Serious question: what's the ultimate political purpose of pointing out Clinton won the popular vote?
— Kai Ryssdal (@kairyssdal) November 12, 2016
Well Kai I'd say it points out that more people said they wanted her to be president than the other guy https://t.co/VSnf1nCcZO
— Jonathan M. Katz (@KatzOnEarth) November 13, 2016
By how many million votes does Clinton have to be ahead before press stops acting like Trump's win represents the will of the people?
— Schooley (@Rschooley) November 13, 2016
Rebecca Traister, for NYMag:
On the Sunday morning before Election Day, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman ever to be nominated by a major party for the American presidency, gave a sermon at the Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia. Her voice hoarse after days of multistate campaigning, Clinton sounded exhausted but happy to be there. Even at the bitter end of a nearly two-year marathon campaign, she could still get energized by speaking at a black church on a Sunday.
There was a feeling of confidence among many in Clinton’s campaign that weekend. They were spending a lot of time in Philadelphia, where the streets were overrun by canvassers who’d poured into the city to get out the vote. Polls had begun to show Clinton recovering from the dip she’d taken after FBI director James Comey’s letter re-embroiled her in the email morass. It looked at that moment, in and out of the campaign, like she was going to be the first female president of the United States.
Clinton preached to the congregation about the Founding Fathers — but not in the way that most politicians, in this era of right-wing deification of the country’s forebears, would invoke them two days before a presidential election. “Our Founders said all men are created equal,” Clinton said. “[But] they left out African-Americans. They left out women. They left out a lot of us.”…
The next night, Clinton stood alongside Barack and Michelle Obama before a crowd of 33,000 people outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the spot where the architects of the nation had endowed its citizens with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — as they built their new country on the backs of enslaved African-Americans and subsidiary women. Clinton and the Obamas were taking an audacious risk in presenting themselves as united in a mission to broaden America’s notions of what leadership could look like, of what the power of expanded enfranchisement could mean for the kinds of people from whom it was withheld for so long.
But little more than 24 hours after these three historic figures made their case for doing more work to perfect our imperfect union, it was clear that half of the country would prefer to return to the Founders’ original vision, with people of color and women on the margins and white men restored to their place at the center. The enormity of the upset came at the end of what had already been a traumatic election for the women and immigrants and people of color to whom Clinton was trying to appeal, and who had spent months being derided, threatened, groped, caricatured, insulted, and humiliated by Donald Trump and his supporters.
It wasn’t simply that the imagined coalition did not, in the end, cohere — though it did not. It was also that the very specter of it, the threat that power could be wrested from those Americans who have traditionally enjoyed more than their share, had created a spasm of resentment and revulsion that no pollster had really been able to track. It wasn’t just that white Americans voted Republican, which they usually do. It’s that they chose a uniquely unqualified candidate who openly sold himself on promises of resistance to and revenge on the women and people of color who were poised to exert a historic degree of power…
It’s worth noting that more than 200 women have tried, mostly in vain, to make chinks in this hardest of glass ceilings, starting with Victoria Woodhull, a stockbroker and occultist who ran for president in 1872, nearly half a century before the passage of the 19th Amendment. A hundred years later, Shirley Chisholm made her historic run, which ended with negotiations over her earned delegates and a speech at the 1972 Democratic convention in Miami. Chisholm compared her campaign to Catholic Al Smith’s nomination in 1928, which she said paved the way for John F. Kennedy’s successful run in 1960. “What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male,” she said…
There’s a rich history of women crying about politics. Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary about Chisholm’s 1972 run, ends with Chisholm saying through tears, “The only thing I continue to regret of course is that we didn’t have the moolah.” At that same convention, Nora Ephron famously reported on Gloria Steinem, weeping on a Miami street about how George McGovern had betrayed the women’s caucus. “I’m just tired of being screwed, and being screwed by my friends,” Steinem bites out. In 1988, Colorado representative Patricia Schroeder tried to mount a presidential campaign but, like Chisholm before her, was unable to raise the money. During her speech, announcing that she would not be running, she cried, and the taunting and jeering she faced as a result of having broken down were ironed onto my 12-year-old brain. In 2008, Hillary Clinton famously got choked up the day before the New Hampshire primary, a race she was predicted to lose to Barack Obama by ten points. In one of that election’s great upsets, women came out to vote for her in droves, putting her back in contention and setting up what would become her epic primary battle against Obama. Many in the media argued that women were responding to her vulnerability, her show of weakness and emotion, to some sort of Bat signal of soggy sisterhood. I thought at the time that what they were responding to was something else. Clinton’s show of emotion came during a week in which the media had dug her a premature grave, in which men had held up an IRON MY SHIRT sign at a rally, in which Chris Matthews had actually pinched her cheek. Tears, for women, only sometimes express sadness and vulnerability. Just as often, they signal rage.
In a way, anger is what got us even this far. Perhaps the most crucial turning point for women in politics came in 1991, when Anita Hill testified in front of an all-white, all-male Senate judiciary panel about her sexual harassment at the hands of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas (who would go on to gut the Voting Rights Act, enabling the disenfranchisement of so many voters in North Carolina last week). Watching a black woman being interrogated on national television by a group of exclusively white men suddenly made America’s representational inequities glaringly obvious. “Women were furious,” Pat Schroeder has recalled…
But as we look forward, we must note that more than half of voters did look toward another America, a future in which participation is diverse and needs are interconnected. Hillary Clinton, the first major-party woman candidate for president of the United States, won more votes than her opponent, the man who will become only the fourth president in history to take office after winning the Electoral College and losing the popular vote. Had this happened in reverse, of course, it would be bedlam, because the will of American whiteness would have been superseded by the (rigged) system of Electoral College voting that afforded non-whites a threatening degree of power. But because this result is an affirmation of whiteness and of maleness, both in terms of the electorate and the candidate who won — there is no threat of incivility. Hillary Clinton conceded early Wednesday morning. Barack Obama welcomed Donald Trump to the White House on Thursday. Michelle showed Melania around…
I was a high-school radical feminist during the 1972 election, fervently cheering on Shirley Chisholm even though it was clear her campaign was more about blazing a trail for future women candidates than about achieving the nomination (much less the Presidency). One reason this week didn’t totally shatter me is that I have a bone-deep memory of that year’s dreadful DNC convention — the tragic certainty that our lip-service “allies” (mostly but not exclusively white men) would be swift to shiv us at the last moment, with a tear in their eyes and a mouthful of pieties for the cameras. Shirley Chisholm, Goddess protect her memory, would probably take comfort that at least this time her successor got far enough to win the popular vote… for all the good it did her, in the end.
Schlemazel
Kia is an inflamed boil on the buttocks of NPR. The whole operation has sold its soul to the GOP and their daddy warbucks owners
m.j.
Serious question: do you think Kai Ryssdal is moron?
WarMunchkin
Digby has this article up, and beneath it, some of the most digby writing I’ve ever read in the last decade of reading. Highly recommend checking it out after reading the NYMag article. A drop of courage for the soul, she is.
It only now dawns on me how much it’s going to feel like the early days of the blogosphere, with all of us having to band together and figuring out a way out from under the boot heel of W. Except this time, the right wing has major online organization. We’ll have to find a way out from under them yet again.
Barb2
Shirley Chisholm
It will take a strong woman to clean up the mess left by the religious right and the new KKK (formerly gop). Will it happen in our life time? Those of us who voted for Shirley Chisholm? NOPE.
