Citing CNN exit polls, EJ Dionne throws some cold water on the notion that economic populism would have ensured Democratic victory last week:
Still, progressives hoping that a heavy dose of populism will be enough to win back the working class must not be under the illusion that the Trump constituency was motivated solely by economics.
In fact, Trump’s immigration stand (he won 86 percent of voters who want to build a wall on the Mexican border, according to CNN’s exit polls ) and his law-and-order appeal (he won 74 percent among those who rejected the idea that the criminal justice system treats black Americans unfairly) were key to his victory. When exit pollsters asked voters to name the most important issue facing the country, he won among those who listed immigration or terrorism; he lost among those who cited the economy. Trump’s hard-edged social conservatism, not just a general anti- establishment appeal, drove up white turnout in many key counties.
Finally, lest anyone doubt that the outsized attention given to the matter of Clinton’s use of a private server was decisive, consider that 45 percent of voters said that her use of private email bothered them “a lot,” and they voted better than 12-to-1 for Trump.
So maybe as a compromise, can we accept that many factors contributed to the catastrophic results of the election and move on?
I was spectacularly wrong in the run-up to this election. I sincerely believed we were better than Trump. We aren’t. I thought white women would come through for Clinton. They didn’t.
As I’ve said several times in comments in response to folks who want to make it all about economics and the working class in the aftermath, I’m willing to listen, as long as proposed changes in messaging don’t include downplaying the party’s commitment to justice for non-whites, women and the LGBT community.
If you start bitching about “identity politics,” I won’t hear anything else you have to say, and trust me, I’m not alone in that. Because now more than ever, we need to recognize the true nature of what we’re up against, and marginalized people will need a greater voice, not a diminished one.
Meanwhile, Team Trump has fanned out worldwide to threaten opponents, shake down marks and pledge solidarity with other Putin-aligned white nationalists. Steve Bannon, former chief editor of the Trump-supporting anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-woman hate site Breitbart.com, will be installed at taxpayer expense in an office next to the Oval to create strategy.
Odious racist and bestiality-curious Trump supporter Carl Paladino spoke on a BBC program to warn NATO members to pay up or else. Folks on Twitter are reporting that the Russian troll factories that saturated US social media with anti-Clinton propaganda are now turning their attention to Merkel in Germany.
Will the shit-gibbon’s minions try to fulfill Trump’s promise to prosecute Hillary Clinton? I don’t know. It would be a spectacularly stupid move, but that obviously doesn’t mean it’s off the table. If they do, we should have her back. All of us.
BillinGlendaleCA
As a Democrat, I want to win; but not if it means selling soul and repudiating my values. And I used to work for Satan.
smintheus
How did a notorious scofflaw, caught breaking law after law during the campaign, who was known to consort with mobsters, become the “law and order” candidate? That’s a spectacular case of political malpractice right there.
gogol's wife
@smintheus:
They only care about the law if it’s black people breaking it.
Crouchback
Most of Trump voters were McCain/Romney voters. So the typical Trump voter is less of an issue than the voters who previously voted for Obama or stayed home but voted for Trump this time. So I’d be interested in what specifically motivated the new Trump voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc. And the immigration issue is to some extent economic – immigrants are seen as competing for jobs and driving down wages. That may not be a fair or accurate view but it is an economically motivated one. We don’t need and can’t get most of Trump’s voters – but we need the ones who provided his margin of victory and there I think economics were a big issue.
JMG
Law and order means, ‘pushing not-white people around under cover of the law.” I honestly don’t think I’ve heard any elected or unelected but well known Democrat propose abandoning the party’s social platform. At this point, the only message for disaffected whites is going to have to be “you trusted him/them now watch how they fuck you over.”
Botsplainer
Kristopher Kolumbus Kobach is reportedly being given some role as well.
He’ll probably be named to head the voting rights division at DOJ.
But yeah, it’s all about economics.
I hope I manage to get summoned to appear before the new HUAC, so they can see how contempt of congress really works.
Yoda Dog
They are going to arrest her, hold a kangaroo court and lock, her, up. We will all have her back and it won’t matter one smidge. We are post-truth now. Believe the autocrat. He can’t fucking wait to make an example of her AND Obama. Especially Obama. They will literally be made to kiss his ring or some similar humiliation.
This will be the dead canary in the coal mine that will signal that we are truly and permanently fucked. I mean other than the election of course…
Baud
Part of losing is hearing everyone’s dumb advice. One thing I find fascinating is what isn’t talked about when we talk about what to do differently. That is, should the Democrats be more overtly religious?
Many minority and immigrant communities are religious. Religious institutions are great at organizing and spreading the message. Historically, populist religion was at the forefront of progressive action. And many rural areas that we need to do better in are deeply religious. So it would seem like something that should be on the table as a way to expand our base.
But it’s not. Not by the establishment, or the bloggers or the pundits, or even the Bros. Complete silence. I wonder why, given that we seem willing to debate ad nauseum our commitment to social justice issues.
FWIW, I would rather give on secularism than social justice, but I hope we can find a way that doesn’t require us to sacrifice either.
Just something that crossed my mind recently.
Botsplainer
@gogol’s wife:
They don’t even have to break it.
Simple refusal to adequately cringe in the presence of Our Sainted Authority is enough to justify an ass kicking.
WereBear
They want a War on Christmas? We’ll war on their Christmas.
Don’t buy anything this Christmas, especially since we should all be saving money. Donate in that wingnut relatives name. Give food and coats and shoes and clean out our pantries and closets. (I routinely give stuff I haven’t used within a certain time, because it’s not doing anyone any good sitting around.)
Smack them in the wallet. Ooooooooh, yeah? Well, I’ll see your bogus “economic insecurity” and raise ya a dent in the consumer index.
They think they can live without our money? Bring it.
JPL
@gogol’s wife: True.
If a black person shoots and injures, or kills a police officer, it is on the news 24/7. The last several weeks there were injuries or killings due to white folk with guns. It does get mention, but not the extent that it does if you are brown or black.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
All this still ties into economic anxiety – the immigrants and the blacks are coming to take our jobs.
Anyway, what happens when that silly wall doesn’t happen?
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
This country has a sickness, and it’s called racism.
I keep saying over and over, if you gave every white man in America a job making six figures, they would still treat women, POC, Muslims, immigrants, and LGBTQ like shit.
I, for one, await the day Calioreton breaks free from this bullshit. Same thing with the NE (side-eyeing PA right now, except Pittsburgh and Philly). Somehow Colorado and Illinois need to create an alliance, too. I’m not a fan of Balkanization, and someone else here mentioned in one thread that a partition like India/Pakistan might be coming, and I agree. Once people have a taste of freedom and equality, they are NOT going to give it up without a fight. That’s what I see in our future, sadly. But it might be necessary.
Botsplainer
@Baud:
Fuck Jesus.
The ideology, at its core, is pure filth, given the cheap grace so mewlingly bleated by American evangelicals.
Christians have ruined Christianity for me. Stalin was right.
msdc
Well said, Betty. I would add just one thing. We need to listen to those who are marginalized, not just because they’re most vulnerable to Trump and his enablers, but because they were right about him from the beginning and they lined up to fight him. When we’re figuring out the future direction other party I’m going to listen to those who were there all along, not those who bravely sat out the fight so they could play Cassandra in hindsight.
FlipYrWhig
@Crouchback:
This is a good point.
This I’m less sure of. And let’s keep in mind that Trump was habitually combining _immigrants_ (mostly from Spanish-speaking countries) and _refugees_ (mostly from the Middle East) to suggest that the brown people in our midst were up to no good. I’m not sure that the economic argument was paramount.
aimai
@Crouchback: This is some kind of fantasy projection of yours. There is no economic anxiety in a voting sense except aligned with racism and misogyny and thwarted authoritarianism. Lots of poor people, and middle class people, have economic anxiety. Only people predisposed to quick and dirty solutions that target others–LGBTQ, women, minorities, government interference on their behalf–are predisposed to voting for the Republican/trump.
People have got to stop chasing the fantasy one time Obama voter. People voted for Obama after eight disasterous years of Bush, and in the middle of a mass economic melt down. They overcame their ordinary, bone deep, racism/sexism/hatred of others to let the black guy clean up america’s mess. If things hadn’t been so bad, or they had had more time to smear Obama than they did, he wouldn’t have gotten elected. Those “former Obama voters” are a mirage, like the “Reagan Dems” were a mirage.
If asshole purity pony liberals had been willing to fight it out in public with their own relatives and neighbors we would have done better. Lots of people were more comfortable sending money, or phone calling other dems, than were willing to confront their own relatives and neighbors over their votes for Trump or Stein. Lots of people were complacent and stayed home because they figured it was a done deal and getting out to vote was too much trouble. WE are talking about a vanishingly small number of voters, in any event, given the sliver of a voting distance between her win and her loss.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
A lot of the conjectural immigrants Trump was talking about weren’t taking our jobs, they were taking our lives. That’s what the Muslim “shutdown” was about.
Betty Cracker
@Crouchback: While I know from living in rural Florida that anti-immigrant sentiment is fueled more by racism than economic anxiety, I agree there’s a link, so good point. As I said, I’m certainly willing to support a party platform that emphasizes economic justice more — I was glad Clinton moved to the left of Obama on that (though you can credibly argue she was the wrong messenger after being pilloried as a crook by Republicans for 30 years and as a corrupt bankster tool by lefties for two years).
matryoshka
Let’s keep her motto “Stronger Together.” I like it. And I like “We’re Still Here,” but that one is only good until it isn’t true anymore.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: Along similar lines, I’m pretty sure that one thing that happened on the other side was a large number of Johnson people looking at the polling margin between Clinton and Trump, realizing that their votes could make up that margin, and swallowing hard to vote Trump and thwart Clinton. And it feels to me like the Stein people couldn’t bring themselves to do that, though, to be fair, they didn’t have much motivation to do that, because Clinton was supposed to be fairly comfortably ahead.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud:
Atheism isn’t like religion dude, there is no Road to Damascus moment, just a bunch of “oh, ya’, that’s just BS, isn’t it?” so once your de-illuminated you can’t come back, it’s just to damn silly. It’s telling people to go believe in Santa Claus. Beyond that “secularism” is stuff like science which we have to have, by definition the word secular applies to everyone.
