done his whole life.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Agree.
Betty Cracker
@Morzer: Bingo. Why would Trump’s DOJ investigate his supporters in the Klan and the militias? Trump was on Twitter last night whining about “unfair” protests of his election and stating outright that they are paid operatives. Trump is on record approving of the Chinese crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters. The Trump DOJ will focus on investigating and smearing anyone who stands up to Trump.
Taylor
@Morzer:
I watched the debates. In between the questions about emails, I heard about a huge infrastructure program, paid for by raising taxes on the rich “because that’s where the money is” (Yes, she said that).
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with Trump’s infrastructure program, which apparently will be financed by cutting taxes for the wealthy.
debbie
@Morzer:
No offer. Just a place to rest unfocused anger.
mai naem mobile
President elect Camacho a taxes need too be released. That said where all the impeach able stuff is. Impeachment to gum up the works.
MomSense
@Morzer:
Explain why Russ Feingold lost. Then perhaps we can better evaluate all of your other opinions on Clintonism. You know the thing that burns me is that the Clintons, for better and worse, have literally been active in the Democratic Party for decades. I can think of six young women off the top of my head in my little state who were inspired to run for office because they met Hillary when she was campaigning for her husband in 1992. And they are all incredibly progressive. If you go to NH you will meet soooo many people who have beeen doing the work of electing Democrats for 25 years now because they were inspired and organized by the Clintons.
Look I am committed to learning about what happened but Hillary literally ran as a woman against a sexual predator who bullied and threatened to jail her to her face on National TV and she fucking stared him down. She won the popular vote and lost in some states by fewer votes than the new suppression and ID laws disenfranchised. She also ran against the RNC, the media, the FBI, the Russians and their agents Wikileaks, the NRA and a bunch of other special interests who spent a fortune.
I have much more to say on the subject of Bernie Sanders and BLM but I’ll wait a minute so I can catch my breath.
OzarkHillbilly
@Joel:
The feeling is mutual. I counteract it by going out every day and doing something to make my small piece of this planet better: Set some fence posts, clear that brush, spread some compost, etc. Eventually I will move back to working on my country.
Patricia Kayden
@WereBear:
Yep. Just wait until Trump’s ill thought out, pro 1% policies start to hit the White working class folks who voted for him thinking that it would only be the Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans and other trashy folks getting hit upside the head. Everything will then come to a head as they realize that their Orange Messiah doesn’t care about their poor behinds either. Cannot wait.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Don’t get mad, get even – and you won’t get even by pushing away the voters you need next time. People vote for all sorts of reasons – and sometimes desperation will persuade people to do something they wouldn’t normally contemplate. Yes, there are some genuinely hideous people who support Trump – but there are also lots of people who felt that the Democrats offered more of the same or no answer whatever and chose to gamble on Trump because at least he seemed to understand their frustration. If you insist that the only votes you want are those from the pure of heart, you’ll lose a lot more elections than you win.
Every time you say fuck the voters, what you are really saying is that winning isn’t your priority. Which is a fine and dandy proposition for a moral philosopher, but sucks bigly if you actually believe in your party and want it to run the affairs of the nation.
Juice Box
@geg6: +1
Patricia Kayden
@gene108: What is “turn a blind eye to the threat of possible violence”, Alex.
Trump repeatedly retweeted White Supremacist memes and declined to renounce David Duke’s support on CNN. He knows who is responsible for putting him in the White House. He’s not going to go after them now.
PIGL
@Betty Cracker: me, too.
Applejinx
@Betty Cracker:
I’m sorry. I’ll shut up, especially if ‘we must keep running women! I only want to vote for women from now on!’ is not enough to atone for what I’ve said.
I am pants-shittingly terrified the Democrats will insist that we must run Hillary a third time, run her again until it works. It seems possible that the narrative will become that we MUST just keep on running Hillary, or failing that it’s on to Chelsea, for vindication. The farther this goes the more frightening it is because money rules so many things, and I saw the relative wealthiness of the MoveOn and Bernie people versus the wealthiness of the people running Clinton field offices, and I am absolutely scared we won’t be able to fight back against the alt-right because of power and money dictating HOW we must fight. I’ll shut up at least for now, and wait to see if things settle down.
Kathleen
@Tokyokie: They will blame Obama. I have a concern about who they will blame when they tank economy which Trump said he thought was a good idea on Fox in 2014 .
Kay
@WereBear:
The problems in the “rust belt” aren’t going to go away because there are 5000 think pieces on white working class or “President Trump listens to us”. It will have the effect of making them more cynical, more angry, more disconnected, less trusting of “elites” because he can’t deliver.
I actually love where I live, I have a lot of affection for this place, and I often (but not always) love my clients, but romanticizing our struggles won’t help. They’re not a story or a narrative. They’re people and people are complicated. Even if Trump did “bring back manufacturing” along with 1970’s wages for manufacturing the most ambitious young people would still leave here, because they don’t want to stay.
WereBear
Why did we lose?
Because they cheated.
Now, let us defeat their sorry asses.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: With the spike in racist attacks/incidents, no, it is not a good morning. Sigh.
Kathleen
@BillinGlendaleCA: Second that. Also ironic is the same week us elected fascist we honor vets who fought fascists.
debbie
@Kay:
The GOP is going to fuck this up by overreaching, just like they always do. We need to be ready to step in and without bullshit stand up and prove they and we have the same interests.
Kathleen
@Elizabelle: broadcast outlets did also. saw tweet yesterday where abc interviewed klan membet.
Betty Cracker
@Morzer: What you say makes sense in the context of routine American politics. But I’m having trouble seeing this election that way, and the attempt to frame it in terms of more effective messaging and advertising ring hollow for me. I think it’s important not to let certain aspects of this fresh debacle disappear down the memory hole, such as the extraordinary role played by Russia and the FBI. I was so wrong about what would happen this time that I don’t trust my own instincts anymore, so I’m not saying you’re wrong. But seeing it framed in terms similar to the post-Kerry reboot make me wonder if any of us really understand the scale of what just happened.
Morzer
@MomSense:
Because he didn’t run a particularly good campaign? Because he didn’t offer more to the voters than his opponent? Because the voters thought his opponent was doing a decent job and wanted to stick with him? Because incumbents have advantages? Because the Democrats don’t apparently know how to talk to the voters at state level any more?
Why did Feingold lose the time before?
Pick a reason.
Personally, I think he lost because Democrats as a party seem to have forgotten how to talk to voters in purple/red states.
So has Bob Shrum. What are the results of Clintonite domination of the party? Judging by recent results, nothing we should care to repeat.
Yes, it’s nice that women are inspired by Hillary to run for office. Yes,she battled gamely in the debates against Trump, which is admirable.
All that said, the Democratic party is in a terrible state at every level – and the Clintons and their friends have been running the party while it happened. I don’t think they are the only failures in the room (what happened to OFA, Mr Obama?) but we can’t have any realistic accounting of this debacle if we overlook their power within it.
WereBear
@Kay: I’m sorry, I don’t understand your answer.
I was trying to make the point that Trump’s post-reality attempts are going to founder because when he denies there’s a crater, and it is where your own house used to be, that Denial Bubble the right keeps puffing up won’t work nearly as well.
elm
People who voted for the KKK’s candidate are not good people.
People who voted for him aftet he campaigned of eliminationism and ethnic cleansing are not good people.
I will not forgive or forget that. They voted that my family and I are subhuman.
