I’ve been quiet for the past week as I wanted to avoid seventeen hundred words of straight profanity. I think I have had enough time to at least go through a couple of stages of coping so this is a post to outline some of my assumptions for the next four years. I’ll get to health policy in another post.
TLDR: We’re fucked hard and good
The first thing that I need to do is recap a simple and straightforward proposition. The Democratic coalition, even when it decided to not show up, is bigger than the Republican coalition. We are just extremely inefficiently located. We’re more popular, but we are locked out of power.
Both the House and the US presidency are now controlled by the party who lost both in terms of the aggregate popular vote. This is a fact.
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) November 10, 2016
This does not do shit on a practical basis but I think it is something we need to remember.
Some of that inefficiency is urban concentration, some of that inefficiency is the natural consequence of the Electoral College that empowers low population states and some of that inefficiency is deliberate policy. The deliberate policy decisions that make the Democratic supporting vote inefficient will get significantly worse. I expect mid-decade redistricting to become a norm in any state held by a Republican trifecta. I expect the Justice Department to not give a fuck about districts that take a 50-50 state and make it a 85-15 safe Republican state. I expect voter ID and voter intimidation to be a national policy.
I expect the Supreme Court to be a 5-4 reactionary majority on voter rights. I would not be shocked if there is a bill filed to expand the court to 11 or 13 Justices filed and floating around as a sword of Damocles to threaten Kennedy to vote for anything coming off of the Susan B. Anthony fund’s wishlist. I expect the filibuster to be gone by lunchtime on the first day of the new Congress.
I expect the Republican Party to use their position of concentrated minorities against a dispersed majority to do as much as they can to lock in as much of a partisan tilt as possible. Packing the courts is the big one as the Democrats have majorities on most of the Appeals circuits right now. Getting to Republican majorities via packing in 40 something Federalist society drones is extraordinarily efficient as that can only be altered quickly if the Democrats can get a trifecta and they re-pack. It’s nasty but efficient.
We’re going to see massive mistakes of basic execution (and many executions that should not occur even if one supports the death penalty) as competence does not matter. We will be governed by the Brietbart comments section. Any policy (even if it is a good one) that is more complex than allowing contributors to use the commons as a waste dump or passing out large checks to the already comfortable or beating up on liberals/Democrats/Other will get fucked up. Deep Water Horizon in the Trump Administration would still be leaking.
We are going to be in caveat emptor low trust/high verification cost world as fidicuary duty obligations disappear, as the CFPB disappears and Dodd-Frank unwinds.
We’re going to a world of 4 degrees of global warming baked into the cake if we’re lucky as any international agreement will only work if everyone else is willing to take pain to allow the US to free ride. That is an incredibly hard sell. I don’t think it will happen.
We’re going to see once again that deficits only matter when Democrats want to enact their policy agenda.
We’re going to see any larger opioid outbreaks in rural counties as Medicaid funded drug treatment will be harder.
We’re going to see a lot of counties that voted for Trump continue to get kicked in the balls economically.
We’re going to lose a lot of people that have options to go elsewhere in the world. Immigrants with an education will find other places to go.
We’re going to lose a lot.
Let’s acknowledge that and then let’s figure out how to fight to prevent the losses that are preventable and get back into a position where we have at least one veto point if not the entire shebang.
One of the things that needs to be figured out is three sets of turnout related problems. The first one is the Nevada problem — what went right there? Democrats picked up a pair of contestable House seats, they defended a Senate seat by electing the first Latina, and they got enough seats to take both the State Senate and the State House. What went right? This somewhat applies to New Hampshire as well (Senate Seat and the state for Clinton, lost the governorship)
The next question is the Pennsylvania question? Philadelphia and Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) both delivered for Clinton. These counties had Obama 2012 or better margins and raw vote counts this time around. The core urban base precincts turned out and did their job. The problem was the rest of the state (Erie County is a good example of county that usually gives Dems a good number but voted Trump on lower than 2012 turnout). What the hell happened there?
The final question is the Detroit/Milwaukee/Madison question — where the hell did their 2012 turnout go? Get those three cities to turnout with only half the drop-off seen between 2012 and 2016 and we’re in much better shape. So what happened and why?
To figure out what to do next, we must figure out what the hell just happened.
japa21
Thanks for cheering me up.
Corner Stone
Yep.
EBT
https://twitter.com/PeterBeinart/status/797980645360140292?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Any chance that Obama’s how to be a president lessons will moderate deadbeat donnie away from actively destroying the country?
Mnemosyne
You missed seeing me on my new hobbyhorse, but it was suppression of Black voters using strict Voter ID laws. The Chicago Tribune has a story with an official saying that 41,000 votes were lost in Milwaukee because of Voter ID requirements.
Last I heard, Trump’s margin of victory was 27,000.
So, yes, they basically managed to gerrymander the country.
polyorchnid octopunch
Please read this thread. I was out and couldn’t post for hours, but this is a way out.
https://balloon-juice.com/2016/11/13/everything-still-sucks-but-i-am-dealing-with-it/#comment-6115672
Just follow it up, three comments in total. This could work, and given that Clinton won the popular vote is a completely reasonable approach to take to throw sand in the gears of the newly triumphant Trump machine.
Ohio Mom
@EBT: no, because Pence and Congress.
Sorry.
GregB
Ate there stats kept on how many people weren’t allowed to vote due to lack of proper ID’s?
Oh, and Steve Bannon is an American-Nazi.
Trentrunner
@EBT: The problem is that Trump is led by whomever he last spoke to.
So, with Trump, you don’t have to make the best argument, just the most recent.
Corner Stone
I think, in fairness, what we should first address is BECAUSE EMAILS!
Jumbo76
What I’m seeing is stories about how the Democratic Party just didn’t do any messaging in some areas, and in others the messaging was about how bad Trump was, not how good Clinton was. There was a strategic decision to reach for near Republicans rather than turning out our base. We must lay some fault at Clinton’s feet, though, because she is not charismatic and she failed to tie her policy positions to broader themes about how she would help people. We can not nominate any more Al Gores, John Kerrys, or Hillary Clintons. We need Barack Obamas and Bill Clintons. Or we can keep losing the presidency. The good news is this is all fixable. I refuse, absolutely, to turn the party over to the Bernie Bros. Now is the time for us to step up, throw out the Democratic establishment, and turn the party into what we want it to be. If you haven’t found your local committee, do it tonight.
jheartney
This looks like a test run for the proposition that heightening the contradictions works to produce progressive change. I’m guessing no.
p.a.
I think, except for ignoring vote suppression, this by Judis at TPM is a pretty good ‘what the hell happened’.
Didn’t He’s Fat Michael Moore predict H was in trouble in the rust belt a week before the election?
Trentrunner
Little disappointed that only Harry Reid (outgoing) is giving full-throated opposition to the Trump insanities so far.
Where are the Dems?
Halcyon
That twitter link doesn’t work for me. Also, does anyone have stats on the aggregate vote in the house? That’s a bit harder to find, but did we actually win that popular vote this time?
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Did you see this Rolling Stones article? I’ve got a matching hobbyhorse.
Crosscheck
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This is a democracy, optics do matter and this delegitimizes the Republicans.
KS in MA
@polyorchnid octopunch: Agree.
Tony P.
How’s about we all start walking around saying “Heil Trump!” while giving the Nazi salute. Not the stiff-armed Nuremberg rally salute, but the casual, flip-of-the-hand, around-the-office Nazi salute. The idea being to possibly lull He, Trump’s supporters into a false sense of security, and possibly shock the apathetic non-voters into recognizing reality. Aside from that, I got nuthin.
–TP
polyorchnid octopunch
@polyorchnid octopunch: I have an example to show what I mean.
Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107
Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922
I went and looked at Michigan’s census data on the state website. It appears they have a voting population of app. 7.5 million people. They tossed out about one fifteenth of that. Michigan has 16 electoral college votes. It should be fifteen, based on the voter purge. Given that there are also other rules that appear to have been violated about allowing people to vote, that number may be even lower… could get it down to fourteen. There are other states that have similar stats. If you get enough of them, that’s it.
There is not much time. I can’t see anything wrong with at least trying.
Chris T.
This is a reply to a comment in another thread:
I don’t know how to set up or administer such a thing, but: set up a web site where people can donate, e.g., $5 to $29, which is to be paired with a minimum contribution (of at least $1 but no more than $5) from someone who needs voter ID and can’t afford the $30. (Can be painted as “you contribute up to most of the $30, they come up with the rest, we get them IDed and registered” even though in fact it’s just a big pool of “ID and register” cash that just requires the minimum contribution from the to-be-registered voter.)
The point of requiring a minimum contribution is to deal with a weird quirk of humans: someone who has put money on something, even if it’s just a few cents, feels a much greater stake in it, than someone who has not. (See the book “Predictably Irrational” for a light introduction; people are very weird about “free”.)
Jeffro
Looks like more and more people are getting fired up, ready to go at these Kkklowns…I couldn’t be more thrilled! Remember W won a close one in 2004 and just two short years later was staring at massive mid-term losses, followed in two additional short years before Obama (praise be his name) took over.
We ran against a massive whitelash here, against the KKK and KGB and FBI and media capitulation, against voter ID laws, and oh did I mention the FBI? We had a great person run a good but not great campaign and STILL came away the popular vote winner. Not a single one of us ever has to qualify or justify our votes for Hillary Clinton – competent, experienced, ready to lead, full of compassion for everyone in this country.
Let’s man/woman up and get connected with our local and state parties and get ready to take these kkklowns down in 2017 and 2018 and 2020. Beat on the media to do their job. Don’t back down from nonsense at work or in public. Stand up for each other. Give money when you can and time even when you’re already overbooked. This is now our additional part-time job, folks. We have to do this. Fuck Steve Bannon and Kellyanne “Ari Fleischer-watch-what-you-say” Conway. Fuck Ryan’s Medicare privatization and fuck McConnell’s historic disrespect to President Barack Obama.
Get organized. Register voters a.s.a.p. Get their frickin’ IDs to them, get ’em IN HAND, now. And then remind them of all that they stand to lose if they don’t get motivated right. now.
MomSense
@polyorchnid octopunch:
Hell I want to challenge the election. This is so infuriating.
Mnemosyne
Someone else linked to an article by this guy who called Brexit and, yep, we’re fucked.
Short version: Trump has successfully tied anti-globalization and white supremacy together. Any anti-globalization activists are going to have to partner with white supremacists. So if “economic insecurity” wasn’t all about race before Tuesday, it is now.
Starfish
That piece you wanted to write in your first paragraph has already been done.
amk
racist raygun. clueless cackling buffoon. racist, sexist con man.
third strike.
GregB
I think we need to tell working class whites to man up, put on their big boy pants, stop whining and being precious snowflakes because this is America Goddammit and being an American is not some easy participation trophy, so if they only picked themselves up by their bootstraps and stopped looking to big government to help them they might make something of themselves.
Jeffro
@Trentrunner:
I’ve seen a few firing back at this stuff, but it’s only been 5 days…the shell shock is just now barely wearing off here at Casa Jeffro, I’m sure they are much the same.
(and this doesn’t even count the ‘who should lead the DNC?’, ‘who should speak for the party?’ silliness – THAT part, I have seen some of in Dem circles)
it would be nice if someone stood up and noted that Hillz won the popular vote, all of her policies were on target, she just narrowly lost in a few battleground states and there were plenty of other players (KGB/FBI/KKK) working hard to torpedo her campaign.