Anyway, the most in your face, confrontational Atheists are ex-preachers and they won’t shut up and a lot likely aren’t even liberals. Christopher Eric Hitchens was a conservative, for example.
Davis X. Machina
@smintheus:
There’s no ‘become”.
“Law and order” has always meant putting the boot to dark people and queers.
Betty Cracker
@aimai:
I plead guilty to that.
OzarkHillbilly
This is the very soul of the Democratic party. It is the foundation everything else is built on.
Botsplainer
@aimai:
Wife had been irritated with my concern and focus AND donations for months. She refused to believe he was electable, that there was this large number of awful people out there.
Election night and the entire next day she was depressed and crying, wondering how and why it could happen, as she’d been queried on multiple Asian and Australian trips by well-meaning suppliers as to whether it could really happen.
Now she’s obsessed, and really concerned. I think a lot of casual D voters approached it as she did.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@FlipYrWhig: It’s same thing really. Just hyped up justify the hate.
“They’re terrorists”
sounds better than
“They’re more desirable employees than me”
Gavin
Playing to fears is always stronger than Hill’s non-message “The Same, Now With A Woman Leader.”
Economic anxiety? Trump MENTIONED it more than Clinton, but his policies will be anti-99%.
Law and order? Trump MENTIONED it more than Clinton, but his stop-and-frisk policies are explicitly racist.
Progs need both a message AND a plan. Thugs clearly need only a message, because they won’t implement anything but the same-old-same-old anyway. This is the way it is, and we need to do better.
As always, Blyth nails it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd2d4_LcEig
Watch it all the way through, very interesting long-run analysis of econ trends.
rikyrah
@JMG:
Yep
p.a.
Un fuckin believable… NOW CNN is expressing (or reporting) concern about the people President-Elect Hindenburg is surrounding himself with.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Baud: This is why conservative Catholics can go fuck themselves. They are all about the unborn, but consistently vote for politicians who don’t give a damn about actual, living, breathing people. They care more about potential and hypothetical people. They are hypocrites. And I say that as a Catholic.
Liberation theology or fucking bust.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
Made mom hang up on me several times. Dad was always a cipher, but being involved all his life in athletics, he isn’t plagued by racial animus – I suspect that he’s a quiet D.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think it’s the other way around. I think it’s “I don’t like having all these brownish people around, they talk to each other in their own jibber-jabber language and I don’t trust what they’re up to.”
Botsplainer
@p.a.:
That’s OK – President Trump can sign a bill bringing satellite transmissions under the aegis of the FCC and the new national libel laws.
charluckles
I doubt they prosecute Clinton, but they have to make a huge show of it. Otherwise, questions might start getting asked about whether it was clearly political (wink, wink, nudge). And if it’s so clearly political their might be more questions about Comey and the FBI, and questions about media practices, and questions about misuse of government resources for political purposes by Republicans…Nah.
I can’t believe how many arguments I am fucking having to deal with from friends and acquaintances about the role of racism and misogyny in this election. I realize they are ultimately trying to stabilize their world view, but hell it’s like theres a parallel universe where Jeb Bush just beat Clinton and not Donald Trump. My fucking brother, who is not worldly, but should know better, is on Facebook arguing that this election has more to do with Democratic elites not understanding the hot-polloi and that the hoi-polloi were angry about being falsely accused of sexism and bigotry. Also too, apparently “I voted for Donald Trump, but not for his racism and bigotry”, is going to be a popular disclaimer as we move along.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: This is the “values voter” idea from 2004. The problem is that for the people who religion really matters, “religion” now means banning abortion and taking away LGBT rights. That’s it.
Hillary Clinton is and was overtly Christian, and talks about it. Doesn’t matter; she’s an enemy of Christians. Barack Obama is a Christian and talks about it; people say he’s lying and he gets called both a Muslim and an atheist.
Fred Clark has talked a lot about this at Slacktivist. Political evangelicalism, which is what people are referring to when they say “Christians” in a political context, started out as a cover for segregationism and is now centered entirely around gays and abortion. With any other vision of religion you can’t win at the religion game.
rikyrah
@aimai:
Uh huh
Uh huh
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@aimai:
Guilty of that, but gods, act like some carpet chewing wingnut?
Of course when my crazy uncle started yelling about “Some people say Obama is a Muslim” I snapped back “Some people say the world is 4,000 years old and flat”, that stunned and embarrassed him because he saw the connection. But the flip side is these people just get resentful of being wrong and just get nastier. A lot of this is these people are incandescent with rage about being wrong on everything and those damn hippies being right.
Davis X. Machina
@Botsplainer
There’s a large number of awful people out there, precisely because there’s a large number of people out there. All people are awful some of the time, some people are awful most of the time.
rikyrah
Lips pursed.
OGLiberal
If “identity politics” = catering your message to the people who are going to vote for you and for whom you think need help v. changing that message to cater to folks for whom you think also need help but who will never vote for you then I’m all for “identity politics”.
“Identity politics” is a dog whistle for “caring about the other more than my white, privileged arse”. And no, these white folks aren’t all the 1% – many aren’t. But a lot also aren’t as poor off as they’d have you believe.
FlipYrWhig
@charluckles:
Wait, wouldn’t that prove that it’s entirely about social attitudes, not economics? Because that’s what I’m seeing from my few Trumpie friends on Facebook too. Which is why this whole thing about economic justice for distressed blue-collars feels so cloying and false.
FlipYrWhig
@OGLiberal: “Identity politics” is what white people who care about class call everything that isn’t class. Ralph Nader called it “gonadal politics.”
tobie
I was at a birthday party in very red Cecil County, Maryland last night and of the 40 in attendance my husband and I were the only Clinton voters. Everyone else voted for Trump. When pressed about everything Trump said during the campaign, they told me we should give him a chance. As far as they were concerned he’s an unknown, whereas in their view Clinton was the incarnation of evil. Complete character assassination. It worked. And the fact that so many on the left ignore how she was raked over the coals kills me as a woman.
OGLiberal
@Crouchback: Obama – Man. Clinton – Woman. That was the difference for the men who switched and the women who didn’t switch when they should have for bloody obvious reasons.
FlipYrWhig
@tobie: Well, she did receive email from coworkers about work, which is pretty much the definition of evil.
Betty Cracker
@charluckles:
.
This Scalzi essay blasts that bullshit out of the water.
JMG
@tobie: The attitude of those voters is the Republican vulnerability. They knew they were taking a flyer. If, make that when, things go wrong, some of them will be quick to turn on the president and his party.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Many religious groups hold positions that are an affront to social justice(gay rights and choice in particular) and want government to codify their views.
RinaX
The main thing that I’m taking from this is that he’s not going to go after certain things like gay marriage, or marijuana legalization, no matter what noises his surrogates were making about it. He’s going for the things that will primarily (or so his fan club thinks) only hurt the “others”, like warping the ACA into some monstrosity, putting back the color alert terrorist attack system, and “helping” law enforcement by making it easier for them to get away with killing people. I’m not even sure this time that if he messes with SS for those under a certain age, that it will do too much to hurt him. The 2016 electorate is much more rabid and hate-filled than the 2006 one. My fear is that ultimately, we will have the exact same pattern that played out during GWB’s reign, in that their hate for us will be enough to overcome their misgivings about any policies that he enacts and they’ll still turn out during 2018, 2020, and 2022, only to have remorse after that.
And at this point I don’t have the same faith that the disparate coalitions that make up the Democratic party can truly pull it together, let alone make any inroads with those Republicans, Libertarians, and others who might join in. I’m just not seeing it.
Betty Cracker
@charluckles:
This Scalzi essay blasts that bullshit out of the water nicely.
OGLiberal
@msdc: “We need to listen to those who are marginalized, not just because they’re most vulnerable to Trump and his enablers, but because they were right about him from the beginning and they lined up to fight him.”
In his own words and actions, Trump marginalized woman possibly more than any demographic. Yet women – particularly white women – didn’t line up to fight him any more than they did against McCain or Romney. In an election where you had a dude you knew dudes would love precisely because he marginalized women you needed them to do that in order to overcome the dude swing to the other side. They didn’t. And that’s why the first woman – a white one, at that – with a legitimate shot at winning the presidency lost to a misogynist, sexual assaulting, serial adulterer, talking creepy about his daughter, idiot.
Scout211
As a liberal living in a blue state but very deeply red county, my perspective may be somewhat skewed. It may not reflect a national strategy, but observing the lifetime Republicans in my county, I have seen several interesting things that seem to be consistent in the Republican voters here.
1. They seem to be pretty much unified in their rejection of anything that any Democrat proposes, national or state.
2. They don’t care one whit for facts, policies or consequences of elections.
3. They vote against anything that Democrats want.
4. They don’t seem to stand FOR anything as a unified group. But they ARE UNIFIED against Democrats.
These are my observations and are vague and nonspecific–but that is my point.
I don’t know what this means or how this affects “what we should do next” but hating Democrats seems pretty much a power base out here.
Major Major Major Major
I just hope it doesn’t become* a zombie lie that Everybody Knows™ on the left that if only we had promised to jail bankers, the precious less-racist-white-people vote would have been ours!
Yes, I know, I’m dreaming.
*stay
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well if we’re looking for things to change, perhaps not being self righteous, smug and preachy? My mind always goes back to Gamergate and how absurdly sensitive these guys feeling were and how relentless the feminist were about attacking them. I mean it wasn’t like these guys deserved to be yelled at, it was just the way it was done as an attack upon them as a person and not on their idiotic beliefs.