Applejinx
Mark Blyth, on Twitter, linked to this blogpost: Trump and the Revolt of the Rust Belt
I think it’s a very good analysis. More relevantly, Mark correctly predicted Brexit, correctly predicted Trump would win at a 60% probability in spite of his shitty campaign and nonexistent GOTV, and says that this blogpost explains why.
It does, I think. (it’s not blame-y or overpersonal, if that helps)
Also, a bare popular majority stood against racism, sexism and prejudice in SPITE of all this. In spite of their own basic survival they stood up for what was morally right.
Schlemazel
@m.j.:
He does not understand what he is paid to not understand, not stupid, the banality of evil
SenyorDave
Personal story. My brother and SIL are both doctors. They and my other brother and SIL got together last night for a late b’day celebration for two of us. Politics dominated the conversation. We’re all liberal Democrats, and we started talking about implications of the election. My SIL who is a doctor has been very affected by the results, and has been posting a couple times a day on Facebook. I happened to mention a book I had read recently that had essays from people of color who live in MN, much of which had to do with interactions with the police. One person wrote that his white friends are surprised when he tells them that he and most POC he knows think about race every day of their lives. I asked my SIL about how often she thinks about being a woman and experiencing sexism, and she said she thinks about being a it every day in relationship to her professional career. She was careful to say the two are not equivalent, for example, she has no reason to feel apprehension in a police encounter. But she was specific about the subtle differences in how she may be treated as opposed to male colleagues. I was not totally surprised but I would not have guessed that it was so pronounced.
Having a sexual predator about to become POTUS is the most depressing political development of my lifetime.
Bailey
“All we got out here was Barney Frank at 11:30am on a weekday.”
So goes the Democratic campaign in Wisconsin, per this interesting piece on Vice:
Anne Laurie
@m.j.:
Ryssdal is a professional
“(NY)Timesman”NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) guy. He may or may not be a moron, but his employment contract requires him to act like one.(edited, b/c I mixed up the media enabler corps)
Mayur
Kai: it would point out that the damage your asshole friends at NPR did by trumping up the email issue and downplaying the dangers of a trump presidency made it close enough that the electoral college mattered. So that’s the fucking point.
gogol's wife
@SenyorDave:
Yup. But whenever I feel it as the worst possible insult to me as a woman, I remember all the millions of women who voted for him, and I despair.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“What the point of Hilary wining the popular vote”
WTF? Maybe because that’s how elections in a democracy are supposed to work?
Ryan
“it was clear that half of the country would prefer to return to the Founders’ original vision”
Less than half actually.
SenyorDave
@gogol’s wife: And that is the thing I struggle with the most. I said this to co-workers:
Even if you hate Hillary with the heat of a thousand suns, how can you vote for a pig like Trump? And that was before the predator tape.
And now his behavior is normalized. I was hoping that maybe someone or some publication could interview the 12? women who came forward. I know if this were a Democrat in that situation the story would be ready to go ten minutes after the election was called.
Hal
Minor trivia. Kai and I worked at the same borders books in palo alto many years ago, but I don’t remember if we worked together or if was after me.
Oh yeah, and fuck that bullshit question.
Suzanne
@Applejinx: Thanks for sharing that.
I have said before that I used to work in advertising/PR. Honestly, that was one of the best experiences of my life for understanding human behavior, and how other people use their knowledge of it in order to make money or win votes. To me, it is exceedingly clear why Trump won in the Rust Belt, why he won the primary, why Hillary could not have won, but neither could Bernie have won. And it has nothing to do with policies or positions on issues and economic position is really only a symptom of it. In short, a lot of people who we are calling “white working class” but who aren’t really overwhelmingly working class feel culturally impotent. Voting for Trump was like a little blue pill and now they’re going to fuck the hipsters and Millenials and urbanites and elites who think their culture is vaguely backward and anachronistic. Shorthand: mayo people fought back against aioli people.
WaterGirl
@WarMunchkin:
Are you fucking kidding me? I just read the article you linked to, agreed with much of it, not so much toward the end. David Brooks as the leader of the way? No hope at all, our democracy is lost forever? Trump will win a second term by a landslide?
Now I now want to shoot myself, or maybe just sit and rock in the corner. Forever. This was not a drop of courage, it was a tsunami of hopelessness and dread.
Emerald
And there is this, posted on the last thread.
Right on.
Brachiator
Since the popular vote don’t mean crap, anyone hung up on this is as big a dope as the Bernie Bros complaining about the delegate count, or Trump when he whined about a rigged election. The way democracy is supposed to work? Read the freaking Constitution. It doesn’t guarantee you a democracy.
WarMunchkin
@WaterGirl: Uh. Well. Clearly I can’t read. I’m sorry for causing you hurt.
Ohio Mom
@SenyorDave: When I switched from a male onocogist to a female one in the same office, I told her there was nothing wrong with her colleague, I knew it was sexist of me but I just preferred to be treated by a woman.
She smiled at me and said, “There is so much prejudice against woman in medicine, it is okay if you are prejudiced the other way.”
So your SIL has company.
raven
@SenyorDave: I said those exact words to my Hawaiian Nam vet buddy this morning and added that this Nazi cocksucker said not getting VD was his “Vietnam”. How in the fuck could you vote for him? He’s much more concerned with “violence” at the demonstrations and the Black Panthers. This is a guy who, because of his complexion, has been badmouthed in the grocery store by people who think he’s Mexican. This is not some stupid fuck, he’s a retired construction manager wit.h a degree in landscape architecture. He thinks I’m nuts.
Culture of Truth
Because the media keeps endlessly telling us to shut up because Trump won, it’s the will of the people, the system has spoken, everyone hates Hillary, she ran a terrible campaign, they alienated everybody, the people bought what the GOP is selling, totally rejected the Democrats’ message, etc etc. So yeah, it’s worth pausing to note that the majority of people who cast a vote actually wanted her to be the President.
Brachiator
@Mayur: Nonsense. People knew what they were getting with Trump and wanted it anyway. Nobody was hanging on the judgment of NPR.
JPL
The electoral college depressed the popular vote, because you really don’t think your vote matters, if you live in a solid red or blue state.
@Suzanne: Congrats on the work that you did. It showed some results, but I wonder if those that live in red states, would be more efficient in off year elections.
raven
@Ohio Mom: I switched GP’s for a similar reason. I was going to this guy who was a USMC officer in Nam and became a doctor. He treated my like I was a fucking private for about 2 years. I finally said “fuck it” and switched to a woman who I had known causally. She’s a good doc except she always apologizes for her “short stubby fingers” when she hit my prostate.
raven
@Brachiator: One of them NYT dudes this morning noted that one reason Obama won was because people wanted change from the Clinton grip on the party.
Baud
@raven: “No apologies necessary, doc!*
mskitty
@WarMunchkin Digby writes extremely well. That column was cruising along until it crashed on the reef of David Brooks, and the last three paragraphs frankly did not make sense.
Baud
@raven: The NYT and the Clintons do not mix.
WarMunchkin
@mskitty: I have just discovered that digby didn’t write that. I made a mistake.
MomSense
@Applejinx:
This author based conclusions on actual data.
Yep race really did
Adam L Silverman
@WarMunchkin: Traister’s article is excellent. As is, as always, Digby’s commentary.
Emdee
Ryssdal’s program “Marketplace” airs on public radio stations, but it is unaffiliated with NPR. It’s produced by American Public Media, which through various twists and turns is a spin-off of Minnesota Public Radio and is still based in St. Paul.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Are you really feeling that hopeless? As hopeless as the article on digby’s website? To me that article said we should just give up on everything. Forever.