Mnemosyne
@EBT:
Well, we’re fucked.
It may be time for me to step away for the evening. My manic optimism is starting to wane. Though I suppose it points to even more chaos than I thought — really, nobody realized that the White House staff changes?
PsiFighter37
@Mnemosyne: +1. It seems like we lost WI, MI, and NC almost solely on the basis of voter roll purges. That flips the EC right there.
Either way, we are up 700k votes via popular vote, and it will grow even more. We need to harness that energy to get all voters registered to vote, no matter how hard it is. We do that, we get those voters out, we win.
But yes – it’s going to be bad, and think about this – it took Johnson-level supermajorities to get the VRA and Medicare passed. That’s never going to happen again on our lifetimes, unless we get gerrymandered and suppressed to the point where white landowners are the only ones allowed to vote.
polyorchnid octopunch
@MomSense: The big point here is people are being denied their franchise for things like incorrect address information and other bullshit reasons like that. The beauty of Amendment 14 Section 2 is they really got it right about the scope:
“But when the right to vote at any election … is denied to any … inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime…”
Denied or in any way abridged. That’s extremely broad. It’s almost like they saw Jim Crow coming and tried to head it off. The fact that nobody in the Jim Crow era tried to use this particular clause doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t try now.
PsiFighter37
@Jeffro: Agree that the shellshock is still there. It’s going to last a lot longer than 2004.
DNC – put Dean in there. He has proven success. Keith Ellison seems like a nice guy, but this needs full-time attention, and I’m very wary of who Warren and Sanders support – ultimately, IMO, their base of support are the voters we are going to lose (old white people) and those who are the least reliable (millenials, and I think their support here is overstated because it is amplified by social media). Ellison also doesn’t have any national profile.
Chris
@Corner Stone:
Thirded. This analysis is exactly my concern since realization hit me on election night, and also why most of the “it’s not so bad,” “it can’t last forever, they’ll make mistakes, we’ll get a chance again” articles fall entirely flat with me.
Because of just how much they can do in terms of entrenching themselves in power, and just how long and how much it’ll do to undo the damage and get them out of there, at this point these articles practically feel like they’re telling black people and civil rights advocates in 1877 that “don’t worry; it may look like your government abandoned you right now, but in exactly seventy years, conditions will have reached the point where a guy named Harry Truman will feel safe taking your issue off the shelf, dusting it off, and putting it back into play.” Well, yeah. Nothing lasts forever, not even the current Republican coalition. But holy fuck can there be incalculable tons of damage done in the meantime.
martian
@Jumbo76: They put their money where the polls told them it was needed, and it looks like the polling was for shit. You reach for near Republicans to run up the score when the polling tells you your base is solid. And honestly, Trump is a fascist white supremacist caught on tape boasting about assaulting women. I think it would have been political malpractice not to scream that from the rooftops, but I’ve clearly overestimated the decency of the average American voter, so you can’t go by me.
I guess finding some more reliable way to understand what’s going on with the voters goes on the list of things to address.
Mnemosyne
@GregB:
It’s slightly different, but here’s Greg Palast’s article about hundreds of thousands of people being purged from the voter rolls in the “firewall” states.
According to the elections chief in Milwaukee, 41,000 voters in that city were blocked because they didn’t have Voter ID. Trump’s current margin of victory in Wisconsin is 27,000.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@polyorchnid octopunch: No. The number of people who appear on the Crosscheck list is much greater than the list of people who were stricken from the voter rolls. The former is the number of people who have been identified as potential duplicate voters. Procedures go from there to weed that down. Now, those procedures are, in some states, totally inadequate, but even there, the number stricken off the rolls is much lower than the initial total.
Further, one really needs to take all of Greg Palast’s reporting with a huge grain of salt, as he’s not terribly fastidious about facts. (Gee, I wonder why he’s published by Rolling Stone? In this case, one thing leaped out at me quickly: he asserts that this is being done exclusively in states run by Republicans, and then uses Virginia as one of his examples. Terry McAuliffe would be quite surprised to learn that he’s a Republican. And, of course, he never gets to the question of how many people were actually denied the right to vote. Without that number, we can have suspicions that need investigating, but we have no conclusions.
Corner Stone
@Chris: White people in this country put us back 30+ years.
They’re going to maintain electoral and representative control. Good luck with all the rest of it.
Gin & Tonic
@martian:
What’s going on is that half the voters wanted to vote for “Fuck you”. Fuck you wasn’t on the ballot, so they went for the next-best thing.
Mnemosyne
@p.a.:
He did, and although many of the people linking to the article seem to gloss over it, one of the reasons Moore cites is white backlash. Right there at #2.
And whiny Berniebros is #4. Funny, they keep skipping over that one, too.
PsiFighter37
Also, I was heartened that Harry Reid’s machine overperformed expectations in Nevada. I hope that even in retirement, that keeps going strong and can turn Nevada more strongly blue over time. Then we need to figure out how to replicate that elsewhere.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne: No. That categorically is not what the elections chief in Milwaukee said. He said that turnout was down in the city, and that he suspects that the voter ID law is responsible for a part of it. He doesn’t know, and he definitely doesn’t know by how much.
For fuck’s sake, the truth is bad enough, so could we at least stick with that?
danielx
@EBT:
No.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: Well yeah, he is catastrophically unprepared. I said before that I could see a best reasonable case scenario where nothing happens because he doesn’t have any actually on the ground doing the work staff.
James E Powell
@Jumbo76:
This is a common complaint but who do we have? Who’s out there that has the ability to go national? I can’t think of anyone.
Jay Noble
May seem an odd question but in those areas that had lower turnouts, could it be that the actual population has dropped and those Obama voters have moved to say Nevada?
And no matter what else gets put out there, the loss is on the MSM. Out here in deep dark red western Nebraska the last 30 years of those attacks on Hillary bore fruit. The folks here truly disliked Obama but the venomous hatred they spewed/spew toward Hillary is truly unimaginable. Social Media amplified it all but The steady diet of Rush and MSM year in and year out with no counterbalance was . . . We turned away Keystone for goodness sakes but I saw truly sane and well educated people go completely bonkers on Benghazi and emails and aborting babies hours before they would be born and the whole panoply of Crooked Hillary crimes. Now repeat that in all those rural areas from PA to WI to FL. These were folks who were going to vote no matter what but there wasn’t anyway they could bring themselves to vote for Hillary no matter how despicable Trump was.
Morzer
@Richard Mayhew
You missed one element: white militias being able to watch the polls and remove possibly fraudulent voters at gun-point. Don’t imagine that the GOP won’t go there. It’s exactly what small-town fascists like Palin and Bannon and the Bundy scum want.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: “In any way abridged”. Closing polling locations in particular places to push down vote totals would seem to apply, wouldn’t it?
I’m just using those numbers as a baseline illustration. Again it’s not like Clinton got fewer votes than Trump. The EC is why she lost, not the actual voters. There is a mechanism in place written over a century ago to help protect against this. Why the fuck aren’t the folks on your side in your country screaming about this? Why isn’t the Democratic party and the disenfranchised screaming about this? You want to talk stolen elections, this is what a stolen election looks like. Even despite the voter suppression Clinton got more votes, but because of the EC she lost the election, and we’ll just ignore the 14th amendment’s procedure for protecting against a result like this because reasons.
Seriously, what the fuck is the matter with you people?
Mnemosyne
@Chris T.:
Unfortunately, I can see two potential issues with that: (1) a lot of the people who need Voter ID don’t have credit cards and (2) lawyers would have to make sure that it didn’t violate some state(s) regulations about selling public records since birth certificates are public records (technically, when you pay for a copy, you’re paying for the time/labor of retrieving a copy of your record, not the record itself).
#1 could be pretty easily dealt with by having an office or mobile site where people can pay cash, but we would need lawyers to doublecheck on #2.
amk
Only when the dem voters and the left realize that the real power rests with the cong critters and the state leges and vote accordingly (and consistently), they ‘can take their country back’.
rikyrah
been waiting for you, Mayhew.
thanks for these sober words
Matt McIrvin
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: He also always implicitly assumes that 100% of the people who were purged from the rolls would have voted, and voted the way he’d prefer. It’s a nice maximal assumption to make if you want to argue that the election could in principle have been stolen, but it’s probably not true, though impossible to prove either way.
brendancalling
They’re losing me for sure. From an earlier post, I’m due in my apartment in Guatemala April 1.
Fuck THIS shit.
Morzer
@polyorchnid octopunch:
No. This is what an election in an outdated and badly designed system looks like. You want to make the case against vote suppression, sure, that’s got evidence to back it. The electoral college issue, however, is a different kettle of stale fish.
FlipYrWhig
@Gin & Tonic: I just saw a post on Facebook that’s apparently making the rounds of the Trumpies, basically saying that Democrats made this happen by denigrating Christianity, letting government get out of control, etc. Basically positioning Trump as their protest against political correctness, welfare, darkies, queers, and wussy college kids. I’d suspected as much but didn’t think they’d admit it. This is pretty much their revenge for the War on Christmas. I hate these fuckers and want them to suffer.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
They will – but they’ll find immense consolation in the thought that you and I are suffering more.
J R in WV
Gee, Richard. I was just starting to get over the shock and depression I felt knowing that all you describe was about to happen, and you rub my face in it again!
Thanks, man!
Seriously, all I know to do is keep on keeping on.
Jeffro
@PsiFighter37:
How about this: put Ellison AND Dean AND Reid in there? It’s not like they’re going to disagree on much. Ellison: new face, full of heart and soul, in touch with current Congress; Dean, plenty of experience with the 50-state strategy; and Reid, just because I like someone who kicks the Repubs in the nuts accurately and hard and often.
Give them each roles to play about as described above, and let’s go at it for 2017 – time’s a-wasting!
Morzer
@J R in WV:
If you meet the Orange Buddha on the road, assist his enlightenment with a 2 by 4.
PsiFighter37
@James E Powell: Kamala Harris in 2020 – that’s what I would like to see. Unfortunately, I don’t know how a multiracial woman will come across in 4 years’ time, if there’s an election that will be held.
Morzer
@Jeffro:
I think it’s a good idea – and each of them will bring gifts that the others lack or don’t possess as strongly. Also, better not to give control of the DNC to one faction again. It didn’t work out so well for us last time.
FlipYrWhig
@Jumbo76: “We need Barack Obamas and Bill Clintons” is about as helpful as saying your favorite baseball team needs Mike Trouts and Bryce Harpers. Let me fill you in on something. THEY’RE INCREDIBLY RARE.
Morzer
@PsiFighter37:
I have a horrible feeling that some nefarious group is even now trying to convince us that Comrade Cuomo is your biggest, bestest friend for 2020.
rikyrah
These Babson College frat bros messed with the wrong Wellesley women of color – because we fought back
After a night that can only be described as a horrific emotional roller coaster, Wellesley students awoke to the first day of Trump. This is what went down.