Barbara
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): Although there are probably limits on what can be done, there are interstate compacts that could be created between like minded states to address certain things — like carbon footprint. One of the things that makes addressing health care so difficult is that no single state is really big enough to go it alone, so banding together to share resources to come up with a plan that like minded states can utilize without all having to reinvent the wheel is possible — so long as states (I am looking at you, Massachusetts) can look beyond their parochial interests — which is never easy. In reality, every state from Maine (as soon as it addresses its penchant for third party stupidity) to Maryland, with the possible exception of Pennsylvania, which can be bypassed, have similar interests here. Ditto for the west coast, including, increasingly, Nevada, which is basically California overflow because it’s cheaper and has great air service, so a good location for certain kinds of business (like Zappo’s). The interior states: Minnesota, Colorado, Illinois, if the Democratic party could see its way back from what seems like chronic public corruption. Others are still too divided. I am not talking secession. I am talking about recognizing shared areas of policy advancement.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer:
Seems to me President of the US is about the least libel-able person on this planet.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Scout211: Yes, this, it looks same to me. But now they caught to car so they have to be for something. To much depends on that.
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: yep. And when Trump talks about immediately deporting 2million “criminal illegals” he’s talking about taking them from our prisons. There aren’t actually 2000000 criminal aliens in our prisons. But it will be big, showy and disasterous for the countries. Yay! Send 1000s unemployed gang members back to Guatemala all at once. It’s what they really need!
note that he hasn’t said anything about the undocumented labor that certain industries absolutely rely on yet. I think he’s might just be cntinuing the big GOP con that forces the Democrats to hold the bag on business’s dirty labor problem. The democrats get to be the adult in the room, reflexively being the “friend of the undocumented” which isn’t popular with many voters so that construction, agribusiness, food service, hospitality and consumer services industries have enough labor supply. Those businesses give heavily to republicans to get rid of labor laws and pesky regulations, but have been relying on enough democrats to be there to keep their labor sources entact. Fuck them, really. I honestly hope trump succeeds in crafting a policy so draconian that rich white suburbanites have to mow their own lawns.
tobie
@Scout211: Ditto! The only thing I would add to this list is that they rage against entitlements, while ignoring their own entitlements. Rural and exurban life doesn’t exist without massive subsidies. But as far as they’re concerned they did it with the sweat of their brow. Remember the slogan, “We built this”?
WereBear
@Scout211: Yes. That is why their house is on fire, and the Democrats are standing by with their fire trucks and fire people; who are women, POC, LBTQ, pro-choice, atheists, etc… and they will say, “Get away from my house!”
They want it to burn down. Remember, deals with the devil always backfire.
gogol's wife
@Baud:
My church is all in with social justice — we basically held a wake yesterday. But our membership is about 200, while the evangelicals across town have thousands.
Emma
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): Speaking of which… and conflating it with the comments about religious communities. I have a crazy idea.
I do not believe for a moment that the majority of the pro-forced birthers care a rip about the fetus. I think it’s mostly about keeping women in their place. This is especially true of women, by the way. Nothing says misogynist like a conservative woman.
I propose an organization calling itself The Coalition for Responsible Fatherhood. It would try to work with religious organizations and other political groups to insert into restrictive abortion laws an amendment (for exiting laws) or a section (for new ones) as follows:
As soon as it is safe, the child’s DNA will be collected and tested. If the father is identified, the state will garnish wages and/or property as necessary for the support of said child. If the father is a minor his parents will become responsible for the upkeep of said child until the father is of age.
They won’t do it. And we can use that.
GregB
I for one recommend reaching out to your local Quaker church. They know how to organize and support decency and humanity.
mainsailset
I’ve only seen commentary in passing about the role and impact of the Breitbart, Drudge, Alex Jones crowd. They were enormously successful in giving their readers talking points, political porn conspiracy theories by the hour in a never ending stir. They created the Hillary is a Liar candidate that they wanted the Rep to run against and never let up. For anyone who tried to go up against that gaggle it was easy to recognize just how well organized they were and just how well they designed their messaging to steamroll anything attempting to interject truth.
Peale
@Baud: one of the best thing about those reverend wright attacks is that they reminded everyone that Obama went to church.
Redshift
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
No, “they’re coming to kill you” is not just a “hyped up” version of “they’re coming to take your job,” if words have any meaning at all. Stretching it that far to justify the “economic anxiety” argument is the clearest possible proof that it’s complete bullshit.
Starfish
@aimai: I think the mass defriending happened *after* the election. People were talking to Trump and Stein voters, but Trump voters refused to read anything outside of all the ultra-right wing garbage. And you can’t talk down a person whose reality is based on “facts” that are not true. If someone thinks that the Clintons murdered people, you are not going to talk them out of that.
Quinerly
Maybe someone already posted this but Linda McMahon of World Wide Wrestling fame being touted for Secretary of Commerce. NBC reporting. I guess next up will be the head of NASCAR for Transportation Secretary. Gotta feed your core supporters. Yes, I’m still angry and sick over this and am not making nice with racist rednecks….oops, we are supposed to be calling them the WWC, because the media told us so.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud:
Hillary literally gave a religious speech at a church the Sunday before the election. Do you mean that we need to go all revivalist and praise the lord at every stump speech?
Peale
@mainsailset: yep. In the late days of the campaign, when Hillary was still running her “Donald is a predator” ads, they have pretty well inoculated themselves from it by focusing on Gloria Allred’s ties to Clinton.
OGLiberal
@Betty Cracker: I also plead guilty to that because a) a confrontation with my mother-in-law about politics, in part, led to my wife being estranged from her family (many other reasons, going back to how they treated her well before I knew her but that was the tipping point…and my family ain’t worth shiite so no fallback there) and b) the only friends we and our kids have are the parents and kids in our home school group and they are all very conservative (for varying reasons, some religious, some fiscal….politics rarely comes us) but also very nice to us and our kids. I do have to admit, they are much nicer to us than the liberal “unschooling” group we were part of a few years back who shunned us because we didn’t want our kids running into a busy street. (I suspect most of those folks ended up being Stein voters)
I wish I had the luxury but I don’t. And while I’ve lightly criticized my Facebook friend who was crazy Trump and very much a Hillary hater, I coached the kid in freshmen football when he was 14. Yeah, he’s an adult now with kids and a career and he’s old enough to know better but he’s still the funny, sweet kid I coached….I just can’t go there too hard.
gogol's wife
I just called Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal. The Murphy staffers (both in DC and in Hartford) were impatient and treated me like a crazy old lady (which I’m rapidly becoming). The Blumenthal staffer in DC couldn’t have been kinder or more sympathetic, and he said Blumenthal is getting his entire staff together later today to work on a game plan. I know which one’s going to get a contribution from me.
Joel
@charluckles: They don’t want to admit it. People don’t want to face the truth about themselves.
Gelfling 545
Pictures from yesterday’s Humanity Over Oppression rally here.
Jack the Second
My personal bet is that this post-mortem will show Trump won by marrying valid problems with racist, xenophobic solutions.
The loss of good jobs, hell, for everyone, not just non-college-educated workers, is a real problem. Terrorism is a real problem, albeit not as existential as RWNJ like to make out. Unfair competition from abroad — state-subsidized or slave-labor-based industries — is a real problem. Undocumented immigration — and the borderline slave labor that comes of it — is a real problem.
Trump addressed these problems with real if infeasible solutions, ones we find morally repugnant. Isolationism, halting all immigration, stopping trade, sound like really great solutions. And they sound all the better because they’re xenophobic and racist, not “politically correct”. I’m not sure we can count on winning back all of those voters with our own solutions to these problems, because “enforce first-world labor standards in the third world / create more legal routes for immigration so that illegal immigrants aren’t taken advantage of / offer job-retraining to displaced workers” doesn’t sound as good as “get rid of all the foreigners and get our jobs back”.
Gavin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m not sure what you’re saying — of course Democrat messaging has to be attacks on people. You saw in the election the exact result of an extended attack on a person, Hillary.
Yes, policies matter – but only AFTER the person is shut down.
Prog/liberal current mindset revolves around “being right” – as though if there was just one more discussion or one more attempted agreement upon initial datasets, everyone would magically “see” the wisdom of The Great Liberal Position. Thus the attempted shaming of people who don’t Believe.
Guess what? The raw number of people in the USA who buy that are not enough to get elected. IT DOES NOT WORK.
Mickee
The economic populism thing never entirely made sense. Even the most low information of low information voters can’t be blind to the irony of electing the billionaire son of a millionaire to address income inequality. I’m sure that’s part of it, but this is about people being scared, not people being poor.
I asked this before, but is there a way to quantify the culpability of Rupert Murdoch for ruining western democracy? His media empire got rich with a steady drip, drip, drip of venom convincing the comfortable and safe that they were threatened by ‘others’ at home and abroad. and needed to be constantly vigilant against them. He managed to completely upend the American ideal within a few short decades.
Peale
@p.a.: lol. Good. I guess it’s sinking in that one nice meeting with Obama didn’t actually change trumps mind about what he ran on.
FlipYrWhig
@Mickee: My pet theory is that American decency and commitment to inclusion (think Frank Capra films) were propped up by World War II and then the Cold War, and it’s been since the end of the Cold War that the tide of racial and social resentment has risen beyond its prior level–which was never all that low, but was held in check by a certain patriotic vision that’s now fading.
Peale
@Gavin: people want trump. They want legalized pot, but they want black people to continue to be jailed for it.
WaterGirl
I am thinking of sending this letter to my family. Would that be a mistake?
bemused
I’m pretty fed up with the meme that everyone should reach out to WC whites. I’m an old, recently Medicare eligibility age, and have lived in NE Minnesota rust/iron mining belt all my life. Imo, there aren’t that many Trump voters up here that would be reachable. These are folks who reflexively think “you’re not the boss of me” and “no liberal treehugging loon is going to tell me what to think, say or do”.