JPL
Megyn Kelly in her book mentions that Trump has been courting journalists with gifts.
What did Joe and Mika get.. maybe a little tryst at one of his hotels?
What about Chuck Todd?
Jake Tapper is wavering on his support, so I suppose he is included.
If they cross Trump in their reporting, you know he will tweet,
and they will lose their jobs.
We live in scary times. Pay to Play
@Baud: No shit
GregB
If anyone is good with numbers and graphics perhaps a new meme comparing a heavily populated county to the number heartland states that went Trump.
The land mass vs. population meme needs to be challenged.
Let us remember that one of the Republican Party called Bill Clinton illegitimate because he didn’t win a majority due to the Perot vote.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I find the fact that HRC won the popular vote comforting. It’s useless politically, of course, but when I think about the fact that the new president is a white nationalist who views women as objects, it makes me feel better to know most Americans didn’t vote for that. YMMV.
Suzanne
@JPL: I’ve worked every election cycle since 2006. I couldn’t canvass in 2010, as I was 84628289474 months pregnant, but I made over a thousand phone calls that year.
LD18’s reorganization meeting is one week from tomorrow. I’ll be there.
Ruckus
All of them, Katie. Every fucking one.
GrandJury
@Applejinx: Pretty good read. His analysis makes sense I guess. Flipping counties from Obama to Shitstain indicates it’s more than just racism and voter suppression. Not just about Hillary either although her long history in politics is certainly a factor.
I think those people are mistaken if they think anything is going to change for them because of this. Only going to get worse.
Betty Cracker
Also, reposting my comment from the thread below:
Bannon will work full-time in the White House as chief strategist and political adviser. The man whose ex-wife testified under oath that he didn’t want his kids going to school with Jews. The man who called the site he ran, Breitbart, “a platform for the alt-right,” complete with a “black crime” tag so the site’s neo-Nazi / white supremacist readers could conveniently locate hate objects. The man who conducted outreach on Trump’s behalf to white nationalists in Europe after Tuesday.
Maybe the media could focus on that rather than breathing a sigh of relief about Priebus, who is a mere toady who will coordinate legislation. Bannon has and will continue to drive the white nationalist agenda.
This cannot become normal.
JPL
@WaterGirl: The fifth stage of depression is acceptance. I don’t think we ever get there, because it would be dangerous to do so.
I do think that some journalists are going to protect him because they have received favors, and if that comes out, they will lose their dignity and their jobs. (the dignity part is a joke) He already threatened Joe.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Top advisors to John McCain, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, saying what the vast majority of political reporters are afraid to– with props to Jake Tapper
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
OT.
Adam, for your Russia portfolio.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@m.j.: no, and from what i’ve seen of his tweets over the past few months, that comes as a real surprise.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Emails !
JPL
@Suzanne: You are a doll. Thanks. Most of the local democratic meetings are in Atlanta. Since Cobb flipped this year, even though I live in Fulton Cty. I might see if they need some help.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe this is what political realignment looks like.
SenyorDave
@Betty Cracker: I don’t understand this. The association with Breitbart should be sufficient to prevent Bannon from being involved in any official capacity. So my tax dollars go to pay a white nationalist? Where are the Democrats on this?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@SenyorDave:
Being rebooted, total house cleaning and all.
enplaned
I find it hard to listen to Kai Ryssdal for that long on the radio. He’s only too pleased with himself and his smug view of the world. This just confirms what I’ve intuitively understood for years. He’s the worst kind of public radio asshole.
Pretending that Hillary was a good candidate who ran a good campaign is not only false, but also plays into the whole Trumpy mandate nonsense.
The reality is he didn’t win it so much as we lost it. Not only is that true, but it helps undermine this idiotic idea that Trump’s victory means anything more than that.
George
@Schlemazel: But evil, though banal, still is evil.
Years ago, when I was growing up in a conservative Republican household, I believed that conservatism was superior to liberalism. I thought that Republicans were better than Democrats at managing the government efficiently in a way that would provide all the promised goods and services.
I was young, of course, but I supported the Reagan tax cuts. They were supposed to reduce the deficit, right?
But then supply side economics failed, and the deficit grew, and I thought Republicans would be wise and jettison the tax cuts and try an new tactic. Naturally I was wrong. The deficit continued to grow, all the while abetted by the very people who claimed to be opposed to deficits in the first place.
All of which led me to the conclusion that there is a lot of evil in the GOP, a lot of mental illness, and a lot of hate. To anyone with any sense of numbers, or any common sense, the answer to Ryssdal’s question is obvious. However, to Ryssdal and the rightwingers who posted on his Twitter question, even a two-point Trump electoral vote victory would make them wonder why anyone cared about a Clinton ten million popular vote victory.
Seriously, they are highly duplicitous and are incapable of understanding objective truth. Hypothetically, even if discrepancies were uncovered and Clinton were to be awarded the electoral vote, I have no doubt that Ryssdal and his ilk would argue, straight-faced, that because Clinton already conceded, Trump still should be president. They are morally bankrupt people.
patrick II
Osama bin Laden may be dead, but he won the game. His goal was to create fear and ruin our democracy and, with the assistance of the Bush administration, he has achieved his aim — throwing the mideast into chaos and having it spread to Europe and now the U.S.
I’m not saying that’s the only reason for our fear and resentment, but somewhere in hell that s.o.b. is smiling today.
Suzanne
@WarMunchkin: That was a great Digby post. Thanks for sharing it. I agree very much (though I am less enthused about Bobo). This election was a big fucking slap down, not of HRC or Democratic governance or the economy or whatever else we keep saying. It was a battle in a culture war, striking back at all the things that HRC and the Dems and the TPP represent: urbanity, secularism, modernity, living in interdependence, multiculturalism and multi-identities, globalism and glabalization, education, technological advancement.
But time marches on. And for the first time in world history, about five years ago, more people worldwide lived in cities than in rural areas. And minorities become majorities. And education levels keep rising. So I really do think that this was a big fucking last gasp of a dying culture. But they’re not going to go gentle into the good night.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I’m quite certain I will never reach “acceptance.” By January 20th, I might possibly get to “acknowledgement,” but no more than that.
I’m still mostly toggling between “denial” and “anger.” There hasn’t been a day since Tuesday during which I haven’t cried, but I seem to be spending less time each day awash in tears, so I guess that’s a good thing. The Voter ID and other kinds of activism are also good things, as is the excellent advice from several commenters to clear and declutter and focus one’s own life. Little by little….
gene108
@Bailey:
What exactly can Democrats do, to appeal to these folks in Wisconsin and not through minorities under the bus like Trump did?
What will Trump voters do, when he does not get his 35% tariff on Chinese and Mexican goods?
I really am at a loss as to what makes these guys tick. In 2010, Republicans ran in “jobs, jobs, jobs”, but did nothing to deliver and still got re-elected, in 2014.
Emma
@enplaned: Ye gods. You’re still at it. What brings you here at all? The need to spit in the faces of people? You create nothing, you offer nothing. You’re the worst kind of pseudo-democrat.
Betty Cracker
@enplaned: Agree completely about that smug prick Rysdall, but you’re dead wrong about what this election means, and if your view prevails, we are well and truly fucked. If you think it’s insignificant that a foreign power and the federal police force interfered in this election and that Trump’s new senior advisor is busily networking with other Putin-endorsed nativist knobs, I don’t want you in my foxhole.
i don’t give a damn what you think of HRC or her campaign. I’m open to listening to new ways to package an economic message — as long as that’s not code for throwing blacks, browns, women or LGBTs under the bus. But don’t minimize what happened so you can cling to a narrative.