MomSense
@geg6:
Co fucking signed.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Morzer:
That was because the media didn’t cover her speeches(with the exception of her acceptance speech at the convention). I watched the coverage, it was emails, emails, emails.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Yes they are, but unless you think defense spending or wars count as stimulus there won’t be any. They won’t build roads, improve water/sewer systems, upgrade the electrical grid, and they sure as hell aren’t going to extend unemployment.
But they will cut regulations to free up business and cut taxes even more. Oh yeah, and they will cut spending by gov’t because everyone needs to tighten their belts in these tough economic times.
Oldgold
Looking back, I wonder if the ACA was not a big ass mistake.
It cost the Ds big time in ’10 at the local, state and mational level. This led to the brutal high tech gerrymandering that insured a crazily conservative House of Represenatives for a decade. Except for Obama’s won in ’12, since the passage of the ACA, the Ds have struggled.
Now, after paying this great political price, it looks like it is hoping to be repealed.
Juice Box
@Applejinx: The alternative to someone who has been in the forefront of the fight for a long time, is someone who is new and experienced or someone who has been coasting along in the background. Obama was new and shiny and very, very smart and skilled. That combination isn’t going to show up often. John Edwards is the closest that I can think of and the newness didn’t outweigh the lack of vetting. Bill Clinton was new on the national stage, but had 10 years as a governor to become “unclean” and develop a record (much of the anger directed against him was due to his anti-racism fight). Your guy, Bernie Sanders, had been coasting along in the background, but didn’t have the wherewithal to develop any policy depth beyond the bumpersticker slogans.
elm
A productive suggestion is to run on some concrete and concise policy claim, even if it’s not necessarily reachable.
Obama campaigned on access to health insurance. Trump on making America white. Clinton could have gone in for a $15 minimum wage or social security expansion or a moon base.
I didn’t see any such simple to state ambition from the Clinton campaign. I did and do want “continuation of normal government functions”, but that doesn’t get many people fired up.
Kay
@debbie:
I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it a lot because young white working class men really are in trouble but it goes deeper than “wages”. They don’t know where they fit in the world. They don’t seem to be able to organize their lives, have less chaos, and it’s hard because they’re creating a lot of these problems. Their parents know this, right, they know they’re bailing out grown men again and again and they don’t know why it’s happening and they don’t know what to do about it so they get mad and that doesn’t help either. This is like whole extended families- there will be one or two “solid” members and they’re propping up a whole group of young adults and the children of the young adults.
Morzer
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t see it solely in terms of messaging and advertising at all. I think the Democrats aren’t sure where they stand as a party or what they believe on some fundamental issues. Are they a party that fights for blue-collar America, or are they the party of the nice professionals who live on the coasts and in the cities? Why can’t they be both? Can the party represent e.g. white men who don’t necessarily buy into some of its social justice ideals, but want to see the rich pay higher taxes? I think the party desperately needs a reckoning with its own soul – and until it has that, it’s hard to see what they can do locally or at state level outside the safe blue states.
Betty Cracker
@Applejinx: No need to shut up! You’re a reasonable guy (most of the time!:), and I value your perspective. But Hillary isn’t going to run again, and neither is Chelsea, and neither is an AI Hillbot 2020.
If anything good comes out of this national disaster, it’s that the Democrats won’t have the Clintons to kick around anymore. But I hope you can understand how it could be offensive to people who put their hearts and souls into this campaign — who saw their candidate smeared and vilified in sexist terms and who are now seeing a sexist monster who views them as mere objects elevated to the highest office of the land — to now hear male allies in their own party pile on.
We’ll move past this. It’ll take a while, though, and we don’t have much time. Stick around. We’re gonna need all hands on deck.
Kathleen
@Baud: I was thinking the same thing but didn’t have guts to say it.
D58826
@Applejinx:
This is not meant to be sarcastic or snarky but it’s a three day weekend, take a chill pill and enjoy the nice fall weather.
I do agree that the amount of money on the right is staggering. The Kochoctupus is buying up state governments, the judiciary, the educational system at a frightening rate. They have a long term business plan with a line of succession in place when the two older brother pass. There is nothing on the left that can compete. Read Jane Mayer’s book ‘Dark Money’. It lays the whole thing out in 400 pages of depressing detail. But wait till you have enjoyed the nice fall weekend
I think it’s way way to early to think Hillary 2020. She will be 74 in 2020. So much can happen between now and then. Now the D’s do have to start working on a deeper bench for 2020. Initially there were not a lot of obvious alternatives to Hillary. Bernie came out of nowhere to mount a serious primary challenge but given the racist alt-right tone of the general do you really think a Jewish socialist would have done any better? As for Chelsea, who knows if she even wants to get into politics. And if she does maybe she inherits her Dad’s ability to charm the voters out of thew trees as to her Mom’s admittedly poor public political skills.
Which brings me to the point I was going to make originally. It’s important that the D’s learn from the mistakes of 2016. We always learn more from our losses than our wins (even though that doesn’t seem to apply to the GOP). In reading one of the post-mortum articles a number jumped out that I had seen before but hadn’t really made the connection. In exit polls on Tue. 60% of the electorate said Trump was unqualified to be president but voted for him anyway. Now the question I have is what candidate, what message, what GOTV plan can compete with an electorate that decides to vote for a person that they freely admit is unqualified? This may well have been a year where the old cliche – the operation was a success but the patient died very much applies.
Leto
@NotMax: Easy fix. Press “O”, go to the Chat tab and under World channels, right click on “1. General”, “2. Trade”, and whatever other world channels you have. Select “Leave”. Did that a decade ago and it’s been a better experience. If you need Trade chat for some reason, create a seperate Trade chat dialoge box. Unless you need something specifically from that channel, you don’t have to look at it. Problem I have is one of the alts I have in a “Social” guild is full of Trump supporters. Watching them talk on Wednesday was just… they don’t understand what’s coming down the pipe for them and I guess I should be sad for them, but fuck’em. They voted their values.
I don’t know what faction you play, but I’d be down for some more Balloon Juice groupings in WoW. Don’t know how many other people we have on here that play though. I know Cole used to, but haven’t seen him say anything about it in a long while.
Morzer
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I watched a decent number of Clinton speeches and I don’t think I could have told you what the big offer was after any of them. Maybe I just missed it, but I am inclined to think that the campaign offered too many laundry lists and too little punch.
bemused
I’ve had a knot in my stomach since 11/8.
I’m terrified for the safety of my daughter-in-law and black/white little granddaughter and another on the way in NC, for my niece’s husband, American born Puerto Rican in Illinois, my Republican friend’s Minnesota grandkids, white/Korean, one of whom could pass for Native American, for my Republican Foxbot sister-in-law’s black/white niece who lives and goes to school in NE MN which voted overwhelmingly for Trump, casual NE MN Baptist Trump voting friend whose oldest son is white/Native American and all the many white people I know who have loved ones who are lgbt, can’t pass for white, etc. and now so much more vulnerable to verbal and physical attacks.
I’m linky impaired but what is going on all over the country scares me to my core. Raw Story “Welcome to Trump’s America”, tweet collection of many racist attacks and growing. Randi Rhodes youtube has a 15 minute clip.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Might want to check out Cole’s new freak out.
matryoshka
@Baud: I have been thinking about resilience a lot (trying to conjure my own) and I think this is an important point. “Conservatives”* have their own propaganda arm to reinforce every lie, and simply stating verifiable facts brings out the flying monkeys. I supported Air America when we had it, and now I fear I’m not tech-savvy enough to stay connected when the boot is fully on our necks. What I really can’t stomach is all the “let’s come together under our president” crap in light of the way they maligned President Obama and his entire family and the complete lie that the shitgibbon is not a racist being farted out by my coworkers.