A mining boom in the 70’s allowed people just out of high school to work in the mines, get wages high enough to go on a spending spree, house, two cars or more, boats, and much more and then retire, many as young as 50. We know many our age that have retired by 50 or 55. After that boom, mining jobs have decreased, mines needing fewer and fewer workers to operate the plants and lower wages. Global investment companies, subject to the international markets, now own the mines and demands for product are undercut by cheaper steel produced in China, etc.
“We Support Mining” signs are prolific here. Most do support mining but want the operations to be safe for our environment and not harm tourism. Big fights particularly about copper-nickel mining and very real danger of polluting our major water sources. I’d guess almost 100% of people with the signs in their yards are against regulations (they don’t believe threat to water is very high). They don’t care that new mines would tear up a lot more of our landscape in est 20 years and shut down or worry about who will be responsible for maintaining tailing pits or monitor the water.
They can’t accept that the world has changed and the good old days aren’t coming back. They still bitterly resent the creation of the BWCA where you cannot use motorized vehicles, boats, snowmobiles, ATV’s. There are plenty of lakes and hunting ground here where they can use their boats, etc to fish and hunt but it really sticks in their craws that they can’t do that anywhere they damn well please.
They hate city people, tourists, “packsackers” who move here and start guide/gear businesses that cater to visitors exploring BWCA. They scorn the multitude of bike trails that Jim Oberstar got funding to create.
Many of these people don’t travel far from home much. The only planes trips they take is to Vegas, Reno, Laughlin or Disneyworld.
They have huge chips on their shoulders and not interested in compromise. It’s their way or the highway.
There are more rational Republicans here than the wingnuts but the people described above seem to be growing in number or are maybe just a hell of a lot louder and vicious now.
Gavin
@WaterGirl:
Won’t matter. They equalize your actual, real pain with the knowledge that Young Bucks Won’t Be Driving Cadillacs And Eating T-Bone Steaks Any More.
Peale
@Gavin: yep. Clinton’s side needed to get negative to drive down his numbers. Unfortunately there are lots of voters on our side who sit out negative campaigns.
CM
@Betty Cracker:
In response to your point about Hillary Clinton maybe being the wrong messenger, I want to emphasize a point I think you made in a post just after the election and that I saw from a commenter on another thread last night. The point is that we must have charismatic candidates as presidential nominees, and I would argue in other leadership positions. In other words, we need candidates more like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and less like Hillary and John Kerry. Charisma is a mysterious quality; for example, it turned out that Bernie Sanders had a voice that people turned out to hear. I don’t think he was the right candidate in 2016, either, but there was someone who probably was — Elizabeth Warren. And in the old white man category, I think Joe Biden had developed an image and a persona during his years as VP that put him in this category. Both made personal decisions to step aside. We desperately need those with an “it” factor and an opportune moment to step up, as Obama did in 2008 and a young Bill Clinton did in 1992.
A further point on leaders. We desperately need people with charisma in leadership positions in the Senate, the House, and the DNC. To hell with seniority, whoever’s time it is, etc. These leaders will now have an opportunity to appear on cable new programs and in media headlines every day as the Trump administration goes by. We better fill these positions with people who can speak to the cameras and draw in the crowds, whose voices are distinct, and whose message is clear.
Regarding another point that needs more discussion, we are spending a lot of time trying to figure out issues and motivations regarding those white Americans who elected Trump. I would agree that the Democratic Party needs to sharpen its economic message in a way that the average hard-working person can understand. Here’s my point: to understand the white working class, we have to understand and factor in conservative talk radio, Fox news, and now social media. Rush Limbaugh and his imitators are on the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all across this country. For over 20 years now, the right has mounted what has to be one of the most effective propaganda operations in world history. Years ago, I used to tune in talk radio occasionally as I was driving around. I remember Rush Limbaugh going off on Jesse Jackson, Neal Boortz condemning government schools, Michael Savage bashing immigrants, some radio host talking enthusiastically with or about Rudy and torture, another getting excited when Jesse Helms warned Bill Clinton about what might happen if he visited North Carolina. I never listened for long; in fact, it was sort of a game — how long could I stand to listen? The answer was usually in the seconds. But I had a mail carrier who had Rush on in his vehicle (a government employee who hated the government) and I remember a picture-framing store where maybe Sean Hannity was playing in the background. I say again: to understand the white people who voted for Trump, look at the media that dominates the airwaves across the vast American countryside. Look at the messages that have been endlessly repeated since at least the early 90s. I have never understood why some of the rich folks who want to do good and save the planet, who believe in inclusiveness and science, don’t invest in a progressive media operation.
By the way, I admire Hillary so much and was proud to vote for her. Do as much good as you can, for as many as you can, for as long as you can. Stronger together!
Rafer Janders
@Scout211:
I’m going to guess you live in an overwhelmingly white county….
BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig: It goes back to the mid-60’s, workers faced new entrants into the workforce(Blacks, Boomers, and eventually women) and a lot of white folk were pissed off about the rioting and general increase in crime during the mid-60’s(after the passage of the Civil Rights acts in 64 and 65).
OGLiberal
@Emma: “Nothing says misogynist like a conservative woman.” They were the ones who were supposed to be so disgusted by just the thought of Donald Trump that they’d cross lines and vote for Hillary to overcome the big swing Trump was sure to get from men simply because he has a penis. They weren’t disgusted at all, apparently. Or it didn’t matter. Just yesterday my wife said that these crazy Christian woman believe probably more than their husbands that their place is to service their man, have babies, cook food, clean the house, etc. A woman president blows up that entire world view.
SenyorDave
@Scout211: This is why I think the focus should be on registration and expanding the base. The WWC in the rust belt who found Trump’s message appealing will have no problem being lied to for eternity. They are pissed that they no longer go immediately to the head of the line, they actually have to compete with POC. If we Democrats had a better base or more of our people registered (and verified by our people) we would have won anyway. But trying to “reason” with people who believe Trump when he says coal mines are coming bac? I wouldn’t waste a dime on them, well maybe a literal dime, but nothing more.
MomSense
Thank you Betty for stating it so plainly. It has been exhausting to hear the bullshit economic anxiety based on the false notion that we lost the white working class. I’ve also never understood how the fixation on the white working class is anything but identity politics.
Major Major Major Major
@CM: I don’t get the Liz Warren thing. I’ve never found her to be a particularly engaging speaker.
gogol's wife
@WaterGirl:
I wish your letter could be read on all the cable networks.
Ella in New Mexico
This weekend I a had a patient who is a disabled early retiree, clearly low-income (or at least tight budgeted) in the ICU who’s quite substantial medical bill for triple heart bypass surgery is currently beng covered by Medicare say that it’s bankrupting America, so it will be good to get rid of it, Paul Ryan-style. “At least we’re getting rid of Hussein and Killary” he gloated. “When can I get me some more morphine?”.
It took everything I had not to dump the pee I was kneeling on the floor to empty from his catheter bag right in his fucking crotch.
These people defy rational analysis. They’re just mean and dumb.
RinaX
Remember Air America? I also remember Al Gore attempting to get a progressive TV station going.
charluckles
Never too late to start yelling at your relatives! We are clearly going to see some sustained attempt to pretend that Trump was your bog standard Republican politician and pretend nothings changed, an attempt to put this on Democrats for being out of touch and elitist. I plan to push back on that. Encouragingly I am seeing some evidence that others are as well.
GrandJury
My prediction is that this Trump wave, or whatever the media puppets start calling, it will die just as quickly as it started. After people keep reading about fuck up after fuck up, probably another stupid war in Syria or some other place, bullying and other shit they will try pull with the media, ballooning deficits, I think people will get fed up pretty fast.
Maybe more companies moving away too. Like Amazon moving headquarters to Ireland or Canada because Trump said he wants to go after then as well…because WaPo said bad things about him.
It comes down to what the media does. Are they gonna fall in line or do their fucking jobs. I’m not too optimistic about that. At least not until they smell blood in the water after several fuck ups and scandals. I don’t think it will take very long for that.
msdc
@OGLiberal: With a loss this narrow, every reason is plausibly “the” reason. But sticking with yours, maybe let’s hold Trump voters (and third party, and nonvoters) accountable for Trump instead of blaming Demographic X for failing to ride to our rescue. Counting on somebody else to save you isn’t a strategy.
p.a.
@FlipYrWhig: The conspiracy side of my personality (very very small part) thinks it’s curious that the war on the middle class really got rolling as the SovUn collapsed. No more healthy middle class needed to stock the Cold War M-I Complex with bodies and tax money.
I don’t believe the above, but I think the argument can be made.
Crouchback
@Betty Cracker: Sometimes it’s both – I’ve read alt-Right types who are anti-immigrant both out of racism and out of a belief it hurts poor whites. Logically it would hurt poor and working class Americans of all races but they’re careful not to make that argument. Thing is, it makes a plausible sounding story and an explanation of part of working class woes. I don’t agree with that and even if I did I’d blame the people who hire illegal immigrants and not immigrants looking for a better life. But as the old Chris Rock joke goes, I understand it.
And Clinton did indeed have pretty liberal and sensible economic policies. The problem was she didn’t talk them up much and didn’t use them to court those missing voters in the Rust Belt. She wouldn’t need all of them – shift 10% of that working class white vote and she’d be president-elect.
Villago Delenda Est
White people suck. Fuck them.
WereBear
@Ella in New Mexico: Yes. This is the most baffling part of it. But their brain parts don’t touch each other.
They are the kind of contrary jerks who, when you point out they will lose their Medicare too, might even say, “That’s okay!” but deep down don’t believe it.
msdc
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, that’s why we lost this election – feminists were too mean to innocent gamers who just wanted to dox and harass women.