Corner Stone
@enplaned: HRC was a great candidate and she ran a very good campaign. I made schedule to take my son with me when I cast a vote for her, and we walked to the D/HRC support booth after to thank all of them for their hard work.
Mary G
@patrick II: Wow. That’s right. Osama bin Laden knew us better than we knew ourselves.
Monala
This if for NR, D.Mason, Goblue72, and Bailey, if any of them show up on this thread:
1) Can any of you explain why proto-fascist and rightwing groups are gaining strength all over Europe, even though those countries generally have much stronger social safety nets than the U.S. and entire parties dedicated to promoting leftwing economic policies?
2) Someone asked this on an earlier thread, but I never saw a response. Why has the white working class turned to the Republicans so decisively over the last 40 years? Note that I’m not asking why they turned away from Democrats (so I don’t want to hear any answers about, “Well, Dems turned away from labor, the New Deal, etc.”). The question is, why did they turn to Republicans? What were Republicans offering, long before Trump, that seemed so attractive to the WWC?
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: Yes. Game over, man. Game over.
SenyorDave
@Betty Cracker: Bannon will work full-time in the White House as chief strategist and political adviser. The man whose ex-wife testified under oath that he didn’t want his kids going to school with Jews. The man who called the site he ran, Breitbart, “a platform for the alt-right,” complete with a “black crime” tag so the site’s neo-Nazi / white supremacist readers could conveniently locate hate objects. The man who conducted outreach on Trump’s behalf to white nationalists in Europe after Tuesday.
I keep thinking this is completely unacceptable. I know I will contact my Senator/Congressman, but that seems pretty minor league. I’m thinking of contacting our Synagogue’s rabbi and cantor and see if they can get involved. They are both very plugged in to the national Reconstructionist movement. This should be something that Jewish groups (and others) get involved in.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Morning Joe?
edit: any journalist that he threatens should wear it as a badge of honor. one of the saddest things about this is having to worry about retaliation from the fucking government. I guess that gives this white girl a teensy taste of what black people live with every day, and worse since no one is likely going to kill me over this.
Elie
@Suzanne:
I agree with you completely. Now, we have to keep them from burning the house down and turning it into a cave over the next years. They have proven they can do that and will do that. I also believe in hubris — a lot.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: What stage of grief are you in? All of them Katie, just all of them.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No props to Jake Tapper, at all. His feed is just sitting there blank, no opinion or commentary. Is he a citizen? Does he agree with Trumpism? Where is he on this Bannon development? Telling us facts reported in 2007 is great. Where is he now?
JPL
@WaterGirl: Definitely Morning Joe and Mika. When they something ugly, he went and twitter with a threat, and they met with him, and then changed their tunes. After I read that Kelly said Trump was handing out favors, you can almost look at the coverage and tell who is on the receiving end. He will now use that as a form of blackmail.
Thoughtful David
Serious question of my own: Do any of you know what day it is that Pervert Trump has to give his deposition about the 13-year-old girl he raped? I’ve tried googling it, and I get all sorts of non-relevant hits.
I want to know what day so I can publicize it loud and long to everyone I know.
raven
@Thoughtful David: It’s over.
raven
@WaterGirl: He’s not a journalist and he never claimed to be. He’s a commentator.
Bailey
@Thoughtful David:
The suit was dropped a couple weeks ago.
If it was really ever a legitimate case at all. Everything about it was very sketchy.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Happy fishing, as noted at the mail of g. I hope it’s a fabulous trip for the entire raven crew, she says enviously, with no beach plans in the foreseeable future.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: I think highly of Digby and appreciate what she writes. Its well written and important to read. And to answer your question: I do not feel hopeless.
Monala
@mskitty: Digby didn’t write that column. The entire thing is quoting Neil Gabler.
NeenerNeener
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around Jared Kushner and “Stormfront” Bannon working together. How is that possible, unless, as Cindy Lauper once noted, “money changes everything”.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I keep wondering if churches will get involved to stand up against all the hatred that will be showing in our new government. Now that would be realignment.
Betty Cracker
@SenyorDave: That’s a great idea. We should go for an early scalp, and Bannon is my pick. Utter scum.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: I am oscillating between hopelessness and determination, myself.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Thanks, I’d seen that.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for the reply.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I look forward to getting some shots of the moonrise on the gulf tomorrow night.
Adam L Silverman
@SenyorDave: That’s why he’s Chief Strategist. Its a made up position.
schrodinger's cat
@patrick II: Don’t give him credit, America did this to itself, cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Adam L Silverman
@Thoughtful David: Cancelled. The girl had Lisa Bloom, her attorney, withdraw the suit out of fear of reprisal.
MomSense
@Thoughtful David:
That’s over but the Judge is moving ahead in the fraud case
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Best news I’ve heard all week!
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: Did you send me an email? If so, I don’t think I got it.
[email protected]
Thoughtful David
@Bailey:
Thanks for the info. I knew that the woman had canceled a public speech about it because of threats to her life, but didn’t know the suit itself was dropped.
Why do you say it was “sketchy?” Just because it was dropped doesn’t mean it was sketchy. May mean the threats got to her.
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s where I am, too, except that we have to add in profound sadness and anger/rage.
Monala
@Bailey: Ok, you’re here! Questions for you:
1) Can you explain why proto-fascist and rightwing groups are gaining strength all over Europe, even though those countries generally have much stronger social safety nets than the U.S. and entire parties dedicated to promoting leftwing economic policies?
2) Someone asked this on an earlier thread, but I never saw a response. Why has the white working class turned to the Republicans so decisively over the last 40 years? Note that I’m not asking why they turned away from Democrats (so I don’t want to hear any answers about, “Well, Dems turned away from labor, the New Deal, etc.”). The question is, why did they turn to Republicans? What were Republicans offering, long before Trump, that seemed so attractive to the WWC?
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: Go with determination. Look its going to be bad for a while, but hopelessness, panic, despair aren’t going to help. That’s what the extremists want, its what they always want.
Matt McIrvin
@NeenerNeener: The magic formula is from Karl Lueger, the anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna, an inspiration for Hitler: “I decide who is a Jew.”
Just like all the white racists who are fine with a black person who is “one of the good ones”.
How Kushner justifies it, well, I’ve never been able to figure that out.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: You’re welcome. I’ve since, prodded by someone else’s comment here, gone over there and need to clarify: 1) Traister’s article is excellent, 2) Digby’s remarks are quality Digby’s remarks, 3) Neil Gabler needs to get a grip! And I still don’t do hopelessness. Or hopeless.
JPL
@MomSense: The NYTimes wants to hear from you…
https://twitter.com/abbygoodnough/status/797919246315491328
Morzer
@Baud:
Don’t blame me – I voted for Baud!
Ooops!
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: Saying Hillary ran a less than effective campaign is not exactly throwing anyone under the bus, even her. Donald Trump is a freaking reality TV star with a history of bankruptcy and libertinism. HIs candidacy was widely regarded as a joke. It should have not been close. The things you mention (foreign interference, emails, etc.) were all things that had surfaced early in the campaign and are evidence that a campaign as usual may not cut it. Granted, that’s a bit of hindsight, but the desire to say everything that happened is not Hillary’s fault risks obscuring the fact the Democratic Party brought a knife to a gun fight. They didn’t effectively deal with the electorate in Rust Belt states they viewed as a firewall, and the GOP tactical moves that weakened the hold on those states were not countered, even though Hillary had plenty of cash, most of which appeared to be wasted on overkill on anti-Trump ads. Trump and the GOP found a weakness in the Dem’s strategic geography and exploited it to grab control of two branches of the government.