By Jalena Keane-Lee on November 11, 2016
After a night that can only be described as a horrific emotional roller coaster, Wellesley College students awoke to the first day of Trump. At approximately 1pm a large truck drove slowly through campus with a Trump flag flying off its back, harassing students. The two men in the truck went to the house for students of African descent, rode around campus yelling at students, and spit towards a student when asked to leave. The two men turned out to be Edward Tomasso and Parker Rander-Riccardi, students at Babson College, a neighboring college.
How were we able to ID them? Well, that’s the key to surviving in Trump’s America.
These men have been called out on social media, in a post by a Wellesley student that has gone viral. How were we able to identify them? Well, that’s the golden question and the key to surviving in Trump’s America. Wellesley students, current and former, mobilized around the country. Students looked up their license plate and found one identity, which led to finding the other.
They tried to make us feel unsafe.
These men came to our campus. They sought us out. They came to our space in a purposeful effort to make us feel unsafe. But we found them.
We found their gloating snapchat.
MazeDancer
Voter suppression is a big reason Hillary didn’t win Electoral College. And will be hard to change. Though we will. We must.
On more possible note – Marketing wise, we can win Medicare and Social Security. Trump’s base does not want this. They also don’t much care for Paul Ryan.
If Dems are focused and clear, we can stop the slaughter of Medicare and Social Security. It is also possible Trump doesn’t want to kill either program. And is going to let Paul Ryan range out there and then denounce Ryan. Pay back for Ryan’s lukewarm support. Hope so.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes, the argument is that we called them racist so many times that they voted for a racist, so it’s all our fault.
Now, by this rationale, since Republicans have called us communists since the 1900s, what we should do is run a Fidel Castro type candidate every four yeas until one of them wins, and when he does, it’ll all be the Republicans’ fault. Because we have absolutely no agency and whatever we do to spite other people, however horrendous, is on the people who hurt our feelings.
(Don’t bother making this argument to an actual conservative: they think Obama, Clinton, and Carter were the Fidel Castros of America, so it’ll only confuse them. Or, more likely, set them off on another tirade).
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Maybe we need a maveri…
No, maybe not.
James E Powell
@PsiFighter37:
I think if you look at the map, you could make a pretty good estimate.
Major Major Major Major
People weren’t this upset after W ‘won’, were they? Honestly asking, I was fifteen.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Is there any way to know 100 percent for sure the exact numerical effect of both Voter ID laws and CrossCheck and how each of them affected the vote in the states that had both?
It’s possible that, even with Voter ID, Trump still would have won by 300 votes. But there’s no way to know that, either. And given the multiple stories even before the election about Wisconsin’s law in particular, I’m not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Multiple media outlets reported that people in Wisconsin were having major trouble getting Voter IDs at least seven months before the election, and then Wisconsin goes to Trump. That seems very convenient, don’t you think?
WarMunchkin
@Mnemosyne: I highly recommend that article, if only for the very clear statistics showing how union families switched from D to R fast. If Rs become a pro-Labor party while we become a pro-financial services party over long trends, I will eat one of their goddamn hats. This, by the way, is the Scott Walker Republican play in WI, MN and MI, the “pro-Labor Republican” brand.
We can still fight back. All politics is local; no amount of kvetching about coastal elites is going to be a counter for the simple fact that our candidates are still the real labor candidates. We run Fettermans until we take the Rust belt back and pick up NC, GA, TX and AZ from demos.
danielx
I may as well get it out now – I am getting more and more pissed as time passes, and it’s showing, or so they tell me. I can’t wait to hear people pontificating about how this isn’t representative of Trump voters, or some such. It is very representative of Trump voters, particularly in rural areas. Bean Blossom is in an area that is rural, all right – it’s basically a crossroads of two state highways (two lane) whose chief claim to fame is as the location of the Bill Monroe Music Park and Campground. I drove by that church during a road trip weekend before this; beautiful little church in a beautiful setting.
It strikes me that many Trump voters will say something like well, hey now, I’m not like the people who did that. More or less like the mob wife who says “buy me stuff, honey. Take me places, give me money. But don’t tell me where any of it comes from.” Then when hubby gets popped for human trafficking or something, she’s all “omigod, I had no idea!”
Fuck them. They knew exactly what they were getting, and they knew who his supporters were. Lie down with dogs and get up with bubonic fleas. It is quite common.
demz taters
Pardon me if someone’s mentioned it before but whatever goes south and whatever shit sandwiches are serve up to the electorate will be blamed on Democrats and the so called liberal media will be willing and eager to advance that narrative.
Richard Mayhew
@Starfish: thank you… Health policy tomorrow
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: I don’t quite get how the logic is supposed to work either. It kind of sounds like “you fags, ni99er-lovers, and baby-killers need to stop using such hurtful stereotypes on us.”
ruemara
Where did those voters go? They went white hood shopping. End of part 1 of the discussion.
@polyorchnid octopunch: the other part of the discussion. Pigheaded misogyny. How often can you show she won the most votes and lost the electoral college? Do we really have to debate this?
I’ll also say this to the whole “WEAK CANDIDATE” thing. The other side ran a neo-nazi white supremacist sexual predator. What the fuck do you thing you are doing giving anyone a pass for voting for him? Goddammit. Look at what they ran. You know what sane people who give a fuck about anything other than themselves do? THEY VOTE AGAINST THE NEONAZI!
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
But everyone in the MSM is telling me it was “economic insecurity” and was totally not racist at all! Who to believe, who to believe …
EBT
@MazeDancer: Well we got the Governor and AG in NC so that should be one place we can roll voter suppression back.
PsiFighter37
@Morzer: He’s not by any stretch, but I did very much appreciate both his and de Blasio’s confrontational yet inclusive statements post-election. I don’t like either of them (and will probably vote against de Blasio if I have a choice in the primary), but they know that NY and NYC are models, from a cultural standpoint, of where our country needs to be / get to.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
yeah, the budget’s gonna asplode, we’re gonna lose social security and medicare, we’ll end up bungling the whole mideast, women’s rights are toast, but white people got to air their grievances so it’s all cool. “we’ll just have to deal with it”.
seems like a hefty price for society to pay over a goddamn temper tantrum.
Richard Mayhew
@J R in WV: health policy tomorrow
James E Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
I was in a purple fucking rage after the supreme court ordered the counting to stop. I threw things. I smashed coffee cups on the granite counters. I refused to speak on the phone. I did not celebrate Christmas with my W voting family members. I really did not celebrate Christmas at all. I was not nearly as upset as I am right now.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: I was. I was 28. I had vicious, yelling fights at work. But the recount meant it was less of a concentrated despair, because there was still hope… for a while.
Major Major Major Major
@James E Powell: @FlipYrWhig: but I mean, were people as apocalyptically worried?
Morzer
@Major Major Major Major:
Bush was enormously unpopular before 9/11 saved his ass. I don’t think it was quite as bad as this, because, for all his many faults, Bush was not the openly racist, rapist, fascist that Trump is and delights in being.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
OT, but I emailed your gmail address in case you still want to hang out on Saturday in SF. Major^4 is on board.
Morzer
@Major Major Major Major:
Apprehensive, yes. Not as horrified and repulsed and frightened as they are now.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I saw. I’m free. We can do this thing.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: To be fair, I was reading between the lines, but it began with a crack about “safe spaces” and “triggering,” which may not be race, but is definitely about a big fuck you to secularism, liberalism, intellectualism, and tolerance/diversity/pluralism.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: No.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Volcanically pissed but less fearful, I’d say.
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: In 2000s? Not really. Because we hadn’t experienced the W presidency. Now we have experienced the W presidency and are hopping mad that we have to experience it again, but this time, with more bombastic braggery on a whole host of issues. I mean, W didn’t run on torture. And giving him the benefit of the doubt here, I don’t know if that would have come up without 9-11. Also, he ran on staying out of wars like Somalia (no Nation Building) even though I do remember people warning us that he planned to go back into Iraq again. There wasn’t really a reason to suspect in 2000 that he meant “Go back in a very very big and expensive disastrous way”.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes.
I was looking for the Will Farrell sketch where Bush has basically started a nuclear war by accident, but it’s buried under all of the later ones.
James E Powell
@PsiFighter37:
But do they know that in Confederate States and the Heartland NY and NYC are despised and used metaphorically to refer to Jews, Big City People who are always so snobby about us being racists, and other assorted stereotypes of the RW worldview?
BlueDWarrior
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah that’s part of the “White Knight” theory of presidential politics I hate. A better line of thinking is what combination of messaging and politicking will get our voters out to vote for random School Board elections as well as the Presidency.
We still have a verticality problem to our politics, in that we’re talking so much about the top of the line that the rest of the vertical structure is crumbling away.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: heh. I remember the one the published the day after the election, something like “Bush and/or Gore: a new era dawns”.
Chris
@ruemara:
As I said multiple times throughout the election, one of the first elections I was old enough to follow was Chirac/Le Pen in France, where the words “vote for the crook not the fascist” were a literal campaign slogan, a successful campaign slogan, and an entirely correct campaign slogan.
The fact that, when faced with a similar choice, so much of the American public reacted by wringing its hands about whether or not the non-fascist candidate was a crook, when the only correct answer was that it wouldn’t matter even if she was, is a moral failure whose magnitude can’t possibly be overstated. (Not that I’m couldn’t see France now, fifteen years later, making the same one – times change).
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Great! I’ll do a fresh email to both of you and we can figure out the deets.
James E Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
Not that I recall. Most people I know were telling me to shut up, grow up, get over it. Why do you care so much? Al Gore said he invented the internet. I think putting some of my social security in the stock market is a great idea. I’m looking forward to my tax cut. Al Gore thinks he’s so smart. I like Bush. He seems like a nice guy. And so on. Seriously. Lost more than a few friends, or rather members of social circles, or more accurately they dumped me for being shrill.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ve been wondering about Nevada myself. What did go right there? How did we pull that off. I know we can’t look at one state and try to make that the plan for the other 49, since a lot of things won’t be the same. All the same, we need to find out just what went right. Maybe we can’t take everything that happened there and do it everywhere else, but a lot of things might work one place and some other somewhere else. Has anybody gone over this yet? I know it’s less than a week after the election, but we might as well begin now.
Peale
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Sadly, I think we’ll learn that “Hispanic population mobilized by a union” and relative lack of the kinds of churches that mobilize their votes played a big part in it. Also, too, Mormons who do have that type of church, not really all that thrilled about the Donald.
danielx
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah they were and I’m still pissed about it, especially since Gore won the fucking popular vote, just like Clinton. W was handed the victory in a judicial coup d’etat by a five to four Supreme Court decision, with three of the five having family members involved with the Republican campaign. That doesn’t come close to matching how upset I am about the current travesty, but yes, people were just as angry. I am in no doubt that we will look back fondly (by comparison) on the relative genius, compassion and vision of Bush fils in six months or so – by which time the eight years of the Obama presidency will seem like a beautiful dream.
Chris
Re Bush v. Gore; I also think the electoral college overruling the vote was such an archaic and rare occurrence that it was written off as a fluke in a basically democratic system.
Whereas in this case, it’s a harbinger of things to come, a situation in which the electoral college and popular vote are going to fall more and more out of step and democratic mechanisms stop mattering.
burnspbesq
No matter how fully Trump’s administration fucks his supporters between now and 2020, he’s unlikely to lose their support. If you don’t think so, remember this: it took the Catholics and Protestants of Ulster over 300 years of killing each other before they realized that England was the real enemy.