*I have always seen them as radicals.
Elizabelle
@Kathleen: I saw your comment yesterday about how cable was about getting Trump elected.
That’s very possible. They certainly desensitized the public about Trump, broadcast his rallies unfiltered, and couldn’t say anything about Hillary without “emails!” in there.
I hope they get what they wanted. Good and hard.
debbie
@Kay:
I’d like to see Dems start to introduce legislation that would really speak to WWC issues. It won’t get anywhere, but the Dems would be on record as advocating for the right things. More than anything else, Dems have got to counter the GOP-fomented perception of Dems as elitists.
Amir Khalidey was anything fundamentally wrong in their approach
On the merits, Hillary presented as strong a case for the presidency as anyone ever has, certainly a stronger case than Bernie or any Republican candidate — especially Trump. She made a convincing case that she had the knowledge, the experience, the the skills, the character and the personal empathy to make a great POTUS. Trump, on the other hand spent the entire campaign showing the many ways he was unqualified, unprepared and of unfit character to be president. And still he won.
Were i American, I would have ignored all the bullshit about her phony baggage, and voted for her without hesitation. But a majority of people in states with a majority of electoral-college votes picked Trump nonetheless. So Hillary’s defeat may not have been about Hillary. Alongside a less than friendly mainstream media and the Republicans’ success in badmouthing her for nearly 30 years, maybe their voters hated her for being Obama’s preferred successor.
If I were running the DNC now, I’d identify a cohort of 30-something to 40-something to up-and-comers for 2020 and beyond. I’d find mentors for this cohort — people like Pelosi, Reid, Bill and Hill, Obama, Biden — who can give them an education in presidenting. (In addition to rebuillding the state and local parties, of course.) Just throwing the idea out there for consideration.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer: You need to read everything I have said here this morning, especially the post about blame and fixing what went wrong. But when it comes to this:
Every Trump voter I know, the only desperation they were feeling was to be back on top of the societal heap with their feelings as the only ones that matter. There was no economic anxiety on their part. Most of them are to do and the few who aren’t are solidly middle class or working class with good jobs, one the best job he’s ever had. A few voted GUNS!!!! because…. well because guns. Add to all that, Trump won with even fewer votes than Romney got.
So yeah, Fuck ’em, fuck em royally with a nail embedded feces encrusted baseball bat. Repeatedly. You want to make nice with those a-holes, go ahead and try, I give it about 5 mins.
I don’t want and what is more we don’t need their votes.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: LOL! Never mind!
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Suppose you could make an economic pitch that won over some of their votes,while not compromising your social ideals. Would you really reject those votes? What if those votes could win you the House and Senate seats you need to make things right after Trump has done his worst?
WereBear
@Kay: I was born in Northern Indiana. I know that culture. It would have ruined me, except I decided to join the present time, which is now the 21st Century.
I have relatives who will not do that.
Thing is, they could have a vibrant culture right where they are. They don’t have to move to NYC to be a writer. They don’t have to move to LA to be an actor. My little town gets a steady stream of popular bands who come from the area, who make a living touring and selling their own CDs.
Even if their ambitions take them elsewhere, the children could come home for visits if that place didn’t do its best to undercut their dreams and destroy who they want to be, or who they are.
I don’t know what to do, either, because for decades now good-hearted people have been trying and trying to get them to change their lives, and that is the one thing they won’t do.
Just my experience. May not be yours.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: I thought this blog has established that the next phony war would be against Freedonia or Klopstokia.
Kathleen
@Waldo: @BillinGlendaleCA: That was part of the plan. Starting to think this has been in the works for awhile. Trump is front man.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: well this is one old white male that does not intend on pilling on. Hillary is who she is. She would have had the same strengths and weakness’s if she had a penis rather than a vagina. Even though in that case sexism would not have been a factor. I suspect that if Michelle or Liz Warren had been the candidate they might have given more electrifying stump speeches like Bill and Barak but they would still have to deal with the lady parts problem. I suspect that if the personalities had been reversed and Bill had Hillary’s personality and Hillary Bill’s she still would have struggled because of the sexism.
Of course she made made mistakes but not because she was a woman. The e-mails were a self-inflicted wound that she never got past. Obviously the media and the GOP flogged an anthill into Mt Everest but she gave them the weapon. Maybe if she had approached the issue differently when the story first broke she could have put it behind her but who knows.
But as I said in an earlier comment when 60% of the voters say that Trump is unqualified to be president and then vote for him anyway, I’m not sure that there was any message/course correction/whatever that would have helped.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer:
Blaming the current state of the Dem party at every level (which I agree with you on) on the Clintons and co is wrong. We have to find a way to get Dems out in off year elections. How, I have no idea..Again, somebody smarter than I will have to figure that out.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Morzer:
No. This is a pretty hard dividing line that got set in the mid 60’s, it’s still with us.
Juice Box
@Applejinx: HRC will be 73 in 2020. She won’t run again. However, you can damn well believe that whoever does run has worked with the Clintons and Obama because those are the people who have been in the forefront of the fight for decades.
You can also be quite certain that the Rs will run the same damn playbook against the 2020 candidate, elevating some petty misstatement to a Crime and amping up their base because it works.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: But we must also must be realistic about who our enemies are.
socraticsilence
@Tokyokie:
Booker, he’s a bit corporate but no more than Hillary was the important thing is that he actually has charisma and isn’t a bloodless technocrat in the mold of our election losers Gore-Kerry-Clinton.
Morzer
@BillinGlendaleCA:
So if the theorists are right and white blue-collar men are now voting like another minority group and they control key areas on the map, you think that the Democrats just have to shrug, suck it up and give up hope of finding any sort of common ground that can win over some of their votes? Even if that makes it impossible to build a lasting coalition for the greater good?
Emma
@Morzer: The phrase “not compromising your ideals” is carrying a lot of weight here. Does it mean “let important minority issues wait for as long as it takes to let those new voters feel comfortable”? Does it mean ” fastracking their issues without considering ng other factors “? You can hold to your ” ideals” for a very long time while people around you are dying.
socraticsilence
@Juice Box:
Honestly, looking at the past quarter century resume doesn’t really matter- the decisive factor in every single one of those elections was charisma and/or affability- all of our losers came off as bloodless technocrats, all of the GOPs losers came off as out of touch plutocrats, often the winner had a worse on-paper resume than the loser: it didn’t matter.
D58826
help in moderation for some reason
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer:
Assumes facts not in evidence. I will admit my POV is colored by where I live, a place where confederate flags are more common than Trump signs. Maybe up in MI or OH there is such a thing as an honest to Gawd economically challenged fiscally ignorant and informationally apathetic Trump voter but I doubt it. Regardless, I don’t live there, I live here in the Ozarks where I am surrounded by racist idiots and those who are OK with racist idiots. Fuck ’em.
And yes, I am an asshole. Why do you ask?