JPL
@Morzer: If you voted for Baud and live in the rust belt, I wouldn’t mention that on this thread.
just sayin
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: I recently heard that Nazi trolls on Twitter have announced their attention to hound people into committing suicide. The news gave me a powerful will to live.
Bailey
@Monala:
Europe has stronger safety nets but infinitely worse reactions to immigration and integration of new populations. Ghettos of immigrants exist there in a way that doesn’t happen in the US. The “otherism” there is also happening much faster there whereas in the US we’ve always had immigrants that were fully assimilated by the second generation. Also consider that with the EU, counties with very distinct histories, cultures, & currencies were forced into a union together under the guise of free trade helping the entire continent. They may have been ready for the flow of capital, but they were not prepared for the flow of people.
However, that obviously doesn’t mean that the perception of out of control immigration isn’t happening in the US. Clearly it is. Trump definitely ratched up resentment to the highest degree possible. However, it is important to also remember that there was no counter to what Trump was bellowing. He was having one conversation, Dems were having another.
There’s no argument that demographics between GOP and Dems switched hands after the Civil Rights Act. But if you’re still suggesting that every white voter that voted for Trump when they’d consistently voted Dem for the past 50 years is a racist not worth targeting, then you are probably not understanding their every rationale and are missing low-hanging fruit.
For what it’s worth, I suspect many already know that manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back. And they probably even grok that Trump, a wealth-inherited NYC real estate developer with the gold Manhattan apartment, the third trophy wife, and the line of shady products isn’t going to solve their problems. But he gave them the time of day. The Dems did not bother to do even that. (Oh sure, I know there’s a 10-point solution out there on a campaign website which would probably be quite helpful for that region but since no one was out there talking to them, it skipped right past them.)
Volley question: Can the Dems maintain any type of coalition that exists solely on the race / gender of the individual voter to the degree that it requires nearly every voter of that race to turn out and turn out big? In other words, is it fair to ask that African American voters turn out at 90% or better? Or is it fair to be disappointed that Latino turnout was only at 70%?
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman:
What the tyrant wants, first and foremost, is that people begin sitting down and shutting up out of fear of what he might do. It’s much easier for him that way. Once he has to get into the business of actual brutality and repression, he’s going to be exposed for what he is – as will the very large number of people who want nothing to do with his program. Remember, a lot of America didn’t vote – which doesn’t mean that they endorsed anything and everything. If, as I expect, the GOP overreach badly, there will be a backlash.
Morzer
@JPL:
*cough* But Baud told me that Clinton was a sure thing, so I should start holding her accountable.
Baud? Comrade Baud? Are you there?
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: As I said, I don’t give a flying fuck about what y’all think of HRC’s campaign — water under the bridge. Let’s talk about packaging an economic message, fine.
New ways to target the Rust Belt that don’t entail diluting the anti-racist, anti-misogynist, pro-LGBT rights message? I’m all ears.
But if you don’t acknowledge the other factors I mentioned, you’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We don’t have time for that bullshit.
Bailey
@Thoughtful David:
Put it to you this way — the “facts” of this case are so dubious that I’m not convinced that “Jane Doe” actually exists.
At any rate, these articles highlight some of the sketchiness of the suit and its origins:
The Guardian
Vox
Jezebel
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
Interesting anecdote from one of the comments:
I’m sorry, but I really hate white dudes right now.
And I think the scariest thing about that article is something the writer is correct about: Trump successfully merged anti-globalization and white supremacy. That thread has always existed, but now Trump has brought it to the forefront. People who try to be anti-corporatist or anti-globalization from the left are going to have a hard time, because Trump has basically co-opted it and made it a part of white supremacy.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Yes. This.
Morzer
@Betty Cracker:
I think we desperately need to analyze how the Democrats are operating (or not operating) at the state and local level. The state parties should have been our eyes and ears and warned us that the campaign wasn’t getting it done in crucial areas, no matter what the polls said. For too long, we’ve been flying blind on one wing in too many areas where we should be competitive or winning.
Gin & Tonic
@Bailey:
That would be an interesting number to get a hold of. My hunch is that the “white working class” is the “Reagan Democrats” — they haven’t voted for a Democrat in a generation.
frosty
@Monala:
50 years, not 40. Remember the hardhats in ’68 and ’72? The reason was law’n’order, same as it is now, except it was a codeword then.
Morzer
@Bailey:
I have a hard time imagining that the lawyer would knowingly set up a press conference with a client they knew was going to be a no-show. I don’t know how credible the case is, but I think Jane Doe either exists as a victim, or as an accomplished con-artist.
Morzer
And the apocalypse is clearly upon us – the Fins are going to win 4 straight for the first time since Teddy Roosevelt married his moose.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, they did.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: Yep.
Chris
@Suzanne:
Thank you for pointing this out; it cannot be stressed enough.
raven
@frosty: Uh, it was the hardhat “riots”.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@WarMunchkin:
I’ve got to call bullshit and shame on Digby. Whether you agree with that post or not, the entire thing consists of Neal Gabler’s piece from Bill Moyers’s site, copied verbatim. The link to the original hardly clears things up.
That is not “some of the most digby writing I’ve ever read.” It’s misappropriation and borders on plagiarism because of her byline and the misleading formatting.
Bailey
@gene108:
#1: Show up. Just fucking show up. That the campaign never even went there is so beyond the very concept of political malpractice.
#2: Counter message that economic improvement and opportunities in the region are not a zero-sum game. We don’t even really bother to do that, either. Why are we framing the discussion that an advance in one area necessarily means someone else will be taken advantage of?
#3: Supply side economics obviously has its claws in this country, but the left has simply got to work out and sell the benefits of investment. Start talking about Moonshot projects for the middle of the country. Start framing it as literally a Moonshot—how the greatest achievement in science and humanity was the result of government spending and public / private collaboration. Ask the question: Without that a.) could we have ever stepped on the moon? b.) Would private companies such as Space X, et al, be able to exist and grow / hire as they do?
They’ll still be fucked. No doubt.
Because when the jobs, jobs, jobs didn’t materialize, pointing out that someone else is getting free stuff DOES work if you let that resentment go unchecked.
And, of course, without the investment, the jobs were never going to materialize. But that conversational loop never got closed, either.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
To me, it feels like it just hammers home the fact that our votes don’t matter, and may matter less and less as time goes by.
Bailey
@Morzer:
I suspect the latter. I do believe that attorney Lisa Bloom had a conversation with someone, but as far as I know, it doesn’t appear she actually filed as the attorney of record.
Regardless, we’ll likely never know.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
Some of us aren’t very happy with our designated group either. Not that it helps. I’ve now seen ignorant, self-pitying white men play the lead role in fucking up two countries that I cared about deeply in the space of roughly 4 months. After Brexit I thought I was going to have a heart-attack, because I spent roughly two weeks in a condition of sustained, incredulous rage. After watching the Orange Rapist win in the USA, I think a brain aneurysm has to be on its way in the near future.
The people I don’t feel much sympathy for are the elites who led the Remain and Clinton campaigns. Maybe they had good intentions, but there’s a level of cluelessness and entitlement among them that deserves a whipping. Whether the rest of the world deserves to share it is open to question, but I guess we let them run the show so we have to take our lumps as well.
frosty
@raven: The hardhat “riots” were what I was thinking of. Nixon years, right?