Peale
@danielx: The other thing – GWB didn’t actually run on HURTING PEOPLE in a concrete way. Stupid Republican standard issue policies about “getting rid of regulations” that you know means “buy bottled water now if you can” but it was fairly standard issue corporate and social republican stuff we were used to.
EBT
@Peale: This. deadbeat donnie ran on hurting people and his voters like that.
BlueDWarrior
@Chris: Unfortunately, this is just part of human nature. SO many people are upset about the way the culture is moving away from them, and too many other people sympathize, that we can’t make a argument to their sense of logic because it’s been entirely hijacked by illogic.
Those damn people in the cities, from the industrialist that shipped their job overseas, to the software engineer/hardware manufacturer that made them redundant, to the college professor that spends more time talking about gradations in gender identity than about the fact our culture (as they see it) is turning into a hedonistic cesspool, to the stupid college hipsters and poor minorities who spend more time cashing government checks than working REAL JOBS, to the Jews (and others) in Hollywood abandoning the hardscrabble but worthy country/boy tropes and replacing it with the cosmopolitian mishmash that none of them can make sense of.
EVERYTHING that has to do with Urban America, it seems like to them, at least looking at it from my perspective, is at war with them. So they will use the political arena, since that is where they have the most power, to exact their pound of flesh back out of ‘us’. And until ‘we’ understand the full power of the franchise in all of these respects, we will not be able to get political power back.
Lizzy L
@Major Major Major Major: Angry and very worried, but not at this level. But then, Bush with all his faults is not Trump. Karl Rove is not Steve Bannon. Alberto Gonzalez is not Rudy Giuliani (if he is indeed named A-G.)
Chris T.
@Mnemosyne: I wasn’t thinking of those who need Voter ID just putting in a credit card number, but rather, an actual volunteer effort of people going to other people’s residences, giving them the necessary funds, perhaps also driving them to county registration locations, and so on. In other words, empowering them, to whatever extent required.
Of course, for whose for whom it’s strictly a monetary issue (as opposed to health, time, transportation, and so on), just giving them sufficient funds would suffice—but I suspect most of those in most need of voter-ID assistance have multiple roadblocks to overcome, so you really would need this volunteer group.
Peale
@Peale: It’s kind of quaint to remember that when Ashcroft was brought in, beyond the anti-choice rhetoric, his big thing was going to be Internet Porn clampdowns and cancelling the gay pride celebrations for DoJ workers.
burnspbesq
@James E Powell:
And women who don’t want to pull down Confederate flag boxers and suck dick while listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and drinking Jack and Coke, and men who do. Don’t forget them.
permafrost
As a tech manager I’m thinking the big opportunity here is going to be to go wherever else in the world the new tech hub is going to emerge. The outward transfer of human capital is going to be a first order opportunity for someone, might as well be me.
Ruckus
@Tony P.:
No way I’m even going to casually confirm this asshole’s legitimacy. Especially in a way that might also legitimatize his followers. Fuck that shit.
.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: On the one hand, W ran as a moderate, so there wasn’t a sense that this was incipient fascism–in fact, that fed the “Gush v. Bore” stuff about how there was no difference between the parties, etc. etc.
On the other hand, he already had a reputation for being fairly dim, hence the SNL sketch, etc. And there was incredible rancor over the way he was elected, of course.
What prompted apocalyptic terror was 9/11 itself, and also the secondary fear that it would drive the US violently insane. That was really when you got people wondering whether the US would become a totalitarian state. And then, sometimes, getting a false sense of security when Bush initially seemed to be reacting kind of rationally. At that point a lot of (by no means all) liberals ended up sucked into his orbit.
The election that I remember really causing despair was 2004, because most Democrats figured Bush had screwed the pooch so badly by then that he surely couldn’t win, and he did anyway. It took until 2006 for people to get sufficiently outraged to stop voting Republican.
jenn
@Morzer: Hold on, one faction? You mean, actual Democrats? Come on. The DNC had a couple of shitty ideas in those emails, whether they were meant seriously or were venting, don’t know, doesn’t matter, they were still shitty. (Also note that those shitty ideas weren’t actually acted upon.) But given Bernie had parachuted into the Democratic party for the purposes of running for President, and used that opportunity to bash the party and the DNC, it’s not overly surprising that some folks who had actually been working for the party took that somewhat amiss, and looked favorably on the person who had been working hard for the party for a period of time that could be measured in decades rather than months. I think pretty much _any_ group would have taken that somewhat amiss. That’s a far different dynamic than rival actual Democrats.
As to who would run the DNC – I really love the symbolism of Ellison and think he’d do a great job, though I am a bit conflicted, since I would also like to have a full time person – not just for the DNC, but because we are in a situation where I want Ellison (or whoever) to be devoting all of their attention on their work in congress. I love Reid, and would love an opportunity for him to make official potshots-from-an-elder-statesman when required, but he’s also older and blind in one eye, and might be really looking forward to some down time. I’ve never been an enormous Dean fan. I think any one of the three could do a great job, but I’m also sure that there are plenty of folks who I’ve never heard of, who could also be great.
gene108
One BIG CHANGE in the Democratic Party, since Obama took office, is the complete and total embrace of LGBT rights, equal treatment of minorities under the law, racial equality, gender equality, etc.
There is no turning back for Democrats from this. The 2016 Convention was an outright, open declaration of where Democrats are on these issues.
So the question is what do we need to do to connect, with white voters, in predominantly white areas that went for Trump? Or used to vote for Democrats 15-20 years ago, but have been drifting towards Republicans, like Louisiana, Georgia, etc.
I think the first order of the DNC is to rebuild state parties across the country. Period.
Work to claw back state legislatures and governorships in 2018.
That’s going to take a massive mobilization starting now.
The Republicans rolled out that mobilization by February 2009, with Santelli’s Tea Party speech on CNBC.
martian
@Major Major Major Major: There were protests during the inauguration. Pretty sure Bush’s motorcade got egged. I was incredibly angry, but I don’t remember being afraid. I think the rolling catastrophe of the Bush administration taught us what to fear.
Now when Kerry lost I couldn’t believe it. That hurt. I couldn’t believe that Democrats didn’t pour to the polls to take back the presidency from the incompetent, lying, warmongering usurpers. But, naw. Kerry was stiff, and phony, and purple band aids and urgh… I can’t go on. So American voters legitimized the Bush admin. I got a lot more cynical about American voters then, but not nearly cynical enough.
Peale
@permafrost: Toronto or Vancouver.
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
It also didn’t hurt that there is a large blue state (California) right next door that was able to easily bus Hillary volunteers to the largest population centers of Reno and Las Vegas.
I like to think that at least one of the six (6) people I registered was able to vote for Hillary. :-)
Chris T.
@Major Major Major Major: I was upset (I voted for Gore), but not this upset. I knew it would be bad but I did not realize how bad.
(If anything, I was more disappointed by the 2004 election results, given that we’d already seen four years of what benign neglect by a figurehead president with active evil from the acting President Cheney had done. It remains to be seen whether we’ll get what I might call “malign neglect”, or active random bizarreness, from our new zero-attention-span narcissist president, and who will be the actual acting president, although my money is currently on Pence.)
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
Fuck you wasn’t on the ballot, so they went for the next-
bestworst thing.FIXIT for you
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, I think a big part of the emotion this year is that Trump punched a huge number of Democrats directly in the face, and Trump voters stood behind him and said, “Yeah! Hit ’em again!”
Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative.” Trump ran as an out-and-proud white supremacist and anti-Semite. Big difference in apocalypse level.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I was talking to an Indian on line friend about they election and she had an interesting observation – this isn’t about racism, it’s about bullying. And thinking about it, the way the kneejerk way the Republicans are against anything a Democrat wants, the hippy punching and the rest, that’s what it is bullying. Even the the last few days with a Republican Congress turning on a Republican president fits that.
Morzer
@jenn:
I do indeed mean one faction. Not going to sugar-coat that for you. And that faction screwed the pooch royally up and down the ticket. As they have done for years. They need to get gone yesterday.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: The majority of them hate us _because of what we stand for_. Write them off. Peel off the ones who can abide non-discrimination policies, even if they are, gasp, wealthy, or, horrors, “corporate.” Let the rest get madder and madder until they die.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
Yep. Laser focus time. We need to have candidates in place and ready to run starting yesterday.
Peale
@martian: This loss stings more than Kerry. there was a lot of the same kinds of speculation about the polls being “wrong”, that white women wouldn’t vote like they said they would when responding to pollsters, and that all of the undecideds would break 2 – 3 to Kerry at the last minute. We were always behind in the polls. This time, we never were, which makes the loss all the more devastating.
The issue with Kerry beyond the purple bandaids was the fact that on the single biggest issue of the election, he had voted for the war. So had Edwards so it really wouldn’t have made a big difference. Thankfully, I think this is the last election that will be about “who did what in Vietnam” and “who voted for the Iraq war”.
Chris
@jenn:
Bernie Sanders may or may not deserve any blame for costing us the general election, but I find that last one unforgivable.
The economic left was probably in a better place by 2015 than it had been in decades – we’d had the Affordable Care Act, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Fight for Fifteen, the rise of Elizabeth Warren as a voice for economic and social justice, and other budding issues that had promise. Sanders trying to be the candidate who coalesced all these messages together and put pressure on the general Democratic Party to move left wasn’t something I had a problem with.
Instead, in the last month or two, the campaign had pretty much been reduced to a permanent whine about the rules and procedures of the Democratic primary – rules and procedures that he knew, or should have, going in, but didn’t start whining about until he was losing, and with transparent selectivity. He took what could have been a worthwhile conversation about the direction of the nation and completely pissed it away on his own vanity.
Lizzy L
@Ruckus: I can’t bring myself to write “P——- T—-.” I can’t. I know it’s childish but I can’t do it.
LookingForACanadian
@Chris T.: Thank you! I see a bunch of people now focusing on this which is imperative. The laws are not going away.
Peale
@jenn: Yep and that was what was so stupid about the reaction to those e-mails. People really do have the right to express opinions in private e-mails and a lot of times and as long as those ideas are eventually shot down, its o.k. But now we have to run candidates who never appeared in any of Jon Podesta’s e-mails. Or people who never had a bad idea and changed their minds privately. We might as well run a vegetable if wanted those standards.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
Some people were pissed, but many were just glad to have the election finally settled.
My feeling is people figured Bush would cut takes, spend more in the military, but not really change much.
He ran as a “compassionate conservative”, because people back then still expected government to provide some level of social support for the citizenry, including the poor, elderly etc.
The fact he and his experienced crew were such colossal fuck-ups was a shock.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
Uhhh, that “one faction” is made up of African-Americans, Latin@s, Asian-Americans, GLBTQ, and women. Not to mention Jews, Muslims, and Catholics. Which of us are you planning to throw out of the party? Or are you going to throw us all out so you can have a smaller, sleeker party of white dudebros?
Morzer
@gene108:
Don’t embrace trade deals that they perceive, sometimes rather accurately, as hollowing out their communities. Don’t run candidates who look as if they like Wall St more than “real people”. (Note for the future: Cory Booker needs to do some thinking on this issue). Don’t spend time telling these people that the other side is evil while neglecting to hammer home a credible message of what you will do for them. Don’t tell them that they have “white privilege” when they look around and see their communities are depressed, jobs are scarce, the young are leaving and wages are miserable.