Matt McIrvin
@GrandJury: I think Trump is going to be reelected in a landslide. Trump will crack down on critical media, and what’s left will be his aura of being the crazy funny outsider guy who gave the politicians what for. Also, those stupid anarchist rioters out of Eugene who keep showing up at protests will provide the perfect excuse to bust heads and run on law ‘n’ order. Any credible Democratic opponents will be destroyed one way or another.
Our only hope will probably be an analogue of the Jackson/van Buren or Reagan/Bush sequence: the cool god-king gets succeeded by his not-cool VP, then all the chickens come home to roost during that guy’s single term. See you in 2028, sooner if Trump’s ticker gives out from all the coke and Ho Hos.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@WereBear: That’s pretty much what I’ve decided to do already. I’m a federal worker so if Trump gives the “starve the government in the bathtub” brigade free reign who knows what will happen to my job. If it was just me, I’d have reasonably high confidence in finding something else, because I have marketable skills. But, if millions of federal workers in the DC area all get dumped on the labor market at once, well, we’re all screwed. There won’t be enough jobs to go around…and yeah, we could move somewhere else except that means a collapse of the regional housing market, so for those of us who own we either get stuck paying off a mortgage here in addition to rent wherever we move to or hunker down and hope things turn around. Besides which, if that happens it’ll probably cause a general recession so there won’t really be jobs elsewhere. So, I’m saving every penny I can from now until I can see how things are going to shake out. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Major Major Major Major: Hillary’s speech was about Christianity. White evangelicals aren’t Christians, they’re Mammonist fascists.
Barbara
@bemused: For several years my family and I have joined cousins from St. Paul camping in the BWCA — which was created around 50 years ago! At any rate, I am from another rust belt area, Pittsburgh, which had a similar trajectory with steel, that ended somewhere around 1982. If you weren’t on the verge of retirement then, you have had a rocky career if you only had a high school education. The difference between Pittsburgh and the Lake Superior region of Minnesota, is that, as an urban area, Pittsburgh was able to tap the knowledge capital of major universities, as well as its large base of philanthropic families, to try to systematically move its economy forward. But that doesn’t work in the towns along the rivers as we refer to them. Most people are willing to work hard, but their willingness to move, to strive in school, to leave behind where they grew up, varies considerably. And for two generations after WWII, they could have both — stay put and prosper — and they don’t want to change. I totally get it, but it’s not coming back. Taking other people down with you is not an answer. Softening the edges of the winner take most system is more palatable for everyone. Or would be if there weren’t low tax uber alles lunatics like Ryan fighting rear guard actions against anything that makes life easier for the masses.
Eadgyth
According to historical trend analysis pieces, this year should have been a Republican deluge, with the Republican winning well over 300 electoral votes.
I know its not much. but that made me feel better. That means Clinton wildly overperformed, and Democrats generally slightly overperformed. Our message is a good one.
I think a lot of activists are coming out of the woodwork right now. I personally feel far freer and more powerful than I have ever felt. I am joining more, speaking more. I know I am not alone in this. If we avoid global thermo nuclear war, this could be a good thing!
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: it’s been one week. I also believe we underestimate what “winning winning winning” so much will mean. But let’s not think that protests in Eugene are going to last for three years, either.
Trump will have higher approval ratings in January because new presidents always get them. Whether he continues to have them after his easy policy victories of are over is debatable.
CM
@RinaX:
I do remember Air America, and Gore is a true hero for his efforts on this and the environment. If only he had picked Senator Bob Graham of Florida as his running mate.
We need folks with the deep pockets and the long-range vision of the Scaife family and the Koch brothers.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: This is a great letter. Why not send it?
Why should any of us be afraid to state our true feelings?
I believe us being soooooooooo polite and accepting and tolerant about the jerks in our lives meant they got to go on being jerks, without consequence. Democrats fought like hell to give them job training and education and free school lunches and health care, and the thanks we get is being called Libtards and bleedin’ hearts while they suck up the goodies we got for everyone and don’t want anyone else to sit at the table.
Screw that with the ever-popular rusty farm implement.
They took hostages.
OGLiberal
@Jack the Second: I think not being able to win them back is why we need to focus elsewhere. I’m not giving up on PA (mainly because I spend at least half my time there) but we may just have to give up on places like OH, and IA. Willing to fight for Michigan if only because of Detroit, Flint, etc….those folks need Dems to help them. And WI still seems winnable. Focus on the more diverse states. Make sure NV and CO stay blue. (and in NV’s case, hope that Harry Reid lives to be a thousand because, man, he’s got that state) Make sure FL and NC vote the way they should. And working on swinging places like AZ and GA and maybe even TX. Might take longer than eking out a win in WI or OH but worth more in the long run.
Of course, had she not lost WI, MI and PA she’s be president-elect right now.
That said, the damage that could be done while waiting for these swings could be enormous. Can Dems multi-task? And can they deliver a message that gets just enough white folks in WI and OH without alienating the more diverse populations in FL, NC, AZ and GA? I honestly don’t know.
The saddest thing about this election is that my wife’s takeaway – and she was a fervent Clinton supporter in 2008 and this year – is that Democrats can’t nominate a woman because our nation isn’t ready for a woman as president. Very sad.
bemused
@Barbara:
Our 3 grown kids went away to college and then where the jobs were. Only one lives in MN but 4 hours away in Mpls/St Paul cities where the unemployment rate is very low. Probably another “reason” for Trumpsters to resent the cities. Our kids do love the unique lakes, outdoor beauty and activities here but it’s not where the jobs are.
GrandJury
@Matt McIrvin: I doubt he will last 2 years much less 2 terms. If he’s not impeached he will just quit because he can’t or doesn’t want to do the job. Then it’s 2 years of Pence which is probably gonna be worse.
gogol's wife
@Eadgyth:
I like the way you think.
DesertFriar
@charluckles:
Two-thirds of the voters with a favorable opinion of Trump before the election believe Obama was not born in this country. Of those, only 13% believe he is a Christian (from Public Policy Polling in May 2016).
To those it really won’t matter if she is tried, she’s guilty. They all know it. But it isn’t a driving issue to them. It is to the left. The Republican leadership knows what will happen if they try. The left will rise up. And they don’t want that to happen. The Benghazi hearing did what they were supposed to do, get rid of Clinton. They will find something else to focus once inflation starts.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Scout211: This is my working theory: Trump supporters are motivated by one thing and one thing only: giving liberals the finger. Trump was obviously the biggest finger they could possibly pick to give us amongst the 17 candidates available to them in the primary. So, they picked him because despite his small hands he’s the biggest middle finger.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: W had a fawning media, plenty of institutional crackdown on libs via the patriot act, 9/11 AND two wars, and he was barely re-elected. Polarization makes reaganesque landslides almost impossible.
bemused
@Barbara:
Yes, BWCA 50 years ago came into being and not easily at all. The WC Republicans fought hard but lost and still bitter, bitter.
CM
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, I sure wish Warren had entered the campaign in 1015 the way that Obama did back in 2007. She is the most effective explainer I have heard of complicated economic and financial points in the aftermath of the recession of 2008. I was definitely surprised when she burst onto the scene from her position as a professor. Just on nicknames alone, Pocahontas would have had a better chance than Crooked Hillary.
bemused
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I have to agree that is a huge factor. Whatever they may actually be in favor of they will immediately reject if a liberal proposes it.
gvg
@Baud: Secularism is about peace between different Christians more than it is about the non religious. Our country was colonized while Europe was undergoing a lot of religious wars between Christians. Secularism was learning to mind your own business, not about Atheism. It still is. We don’t make a certain religion a condition of employment in the government nor do most of us talk religion at work. We have had a lot more peace as a result. As time passed, it also meant Christians not killing Jews nor later Muslims etc, but originally it was Catholic vrs Protestant. There are STILL religious wars in Europe, Russia and the Balkans and the middle east is always at war. These American “Christians” are too a historical to know how protected they have been and would be shocked at the results if they got their way. Allies now would find out they weren’t good enough if we started letting this happen. People used to have to take the religion of their leader/king no matter what their own heart said. ridiculous and leading to less heartfelt religion too IMO. Remember the Irish troubles with England were only recently tamped down. Religion is a powderkeg. Let’s not blow up. Secularism is just keeping it at a safe distance and it works.
OGLiberal
Question – How is that we won the governor’s mansion in both West Virginia and, it appears, NC, but the Republican candidate won bigly in Vermont. This is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts. I’m sure that dude who won in Vermont is more liberal than half of the Democratic Senators currently in office but, still.
tobie
@CM:
As much as I would like this to be the case, this can’t be a prescription for a party. Charisma, the capacity to inspire people, to move them toward ideals is very hard to find. Obama was and is a once-in a-generation phenomenon. For me the real question is how can we convince people of our progressive ideals, when we have a solid-but-not-soaring candidate, which is more likely than not the norm.
By the way, Elizabeth Warren is terrible at giving a speech. She’s really good extemporaneously and I love her smarts and courage when she’s asking questions at hearings but the big speech is not her venue. Michelle Obama, on the other hand, does have it.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Peale: You know, I was listening to a satellite radio show recently (Signorile? Probably.) and a caller from Virginia came on and discussed why he was voting for Orange Shitgibbon. He explained he was a construction contractor, and he didn’t like how all the documented labor drove down wages for “real” Americans. He was also Republican. You would think that he would love undocumented labor, because, as you point out, he could pay those workers less than what someone in the country legally, or someone who is a citizen would expect to be paid. I imagine the caller is one of those people who wants to pay his fellow Americans what people pay undocumented workers. What Republicans, and the GOP, want are Americans to be slaves, period. The only reason why they hate undocumented people is because most of them are brown.
@Barbara: You know what? I totally forgot about Minnesota and Nevada. Sorry about that. And perhaps you are right- more cooperation between blue states is a way to go and should happen, but I think that still eventually leads to them saying “fuck your couch, we’re out.”
@Emma: Interesting idea!