Morzer
@Emma:
Yes, it’s carrying a lot of weight – but that’s the tough part of politics. Can we find a way to expand/rebuild the coalition to include some of the voters who gave Trump a chance, while not becoming Trumpist? If we decide not to do so, are we committing to losing elections/not regaining the House etc? What are the possibilities and payoffs here? I think we as a party have to take a hard look at our assumptions about what we believe and whether our approach is effective – and we shouldn’t rule out trying to win over voters whose views don’t perfectly align with ours. It’s not impossible that we might make some progress in changing their minds in other areas once we bring them into the coalition and they see some actual benefits from voting for us. We shouldn’t be too quick to shut down such possibilities.
old_owl
@Kay:
This stuff is strategic. Gore was a boy scout, but they went after him (“Al Gore invented the Internet, hur hur”) in preparation for 2000. The hate machine is now going to swing around and aim itself at prospective candidates for 2020. The whole point is to define someone for the electorate, before they get a chance to define themselves.
So my guess is we’re going to be hearing negative stuff about Gillebrand from CNN, MSNBC and of course Fox.
ETA The seeds of Clinton-bashing (Whitewater) and Gore-bashing (He claimed credit for Love Canal) were laid in the NYT, so my guess is that the attacks will start there.
Yes. Unless Dems can control their messaging channel, the “liberal” media and right wing media will define Dem policies and candidates, even to the Dem base.
Parties need a strong base that lives on despite wins or defeats. That needs sustained investment (time and money), and a dedicated messaging channels down to the local level. If the churches did not exist as a messaging network for the GOP, they will be bust. With unions gone, Dems have nothing for messaging the base. That is why the first thing the GOP will do is to destroy whatever is left of the unions.
Take Latinos. Does the right wing think Latinos are a democratic constituency? Yes. What are they doing about it?
This
They have set up a dedicated messaging channel. To woo enough Latinos to make a difference to the GOP.
It’s Koch funded. But its the same, GOP or Koch. It was in setup in 2015. It will yield it’s dividends in 2020.
Dems need thousands of Moral Mondays in blue, red and purple territories to win. BJ can do something practical, sponsor one such group continuously ( for years) till it becomes self-sustaining.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, hypothetical discussions do assume possibilities not in evidence. But, if we don’t consider these possibilities, we can’t expand our range of possible approaches, which seems like a good way to lose battles that we might otherwise win. And no, I don’t think you’re an asshole just because we disagree – reasonably politely – on a tough and complex issue.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Morzer: They won’t accept the social justice part of what the Dems are offering; without the social justice part, we aren’t Dems anymore, just Republican lite.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
We all got one, OzarkHillbilly, if we didn’t we’d have problems.
socraticsilence
@geg6:
Jesus, she just said she worked to get Maggie Hassan to the Senate, maybe just maybe listen. Just going to throw this out here- but if almost every on the ground activist I talked to this cycle across every single battleground state ran into the same problem– maybe the problem isn’t the salesmen or the consumers maybe its the shitty product.
If I say Al Gore and John Kerry had great on paper resumes but were shitty candidates because they didn’t have the necessary charisma most people on here will agree but suddenly saying the same damn thing about Hillary is sexist?
Face it- Hillary was a Gore or a Kerry– they all had great policies, they all had some drawbacks but above all else they all lacked charisma and/affability and they all lost because of it– charisma doesn’t just draw crowds it helps you paper over the small missteps that every campaign makes and that the media loves to turn into major scandals/distractions– misogyny alone doesn’t explain why Bill Clinton could have Tiger Woods’ approach to fidelity and still win or why Obama could skate through the Rev. Wright BS– charisma is a huge part of it.
Morzer
@BillinGlendaleCA:
If we get their votes by e.g. our economic pitch, while maintaining our commitment to social justice, will those votes be any less valuable? My experience is that relatively few voters go for the entire package that their party offers. Why shouldn’t we be willing to try a more flexible approach?
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
I agree completely. And let me just say once and for all that you are not building a progressive movement if it is almost entirely white. Bernie made fucking clear in 2012 with his condescending remarks about why black people voted for Barack Obama, about it being a post-racial country, about needing to reach out to the “white working class” (which Obama won in 2008 and 2012), and making comments about primarying the first black president that he was incapable of including all of our citizens in his “vision” for our party and country. And if people are honest, he made a fucking ton of other racially condescending comments about black voters in his 2016 campaign. Here’s just one for starters. Explaining why black people didn’t vote for him in Southern primaries he said that once they knew more about him they would support him. Fuck you Bernie seriously. If there is one block of voters who is always the most informed it is black voters. Their existence depends on it.
And you know what, his NYDN article revealed that he was so woefully ignorant about laws he had voted for, foreign policy, and the policies and issues that were at the core of his campaign and that he had been championing for his whole career that he was unqualified to be president of the united states. Nah, fuck off again. You don’t get to be that ignorant, condescending, and racist (white privilege is just more civil racism but just as corrosive) and get my fucking vote. Also, too his stated issues at the time for voting against Ted Kennedy’s 2007 immigration reform bill were also fucking racist. I’m not making nice with any of you assholes who did not recognize what the Sanders “movement” was. If he is your model moving forward, count me out. I’m not going back to that. I’m with people of color for better and worse.
Months after he had no path to the nomination he switched his campaign themes from his ignorant and fucking ridiculous take on important issues (8% GDP to pay for Medicare for all) to a message that was completely Clinton is corrupt, the DNC rigged the primaries, and other memes which Trump appropriated effectively. I had a long conversation yesterday with a lovely young woman who found me crying next to the dumpster between the back of my office and the cafe where she works. She didn’t even know that the only reason she has had pre-natal care these last six months is because the ACA allowed her to stay on her mother’s plan as she is 24. Our discussion of the issues went on from there to the point where she was crying at the end and deeply sorry she had believed what Sanders had said about Clinton and the issues. She voted for Jill Stein. As an aside on these oh so principled Stein voters-if voting your conscience does not mean voting to protect the people who will be harmed by hair furor, then you do not have a conscience. You are lacking empathy and you are a horrible person.
If you are more interested in blaming the woman for not exciting the voters and you have no interest in looking at the numbers and fighting the consequences of voter suppression laws then you are not a progressive. The most vulnerable people, the people with the most to lose and the highest stakes in this election had their most fundamental right stolen from them. Even if you don’t think it explains the losses in the rustbelt states, NC, and FL (you are wrong btw) that should be your primary outrage if you are an alleged progressive. If you are bemoaning the poor white working class and ignoring the demographics of who voted for Trump, you are not a progressive. She won the under $50,000 white vote handily! Trump won in places where the employment rate has increased the most since 2010. He won with exurban and suburban whites who are not fucking experiencing economic anxiety. If you think the media gave equal, positive time to both candidates and that it was possible to break through the media/Trump blockade to get her positions on the issues across you are not dealing with reality. You are part of the problem.
Why zero questions about women’s reproductive health and choice in the national debates? We are half the country and we don’t merit one single question. Why zero questions about climate change? This is the single most important threat not just to our national security but to our human survival. Why did it take so long for the media to even show the violence and horrible things that were said and done on the floor and outside of the Trump rallies? It took a white guy to go to a Trump rally and tweet about it before our media covered it even fleetingly. Why did they talk about fucking emails and fail to tell people that there are actually three separate channels for communications and that there is separate equipment and that the Secretary literally views these communications under a tent? John Harwood said that the media knew this but pretended not to understand. Why?
If you think the people who voted for the candidate who was endorsed by the kkk and who has “alt right” AKA white supremacist movement leaders literally running his campaign were going to vote for Sanders then you are an idiot. You also have not been paying attention to the anti semitism that was espoused by the candidate, his family, his campaign and his supporters.
I’ve got a giant box full of receipts and I am more than happy to pull them out. Game fucking on. This is life and death for a lot of us.