Note that you don’t have to compromise your commitments to LGBT issues, feminism or social justice to avoid making these basic mistakes.
catclub
@PsiFighter37:
I am not buying that at all. If there are hundreds of thousands of people who were de-registered against their will they would be speaking up en masse on facebook.
Thousands, hundreds of thousands.
My theory is that people did not show up to vote.
EBT
@Lizzy L: I have listened to the right level slurs at Obama for 8 years. He will be deadbeat donnie until he dies.
FlipYrWhig
@martian: Hillary, Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, and Carter all got nuked by a joint effort of the Republicans and the media. It’s what happens every year. Obama got through because he was young, cool and symbolic. Clinton got through because he was young, cool, and symbolic. It’s really not fair that Republicans can run plodders like the Bushes and win, but we apparently can’t.
OGLiberal
@Mnemosyne: Don’t need to challenge voter ID laws in court. Don’t need to crowd fund ancestry.com account. All you need to do in states like WI where Obama won by 14 percent in 2008 and 7 percent in 2012 is to not let the GOP hold the fucking governor’s mansion and both houses of the state legislature so that they can pass these laws, like WI did in 2011, a year before Obama won by 7 percent in that state. Dems suck at mid-terms and state elections while the GOP gets old white people out (or not really out, via absentee) for every freaking election.
The GOP did this but Dems allowed it by enabling the GOP, by not voting, to control three branches of government in freaking Wisconsin. And it’s the legislature that matters and most people probably don’t even know these reps. In my usually Republican district the Dem assembly candidates unseated the Republicans last election. (One if a former town council member in the town where I live.) Still have a Republican state senator, although she’s quite moderate. But you can win, hold, and even win back these state legislatures. Do this and we have no racist voter ID laws.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Another reason 2004 seemed harder to take than 2000 was that in 2004, Bush was more clearly running as a religious-right candidate, taking advantage of the backlash against same-sex marriage. When he won, the post-mortem analysis was all about how the Dems had gotten killed by the “values voters”, and everyone was talking about how they could reposition themselves to be a little more patriarchal and fundamentalist. It was the “white working class” of its day.
And of course there was the famous Swift Boat campaign: the Democrats had tried to run a genuine war hero against the draft-dodger Bush to neutralize their perceived weakness on defense, only to get his Vietnam service mocked, impugned and pilloried to the point that it became a negative. And somehow this campaign in the middle of a war that was rapidly going south ended up being all about a completely different war decades earlier.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: Donald Trump is from New York and gold plates everything but his wife. Don’t give me this “Wall Street” bullshit. You’re projecting Berniac motivations onto Trumpies. They don’t care about Wall Street. They care about pushing one for English and pizza places catering gay weddings and Colin Kaepernick.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
This is where my paranoia jumps back in: it’s kind of gone down the memory hole that Bernie’s campaign manager had strong Russian ties, too:
So Bernie’s campaign manager used to work with Trump’s campaign manager for Putin’s puppet in Ukraine, and Bernie just happened to run his campaign in a way that would be the most damaging and divisive for the Democrats. Hmmmm ….
InternetDragons
@Lizzy L: I don’t see anything childish about not wanting to call Trump the President. The title is a step toward legitimizing him.
I can’t see myself ever calling him that.
Taylor
@burnspbesq:
Bullshit. The rebellion of 1798 was led by Protestant aristocracy. It was after that that the English government drove a wedge between Catholics and Protestants so that Protestant aristocrats would never again lead a rebellion against the Crown.
125 years later, Catholics rebelled against England, but Protestants in Ulster stayed loyal. Had the English forced the North into the new Irish Free State, you would have had civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Instead you had civil war between Catholics and Catholics, because De Valera’s fucking purity trolls would not accept the partition of Ireland.
The 1960s in Northern Ireland were Catholics marching for civil rights, until Bloody Sunday when the English killed off the civil rights movement and replaced it with the IRA.
OT but we don’t need ahistorical shit on top of everything else.
ArchTeryx
Yep. It was even enough to drive me out of lurking for many years here, to bear some witness before the end comes, one way or another. Because the Grim Reaper went from living in another state to taking up residence in my neighborhood. Waiting.
My turn will come soon enough. I’d love to take a few of the deplorables with me when I go, but “Breaking Bad” just isn’t in my makeup. I’m too nice. I won’t go out with either a bang or a whimper. Just peacefully.
BlueDWarrior
@FlipYrWhig: That seems to be the biggest problem. And it also hurts that we almost have to run people who don’t or couldnt have institutional memory in order to get hype. At some point maybe we should just pick a random big city mayor’s name out of a hat and see if they want to make that jump.
Mnemosyne
@OGLiberal:
Oh, sorry — my fix is actually to help fund an effort to get people the paperwork they need to get their “free” voter ID, usually a birth certificate, but often also including a marriage certificate to explain why their last name is different than the one on their birth certificate.
martian
@Peale: Yeah, Kerry voted for the war. I was a Deaniac, so I definitely held that against him. But once he was the nominee, I fully backed him. I don’t get this preciousness a lot of Dems seem to have where, when the chips are down, they choose their fee fees. I would say conscience, but not opposing BushCo in every way possible was unconscionable behavior. I believe the same now about Trump.
Man, I was at one of Kerry’s last rallies in Wisconsin as he barnstormed across the battleground states on the last day. They handed out signs printed with “ONE MORE DAY”, and we cheered deliriously in hope. God, the pain as the results came in. I put that sign away and never looked at it again on purpose. Saw it once briefly while packing for a move and just shuddered.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: …and, yes, it’s the difference between merely “the wrong man won, with potentially bad consequences” and “this man is going to have us murdered”.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Remember that Trump presented himself as a builder, a star, someone who could buy and sell politicians. Clinton never found a credible response when challenged on her speeches to Wall St, NAFTA and TPP. Voters saw a contrast. Was it a spurious contrast? Sure – but you don’t win any prizes for legalistic precision in politics.
Matt McIrvin
@Peale:
Yes, but it may also be the last election.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
Fix’d. Because apparently in your world, Khizr Khan is not a real person.
OGLiberal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I can get on board with that. Racism didn’t stop Obama, twice. (Or three times if you count the Dem primary in 2008) I think the biggest issue this year was sexism, which actually kind of is like bullying. And sexism can cross racial, religious and, yes, gender lines. No way she should have done only about as good as Obama with women this year…no way, not against a guy who is more misogynist than racist. But that’s what even the assumptions was that couldn’t be possible, even though the polls showed her winning women, even white women, bigly. Didn’t happen. Folks didn’t want some uppity old chick as their president, even moreso than they didn’t want some uppity black dude in 2008 and 2012.
gene108
@Chris:
But the Left wanted us to become nuclear armed Denmark the day after Obama’s first inauguration.
When Bernie came along promising it can be done, he tapped into a well spring of pent up demand.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
Khizr Khan was not a candidate. Maybe you should bear that in mind.
Major Major Major Major
@martian:
Hint: they’re assholes.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
Anecdote from Michigan: my friend’s brother is a strong Democrat, but all the white suburbanites he knows voted for Trump because they were pissed at Black Lives Matter.
But it was about “economic insecurity”!
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re not actually this clueless.
ETA: Also, you may want to check out the links I provided for Tissue Thin Pseudonym up above. The voter ID problem in Wisconsin was being reported back in April. But I guess those people just decided not to show up.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: WTF? How is that comment helpful?
Lyrebird
@martian: Exactly my case, as well. After giving a lot of hours and heart to the Kerry campaign, I was heart-broken that GWB won, depressed about the successful swiftboating, and afraid for the military folks and people of other countries who might (and who did) die for the cronies of GWB and that creep he ran with. That is on a whole different level than feeling like fascism is ascendant, being scared of my neighbors (I live in rural PA), and thinking that the rule of law is gravely threatened. Bush was someone who reveled in executions and I’d be in favor of war criminal status for him and others, but I would not be afraid myself to be in a room with him or with his ardent supporters. Not Same.
OGLiberal
@Mnemosyne: I get that. My larger point is that blue state Dems need to stop not voting in off years and letting the GOP take over all three branches of elected government in a blue state like WI, Do that and you don’t have to help any old, poor black person find their birth certificate, because the won’t neex it to vote.
Omnes Omnibus
@jenn: This.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
You can keep telling yourself that it’s all about racism, but that isn’t going to help in the future. If your offer to the voters is: here’s a chance to be less racist than you usually are, you won’t win many elections.
You also haven’t explained the people who voted for Obama and then switched to Trump.
The Democrats didn’t make the Rust Belt voters a credible offer of a future for their communities. Trump’s offer is basically retro-fantasies – but at least it sounded as if he took those people somewhat seriously. Until the Democrats come up with a better offer, they are going to make winning elections much harder than it should be.
Mnemosyne
Someone pointed this out in another thread, but:
Hillary gets excoriated for making a speech to Goldman Sachs while Trump installs former Goldman Sachs employees at the White House?
Fuckin’ Berniebros and their goddamned purity ponies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: Where are you living now?
BlueDWarrior
@Morzer: The problem seems to be that, at least if you look at trend lines, a lot of their communities don’t have a sufficient critical mass of youth or capital to become a new hotbed of something.
It’s not true that all the new innovations are big city driven, but what exactly do you do for the small down of 25,000 or less that’s a half-hours drive (at least) from the nearest major metro area that doesn’t come off as sounding like “I’m parachuting in from God know’s where and telling you to re-order everything about your life and culture.”?
satby
TL:dr because I am half a world away with spotty internet. But popping in to say that everyone asks about the election here in New Delhi, everyone is disappointed though much consumed with their own currency issues, and even the tourist from South Carolina I met was appalled.
We are not alone.
Miss keeping up on the threads, but I am getting real reminders that life is far worse for lots of people in the world.
Jado
@EBT:
No. He has no reason to respond positively to anything being asked of him. He effectively has a mandate and is beholden to no one. The only way I see anything positive coming out of this is if he decides to totally screw over the establishment GOP and enact a bunch of democratic policies. Just to make Paul Ryan’s head spin around and fly off his shoulders.
That MIGHT happen. I expect that the establishment GOP will roll over and do anything Trump wants them to do so he will let them stay in their cozy chairmanships or whatever. There are a lot of Tea Party Rs in both houses that will do ANYTHING Trump says cause he won, and I think Trump will have them asking “How high?” very quickly. This was a quantum shift in power, and Trump is holding all the cards.
We are indeed well and truly fucked
Suzanne
As much as I hate this, the primary criteria for our 2020 candidates need to be excitement and youthfulness (in affect, if not in actual age) and passion. Not intellect or experience or positions or closeness to Wall Street or whatever.
Eljai
@Matt McIrvin: I was angry about the 2000 election, including the treatment of Al Gore and the Supreme Court decision. However, I didn’t get frightened until after 9/11 and the march toward the war in Iraq. Even some of my liberal co-workers accepted Colin Powell’s powerpoint about Iraq having weapons. I was in shock about 2004 but it didn’t last long, and I continued to stay engaged. This is a whole new level of anger and fear. Still not giving in or giving up.
Matt McIrvin
@OGLiberal:
See Mnemosyne’s comment above: I think the atmosphere in Obama’s second term was much more racially charged than in his first, because people actually started getting angry about the killings of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and all the rest of them. (Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, but George Zimmermann finally walked in 2013, and Black Lives Matter was formed right after that.)