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: I know, that’s one of the reasons I was surprised by Baud!’s comment.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: She was really a bad messenger on some of the issues Trump raised, e.g., trade, and I think that might have made a difference in OH, PA and WI. I think Obama would have struggled on those issues after TPP, but he might have been able to overcome them with enthusiasm from the base. I’m not sure how you could have beaten Trump, but it seems you had to convince people that his promises re trade, social security, etc., were empty and completely inconsistent with the policies of the GOP that controls Congress. I don’t think that ever registered, but the Dems didn’t do a very good job of bringing this up.
Major Major Major Major
@tobie: Michelle has no interest whatsoever in running for dog-catcher, not to mention anything where she’d get even more attention.
OGLiberal
@Mickee: And he got Trump, whom I’m pretty certain he hates, and Steve Bannon, whom I’m pretty certain he hates more. You built it, Rupert.
trollhattan
The spousal unit spent an extended weekend with two white wealthy women who were happy Trump voters. Based on what they take to be facts (not just about him, also about how the world and country function) they are unattainable for life. This Fox thing has worked to perfection–all hail the Murdoch.
Am much more able to understand how a high-functioning idiot like Ben Carson becomes a surgeon.
japa21
@gvg: A bigger issue is that many on the right view liberals/progressives as anti-religion, specially anti-Christianity. Many people on the left are very religious and there are organizations of people who try to counter the hate from the right. However, all it takes is someone on the left to make a comment about how anybody who believes in God is a stupid idiot (and I have seen those comments here) and it just gives those on the right justification for their beliefs.
Major Major Major Major
@Hoodie: republican voters literally did a 180 on their positions on trade as soon as Trump started talking about it. They have no position on trade other than follow the leader. (On phone, don’t have link handy)
tobie
@Crouchback:
Would she have been heard if she did? This is an honest question. The word cloud posted here yesterday was devastating. It was emails 24/7 and the only things that registered in any significant way after that were “scandal” and “corruption.” I’m not saying she was a perfect candidate. She wasn’t. Her choice of VP was a telling mistake IMHO. But the vilification of her was so deep that I do’t think anything she ever said about manufacturing, apprenticeships, growing the middle class was heard. And she did say these things. At every friggin campaign stop.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tobie: I like Elizabeth Warren, she speaks to me. To my meathead cousins whose support for Trump (I’m guessing, and I’m afraid to confirm at the risk of causing a pointless fight with people I see couple of times a year) would basically come down to “he’s gonna get tough”– with ISIS, with illegal immigrants, with the deficit/debt (like most people I doubt they know or care about the difference), with Wall St, whatever– I don’t know if Warren’s earnest wonkiness would get through to them.
One of the few discordant notes at the Dem convention was bringing that earnest wonkiness on right after Michelle Obama’s damn near perfect speech.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Are your relatives wingnuts who would gloat if you didn’t tell them to give you some space? I guess it depends on how compassionate they are, as to whether or not your letter would shut them up. They might instead try to refute you point by point.
I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve got a pact with my wingnut father not to discuss politics, which is the only reason we have a relationship at all, and honestly, it’s kind of distant. I’m definitely avoiding him for the next few weeks because if he came at me with shit-gibbon triumphalism now, I’d say things I wouldn’t be able to take back. He’s the only parent I have left, so I’d prefer to be on speaking terms.
But I’ve got scads of other conservative (white, working-class, and yes — in many cases — racist AF) relatives. I extended the “no politics” rule with them during this election season, reasoning that I couldn’t change their minds and that I didn’t want to damage our relationship. Now, I think that was a mistake.
It’s true, I wouldn’t have changed their minds. But now that they’ve actually managed to pull off the election of a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue, I regret not at least giving voice to an objection, even if it would have fallen on deaf ears, even if they already knew how I’d be voting.
I’ve never sat silently by and allowed racist, sexist, anti-gay, etc., comments in my presence go unchallenged. In retrospect, my “no politics” rule feels like a cop-out. I don’t know what the right thing to do is. It troubles me.
Barbara
@bemused: We use an outfitter because they have better equipment and we are coming from afar and don’t want to lug everything with us on a plane. The outfitters are a couple who were able to buy the business more than 20 years ago, after the husband had worked in MSP as an area manager for a company like REI. They told us that they doubt their kids will come back, and if they do, it will not be for more than a decade after they finish college. The work is highly seasonal even for them, and it can support only so many full time workers. We met other seasonal workers, including a guy who goes from BWCA to Alaska for the Iditarod. But America has almost always been a combination of the rooted and the rootless. It’s just that the rooted got used to not being forced to make trade offs. But really, the thing that scares me the most is the appeal to white identity. There is no positive value in that and there never will be. It solves no one’s problems and asks people to be satisfied with their hate. I dread that.
WereBear
Nope. I used to think so, but this election is about how they don’t have to have justification for their beliefs.
But I want to! is their operating system.
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: Or maybe we’re all overthinking the fuck outta this and the “persuadable” voters are actually a panicky herd that zigs and zags between the two parties for no rational reason whatsoever.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Just restrict the franchise to white people and you get the Reagan coalition back again. Bush didn’t do that, but with a sufficiently sympathetic SCOTUS and repeal of the 1965 VRA, Trump effectively could.
Major Major Major Major
@japa21: I hope you’re not saying this means we need to watch our language. Conservatives will always find somebody to blame for them just having to be greedy, spiteful assholes; so what if they point to some time a liberal was mean on a blog? Meanwhile Erickson can call David Souter a goat-fucking child molester and get a salaried spot on CNN.
DCF
This Writer Perfectly Predicted What Would Happen in a Clinton-Trump Race
http://fortune.com/2016/11/09/presidential-election-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders/
Here’s the original article (February 23, 2016):
Democrats need to seriously and pragmatically assess their strategy for defeating Trump. A Clinton run would be disastrous; Bernie Sanders is their only hope.
http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrats-nominate-sanders-a-trump-nomination-means-a-trump-presidency
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: there’s a school of thought that I find persuasive that’s saying that Clinton’s mistake was in focusing only on Trump as an aberrant and hateful phenomenon, and not enough on treating him as a normal Republican, Romney-izing him as a trickle-down tax-cutter for the rich.
Related note: Trump said a few times– and I muted him cause I hate the sound of his voice– was that the “death tax” was destroying family farms, he knew “many, many people…” I don’t know if he was ever asked to name them, or one, and he probably would’ve blown off the question. But that particular bald-faced lie drives me crazy.
OGLiberal
@WaterGirl: It’s a wonderful letter, captures so much of what I feel and believe. Are most of your family and friends Trump voters. If “yes”, don’t bother. You’ll be hit with a slew of BS Breitbart and Infowars conspiracy crap that and not an ounce of sympathy. You’ll feel worse about the election, your family, your friends and this country in general than you do now. I’m currently in cocoon mode, avoiding Facebook, avoiding Twitter. Didn’t even watch Maher, SNL or Oliver this week. Staying away from the news. Basically confining myself to Balloon Juice and the occasional TPM visit. We aren’t going to change anything overnight and I am so depressed and saddened right now that I just want to bitch on BJ with fellow travelers, eat junk food and watch Shatner era Star Trek. My hope is that I can someday look to the future, as long as the present isn’t as horrible as I worry it will be.
Major Major Major Major
@Barbara:
Yeah, how IS it that those of us who left home for strange and distant cities, seeking opportunity–the quintessential American story–are the out-of-touch ones?
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
That is a very patient letter. I would not have been that calm and clear. Mine would have been laced with profanity. But, yours is much more calm.
If they are Trump voters, please tell them that if they respond with nonsense, this will mean that you are going to cut them off for awhile.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe he literally knows noone with a net worh less than $2M. I could almost believe it.
CM
@WaterGirl:
Brilliant and beautiful — about a horrifying reality. I have been saying for years that something awful has happened to the Republican Party, which does include Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower in its history. From Goldwater to Reagan to Dubya to Palin to Trump, the party has deteriorated intellectually and morally, and now, suddenly, it is in control of all the institutions of our government. As the campaign went along, I kept thinking and telling people that I now knew how “good” Germans had put Hitler and the Nazis into a position to control their country, but up until late Tuesday night, I thought Hillary would win. So, here we are. Share your vision as widely as possible!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: isn’t the current exemption $5 million per individual, ten for a married couple?
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe. I just know I’ll be sneaking under the bar either way.
Iowa Old Lady
As someone who grew up in the WWC, some of the talk about reaching out to them sounds paternalistic to me, particularly when it’s coupled with dismissal of the concerns of minorities and women as identity politics. It sounds like white men feeling the need to tell everyone else what to think. I don’t believe it’s meant that way, but to my ear, that’s how it sounds.
GrandJury
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: That explains the polarization (which exists on the left too btw) but not the flip of independents.
The people who will vote either way, as few as they are, appear to have decided this. In the rust belt poor to middle class counties they flipped from Obama to Trump. Upper middle class to more well off counties stuck with Hillary. I got that info from some article someone posted here. I think it got to the heart of the matter quite well.
NCSteve
THE EXIT POLLS ARE USELESS FOR DETERMINING WHAT HAPPENED!!!!!
The question isn’t why people who voted for Trump voted! The question is why millions of Democrats didn’t vote! That’s what we have to find out. And while we’re at it, we have to find out why they didn’t vote in 2014. This is the second election in a row where major turnout efforts were made and yet we underperformed.
dogwood
@Major Major Major Major:
She is an idol of the left, so she doesn’t have to be a compelling speaker. Like Bernie, she only addresses one topic, so the left project the rest of the policy onto her. It ‘s very safe. She underperformed Obama in Mass. so she’s got some problems. Wouldn’t be surprised if she struggled a bit with democratic leaning independents.