Bailey
@Gin & Tonic:
It would be. I don’t ultimately know that number. But I am speaking of articles containing voter interviews that I’ve posted in the last couple days of white ex-urban / rural-ish voters who are still Dems, NOT Reagan Democrats, and have voted Dem up through Barack Obama’s two terms. THOSE are the kinds of voters we lost in droves, too. Those are the ones I’m interested most in getting back because they appear to be very gettable.
dww44
@m.j.: I don’t know if he’s evil, but he definitely tilts towards the Wall St. brand of conservativism. I’ve listened to his Marketplace APM radio show enough over the last 20 years to have concluded that and that most of the stories on it are incredibly shallow.
mai naem mobile
@Betty Cracker: this is going to sound stupid and it’s a long term thing but elderly care and an American version of the movie My Favorite Marigold Hotel in the Rust Belt and rural areas. You have cheap housing stock. I see lots of elderly people who do not have family around them so it’s not like you are warehousing them. The boomers are getting older and living longer. Elder care is a job creator. I’m not saying it’s a Google or Apple job but it’s a job. Before somebody slams me,I don’t claim to have thought all the ramifications through and I’ve thought about this way before the Marigold movie so don’t think I see it as some Hollywood movie script. Ofcourse, you would need GOP buy-in for tax credits etc to convince people to move to these places.
Emerald
@Monala:
Subtle racism. Then trump turned it into explicit racism.
The WWC know that we are going to be a minority majority country in just a few decades and it scares them. The only thing they felt secure about was their superiority and they know that’s going away. So they turn to the people who promise that they can stay in charge, no matter how much they get shafted economically.
That’s why they went for trump, no matter how horrible the man was. In fact, his awfulness is attractive to them, because it makes him a badass toward those people they hate. That’s all they really want. They will support him to the end no matter what he does.
Tenar Darell
@NeenerNeener: There were Jewish Elders who cooperated with the Nazis. There were Jewish capos in the camps. There have always been conservative Jews in this country who are willing to ignore the underlying anti-semitism of the Christian right (tolerate the eschatology for the sake of supplying weapons to Israel). Even someone as revered as Brandeis knew what he was compromising with to get Israel.
So, someone like Kushner is a shonda, but not unknown. He’s a minority, but there will probably be quite a few who think that simply because the cheeto’s grandkids are Jewish that it’s NBD. (Of course they’re wrong, Rothschilds of WWII could prove it, but by then it’s always too late).
Chris
@Mary G:
I’m not sure I buy that he just knew us well enough to foresee all this. More likely, he just got lucky.
Emerald
@Bailey:
It was a legitimate case. The judge accepted it. The girl dropped the case because she was getting death threats.
Chris
@WaterGirl:
I recently met up with a pretty religious friend, from my college days a decade ago, who is now attending the fundamentalist church near AU that I attended for a while before quitting it in disgust. According to him, the overall opinion of the church (which was Republican as hell when I knew them in the mid-to-late 2000s) was now pretty much in the middle, equally not-a-fan of both candidates. That in itself doesn’t mean much, but what I found much more interesting was that the church apparently now works on helping Syrian refugees settle into the U.S. One of Drumpf’s pet targets.
I also found it interesting that (in contrast to my “moderate” “open minded” East Coast Republican friends) all the Republicans I know who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump were the Bible thumping variety to some greater or lesser extent.
Anecdotes are not data. The religious right remains, in very large part, a “respectable” name for the white patriarchal supremacists. But let’s say I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Christian churches, even non-liberal ones, took some role in opposing Trump. I’d certainly expect it from them sooner than I would from “establishment” Republican politicians and corporate types.
Suzanne
@Monala: Republicans have been telling them that their way of life is noble. They have pushed the idea that you don’t need pesky things like education or experience to have an important job. They’ve told them that evangelical Christianity is awesome, especially when it’s doing the exact opposite of what Jesus would do. It told them that black and brown people were okay as long as they didn’t get too uppity or start getting ideas that they should be in positions of leadership. It said that you aren’t sexist—you LOVE women!—especially when they make your dinner every night. It said that Democrats didn’t care about you, they just wanted to make you feel bad about being white. And it ESPECIALLY told you that you didn’t have to feel bad about any of this, that all of the low-grade anxiety you’re feeling about the eroding cultural potency of white Christian patriarchy is REALLY ALL ABOUT YOUR DEEPLY HELD CONVICTIONS ABOUT EMAIL SECURITY!
dww44
@Betty Cracker: I’m with you and if you’re on Twitter maybe respond to Rysdall’s tweet with this response in the appropriate 140 character format.
Bailey
@Emerald:
Not exactly. The suit was filed first in CA in April and then dropped for procedural errors. It was re-filed in NY Federal Court. Anyone can file a suit. A judge hadn’t “accepted” it. The court date in December was a status conference for the judge to determine if there was any “there” there to the suit and whether it should proceed to trial / settlement. Obviously, it was dropped before anyone could find out.
As for death threats? Who knows? If she was a “doe” who would know how to target her? And for as vile as he is, death threats aren’t really Donald Trump’s style. He’d much rather win and then shame the person forever and ever after that.
Shalimar
@Morzer: Bloom in particular seems to have a good reputation, and it seems very unlikely that she would take on a client without a personal interview in which she found the victim credible. Aside from her involvement, everything else about the story screams scam attempt.
NeenerNeener
@Matt McIrvin: @Tenar Darell: Thanks for squaring that circle.
Chris
@Bailey:
For what it’s worth, I remember a poll of the French population where over 50% admitted to being at least somewhat racist.
I think the absence of a “nation of immigrants” myth in most of Europe makes it even easier there than in the U.S. for the idea of “real [citizens of country X]” versus unwanted ill-tolerated foreign interlopers to take root. Not saying it makes sense (national identities are arbitrary in every case), but I do think it’s true.
permafrost
I was reading an old document just the other day that says that legitimate governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.
Morzer
@Bailey:
Seems to me that Clinton might disagree with you on that one. Trump’s perfectly happy to spur on death threats, violence, calls to imprison his opponents without trial. I think he’s proven repeatedly that death threats are his style and that of his supporters
gogol's wife
@SenyorDave:
People magazine did.
SgrAstar
@Suzanne: Couldn’t agree with you more, Suzanne! I live in a very red state, and I can tell you from personal experience that these people hate our guts. That hatred transcends class and economic privilege, or lack thereof. It really is cultural. No greater source of anger and repulsion out here than seeing Beyonce and JayZ campaigning with Hillary. Coastal/big city culture has overrun “real” America, and it’s “corrupting” their own children. Fortunately, that culture- the tolerant, expressive, creative culture of the majority- is too strong to be beaten down by trumpism.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
That was too good not to be repeated.
Bailey
@Morzer:
That’s kind of getting into conspiracy theory territory. If she was a known identity, it would be easier to trace DT siccing his minions on her via Twitter or something to harass. But she isn’t. So from that, if we still presume DT’s involvement, we have to assume that he went on the complete downlow to threaten this person in a way that it never got traced back to him. That’s where it gets quite presumptive.
Obviously Trump takes great pleasure in whipping his followers into a frenzy and directing their outrage. But he didn’t publicly direct it in this case because there was no known person to direct it to. Anything other than is pretty wild speculation.