Kathleen
@WereBear: @MomSense: amen amen
socraticsilence
@Davey C:
And…..the Trump Administration is brought to its knees before inauguration day. I might be super pessimistic, but I want to see that Granny starving fuck try it– I have a feeling it goes over about as well as when Bush after re-election tried to pass Social Security privatization.
Betty Cracker
I’m old enough to remember the rise of the Third Way in Democratic politics, which was something along the lines of, “The Republicans keep kicking our asses, so let’s adopt some of their framing so we can win some elections.” It made some sense, and to an extent, it worked. But it also got us Bill Clinton flying home to Arkansas to preside over the execution of a mentally disabled black man, signing off on the repeal of Glass-Steagall and declaring the end of “welfare as we know it.”
The Fifth Way cannot be pandering to people who supported an honest-to-dog fascist by throwing women, black folks, immigrants, gay people, etc., under the bus. I know none of y’all who are proposing an appeal to Trump voters are advocating that. But we have to draw a line that is clear and bright. And we also have to understand the nature of this enemy. This isn’t politics as usual.
NeutronFlux
@Betty Cracker: Yes. This.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer:
Trying to lighten it up here.
As to expanding our range of possible approaches, yes we need to but I do not believe we need to include Trump supporters. I repeat, he got fewer votes than Romney (or so I’ve read) Our problems lie wholly within the Dem party, somehow or other we need to find a way to get ALL of our voters out in EVERY election, especially mid terms. I am not smart enough to know the answer to that question but there has to be one.
In the mean time I am going to do what I have been threatening to do for a long time and join the county Dem party so that I can do everything possible to ensure that the next Washington Co dog catcher is a Dem. Here in MO this party has been decimated and that is where we have to start.
Applejinx
@MomSense:
Why the flying fuck didn’t Hillary say something? I sure would not have thought less of her for calling that out. She was ON THE STAGE with a microphone talking to the nation, with a goddamned tangerine Frankenstein looming behind her, and it does not occur to her to depart from the bloodless technocrat briefing and firmly say ‘Step back, Donald’ or ‘Why are there zero questions about women’s reproductive health and choice here?’
She was ON THE STAGE.
D58826
@socraticsilence: Agree. With most candidate/voter interaction via TV you have to be able to light up the screen. Cable put it’s thumb on the scale by covering Trump live but he made an exciting show. CBS guy said that he was good for ratings. Even people only tuned in to see the train wreck they still tuned in. Wasn’t it PT Barum who said any coverage is good coverage and I don’t care what you say just spell my name right. Hillary/Gore/Kerry were boring and if cable news had devoted the same amount of live coverage to them moist people would have switched to the food channel. On the other hand Michelle got rave reviews for her speeches. So it wasn’t just sexism
Juice Box
@socraticsilence: Of course. That’s definitely part of the package. However, I can guarantee that the Rs will find some terrible Crime! that any D candidate will have committed and run against that Crime! to the exclusion of everything else with the complicity of the MSM. Tony Rezko, “inside information” on the commodities market casino, lies about the internet, personal loans to family members, what have you, there will be some Dirt! about the next candidate and plenty of Ds will be handwringing over it too.
Comey, 25 years in the public eye, voter suppression laws, charisma, whipped up “scandals”, bizarre MSM fascination with trivia — they all played a role, but you can’t point to any one as The Cause of this defeat. HST, LBJ, RMN, JEC, and GHWB were all fairly charisma deficient.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think you should aim higher than dog-catcher, A true Democrat should aspire to be a cat-herder at the very least.
I do think we should not just lump all Trump supporters together as hard right, racist fascists. Yes, a percentage of them are that – but let’s not push the ones that aren’t into the arms of the alt-right by making it clear that we think they all are irredeemable scum.
WereBear
Don’t fall into the media framing. ooooooo, it was economic anxiety about not having jobs, poor widdle white working class men
When the reality is, they want to barely graduate high school, marry the girlfriend they knocked up, stay in their town, and have a job with benefits and a pension.
I understand. Your father or grandfather had that. But that era has ended and will never come back. Your brute force skills have aged out of the economy. Once upon a time, immigrants made a living as sandhogs, too, but not any more.
THAT is what they want. THAT is what they cannot have. And there just isn’t any way to give it to them… except lie.
Which is what Trump did.
old_owl
@Taylor:
Yes. Unless Dems can control their messaging channel, the “liberal” media and right wing media will define Dem policies and candidates, even to the Dem base.
Parties need a strong base that lives on despite wins or defeats. That needs sustained investment (time and money), and a dedicated messaging channels down to the local level. If the churches did not exist as a messaging network for the GOP, they will be bust. With unions gone, Dems have nothing for messaging the base. That is why the first thing the GOP will do is to destroy whatever is left of the unions.
Take Latinos. Does the right wing think Latinos are a democratic constituency? Yes. What are they doing about it?
This They have set up a dedicated messaging channel. To woo enough Latinos to make a positive difference to the GOP.
It’s Koch funded. But its the same, GOP or Koch. It was in setup in 2015. They are on the ground. It will yield it’s dividends in 2020.
Politics is a long drawn out process. There is no instant gratification.
BJ can do something practical, sponsor one such group continuously ( for years, through defeats) till it becomes self-sustaining. But ultimately it has to be local – on the ground. Elections happen on the ground, and a virtual community like BJ is not a replacement for being on the ground.
waysel
@Applejinx: You really should leave your Clinton hate at the doorstep when you come here. Please.I’m sure there are plenty of other places you can vent it with an audience that will cheer you on. Most people here don’t share your insight into the truth about her, so all you’re doing is hurting people who have similar goals with you. I would like to flame the shit out of you and/or try to persuade you to see our picture of HRC, but that would be counterproductive and/ or a waste of effort.HRCs viableness is a moot point now, so leave it alone.
MomSense
@Oldgold:
Without it I would have died a few months ago.
D58826
@OzarkHillbilly: Saw on twitter that Hillary is on track for a bigger pop. vote margin than Bush v Gore in 2000. Democrats won the majority of senate votes. And if history hold will do the same with the House.
Getting democratic voters out and winning over independents is important but given the way the Constitution has structure the government the GOP has a built in advantage. Twenty small to middling size red states with a combined population less than NY and Calif. have 40 Senate seats. Calif./NY have 4. One more red vote and they can bring the Senate to a halt with the filibuster.
Juice Box
@Kay: Elizabeth Warren will also be 70 in 2020 and says she isn’t interested.
Her last opponent ran against the “Cherokee” scandal and her personal loans to family members who bought and flipped foreclosed properties during the housing crash. The “left” will run against her history as a Republican in the primaries.
Anyway, I think that EW is, like Harry Reid, happy playing the role of a hammer on the ice. I don’t think that she really wants to be Wayne Gretzky.
Morzer
@D58826:
I now have “I get wet” running through my head, which is not something I thought a discussion of politics or mention of the food channel would ever achieve.
waysel
@geg6: I feel as you do. Though I hope you stay, or come back soon.
D58826
@Morzer: I hate spell checking that doesn’t know what I really meant to say. Sorry for the nightmare :=).
enplaned
She was an uninspiring candidate who ran a mediocre campaign. In this year we should have won 400 EC victory over Trump. We didn’t.
In 2016, Democrats lost more than GOP won. Failed to get out the vote.
Start there.
enplaned
@waysel: not hate. Reality. She should never have run. Most establishment candidate ever when the country wanted change.