Lynn Dee
Some thoughtful & thought-provoking stuff to read:
Paul Krugman’s “Thoughts for the Horrified”:
Neal Gabler’s “Farewell, America”:
Patrick Thornton’s “I’m a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America”:
Jennifer Rubin’s (yeah, surprised me too) “Trump voters: We did hear you; we just thought better of you”:
Kathleen
@Scout211: I would agree with that. Do you have any thoughts about why?I’d love to hear them. You sound perceptive
OGLiberal
@CM: Rich people did invest in progressive media. It was called Air America. And it failed, pretty miserably. It did give us Senator Franken and Rachel Maddow but people who listen to talk radio are the folks who want to bang on their dashboards in anger and yell, “Damn right!” Progressive aren’t good at anger – nor should they be – and nobody who watches TV or listens to radio wants to hear about policy…nobody. The only people who want to hear about policy watch John Oliver or John Stewart….and there aren’t enough of them to win elections.
Right wing radio and Fox News exist because the audience was already there.
GregB
@Iowa Old Lady:
Amen.
The right wingers who are mocking liberal/left appeals for safety for minority groups spent 8 years telling everyone that one if the important part of the Bush 2 era was that he made them feel safe.
It is supremacy when only their opinions matter and their troubles must move to the front of the bus in importance.
Major Major Major Major
@OGLiberal: Maddow should run for office.
Lynn Dee
Some thoughtful & thought-provoking stuff to read:
Paul Krugman’s “Thoughts for the Horrified”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/opinion/thoughts-for-the-horrified.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
Neal Gabler’s “Farewell, America”:
http://billmoyers.com/story/farewell-america/#.WCb9MCX3Tah.twitter
Patrick Thornton’s “I’m a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America”:
http://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/im-a-coastal-elite-from-the-midwest-the-real-bubble-is-rural-america#sthash.WOVboNTi.dpuf
Jennifer Rubin’s (yeah, surprised me too) “Trump voters: We did hear you; we just thought better of you”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/11/13/trump-voters-we-did-hear-you-we-just-thought-better-of-you/?postshare=4461479060161123&tid=ss_tw
Lynn Dee
@Lynn Dee:
Okay, I screwed up the links there. See #158.
Applejinx
@Mickee:
Frankly, he’s bullshitting and is a lot poorer than Hillary and everybody knows it.
If it was about voting for the least rich person, well, they did.
Mnemosyne
Story from Bloomberg today: Comey threw the election to Trump. His last-minute letter shenanigans got Democrat-leaners to stay home and Trump griefers to turn out.
WereBear
Of course, we are not. We are living in the 21st Century.
Ironically, here is what I tell young people who are torn: between their small town loved ones and the lure of the Big City; you can come back. (HTG, this is the only rural place I’ve ever lived in where people really do want to come back.)
So these whiners could get these kinds of skills and still live in their little towns. Why won’t they?
dogwood
@Major Major Major Major:
You can’t be serious. We know that people don’t vote on policy, so let’s get Rachel Maddox to run for something. I stopped watching her quite awhile back. Those 20 minute rambling pieces she does were unwatchable. If I were picking fantasy friends she be on the list. Policical candidate? No
GrandJury
@Lynn Dee: My dog I am actually reading Jennifer Rubin for the first time ever. The scary thing is that she is making sense. Things really are upside down.
At least she is working for WaPo. I trust them more than any other major. They were one of the few who tried to do their job and warn people about Trump over and over again instead of obsessing over emails. Hopefully they continue to do that and not allow themselves to be bullied.
mdblanche
@Scout211:
This is why I think the Republicans are at risk of serious infighting, hopefully crippling. It’s easy to unite to just say no, or say yes to poke-somebody-in-the-eye legislation that will be blocked from ever becoming law. They can’t just be against what Democrats want, now they have to be for something. Divisions they’ve been able to paper over since 2008 are going to come back into the open.
@GrandJury: The media were pretty useless during the Bush years, with the possible exception of Katrina. Now, as then, any progress will be made in spite of them. Of course there will be scandals aplenty that will be too juicy for them to resist.
Mnemosyne
@NCSteve:
So far, there seem to be two major reasons turnout was lower for Democrats:
— Voter suppression through Voter ID and taking people’s names off the rolls. The majority of the Voter ID stuff was in place by the end of 2012, so it also affected 2014.
— Voter depression by relentlessly bashing Clinton. Democratic voters hate negative campaigning so much that they will stay home even if the Democrat is the one being bashed. Plus Bernie’s tactic of complaining about how the corrupt DNC and corrupt Clinton cheated him out of the nomination.
Can I just take another moment to remind everyone that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Sanders campaign manager Tad Devine worked as a team for the Russians in Ukraine? That’s certainly an interesting coincidence, isn’t it? But the problem was that the DNC was, like, totally against Sanders, which we know thanks to Russian hackers.
dogwood
@dogwood:
Maddow. Damn autocorrect.
Barbara
@Major Major Major Major: Because for two or maybe three generations people rarely had to move to stay ahead and they developed amnesia.
bemused
@Barbara:
I agree. Forget the Trump voters. They are lost causes.
beergoggles
It’s just weird to me that Democrats are fretting about figuring out a way to go after Trump voters who they think they’ve lost from the Democratic party instead of figuring out how to get some of that 46% of eligible voters who didn’t end up voting…
Major Major Major Major
@dogwood: I’m sure Liz Warren gave plenty of rambling 20-minute things when she was a professor. I didn’t say she should run for office in Texas or whatever.
Edited to remove rudeness
WereBear
@Lynn Dee: Geez, I was rolling along the Bill Moyer’s site until I discovered it’s David Brooks who will be our savior.
GTFOH.
Barbara
@Major Major Major Major: I agree that Elizabeth Warren is unlikely to have bested Clinton’s performance. Hindsight is 20/20, but maybe Clinton’s choice of VP should have been bolder — as in, one of the emerging Latino politicians from the southwest.
NR
@Mnemosyne: I love that people here are already trying to blame this disaster on Bernie Sanders. Anything to avoid having to take a hard look at yourselves and admit your collossal fuck-up, right?
Btw, here’s the damage that neoliberalism has done to the Democratic party in one image.
And here’s 2009 for comparison.
I’m sure that’s all Bernie Sanders’ fault, too.
Barbara
@bemused: Not all of them, but many of them, yes, I agree.
oldgold
The tragedy and comedy of all of this is that HC probably lost because Anthony Weiner sent a penis picture over the internet. But for that, we are discussing the break up of the GOP.
mdblanche
@GrandJury: Jennifer Rubin isn’t paid to think, she’s paid to channel whatever her faction of the GOP wants her to. There are probably still anti-Trump Republicans out there. With luck, they might even start being useful.
bemused
@Barbara:
No not all but a huge number. Maybe in time, more of them will realize they’ve gotten screwed and blame the actual perpetrators, not automatically lay it on Dems/liberals. Right now, I think it’s a waste of time and energy.
Major Major Major Major
@Barbara: but we did fine in the southwest/new west. I’m not saying she couldn’t have picked better but I don’t know if that’s the place to look.
I guess I’m mostly bothered by the “why not Liz warren??” argument because, like “reinstate Glass-Steagall” or “Fairness Doctrine!”, it’s a lefty shibboleth that ignores simple realities like 1, she doesn’t want to be president, and 2, she wouldn’t actually do any better.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
That wouldn’t work for my family. They’re still too busy gloating to read so many words.
I have removed myself from my family for the holidays and will spend zero dollars, though I like the idea of small donations in each family member’s name (like the SPLC for the brother still looking for the birth certificate).
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
What the ever loving fuck?
WereBear
@debbie: I have discovered that lots of people have become very open to the idea of not going on some kind of expensive consumer rampage for the holidays.
They just need the comfort of lots of other people doing it, too.
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
The Russian connection to Trump, Sanders and Stein is probably the most horrifying part of all of this. That Republicans, the left, and the Media weren’t interested or concerned is what is making me feel hopeless. There could have been more, but the only Rep. I heard mention this was Rubio. He said he wouldn’t be talking about the hacked emails because foreign interference in an election isn’t acceptable.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Massive, confirmed meddling by Russian hackers. Russian-connected campaign managers for both Trump and Sanders. Russian funding of alt-right groups in the US. Jill Stein happily accepting Russian money to speak there. A repeat of Brexit, which also involved massive meddling by the Russians.
Nope, nothing to see here. It was all about the economic insecurity.
sherparick
@smintheus: Because it was about showing the “Ol Law and Order” to those people.
Kellyanne Conway on “Fox News Sunday” even got Chris Wallace to raise an eyebrow when appeared to threaten Harry Reid with legal jeopardy for his comments about Trump. Boy, it is going to an interesting 4 years. I wonder when Balloon Juice and other progressive blogs get a cease and decease letter/message from Trump’s personal lawyers or the Justice Department.
dogwood
@mdblanche:
I don’t think Rubin is enjoying watching swasticas being painted on synagogues. This is something that transcends party hackery; it’s personal.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
One of the things we must do is never give up on the noise–and make sure the noise is not the sound of us fighting each other–that is to say, the members of the Coalition of the Woke, if I can appropriate that term here.
You know how noise levels at some home games are so loud the people on the field/floor are reduced to sign language or headsets? That’s what we want. (I know that if you aren’t a sportsball fan, this isn’t familiar to you–but some teams’ fans are notorious for the volume level they can bring) Call-out culture can become a horrible thing, but we need to apply it in a shrewd and directed manner. Bring out the cowbells and the vuvuzelas, the airhorns and the rest of the noisemakers. Mock. Name and shame. Hit these people firmly in their self-love and their reputations
Call out the New York Times for BS-ing its way past Steve Bannon’s bigotries. Make their ombudsbitch expose herself in public as she tries to justify their willingness to gloss over open racism and antisemitism. When she does, drag her some more. Make Mr. Sulzburger own what his paper is doing, and has done. Do the same for every other newspaper and so-called “reporter” or other TV talking head.