Morzer
@Bailey:
Having seen enough of Trump’s rallies with their viciousness and incitement to violence, I think you are being hopelessly naive about what Trump’s style is. He’s all about intimidation, threats, bullying and winking at chants to hang or imprison his opponents. Death threats suit him perfectly well. Just because he may not have cosigned them in one particular case does not mean that he’s off the hook for encouraging or approving them throughout his campaign. You should not delude yourself about exactly what sort of degenerate and tyrant in waiting Trump really is.
SgrAstar
@Brachiator: Brachiator, don’t be dense. We’re all very familiar with the Constitution. We insist that HRC’s popular vote majority be mentioned- repeatedly- because we must push back against the trumpist claim that they have a mandate. Duh.
Jeffro
@patrick II:
I don’t think OBL thought much beyond getting the US to over-react and get bogged down in a land war in the Middle East, with the attendant cost in lives and trillions.
Bailey
@Morzer:
You’re avoiding the logic of this—DT couldn’t have put his followers onto the threat path in this particular instance because 1.) we would have heard about it 2.) she is still a “doe”, therefore, unknown to his followers at large.
That leaves a scenario in which DT, if he actually did rape a 13-year old twenty years ago, to privately know who she is and go after her himself. Now maybe. But that’s very speculative and is at odds with the type of public harassing that we see him doing with his followers.
Beyond that—people are free to believe what they want to believe about the suit. There is a dearth of facts. There is a one-time plaintiff that is still a “doe” operating under a pseudonym. There are some very shady characters that either created or took advantage of the situation over the years. There was a suit that was filed and then pretty quickly dropped. There’s an attorney who never filed as the actual attorney of record but who called, and then cancelled, a press conference citing threats to the “doe.”
Anything beyond that is conjecture. Have at it.
dww44
@Morzer: Actually I’ve thought about this a lot. We need a functioning party apparatus whose job it is to not only field local candidates, but maintain a permanent visible presence in states and counties and with our party at least, always always doing the necessary to GOTV by insuring that all supporters have valid registrations. Then our Presidential candidates can be focused primarily on messaging and strategy to win. This is from one who’s spent time on the ground since 2008 in a red state where there was no viable state party apparatus until Obama created his own. But there was in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Not big enough or good enough, but it does exist..
Jeffro
@Morzer:
Seconded. Let’s not forget some of the dark places where Trump was going at his rallies just two short weeks ago, when the walls were closing in. Singling out reporters. Everything was “rigged”. Refusing to accept democratic processes.
Assuming his new “allies” (Pence, Priebus, Ryan, McConnell) don’t bamboozle him with flattery into taking a straight GOP (hard) line, let’s see what happens the first time he gets a wild hair or two and decides, oh, that he needs his DOJ to break up Amazon ’cause Bezos’ Washington Post keeps reporting Trump’s actual words.
Applejinx
@Monala:
Can’t speak for them, but you’re highlighting a problem.
WHAT leftwing economic policies? Post-Thatcher austerity clobbered the UK pre-Brexit. You do realise that ‘stronger social safety nets than the US’ reads a bit like ‘sturdier than cheese (cottage)’. What promoting leftwing economic policies? The whole world has been going globalist and neoliberal for decades.
We have replaced economic justice with culture wars. Granted, yay culture wars for justice and egalatarianism, but WTF did you think would happen?
Also, note that Trump clobbered the Republicans first, for things like trying to run a third Bush and their clinging to trickle-down economics and tax cuts for the rich. Who is up at the right hand of Trump? Paul Ryan? No, Bannon- who hates Ryan.
And before then? Before then, literally everybody bought into the globalization story and thought that we’d all be wealthy and sucking on gold plated iPhones as we watched American business boom. And it has. American companies are a powerhouse, except they’re not really American so much as they don’t pay taxes and are based in Ireland etc. but in theory they’re American, right? What’s good for Apple is good for Wisconsin, eventually?
Nope. And the shattering thing is to see that not only is the liberal mainstream THE slowest to figure this out, but that the liberal mainstream that CONTROLS the Democratic party with all the money their faith in neoliberalism has brought them, is prepared to believe that half of America are literally Nazis rather than once consider an inconvenient truth.
It’s the economy, stupid. Follow the money.
And when people tell you ‘jobs, economy’ and you turn around and not only refuse to help them but call them Nazis, this is what you get. And somebody else will have to dig us out of this bunker, and for God’s sake stop telling these people they’re Nazis, they’ll get tired of arguing now that they no longer have to.
Steve in the ATL
@Chris:
Around these parts, every evangelical I know was a vocal VERY vocal trump supporter.
Fucking assholes.
rikyrah
@Monala:
Racism
SFAW
@enplaned:
You are SO RIGHT. And Al Gore was the World’s Shittiest Candidate EVAH before Hitlary came along, right? I mean, he couldn’t even win his home state? And why was 2000 SO CLOSE? If Gore had run a non-shitty campaign, then pointy-headed Lie-berals wouldn’t be blaming Saint Ralph the Pure for something that was not his fault.
I am so fucking tired of the “Hillary sucked” bullshit.
“Hast thou considered my servant Hillary?”
The shit she’s gone through would have driven most people off the deep end 15 years ago, and Trump that way in about two months.
SFAW
@Bailey:
Hardly. Trump doesn’t have to say to no one in particular (wink wink) “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” What he SHOULD have done — were he not more than OK with the threats — was, when people at his rallies started with the “Lock her up!” and worse, is said “Knock off that shit! This is America, not fucking Russia or Nazi Germany!”
I don’t need more than zero fingers to count how many times he tried to tamp things down.
Bailey
@SFAW:
Again, you’re avoiding the obvious point that the “meddlesome pest” has not been publicly named. So how would he know whom to sic his mad followers onto? And given that his public rallies and twitter feed are well reported on, we know he gave no direction to do so from that vantage.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Actually, I think the answer is
1) Racism
2) Racism
Just being a little @n@l-retentive re: subject-verb agreement, so to speak.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Bailey: According to Lisa Bloom (who said this on the Stephanie Miller show), Bloom’s law firm had been hacked, and the accuser’s information has gotten out. Hence the death threats.
Whether this is true, I don’t know, but if anyone is sending death threats, it’s probably not Orange Shitgibbon. Probably one of this fans. Or Russia.
Bailey
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
I don’t know much about Bloom–I stay away from cable news as much as possible. But I believe she wasn’t even announced as Doe’s attorney until Nov. 2nd–the same day of the press conference, which was then cancelled because of threats. Are we to suppose that the hacking and threats were so instantaneous?
Again, everything about this suit and its history is highly questionable. Folks are clearly free to believe what they want though.
5x5
@Applejinx:
Donald Trump is actively abetting neo-Nazi followers. He is encouraging the KKK. He is working with global white nationalists. When people tell me “jobs, economy”, I will say we are trying to help you and others. I will also say, look who you’re standing with. They’re deplorable.
SFAW
@Bailey:
And yet, they’ve done it anyway.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: No one’s saying they shouldn’t be examined. In fact, why were Democrats so ill-prepared to deal with them? This was a strategic loss in that Dems lost areas they thought were safe. After-action analyses are appropriate when you’re strategically outmaneuvered by a seeming clown like Trump. In fact, I think that’s part of the problem. We relied too much on viewing Trump look like a clown and a buffoon, when that’s exactly what made him attractive to a lot of his supporters. He displayed a willingness to be a clown for them, to make a fool of himself and try anything to address their irrational anger and fear.