Juice Box
@D58826: Wyoming has 1 EV for every 180,000 residents, California has 1 EV for every 690,000 residents.
D58826
Said this yesterday with regard to Applejinx and will say it again today – the only ones that benefit from a democratic circular firing squad are the republicans. If ‘tolerant’ democrats and liberals can’t disagree among themselves in a civil and respectful manner how are we going to convince any one else to do the same. Or we could just go full on GOP and start looking for DINO’s to drive out of the party.
Trolls are fair game. I don’t think Applejinx is a troll.
MomSense
@Applejinx:
She fucking did! There is video. You can watch it.
Another Holocene Human
@Marcion:
Bullshit. It’s a ban on citizen-lobbyists. Industry will still be able to court the big boys. They don’t care if they break the law, either. The only way to ban that would be to rein in campaign contributions, which is impossible under Citizens United.
Ben Cisco
@BillinGlendaleCA: Thirty years ago today, I was a couple of hours south of here working infrared mapping systems for the RF-4C. We used to call them flying bricks.
Morzer
@D58826:
It’s not so long ago that we had Senators from a number of those small/medium red states. Perhaps we should be asking why the Democratic party simply threw in the towel and relied on getting lucky with crazy candidates from the GOP to run against, rather than making a clear, persuasive case and fighting tooth and nail everywhere and every time.
Denali
@Phyllis,
Thanks for the info re Hillary’s address. I do want to thank her and tell her that I am proud of her. On Wednesday a friend and I went to Susan B. Anthony’s grave and left my I voted sticker along with many others. Small gestures, but heartfelt.
socraticsilence
I can’t say more without stepping across the line and unmasking who I am but Jesus fucking Christ people, Hillary was John Kerry who was Al Gore– charisma matters, you can pretend it doesn’t or talk about how its not fair but its fucking true. If a candidate can’t legitimately fire up a room with 100 people in it who aren’t already die hards, guess what they’re probably not going to win in an election with potentially 130 million voters.
Juice Box
@geg6: Yes, please take a break and come back. Many of us agree with you completely.
Emma
@MomSense: forget it. The white men are telling us who to blame, evidence of our own eyes be damned. They’re also telling us how to fix it — let’s try to give racist white men what they want.
Juice Box
@Morzer: Oh, but we hated those blue dog senators. Remember? They were far more “corporatist” than HRC. They loved that coal too. You are asking why we can’t win more and run purer candidates.
D58826
@enplaned: While I agree on the ‘country wanted change’ bit, I just wonder change to what. What do they want to change from that has happened in the past 8 years
1. Obamacare
2. dodd-frank
3. stronger environmental protect
4. 74 straight months of job growth
5. the US economy with all of it’s faults is still doing better than any other Western economy
6. rescued auto industry have some of it’s best years ever
I’m sure I missed a few. But what will the GOP/Trump change that is an improvement over that list?
Another Holocene Human
@WereBear: Food stamps are going away. Those who didn’t vote are about the get slapped upside the head. Wonder if they’ll learn. The wealthy ones who voted Trump will be laughing.
Betty Cracker
@socraticsilence: I think there’s some truth to that. It’s a really stupid thing to disqualify a person on, but we’ve just had the most vivid demonstration ever of how stupid a country this is.
WereBear
@Another Holocene Human: This is why I am thinking a General Strike might help.
If all the Democrats stayed home for one day, would the country keep running?
Imonlylurking
@MomSense: preach it
Juice Box
@WereBear: Those jobs are gone and they’re not coming back. They weren’t taken by undocumented immigrants or workers in Asia. They’ve been automated out of existence. It just takes fewer people to make a car, a sock, or a table. Ditto extracting coal, gas, and oil. The US manufactures a lot of stuff, just without as many workers. Blaming a couple million immigrants is the wrong diagnosis.
MomSense
@WereBear:
The media have been trying to recast racism as anything but what it is. Soledad O’Brien called them on it live on air. She went on CNN and said they were intentionally normalizing racism. On twitter she explained to people who were skeptical that CNN and all the other media outlets did it because it was profitable.
There is a reason the media didn’t ask about women’s health, drowned out all the other issues of free education, debt relief, investment in infrastructure and jobs creation, climate change, and the fact that yes there were actually people who were excited about Hillary’s campaign. They were not going to give equal time to women, people of color, the environment, the actual working class bread and butter issues. Look at who runs and owns the media outlets. Look at who is on the television. Megyn Kelley is not the feminist champion you are looking for.
Here’s a thought. People should go back and compare polling numbers on black lives matter, policing, the sides people took in the high profile police shootings and beatings of black people and then think about one of the hills we had to climb and why Hillz’ stand with the Mothers of the Movement and BLM was not only principled, brave, and progressive, it made it tougher to win the election.
I’m not going to pretend that racism is anything other than the biggest factor in our body politic. It has always been going back to our colonial experience and our founding.
waysel
@Applejinx: Can’t resist. Sorry. Award winningly stupid: “I am pants-shittingly terrified the Democrats will insist that we must run Hillary a third time, run her again until it works.” You,sir, must get a grip.
MomSense
@Emma:
It really is that simple and pathetic.
D58826
@Juice Box: I was going to make the same point. Liz Warren is not going to get elected in North Dakota. Period. full stop. end of story.
So you work with the blue dogs and get less than perfect solutions enacted and prevent truly bad ideas (privatize medicare) from seeing the light of day.
Obamacare is the perfect example. W/o the blue dogs it doesn’t pass. The bluedogs would not vote for Bernie’s single payer dream. So we have the imperfect Obamacare, that can be improved upon overtime (if it survives). It might not be perfect but 20+ million people have medical coverage, healthcare spending increases have slowed and the medicare trust fund extended for 13 years. Not bad for an imperfect comprise hashed out with the blue dogs.
There are not enough liberal/progressives to win national elections.
waysel
@WereBear: Yup. Vote suppression. James Comey.
Juice Box
@MomSense: Beautiful!
Another Holocene Human
@Jeffro:
Ding ding ding. Think that includes NPR at this point, wholly owned subsidiary of Kochs.
MomSense
@Juice Box:
Look at the job losses in the rustbelt in the 80’s when St. Ronnie was president and long before NAFTA. All those white guys with economic anxiety still love St. Ronnie and would vote for his rotting corpse if it was on the ballot.
There is so much evidence against all this nonsense sympathy for the economic plight of the poor white working class but some progressives are going to cling to it no matter what.
Another Holocene Human
@Morzer: No, I believe Trump voters are evil deep in their dark little hearts. People who bought the propaganda against Hilary mainly stayed home. Some voted 3rd party. 5 million erstwhile Dem voters stayed home this time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx:
She is not going to run again. Get a grip.
WereBear
@MomSense: Reagan’s rotting corpse would be better than we got.
Denali
@Satby,
Have a great trip! India is endlessly fascinating.
Shalimar
@Kay: It won’t matter what the financial channels say. Remember McCain in 2008 claiming the economy was still doing great. It destroyed his credibility at a key moment in the campaign. People know the economy was getting close to terrible. They personally or people they knew were suffering. It will be the same thing with Republican policies. Everyone will have close friends or family who are suffering.
MomSense
@WereBear:
INORITE. Unfortunately it would probably have the same transition team and cabinet.
I take a little comfort in knowing that der trump already looks like a rotting corpse. All the spray tan his “billions” and tiny little hands can spray does not camouflage how unhealthy and terrible he looks.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense:
I agree 100%, and there’s no doubt in my mind that was a huge factor.