I think kind-of-racist white people in super-white neighborhoods reacted really viscerally to that in a way they hadn’t to Obama. Obama was a good black guy to them; even if you didn’t agree with everything he did, he was well-behaved and cool. But here you had all these situations that we saw as summary executions of people who were either innocent, or certainly not deserving of the death penalty; but that instinctively played to them as “good guy shoots a scary black criminal who had it coming and they call him a racist and start rioting in the street”. Which awakened all the old stereotypes about black people as feral crime machines who were being coddled by effete liberals.
dww44
@Trentrunner: a little late but AOL floating headline (clickbait, but I didn’t click) is that Kellyanne Conway is telling Harry Reid to be careful in his criticisms as there could be “legal pushback” or some such. Must be planning on changing those libel laws on January 20.
Taylor
@martian:
Atrios blamed his blogging on watching the inauguration in 2000 on network TV and C-Span, and noticing that the networks were very careful not to show any of the protests.
Mnemosyne
@Morzer:
Please show them to me. So far, I’ve seen counties that went to Obama going for Trump with fewer votes overall. I haven’t seen many verified Obama voters going to Trump, but I’m sure there are some, because white people hate Black Lives Matter.
You also keep missing the point: we are not going to win over Trump voters with our magical policy changes because They. Did. Not. Vote. On. Policy.
If they voted on policy, they would have voted for the person who promised to keep Obamacare instead of the person who promised to destroy it. They would have voted for the person who promised to keep consumer protections against big banks instead of the person who promised to repeal them. They would have voted for the person who promised them more infrastructure and better treatment for their opioid addiction crisis.
But they didn’t. They voted for the guy who promised them that he would put whites and men on top of the social hierarchy again, without all of these nasty women and scary people of color to mess things up. They voted for the guy who would finally get rid of abortion rights. And you’re actually dumb enough to think that they only did that because of “economic anxiety.”
Now, let me be clear. This was a low-turnout election in a lot of those states. I think there are white non-voters we can appeal to in those states, and it’s worth doing some actual surveys and research to find out how to appeal to them. But the people who actually pulled the lever for Trump are gone to us. They knew he was a misogynist, anti-Semitic white supremacist, but he hates all the same people they hate, so they voted for him.
Major Major Major Major
@Taylor: if it had been a Dem inauguration there would have ONLY been coverage of the protests.
Lyrebird
@dww44: Well Harry Reid has a response ready! Maybe Mr. Jentleson (Reid spox) oughta be in the ring for DNC leadership as well.
ETA: my link is to Reid’s Senate page
Suzanne
@Morzer: That piece in Harvard Business Review made the point that people in those communities don’t want to move to a bigger city for more education and economic opportunity. They want to make more money doing essentially what they’re doing, living where they’re living.
And I want Jason Momoa’s face in between my legs, but whatever. While we’re on the topic of fantasy.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
You’re going to hate this even more: we’re probably going to have to run a white guy.
Peale
@Morzer: those trade deals were popular in the suburbs. That was the whole point of the third way. It helped win over white voters in the suburbs. As did Sistah soldier moments and crime bills and welfare reform. it was about getting votes in the suburbs. And it worked. Yes, it also brought in loads of corporate cash (which we also needed) but it also started reaching into the vast number of voters in the suburbs who worked for corporations.
martian
@FlipYrWhig: “Hillary, Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, and Carter all got nuked by a joint effort of the Republicans and the media. It’s what happens every year. Obama got through because he was young, cool and symbolic. Clinton got through because he was young, cool, and symbolic. It’s really not fair that Republicans can run plodders like the Bushes and win, but we apparently can’t.”
I’ve been thinking over this same thing. We run profoundly decent people, I think. Looking back, I’m not ashamed of a single one of them whether they were my candidate in the primary or not. The country would be immeasurably better off if they had won. But earnest, good people who’ve spent their lives in public service are not where it’s at with the American electorate. I wish I could blame it all on the media, but I question whether it’s entirely the infotainment complex spoon feeding the passive public and not also the problem of American anti-intellectualism and a media that’s going where the money is by giving the people what they crave.
Taylor
@Mnemosyne: Not if it means another stiff like Dukakis or Kerry.
Mnemosyne
@OGLiberal:
You know that a lot of the Democratic voters in those states are old, poor, black people, right? That’s why the Republicans went to such lengths to disenfranchise them.
OGLiberal
@Morzer: I think the problem is that Republicans can completely lie to their voters, not deliver, have those voters get pissed…and they’ll yell sell out but in the next election they will vote for that Republican because they know, at least, that he/she will make things just a bit worse for blacks, browns, gays, young people, women, Muslims, etc, than “real” white people. It’s not all racism as you can from my list of “others” above.
If you promise Dems something you know you can’t deliver, or don’t make that promise, they’ll get all purity pony and stay home or vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. So, damned if do, damned if you don’t. Those people, given the closeness of this election. Even if only 50 percent of Stein voters and 25 percent of Johnson votera went for Hillary in WI, PA, and MI, she wins. I’d rather my candidate not promise me too much. Obama haf soaring rhetoric but if you looked at his actual policies, they were very realistic. It was his realism, which Hillary shared, and his ni drama, which she didn’t, the drew me away from Hillary and to him. It’s not as sexy as “build a wall” and “it’s going to be great” but I prefer it. Guess I’m in the minority.
And, I’m sorry, Trump had so many obvious warts that even though he was peddling exciting but impossible stuff to people that it shouldn’t have mattered. People who voted for Trump will tell you that character counts and she had questionable qualities..so they voted for a billboard for bad character and morals?
Lizzy L
@Jado: OTOH, a malleable Trump, easily led to do whatever Paul Ryan or Reince Priebus or Darrell Issa (hssss) or Jason Chaffetz (hssss) wants would be equally awful. The grab-em-by-the-pu$$y-Trump you describe might very well decide he doesn’t want to touch Medicare because his base won’t like that, and because he’s the boss and Fuck You Paul Ryan. (I think Paul Ryan is not going to be Speaker very much longer. Just sayin’.) And the minute he perceives that Steve Bannon has an agenda that might not be beneficial to Trump — Bannon will be out the door. The man is a raging narcissist, and he may not really want to be POTUS, but he’s been swimming in the shark-infested waters of NY real estate for 50 years, he’s not naive.
Matt McIrvin
@Morzer:
As stated, it was Black Lives Matter.
I think there’s a variety of mildly racist white person of Democratic inclinations who probably thought the Barack Obama of 2008 and 2012 was a good, cool guy, but for whom the public protests and unrest over killings of black people that started around 2013 were just too much. (Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, but Zimmermann walked in ’13, after Obama’s second inauguration, and BLM formed after that. Mike Brown and Tamir Rice were in 2014, Freddie Gray and the rioting in Baltimore was 2015.)
To these people, all this played as “good guy shoots a scary bad guy and they call him a racist and riot in the street.” And that calls up every old stereotype of African-Americans as feral crime machines aided by bleeding-heart liberals eager to pin racism on everybody. And that gets them mad.
And then someone says “I’ll end all this political correctness and crack down on bad guys everywhere!!”…
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: My nephew, a high school freshman, saw some people harassing a Latino classmate, and he walked up to them and and said. ” Go fuck yourselves. ” I texted him that I was proud of him, he texted back that he did not see why a bunch of old people were proud of him.
Timurid
It’s more than just ‘both race and economic insecurity.’ The racism has been latent for a long time, but in times of relative prosperity it was more prudent to make peace with the ‘enemy.’ The problem is that in the new economy, with massive and growing labor surpluses, lots of Americans will eventually become expendable, with no real role as workers or consumers. The real argument in this election and its aftermath is, “who will be discarded?” Trump’s supporters want to discard the Others… because they see them as inherently inferior, they see them as members of a dangerous enemy culture or they’re in simple ‘better them than me’ self preservation mode. Urban creative class types, technocrats and outright neo-liberals… who may identify themselves as either liberal/Democrats or conservative/Republicans… want the WWC ‘deplorables’ to burn. Unlike minorities in this country or workers abroad, They Had Their Chance. And they blew it. Now they will pay for their sloth and wickedness.
And however it all works out, one thing is guaranteed. The elites who built the whole pyramid scheme of White Privilege will walk away with barely a scratch.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: These people are also upset with those lazy uppity college students and their dang safe spaces and don’t see why a trans person can’t just shut up and use the wrong bathroom.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
I would be happy to help the WWC “deplorables.” In fact, I thought Democrats had already, and Hillary had some great ideas to help them even more. But they preferred to reject our help and spit in our faces rather than accept help from people they think are their social inferiors. How do you combat that?
Major Major Major Major
@Timurid:
There are maybe seven thousand people like this.
toocanAnj
@polyorchnid octopunch: My son is a 2nd year Yale Law student. I sent him your three comments. Many of them worked on HRC’s campaign and are tearing their hair out trying to figure out a way to do something.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I KNOW. God. I remember reading in 2008 that the first female president will most likely be a Republican, because Democratic women scare too many people. At the time, I was like, “Nah.” Now I am not so sure.
I could see Cory Booker. It needs to be a dudely dude. Maybe with a woman VP.
dww44
@Mnemosyne: It would be nice to recapture either the Senate or the House. While viewed as unlikely, nothing is impossible given an action plan, great messaging and execution, and a bit of luck.
BlueDWarrior
@Major Major Major Major: That is if they even recognize a trans-person as a trans-person and not someone being coddled in their (as these delplorables would call it) self-denial.
Botsplainer
Need fewer MLKs, but a lot more Nat Turners and Weathermen.
Peaceful action gets a slap in he face – frankly, having the Koch brothers, Shel Adelson, Kristopher Kolumbus Kobach, Heritage Foundation thugs and the like having to hire food tasters and people to sweep their cars for bombs every morning is about the only thing that can inspire reluctance now.
TriassicSands
I think we can all agree with Donald Trump on one thing:
Major Major Major Major
@BlueDWarrior: “Yeah, what’s the difference between Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, huh, libtard?”
Lizzy L
@Suzanne: A dudely dude, and not Tim Kaine, probably. Though maybe he can rehabilitate himself. Grow a beard. Something. Yeah, not a woman. Damn. I had hoped to see a woman POTUS in my lifetime. Guess not.
Monala
@Mnemosyne: At least in the case of Detroit, its population declined significantly since 2008.
Botsplainer
Clearly, Obama fucked up by saving the auto industry.
I plan to do my own protest by only buying European in he future.
Mnemosyne
If I may quote our gracious bloghost from his Twitter feed:
Suzanne
@Timurid: I have less than zero desire to help Rust Belt and coal country communities get back jobs that don’t require college degrees at the expense of the climate and environment and at the expense of trade wars with other countries. I am more than happy to pass policies that will make their lives better, but as soon as they kick themselves in the nuts in order to preserve their cultural superiority, I’m out. Especially now that they have endangered me and my loved ones with their temper tantrum.
On a related note, if anyone from this community needs a place to go for the holidays that is away from Trump-loving family, you are welcome and wanted at my home. We have annoying pets, Settlers of Catan, and sarcasm.
Mnemosyne
@dww44:
That’s why we need to start working on 2018 midterms today. Find people for each House race and each state race, and run them. Find them yesterday.