Honestly, I think the p-grabber tape was a turning point, because then Dems became obsessed with Trump’s sexism, when his supporters already knew he was a pig. These people were voting for him in spite of that, so there was only so much mileage you could get out of that. He played a card that’s familiar — the culture wars — using tactics relating to social status instead of relying on the old standby social issues like gay marriage and abortion. Trump figured out a counterattack that even the establishment GOP failed to recognize because they took themselves too seriously and stupidly thought their supporters were interested in movement conservatism. Trump’s tactics are shot through with racism and sexism, but that may be more evidence of the crudity of Trump’s implementation than evidence of the part of his message that made the difference with voters who are not particularly racist or sexist. Those people are more likely just being conned by Trump’s message of “throw the dice for change” when the dice are loaded by Trump’s personal interests and his alliances with people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Anyway, the association of racism and sexism with his campaign just makes it more imperative that you figure out what you did wrong on the other issues so you can ward off the danger he poses by enabling people like white supremacists and MRA types.
Suzanne
@SgrAstar: Yes. I live in the inner suburbs of Phoenix, which is a large city……like most cities, with a liberal little area in the middle, surrounded by a lot—A LOT—of red. Where I live is interesting in that it’s very purple, and due to the presence of a large tech employer in my neighborhood, has a larger Asian presence than the rest of the city. My Congresscritter is a Dem, and the first openly bisexual member of the House. We just elected a Dem state house member and state senator from my district, ousting a long-time GOP asshole. I see the fucking culture war ON MY STREET. My transgender Jewish next-door neighbor freaks out the evangelical Christians that live across the street (they came over and asked us how we thought that they should talk to their kids about her).
Every election happens within a cultural context. This one is anger and resentment at the loss of cultural power. I remember the moment that I realized that Donald Trump was really fucking good at campaigning: during one of the primary debates, when there were still like 6482535282 of them, one of the questions posed to him was something like, “Are you too angry for Americans?”. And he said something about how, “I am so angry about what has happened to our country. I am proud to carry the mantle of anger.” And I turned to Mr. Suzanne and said, “That was a great answer.” He did jujitsu, turned that perceived negative into a positive. And he won because he embodied the anger and resentment for all those people who are pissed as fuck about rap music is more popular than country and transgender people in the bathrooms and the fact that ranch dressing is déclassé and that we think they’re assholes for hanging on to their Confederate flags. They used to drive the cultural bus. Now they don’t. This is not and never was about governance. We lost because we didn’t figure that shit out.
Suzanne
@Hoodie: The p-grabber tape was a turning point, because professional white women were telling them how bad that was, how demeaning that was. And a lot of those fuckers were likely thinking about how, yeah, it was gross and not really okay, but they didn’t like being lectured by a bunch of uppity professional white women about it.
Bailey
@SFAW:
We really have no facts on this at all.
Speculate away though.
Peale
@Hoodie: He is a sexist pig. But if you’re not actually going to work for him, it’s not a big deal. Yes, I know that a lot of women hate sexist pigs and were repulsed and reminded that he’s the awful boss that they’ve hopefully never had, or who if they had, they hopefully left. But those sexism attacks were not effective in turning out white women in formerly safe suburbs in Philadelphia. Probably for the reason I just mentioned – he’s a pig, but he’s not actually hiring us to sit in his office.
The real consequences of his sexism is that he’s going to change the working conditions of women in the Army (probably at the same time they vote to expel the gays), and the white house is going to be a cesspool of ass grabbing handsy old men.
Hoodie
@Suzanne: That, or it just wasn’t as important to them in relation to other issues. Considering Trump’s negative favorability ratings, people were not voting for him for his character.
Peale
@Hoodie: I think the Democrats weren’t prepared for this loss because they never did an actual port mortem on Obama’s win over Romney. Obviously there was something wrong when they lost in 2010 and 2014 but because Obama won in 2012, the skipped the post-mortem and tried to run his playbook. The Obama had already lot millions of voters in his re-election. But if you google around for the “democrat post mortem” I can’t find one. My guess is that they did nothing to that would impress those 5 million voters back on their side because they didn’t exactly know who they were and probably chalked it up to causes that weren’t correct. But seriously, if you come across any Democrat national committee members (who is on that thing, anyway?), ask them what the 2012 post mortem said.
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
They managed to miss the massive voter suppression operations in WI, MI, OH, PA, and NC, just for starters. How the fuck did that happen?
ETA: All of that suppression started shortly BEFORE the 2012 election and the Republicans expected it to win the election for Romney. So it should have been dealt with in 2012.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Bailey: I am not saying I agree or disagree with you, am I just telling you what Lisa Bloom herself said about the hacking and the death threats.
I don’t know enough about the case to make a judgment on whether it’s a scam or not, so I won’t.
gene108
@Bailey:
Jane Doe’s lawyer’s office got hacked. Probably how her info leaked. Trump’s supporters are very much the type of folks, who would engage in death threats.
Bailey
@gene108:
And yet Trump’s vile followers, successful in this mission, aren’t online crowing about this accomplishment and driving away an accuser? The fact that we STILL don’t know her name—particularly if she was outed and harassed by Trump sycophants–makes me think that this is a bullshit story from top to bottom. Maybe Lisa Bloom got conned, who knows.
PIGL
@Matt McIrvin: I’d more likely be driven to tracking down the trolls then taking my own life. I wish more people would do the same, given the choice.
artem1s
@patrick II:
he mainly attacked the US because he saw the Saud family as playing with the enemy and giving into the West’s excesses. Can’t say I disagree with him. The Christian Evangelical movement has declared once and for all that they do not give a rats ass about salvation, agape, piety or any thing that Jesus would do. All they care about is naked power and worshiping the golden calf.
Ithink
@enplaned:
If we don’t believe as liberals and Democrats or whatever manifestation of the Political Left we prefer to label ourselves individually that Hillary was actually quite a good candidate and ran quite a good campaign then this perpetual firing squad amongst ourselves is what will cost us regaining anything in the 2018 mid-termsand beyond! Can’t really have an opinion on whatever else you stated so here it goes…
Trump was a uniquely anti-establishment candidate w/ no ideological, moral or intellectual compass to comply in his ludicrous primary, campaign and successful election to the U.S. Presidency.
There are any number of mistakes we made, but what we must’nt do going forward in this fight against what is more than likely actual Fascism in the making is believing that we need to make significant concessions towards economic uplift while putting racial, gender, religious, and other equalities on the back burner.
The days of Third Way and triangulation are clearly over whether that’s from some of Obama’s legacy and certainly much of Bill Clinton’s tenure.
We need radically populist ideas and policy proposals while also assembling, fundraising and vetting a deeper bench for Democratic presidents, senators, house reps and other political offices going forward. The basket of deplorables is The Truth and there is no amount of rational discussion or empathy that’ll neutralize the hatred and myriad resentments that is the quintessential Trump supporter.
IOW: we are f***-ing screwed unless we step our ground game up in turning out our Democratic base and all-new voters (the true silent majority 50% or 80-100 million registered voters who just continue to screw their fellow countrymen over time and time again it regardless of the “inspirational” options being offered) and simply trumping the foul and unfathomable energy this madman has thrust into the America public arena.
You can blame big data, the media, Clinton herself and the elite insiders of whatever stripe all you want but if there’s no measured criticism and correction on your mirror’s reflection from this point on we’re frankly no better than the authoritarian nonsense that has generously seized all the branches of government and every legislature except one needed to pass CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS. We are still #StrongerTogether and we can’t forget that going forward.