@MomSense:
This too, but the good news is that the modern Democratic Party has always been the only party that stood up for the working class of all colors. It was right there in Clinton’s platform, even if all voters heard was blah blah blah blah EMAILS.
I’ve seen exactly nothing on offer from the folks who are bewailing the alleged lack of outreach to the WWC that is a radical departure from Clinton’s platform. It’s all messaging and strategy, and I frankly don’t give a shit about that as long as we don’t compromise our commitment to equality and diversity.
Shalimar
@Morzer: You know who the last Democratic Senator elected from Alabama was? Richard Shelby. Those type of people don’t run as Democrats anymore. Conservative voters no longer cross-over and vote for moderate or conservative Democrats, and conservative voters are a clear majority. People like Shelby in the younger generations are all Republicans, which is why Republicans are doing so well on the state level.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
And now the only thing that is going to get people through this next four years is that we commit to each other and build personal networks (actually in person and offline) that are diverse. We are going to have to take care of each other, shelter each other, and support each other in every way. It is already open season on Muslims and people of color. The people the SPLC has been warning us about are emboldened.
ETA Why the media fascination with the white working class to the complete exclusion of the working class who are not white and comprise the majority of the working class?
Uncle Ebeneezer
@satby: EXACTLY. Maureen Dowd is rightfully shat upon in liberal spaces for her role in pushing false narratives about Gore that too many American’s bought into, giving us W. I don’t see why Bernie and all his Bros, and Glenn (spit) Greenwald and everyone else who did the SAME EXACT THING to Hillary (whether on tv, print, blogs, Facebook etc.) throughout the primary and all the way up to Election Day should somehow be granted a pass. I know people who were doing this. They aren’t Republicans, many of them even #HeldTheirNoses and voted for Hillary, but they pushed this BS to the point that an unhealthy amount of the Electorate bought into it. Hell, many of them are STILL pushing it today. They are the same assholes who were apologists/denialists anytime people pointed out the sexism/misogyny aimed at Hillary even from the Left. Fuck them all.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I’ve tried to avoid any glimpse of the shit-gibbon since Tuesday, but from the few I’ve seen, you’re right. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he keels over before the inauguration. I hope the fucker doesn’t. Looking forward to watching that vile shit-stain flop on the world’s most brightly lit stage keeps me putting one foot in front of the other.
Another Holocene Human
@debbie: Brilliant
Shalimar
@MomSense: I live in a Florida county where there weren’t even any local Democrats on the ballot. All the non-Republicans who ran for office here ran as independents, because 30 years of talk radio hate has made it impossible to be a Democrat in public. You get constant attacks and death threats. I have no sympathy at all for the white working class even though I am a member of it. Politically, any who speak out in public reveal themselves as hateful assholes.
Robert Paehlke
No more cable news for me. I will seek a cable package that excludes them all. If I cannot get it I will cut the cable.
Morzer
@Shalimar:
Sure, but Alabama is the Deep South. What about Montana, North Dakota etc? How do we explain the ongoing disaster of Iowa? It seems to me that Democrats have forgotten how to approach voters outside the “easy” blue states – and that we need to know why that happened and find a way to fix it.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: It’s poverty. Poverty does this. It’s the so-called “what’s wrong with Black families” song and dance we’ve heard for fifty years being played out in the forgotten parts of White America.
There are no good jobs, there is no justice. Talked to a guy a few days ago who got pushed out of his job at fire dept for political reasons, tried to get a job as a prison guard and one of the people from the county called the prison and told them not to hire him. His marriage ended and he’s fighting to keep his kids, well, he has programs for child care but if he gets a marginal job he loses them and then nobody to watch the kids. He had another job for a while where the boss verbally abused him until he quit. That boss has now been fired by the city commission there but he hasn’t gotten the job back. “You quit voluntarily.”
There is no safety net. There is no justice. I worked in a union and we could barely defend our members and most jobs don’t have one. Some young men look around and decide the only way to win is not to play.
Another Holocene Human
@Morzer: I agree. There was nothing simple for the simple folk to latch onto. Obama was good at that. When Obama ran for re-election there were lists of his accomplishments going around. Why didn’t we have lists of Dem accomplishments to hand to voters? Did they think it was self evident? It seems like FDR believed in lists of Dem accomplishments. He got re-elected four times….
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: AGREED!
We actually do have to look at what WE did wrong because WE didn’t turn out OUR voters. FUCK the alt-right, courting them actually lost Trump more votes than it gained him. A simple fact that is being elided here.
MomSense
@Morzer:
How do democrats do this in a fact free and corporate controlled media environment?
I talked to an old friend who lives in Wyoming. They think Obama killed coal production and caused 2500 coal minors to be laid off with an EPA regulation that isn’t scheduled to take effect until 2017. I tried to push back with that fact, gas and oil prices, and the reality that they could have foreseen the demise of coal for at least 20 years so why didn’t they plan for it?
Nope they don’t take responsibility. They don’t acknowledge facts or reality. They are always blameless and owed something. Fuck that.
Another Holocene Human
@Morzer:
Your premises are wrong. People making good money voted trump, people with lower incomes voted for Clinton. The problem is that not enough lower income people voted. So of course a pitch to make things better for the bottom 40% seems like it would motivate those folks to vote–plus I think a replay of OFA’s successful GOTV game instead of whatever that 2016 hot mess was–and we do have to address voter suppression head on.
But don’t go down the Tweety Reagan “Trump” Democrat rabbit hole. Those folks are doing WELL they voted to kick the ladder down below them. Do not chase these voters.
Do something for OUR voters. The working poor of all races and backgrounds. The non working poor and disabled. People didn’t hear enough that Hilary was for them and doing something for them. Blame cable if you want. Obama found a way around the MSM and we have to repeat what he did.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: And marijuana won’t do it, at least not in Florida. Tried TWICE and failed!
Maybe we should put increasing min wage on the ballot again. IDK.
Betty Cracker
@Another Holocene Human: I think you’re right, especially on the warning not to go down the Tweety lunchbox-and-hardhat rabbit hole. I did want to note that my experience with HRC’s GOTV operation did not mirror yours as you described yesterday, at all. But evidently it wasn’t consistently good or we wouldn’t have such different experiences within the same state. Oh well. Lots of lessons to learn as we form the Resistance.
Morzer
@Another Holocene Human:
I assume that voters for a given candidate are not monolithic – that they have different motivations, interests, identities. My concern here is that too many people are listening to their anger and pain and deciding that all Trump voters are evil and unreachable and alt-right. If we treat them all that way, they will become a monolithic bloc in sheer self-defense. We should be trying to slice off some of his voters, motivating our own people to turn out consistently and building a party for all Americans. That has nothing to do with fantasies about Trump Democrats or Tweety – it’s simply the reality of politics. Maximize your possible voters, steal enough of your opponent’s = win. Disdain possible voters and preach to the choir = lose.
D58826
@Another Holocene Human: Funny how when it is poor black families it is blamed on some kind of ‘personal blasck pathology’. When it’s poor white families it is the elites who don’t care about good hard working Americans.