Again, as reported above, the Trump team didn’t even know they needed to hire White House staff. Our only hope is that they’ll be too incompetent to actually do anything, but that’s a very, very faint hope.
OGLiberal
@Mnemosyne: So don’t let Republicans take control of the governorship and both houses of state government like the do on Wisconsin. Why are you not getting my point? Yeah, you can do that but it’s dancing around the edges. These laws should have never existed in WI because the GOP should have never won all three braches on 2010, 2-years after Obama won the state by 14 points. And Walker certainly should have not won a recall election in 2012 when Obama won the state by 7 pts a few months later. The major focus in WI between now and 2020 should be on flipping the governor’s mansion and state legislature, so they can overturn these laws rather than fight them in court or help folks find records that, in some cases, simply may not exist. (How worried was a county clerk in Alabama in 1954 about making sure some negroes birth certificate was filed away correctly?) Too many Dems, including some who were disenfranchised this year, didn’t vote in thise elections. And in 2010, those voter suppression laws in WI didn’t exist so that’s not an excuse.
Big picture. Your idea is not bad but shouldn’t have to have the idea in the first place. Black, old, poor registered voters shouldn’t have to produce photo ID based on some birth certificate they may never find. They should be able to vote, period. But Dems in WI, by staying home in 2010 and 2012, allowed these laws to be in place in 2016. That is the biggest problem that needs to be fixed.
Mnemosyne
Also, there’s still a pending run-off election in Louisiana between the Democrat (Foster Campbell) and the incumbent Republican. Go donate money now.
Timurid
@Major Major Major Major:
My phrasing could have been better. I certainly didn’t mean all the urban creatives, for example.
Of course the punchline is that Trump can’t save the WWC… and any attempt to systematically punish or neglect the WWC will also do terrible harm to the minority working classes.
Cacti
@p.a.:
Yeah, but he also predicted a Romney victory, and that there would only be a thimble of difference between a Bush and a Gore Presidency.
I guess he finally got one right.
Chris
@Jado:
It might happen, but don’t bet the ranch on it, especially once he’s surrounded himself by the Republican advisers he’s currently handpicking. To the extent that he and the “establishment” have differences, I expect they’ll settle them the same way gentlemen in politics have done for decades. By agreeing to go out and punch the shit out of some hippies and blacks.
Peale
@Cacti: yep. Let’s keep that in mind here. It’s like when the financial collapse in 2008 was predicted by Peter Schiff…he got it right! But then you look at his career and he had basically been predicting a financial collapse every year since we went off the gold standard.
Major Major Major Major
@Timurid: Yeah, I know the character you were getting at, just objecting as it sounded like a right-wing framing that they’d use to capture, for instance, me.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
The more incompetent they are, the more work they leave to the Republican establishment. Some hope.
Mnemosyne
@OGLiberal:
I do get your point, but we have to win those elections with the population the states actually have, not the population we wish they had.
As I keep saying, we need to find the non-voters who were disgusted by this election and find Democratic candidates who will appeal to them. That will vary in each state, so we can’t make generalizations of Moar Anti-Trade Agreement! until someone talks to those people and finds out what they actually want, not what the Trump voters around them wanted.
This means we need local people on the ground in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina, just to start. And it’s probably good to throw Louisiana in there, too, since the Democrat managed to force a run-off with the incumbent Republican (see my bleg for Foster Campbell at #201 above).
I live in California and I have a full-time job, so I can’t move to one of those states to do this, but I’m happy to throw money to it. What’s our next step?
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
Moore also said that it would happen partly because white male supremacy was being threatened, but the people who call him a prophet keep forgetting about that part.
GregB
Trump will hire Polish scab workers to staff White House.
Peale
@OGLiberal: why should Walker have lost the recall? The problem with the recall was that many people were annoyed to be asked to vote someone out of office before their term ended.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: I seriously think even when you describe the issue plainly, all they want to hear is “elfin magic”. We’ll just send Cranky Grandpa Jesus to waggle his finger and talk about breaking up banks. That will work because they sure flocked to the voting booths to make sure he was the candidate.
Major Major Major Major
@Peale: This is true.
Ksmiami
@permafrost: that’s what I’m telling my kids- leave.
Monala
@Mnemosyne: I have heard about a program that does something similar for the DREAMers. It costs about $400 for all the citizenship papers they need, and an organization was set up to for people to donate the funds to help them with those costs. The expectation is that once they have their citizenship, if they land a job, they’ll pay back the funds over time to expand the pool of funds to help more DREAMers.
Chris
@GregB:
I’m sure his visiting Russian BFFs will be thrilled to have Poles serving them. Some of them are probably old enough to remember the good old days.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Because the Jewish Socialist totally would have beaten the anti-Semitic white supremacist.
Ugh. I’m going to bed. Good night.
fuckwit
@Jumbo76: That’s idiotic. Obama, Big Dog, JFK, and FDR are once-in-a-generation, transformational leaders. Geniuses like that are rare. We’re fucked if we are dependent on that level of talent just to survive.
Major Major Major Major
@fuckwit: You also described almost half the presidential years during that time period (I’m including LBJ). Not that rare, evidently.
SWMBO
@Mnemosyne: Hillary beats Bernie. Trump beats Hillary. Bernie could beat Trump. If only the real world was Rock Paper Scissors
Emerald
@Starfish:
Oh FSM Thank You!! That is the first time I’ve laughed since this debacle happened.
GAWD that’s funny!
Monala
@Chris T.: I work for a nonprofit that helps people get IDs, and provides the funds for them to do so, but it’s so that they can get housing, jobs, etc. Because we’re a nonpolitical organization, I’m not sure it could be expanded for voting purposes. But if we are able to do the ID-getting, other groups can.
fuckwit
@OGLiberal: That’s another really stupid thing we liberals do: demand perfection.
We demand transformational, soaring rhetoric, and big plans and ideas!
We demand detailed, sober, incremental, adult-in-the-room planning!
We demand perfect personal moral character!
We demand honesty and consistency!
We demand inclusiveness and an appeal to everybody!
We demand the ability to get things done (which requires compromise)!
AND WE DEMAND ALL OF THESE THINGS IN THE SAME PERSON!
The Rethugs demand none of those things. They just want an angry (or at least tough-talking) white man. They’re done, they’re on board. Doesn’t matter if he’s a know-nothing, corrupt, and a serial rapist. They do not care.
We have to not only be twice as good just to get our fucking fickle-ass demanding-perfection, precious snowflake voters out to the polls, we need to be an order of magnitude as good. Obama was that. He’s not coming back.
That is why this election reminds me so much of 2000 and 2004. A meh candidate does not get Democrats to the polls. We demand superstar perfection before we’ll come out.
That, too, and too many Americans think that we live in an elected dictatorship. They forget that Congress makes the laws, and with a useless Congress, there will be no laws (or really bad ones).
I’m convinced now that this is the fatal flaw in the Democratic Party, the USA, and democracy in general: people are idiots, and they don’t vote for platforms, they vote for figureheads. This became painfully evident during the reign of Ronald Wilson Reagan, and it has just gotten worse since.
OGLiberal
@Mnemosyne: I would agree to this as Dems can still do OK in Louisiana at the statewide level – see their current governor, governor who preceded Jindal, former and recent Senator Mary Blanco, etc. But I think this one is a stretch. John Kennedy was a Democrat as late as 2007. I’m sure there are still a lot of Southern Dems in LA who will vote for Kennedy because they think he’ll stick it to the blacks (I have know knowledge or evidence he’s racist but most voters just need the GOP after the name) while making sure all that New Deal/New Society stuff they like doesn’t go away. He ain’t Diaper Dave (who did, of course, win re-election after all the stuff came out). Given his recent Dem affiliation, he’ll be tough to beat. As a GOP state treasurer he critcized Jindal for cutting the budget.
And just read Campbell’s bio. While he wasn’t craven enough to switch parties he doesn’t sound much better than Kennedy, and may be worse. But like with Manchin, I’ll stick with guy willing to keep the D.
I kind of wish the old Rockefeller Republicans stayed with the party so they could have eventually rooted out the racist former Southern Dems. Ah, who am I kidding…most stayed and kept their mouths shuts until the racists primaried them out. It always amazes me how many civil rights hating Dems left the party in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (for some, it took that long) but how many liberal Republicans stayed with the party until they were voted out or died.
Chris
@Monala:
Why couldn’t it? You’re helping people get the means to vote, you’re not telling them how to vote.
daves09
@Mnemosyne: No we don’t, the dems who won were women-Harris, Cortez-Masto, Duckworth, Hassan. Feingold lost, Murphy lost, Bayh lost. Tired old white guys who covered the whole demo spectrum, and they lost. So let’s forget the crap that it has to be a white guy.
Chris
@fuckwit:
People think I’m kidding, but I swear to God that Doc Brown’s observation “no wonder your president’s an actor: he has to look good on television!” from the original Back To The Future is one of the most insightful goddamn statements ever made about American politics in this day and age.
fuckwit
@SWMBO: I don’t necessarily believe that, but why didn’t the Clinton people have Bernie out barnstorming in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, with his message of economic populism to counter Troll’s message of racial demagoguery? Why didn’t they– as Obama did in 2008 and 2012– send Biden to Pennsylvania on the campaign trail, bringing his angry white man schtick that resonates so well there, and not let him leave for a month?
Clinton didn’t need to be a man herself, she had plenty of top-shelf surrogates who could have done that job for her in those states. And educated people in the process.
Something tells me the campaign either screwed up their electoral math or had good internal polls showing the danger but kept them quiet and failed to act on them.
Chris
@OGLiberal:
Is it me, or is “liberal Republican” an exaggeration for the Rockefeller types?
My impression was that for much of the 20th century, “Northern Democrats,” “Eastern Republicans” (the Rockefeller types), and “Western Republicans” basically stood for “liberals,” “centrists,” and “conservatives” respectively. (Southern Democrats being the wild card, united behind segregation but all over the place in other topics). The moderate Republicans were the wealthy business-friendly “establishment” types who’d made their peace with the New Deal, but were opportunistic enough that a lot of them were happy to change when they sensed the wind change. Or so I thought.
Monala
@Chris: Because this isn’t a service that is just open to the public. Based on the funding for it, people are sent to us because they need ID to accomplish a goal that will lead to self-sufficiency. They’re sent by programs that are helping them get jobs or housing or whatever. That’s the mission. It’s not, “Hey, anybody who needs ID for any reason, come here!”
OGLiberal
@Mnemosyne: I agree with having more folks on the ground but pretty certain we had more than Trump this year. The problem is that in a state where Obama won by 14 in 2008 and where he won by 7 in 2012 and where, with voter suppression and lower turnout, Hillary lost by about 1 percent, we need to win in the off years. We need people there every election year, not just for the presidential popularity contest every four years. Again, we stop Scott Walker and the GOP from taking over the state and passing these laws, folks would find it much easier to vote. That it’s difficult to find a birth certificate is a symptom of being required to find a birth certificate. Wisconsin wasn’t some fluke like IN in 2008. Solidly blue in many ways. Went overwhelmingly for Obama in each presidential election. Yet voters let Walker and the GOP obtain and keep state control during that same time period, during which the suppression laws were passed. There may have been other reasons Hillary did worse than Obama in 2016….indeed, i doubt voter suppression laws resulted in an 8 pt swing, which is what we got. Much of that was sexism and, to a lesser extent, racism. Still, as noted, the gap was so small that if disenfranchised voters could have voted, we may have pulled out a narrow victory in these states. But the problem was that those laws existed because Dem’s allowed them to exist by not voting in every election.
Chris
@OGLiberal:
I’d still like to know what grassroots, civil society institutions we can count on to help us get out voters, or rather which ones we should be either building or reaching out to. Who’s our equivalent to unions for the New Deal coalition (it pretty clearly isn’t unions anymore, even in the supposed union strongholds), or fundiegelical church networks for the Reagan coalition.
Without that kind of thing at our base, I don’t see how we build a lasting Democratic coalition.
OGLiberal
@Peale: All Republicans given the opportunity to recall a Dem would take that opportunity, see Davis, Gray. If you have the opportunity to remove a political opponent through legal, legitimate means, do it. Republicans would do it illegally and illegitimately in a second. Why do we have to be so nice? The ghost of Patrick Swayze just told me it’s time to not be nice. Because they are never nice.
Right boot.
CarolDuhart2
@catclub: A lot of people probably don’ t really know why because they were turned away without explanation, or told it was a glitch somehow. That brings up to my favorite and essential hobbyhorse: vote by mail. Whether out of sentiment or whatever, we insist on having already time-stressed people show up and wait in line to vote, often times after a long work day. It is easier to mobilize when people can just go to the mailbox. No having to find and show ID or get childcare, or stand outside in the cold.
About local elections: somehow we need a way to publicize those more. I only found out about my mayor’s race a few days before the day.
Can I say that a theme running through my head is this-we will be thankful in the end that our government was designed to be so balky and kludgy as it is. Orange cheeto has to wait a couple of months. States exist and have a say in the matter on the ground. So do cities, especially like New York and LA. Things can at least be stalled or slowed down due to our federal based system.
Chris
@CarolDuhart2:
Sure, but a problem arises when you’ve got such an overwhelming majority in the system – control of the executive branch, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and most state governments. The system doesn’t make it impossible to introduce sweeping change, just hard. With that many cards in their hands, there are serious limits to how much we can stall.
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
And the actual analysis of who voted and why showed that the immediate post-mortem was typical propaganda put out by Republicans and parroted by the press/media. The demographic that sunk Kerry was the same one that sunk Hillary – white women in the suburbs. At the time they were called Security Moms. I guess this year we can all them Mean Girls.
OGLiberal
@Chris: Used to be unions and the Catholic Church and corrupt Dem machines. Don’t want Tammany back so no on the latter. Unions are done. I’m an atheist but my kids and wife (less so, reality has made a big hit on her faith) are Catholic. I grew up with many Catholic and what they were was nothing close to the conservative Catholics I see today. Despite Pope Frank’s good works, JPJ II and Joey Ratz really swung the Church. Scared some out, swung some to wingnuttery, but really moved the focus from social justice and helping the poor to nothing but “babies are being killed” and “gays will kill us all”. We were part of a Catholic home school grouo for a couple years and they were based in the same area in NJ I grew up in and I recognized nothing. My wife grew up in New Orleans, was raised Catholic, and went to Catholic schools all her life and she couldn’t recognize them either. They rejected evolution. Even PJP II was OK with evolution, admitting it could be reconciled with a belief in god. (think about how amazing evolution is and then think about how difficult it would be to believe it happened by chance. i do believe it happened without a holy hand guiding it – and most stuff doesn’t happen by chance but by circumstance
Anyway, I don’t know what that organization is. With labor dead and religious groups dead to Dems, maybe it’s women’s groups, gay groups, immigrant groups, and black groups. And that’s too many groups, all if who are way out of power. The one that could be strongest is women, given the demographics. But they failed this year, especially thw white ones who should have offset the white (and sometimes not) men flipping from Obama in 2012 to Teump in 2016. They didn’t. And what’s the uniting cause? I don’t think Trump gives two shits about abortion and he probably likes it since he’s probably used it and will again but if it gets a bunch of folks to cheer for him, he’ll go for it. I mean, if hw gets a future mistress pregnant and she needs one, she’ll get one.
TriassicSands
@dww44:
Obviously the libel laws have to be changed and made retroactive. Trump has a lifetime’s list of people he still needs to get even with for saying less than flattering things about him. BHO is on that list for the highly disrespectful comments he made about Trump at the Correspondents’ Dinner. Even classmates from grades K-12 should start lining up lawyers. The sociopath is going to need a new cabinet position — Secretary of Lawsuits.
Further, historians had better be on alert — Trump’s heirs will not tolerate anything but stellar presidential ratings for their father, who will undoubtedly be the greatest president in American history.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@OGLiberal: Telling everyone that we should have done something different in 2010 is a really fucking useless observation.
Applejinx
@OGLiberal:
The Republicans lost. They did not vote for the Republicans. They voted for Donald Trump.
Did you SEE the primaries? They had lots and lots and lots of Republicans to vote for. They got mowed down like grass. You’re mistaken.
Applejinx
@fuckwit:
He would have been happy to do it, happy as a pig in shit. That would be Bernie in his happy place. It’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Bernie was campaigning for Clinton ever since the primaries, in the face of total hostility from his own supporters, hostility in huge numbers.
I can only assume the Clinton campaign didn’t want him to do that because that would mean legitimizing the economic populism. Repeat: looks like the Clinton people didn’t want him to do that, or in spite of the whole Dem primary, memory-holed everything that had happened and in the face of active Trump campaigning on exactly those issues and Trump trying to paint Clinton as a neoliberal technocrat for the big urban cities and elites, chose to actively run as neoliberal technocrats for big globalized business and the elites.
When reality resonates too closely with the most damaging attacks of the other freaking side, it’s a problem and you end up losing to an orange fuckweasel Nazi.
The Clinton campaign CHOSE not to do what would have saved them, because it would have meant abandoning the globalization agenda. At this point I can believe that they wanted places like Wisconsin etc. literally to die, and get out of the way. For the good of the GDP, and the stock market, and American economic power writ large. I look at the reactions of, say, Whig, and go: so that’s what the Democrats really think. Hmm.
BellyCat
Agree with most of Richard’s statements. However if we are to look to our strengths, this one aspect is not correct:
The majority, democratic voting, IS CONCENTRATED. The very definition of an urban area is concentration. Republicans are geographically diffuse.
An important long game is to further incentivize urban migration, thus increasing exposure to diversity and numerous other benefits.
What is it that brought people to the exurbs and suburbs? One simple answer: low taxes. The secondary answer, for people with children, is better schools.
Thus, it follows that if it were more expensive to live in the exurbs and suburbs then people might be more drawn to cities purely out of economic interests. Improved schools in the cities would also help.
How to do this? The answer is rather simple. Create tax cuts for those living in the cities and offset the lost revenue, as well as increase it, by charging a toll for all those who commute to the cities to take advantage of the well-paying jobs located there.
This is a little bit of an oversimplification of the complexity involved, but not by much.
Yes, there are many other factors but if one is getting at root problems to correct, this is one of the important areas to concentrate on and it plays to urban areas’ strengths.
Example: the tunnel tolls going into New York City.
D58826
@japa21: Yes Richard no need to be a pessimist (snark).
OGLiberal
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: No,it’s not. Because it wasn’t a one year thing. The GOP continues to cement their hold on governorships and state legislatures and were doing it before 2010. That needs to change, especially in states where Dems can or do win in presidential election years. You want to own redistricting in 2020? You want to end voter suppresion laws before the next presidential election? Win back the state governments. The message to Dem voters is to get your asses out and vote in the years when it isn’t a national popularity contest. The GOP makes sure old white people do – we need to do the same, and that includes me, who votes in off years but doesn’t really get involved in GOTV or fundraising in those years.
FlipYrWhig
@fuckwit: @Applejinx:
They did, you stupid fucks.
Bernie Sanders to Close 2016 Campaign with Coast-to-Coast Swing
Bernie Sanders to Campaign for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin on Wednesday November 2, 2016
Bernie Sanders to Campaign for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin on Wednesday October 5, 2016
OGLiberal
@Applejinx: OK, but they voted for what the Republican Party stands for. Yeah, President Cruz would be worse and President Kasich would be no better but they all hold office because they cater to voters who hate the other. Trump may not be a Republican but because he wasn’t a professional politician and didn’t need the gig (nor do I think he really wants it – just wanted to show he could win…and he did) he was open about it. But that’s really not much worse than the dog whistles. So what I said still holds true – Republicans or non-politicians who appeal to Republican voters can never deliver on anything but will get Republican votes not only because they say they will stick it to the other but because Democrats actually do stuff to help the other. The latter may be what drives them more – they’d rather inaction and lies than action that makes somebody who doesn’t look like them have a life that’s just a little bit better.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Speaking of the memory hole, you have already forgotten that St. Bernard the Ever Pure DID EXACTLY THIS. At events. For at least a month. I have links to prove to you and fuckwit (but I repeat myself) that it actually happened, but it’s in moderation. For fuck’s sake, dude, get back in contact with something that looks like reality.
OGLiberal
Sexism. This election was lost because of sexism. Do I have exit polls stat or any stats to back this up? Not really. I just have a misogynist idiot who said he could freely grab a woman’s pussy because he was rich and famous as my president-elect. And and extremely experienced woman lost to that dude because more men voted for him than they did Romney or McCain and woman voted for her in about the same numbers as they voted for Obama. This country isn’t ready or willing to vote for a woman to lead them…or at least not one who isn’t hot and dumb as a stump but gave one good speech. (Palin, if you haven’t already figured that out – although I think her attractiveness is overrated and she would have failed even worse than McCain at the top of the ticket)
Freaking Pakistan had a woman head of state – twice. Yeah, I know it was the same woman and parliamentary systems are different but still. So did India. We can’t seem to do it. Maybe we need our own Angela Merkel…thought Hillary was that woman but apparently not to many other American voters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow6FqujCEtw
polyorchnid octopunch
@Matt McIrvin: Read the clause again. This approach is not dependent on that at all. It only addresses denial of right to vote and abridgement of it.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Morzer: Yeah. Which is directly addressed by the clause in question.
polyorchnid octopunch
@ruemara: The thing is the constitution has an as yet completely unused tool for dealing with this. Why are you folks not attempting to use it?
polyorchnid octopunch
@Peale: Kitchener-Waterloo.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: I was far angrier when W “won”. What happened in 2000 was both a crime and unconstitutional.
This, hate to say, was legal and a blowout. We own this loss. In many ways that makes the sting kind of worse, that six million of my “fellow Dem voters” chose to sit home and eat ice cream rather than vote, but at least I know this wasn’t stolen from me by a partisan Supreme Court. So I personally am not that upset. I’ve lived under Republican presidents for a majority of my life and I’ll outlast this bastard too.
The Moar You Know
@OGLiberal: Both murdered in office by religious fanatics. I hope we can do better.
John
I can’t speak to Detroit or Milwaukee, but turnout was up in Dane County, where Madison is located, and Clinton actually outperformed Obama in raw votes (though Obama did about 0.6% better in percentage of the total vote). But the number of votes case for Johnson, Stein, and various write-in candidates were WAY up, by a combined margin of 15,000 votes or so.