But it’s not racism.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@MomSense: Rod and Karen at the BlackGuyWhoTips podcast discussed the election the other day and came to more or less the same conclusion. Even more simply: this election was a response to Black Lives Matter. As someone who spends alot of time defending BLM online, I can’t say that I’d disagree. Most Americans don’t support BLM and are outraged and threatened by it. In progressive spaces it’s better but still not great. In Black Activist spaces, obviously people get it. But out there in the rest of America, it’s racism, ignorance and White Fragility all the way down. They are completely misinformed about what BLM stands for and they fully believe that BLM routinely encourages or participates in violence against police (they don’t.) I highly encourage anyone interested to check out this TBGWT episode I linked. It was excellent. It actually managed to make me laugh as well as helping me better understand why this result was not a surprise at all to many people who don’t have the luxury of white skin. Though be forewarned: Rod/Karen do not pull any punches in mocking/blaming White people, so leave any Fragility at the door.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
The thing is that the reported completed volunteer shifts the week before the election surpassed Obama ’08 and ’12.
GOTV is never perfect but I’m not buying the argument that this explains it. I think comey’s unprecedented interference in this election has a lot to do with this.
D58826
@MomSense: There was an article about the Iranian deal the other day. The article went over the usual points but the comments were amazing. The Trumpers are convince that at best the deal allows Iran access to nuclear reactors (which they already had and are allowed under the NPT) and at worst that Obama has given them to tools to build nuclear weapons.
Now the details of the deal are complicated but the basic point behind the deal is to shut down all possible paths to a nuclear weapon for 10 years.
MomSense
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
I will listen. Thank you very much for the share.
MomSense
@D58826:
How do you run a democracy (a superpower!) in a fact free context? Guess we are about to find out.
D58826
@MomSense: well we did have a bit of a preview ovedrthe past 8 years. Death panels anyone.
HeidiMom
@OzarkHillbilly: Or a sitting Senator, former mayor and governor, fluent in Spanish, passionate about social justice, background as a civil rights attorney, who fought hard and well as Hillary’s choice for Vice President? I like Tim Kaine.
Also, thanks to Adam and Alain for answering my questions and clearing the path to my first comment. I’ve been lurking for a long time but realized on Wednesday, when this was the only site (other than WereBear’s Way of Cats) that I could tolerate for more than a minute or two, that I really needed to be here. And to answer the obvious question, Heidi is my dog; she lives, for the most part happily, with two cats.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: My guess is it was a perfect storm that encompassed a lot of factors, including Comey, Russia, WikiLeaks, the crappy MSM, a hysterical reaction to the prospect of a black president being succeeded by a female one, backlash against BLM, etc., etc.
As for all these suffering WWC types who voted for Obama and switched to Trump in the Rust Belt, Weigel at the WaPo managed to track one of that elusive species down in Wisconsin. Here’s what he said about the Access Hollywood tape:
Fuck that pig with every bit of oxidized metal in the Rust Belt. I want to win, but no, I don’t think we should tailor our message to go after his vote.
MomSense
@D58826:
Death of democracy the prequel.
Yup. Ok some self care time. Going to walk in the woods with my dog.
chopper
@Kay:
he’s a narcissist. all he’s gonna do is whine and blame people. anything bad that happens during his administration is going to be obama’s fault.
EBT
@raven: You get an other than honorable if they find out you joined to avoid jail time now.
chopper
@Kay:
I predict all the gooper debt/deficit scolding will dry up the day trump is inaugurated.
debbie
I love that Trump was whining about the unfairness of the protests.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: Yep on the perfect storm. If one or two things had broken the other way Hillary would be president – elect.
From Dick Polman a bit of hope at the beginning of the article and depressing stats on how she under performed among groups that had supported Obama in 2012. For the life of me I still donot understand how, with all her flaws and even the desire for change, that people who voted for Obama either sat out or went for Trump. I can see in a Hillary vs Jeb or hillary vs Rubio, maybe even a Hillary vs Cruz but TRUMP an admitted sexual predator?
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/98837-young-progressive-americans-from-anger-to-resolve
D58826
then again maybe this explains it from the WAPO:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/10/im-a-muslim-a-woman-and-an-immigrant-i-voted-for-trump/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
waysel
@enplaned: Ooops . Prolly too late cuz I got distracted elsewhere, but just in case. DIAF.
Another Holocene Human
@socraticsilence: Cosigned.
Another Holocene Human
@waysel: Really? No criticism of Clinton allowed?
We just lost. LOST. Big league. Wake up. Hilary had strengths as a candidate and weaknesses. Her campaign was good in some ways, failed in others. We do need to figure out why we win and why we lose. It’s of deadly importance.
Miss Bianca
@Another Holocene Human: Simple. When the media doesn’t harp on imagined scandals to the exclusion of doing their jobs when it comes to due diligence vetting, when our base doesn’t have to deal with a carefully-planned program of voter suppression across states, and when our voters pull their heads out of their asses and realize that they have skin in the game, and it behooves them to play, we win.
When not only our political enemies, but our own “allies” sabotage us at every turn they can, we lose.
Another Holocene Human
@Shalimar: Bingo. Concentrate on where we can flip. NC, VA, GA, FL. AZ and NV. Some states are lost for now.
D58826
@Another Holocene Human: OR try and figure out why
1. millions of women, who probably would not want Trump within a mile of their teenage daughters, still voted for the p**y grabber
2. millions of Latinos, who may well see relatives deported, still voted for Trump
3. 59 million people voted for Trump, in part because of the terrible e-mails, w/o any idea if Putin has Trump by the financial balls.,
Elie
@satby:
Absolutely! This enrages me. Having to get the retread Bernie bot arguments thrown back in my face is too much. People will have their opinions but she was intentionally and mortally wounded before Bernie but then his folks deepened it. A week before the vote it was as though some sort of implant had been inserted into white people’s brains. And let us not forget other assistance from Comey and the media. Even Bill fucked her up with that little stunt he played on the tarmac with Loretta Lynch and then trashing Obamacare premiums. With friends like that… It is above horrible to hear those same talking points here and read them in comments in the papers. Sure, I do think that the Democrats need to rethink, regroup and reorganize. But we don’t have to trash this strong and competent woman to do that. My heart just breaks for her. Given her sincerity, I believe she feels deeply how she let people down. What can she do about it? Has every male candidate been perfect and without flaws to compensate for? Nope. Yet she has to be crucified — intentional and unnecessary meaness that sounds just like Trump. Sad!
Elie
@D58826:
Here it is… Only 53% of WHITE WOMEN voted for Hillary while like 70 or so % of Latinas and 90% of black women. Wassup with that? College educated and all… — they liked them some mean white man “taking control”, I guess. But never mind, I have to hear leactures from white fanbois degrading the candidate who did a good job… Sure, we need to figure out what to do better and how — but we donot have to trash her or demean her. I will not tolerate it.
Elie
@D58826:
And where are the investigative stories on who is financing him? How did he get away without sharing his taxes? Why didn’t the FBI report on the Putin connection but trashed Hillaries with fucking lies about emails. Its Outrageous but now we have to hear how she blew it cause?
Elie
@Another Holocene Human:
Of course criticism is allowed — and necessary. But not mean and dishonest commentary that just regurgitates “crooked Hillary”.
Elie
@D58826:
Turns out she was pretty misinformed. She’ll find out about those Obamacare premiums and how “high” they were when she has to deal with the Republican solution. Single mom and all. Good luck. Maybe she should have done a lttle more reading.
waysel
@Miss Bianca: Agreed, but you forgot Comey. And Putin.To AHH: not rocket science, nose on face, but no, let’s blame the damn victim.
waysel
@Another Holocene Human: And sloppy reading of what I said and its context, but whatevs.
waysel
@Elie: THIS and your 2 posts prior.