That “there, there, everything will be fine” post-election column of Garrison Keillor’s got dragged beautifully by several people–and he, and any other person who’d like to think of themselves as a liberal needs to have their feet held to the fire when they try to gloss over the damage some of their fellow-citizens and other residents of this country can expect to sustain. I’m not talking about the flailings of earnest and overwrought SJW teenagers on Tumblr or other online hives of agitation–although those can be usefully aimed if you can get them past fretting over who’s allowed in the LGBTQ tent this week and whether eating dosas constitutes cultural appropriation.
Letters to the editor. Letters to your elected representatives–state and federal. Letters to local officials.
There’s a trick to writing to a US Congressman or Senator–letters to Washington enter the Congressional mailroom and loiter for far too long, so it’s best to write to their local offices. Faxes work, too. So does calling, whether it’s the local office or the DC offices.
Make your letters clear, concise, and make sure they’re correctly spelled and grammatical, and don’t stop sending them. Avoid obscene and profane language (I have had to write some letters twice and send the second, but Bob Corker brings that out in me.)
Use your social media accounts–and if that means you need to keep some things separated, do that. If you need to close comments on something, close them. If you need to block people, block them. For some people, “being nice” means “Please don’t tell me I’m doing something bad”–so tell them you’re very disappointed that they should be so thoughtless of others, because you expected better of them, and that the subject is closed. If you find useful and interesting things online–link to them and explain why. Similarly, if you find something online you can’t even with, link and explain why it’s so very terribad–and if Garrison Keillor or Corey Robin or whoever else can’t take honest, directed criticism, then they need to find another form of self-expression, like fingerpainting.
Drag David Brooks. Drag McArdle. Drag Douthat. Drag Friedman. Drag Podhoretz. Drag Noonan. Drag all of them. Pierce is on-point with his mockery–it hurts People Who Need to Be Taken Seriously a great deal to know you’re laughing and pointing. Let the people at MSNBC or Charlie Rose or whatever know when they book these enabling bloviators that you’ll be turning the set off and why–because they have decide to support people who are one the same side as someone like David Duke. I’m pretty sure they don’t want Duke and his ilk hung around their necks–but the “thoughtful conservatives” and “moderates” need to find themselves wearing him like a Hermès tie with vomit stains on it.
Hold up James Comey as a weak, incompetent meddler. Do the same for John Roberts, who was convinced voter suppression was over and done. Keep an eye for others who need to follow them on the Walk of Shame, pointing out the lipstick on their collars from the pig they’re busy kissing.
Call out voter suppression measures everywhere. Elected officials do not enjoy being made aware their dirty work is visible. Watch for other efforts to disadvantage vulnerable groups–and bear in mind that we are all, sooner or later, vulnerable.
Not someone who can handle a noisy fight? Support your local library–libraries are too often the targets of budget cuts, and need outside cash. Join the ACLU. Join Amnesty International. Join the NAACP. Join the League of Women Voters. If there are local drives to get people registered to vote and to help people obtain adequate identification to vote, do your best to help–helping people complete paperwork is not a glorious task; it’s dull and quiet and takes patience. Help people who are working on voting rights restoration projects. Look into helping with citizenship and ESL classes as well.
Finally, and most importantly, have each other’s backs. If people say they are feeling a lack of support, ask why, and ask what you can do to help.
socraticsilence
I’m waiting for the inevitable overreach- Medicare privatization is a start. The ultimate one, that even Trump is too smart to do would be moving to prosecute Obama.
The Clintons have been torn down enough that maybe continued investigation would fly but moving that focus to Barack would be a Ft. Sumnter moment.
Mnemosyne
And while I’m at it, I’m betting there will be a Trump presidential pardon and hero’s welcome home for Edward Snowden. After all, he did his job, and did it well.
GrandJury
@mdblanche: There are a lot of anti-Trump Republicans. Mitt Romney for example. All the #neverTrump people. The ignorant masses just ignored them. Anyways, they could prove useful in the months and years ahead.
Will see how it all shakes out.
dogwood
@WereBear:
I’m not going to stop spending until Trump takes over. I’m not interested in hurting the economy while Obama is still president. When I slow down it will be on Trump’s watch.
dogwood
@Major Major Major Major:
No need to edit your comments.
Frank Wilhoit
Am I the only person still alive who remembers Reagan? Every single word that is being spoken today, by Trump, by his surrogates inside and outside the Party, by the media, by the prospective victims, by the armchair political scientists, were being spoken by the corresponding actors in 1980.
NR
@Mnemosyne: You’re pathetic. You can’t even bring yourself to admit that you were wrong when we’ve just had an epic disaster confirming it. No, it was always someone else’s fault. It was the Russians. Or the racists. Or Bernie Sanders. Never yours. You and the party leadership you unquestioningly support are totally blameless, always.
Care to comment on the maps I posted? I’d love to hear how you’re going to blame that on Bernie Sanders. It would be good for a laugh, if nothing else.
debbie
@WereBear:
If it helps them, add my name!
NR
@oldgold: Take a look at the maps I posted two comments up from yours. Even if Hillary had managed to squeak out a win, the Republicans still control the state governments in a huge majority of the country. With just a very few exceptions, the Democrats do not exist as a political force outside of the west coast and the northern part of the east coast.
The neoliberal leadership of the last eight years has consigned the Democratic party to political irrelevancy. It’s time for a change.
Steve in the ATL
@WereBear: I used to love Bill Moyers but had to abandon him when he went full Bernie or bust/Hillary is the devil
TriassicSands
@Baud:
Should Democrats be more overtly religious?
Sincere people can’t just be overtly more religious. How overt one’s religion is isn’t something to be adjusted to attract voters. It isn’t sincere and it will show.
Personally, I want zero religion in politics. I think it is destructive. As soon as anyone starts trying to use religion to make public policy, I’m against it, and I believe it is harmful to a free and open society.
The fact that no atheist or agnostic candidate would have a chance of being elected president is a sign of a backward society. (As is electing someone like Donald Trump and pretending he is the candidate of religion.)
dogwood
@Frank Wilhoit:
It is similar. There was a lot of concern about whether a second tier movie actor could do the job. The press fluffed him too. But I can’t go any farther with the comparison. Reagan was a 2 term governor of a large diverse state. I believe he vetoed a law forbidding gays to teach in public schools. He could both pronounce and define nuclear nonproliferation. The government functioned under Reagan. I have no idea how we function with a narcissistic ignoramus whose holding a hit-list and surrounded by foreign agents.
The Lodger
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: 88
Mnemosyne
@NR:
You can close your eyes and pretend the Russians didn’t massively interfere in the election, but that’s not going to change the truth.
Don’t worry — for your cooperation, Comrade Vlad will make sure you get plenty of show elections you can screech about, as long as you promise never to try and look beneath the maskirova.
WarMunchkin
I’ve discovered that it doesn’t really make sense for me to push back on this. Why spend time arguing about how the Democrats’ message has changed; when have people actually changed their minds on the Internet?
I’ll go out, help run candidates, show by example how Obama style populist messages can help protect civil rights gains and earn trust that way. Everything else is wanking into the void and causes unnecessary friction here among allies.
glory b
@Peale: I was listening to Latino USA this weekend. Steve Cortez, Trump’s Latino outreach guy was being interviewed by Maria Hinojosa. He said that if undocumented workers are here, raising their families and living law abiding lives, they don’t have anything to worry about.
Which is pretty much Obama’s policy in a nutshell.
He also said that he’ll get them to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric.
I want to put this out there so, hopefully, someone from his campaign will have to address it, one way or another, in the mainstream media.
Mnemosyne
@WarMunchkin:
This. I was right back in 1992! doesn’t do much to try and solve the problem we’re facing right now.
I will try to stop feeding the trolls, but the whole Russian thing is really pissing me off.
glory b
@CM: “The point is that we must have charismatic candidates as presidential nominees, and I would argue in other leadership positions.”
Instead, maybe we need to educate voters about the fact that the smart, hardworking, competent person running is someone you should vote for. Cheebus, the repubs can win with the Walkers and the Scotts and the Pences and the McCarthys (who can’t put together a coherent sentence (she’s “untrustable?”)).
There aren’t thousands of Obamas and B. Clintons out there. If we stopped waiting for them, maybe we could get some things accomplished. As Booker T. Washington said, “Cast down your bucket where you are.”
liberalandlovingit :'(
@Mickee:
I read about Murdoch during the trials in UK.
It’s called “Monsterism”.
NCSteve
@Mnemosyne: Maybe. But my real point here is that we have to actually gather some goddamn data on who these people were and what motivated them to stay home rather than trying to paint our own perceptions and opinions and grudges onto it.
Indeed, we need to bring so few assumptions to the project that, like they do when a rocket explodes, we don’t assume things like “sabotage” are off the table until we investigate them and check them off the list. I’m not saying that happened. I’m saying that’s the level of objectivity that has to be brought to the exercise if we’re to gather the data correctly and analyze it correctly.
And that, of course, raises the question of who exactly this “we” is that’s going to do this engineering failure analysis is. Because all I’m seeing right now are people eager to paint their own pet theories, grudges and preconceptions onto the outcome.
The Truffle
@GrandJury: Kathleen Parker is also vehemently anti-Trump. However, she now identifies herself as conservative, rather than Republican.
Emerald
@Betty Cracker:
An even more effective and much shorter response: They may not be racists, but they did not find racism disqualifying.
SgrAstar
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: how do you separate the person from his beliefs? Asking for a friend….
Monala
@Mnemosyne: Do you think? I have a feeling that Snowden may have some remorse right now – not for his actions necessarily, but for the people he aligned himself with. He was pretty upset with Wikileaks’ doxxing of women in Saudi Arabia and activists in Turkey.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, it was all Russian hackers’ fault that most of the country went from voting Democratic on the state level to voting massively Republican. It wasn’t that the Democratic party leadership cared more about pleasing their corporate donors than doing right by working Americans. Nope. Russian hackers.
Just close your eyes and repeat it again: Nothing is ever your fault. The party leadership is perfect and deserves your continued unquestioning support. You won’t have to do any of that hard “thinking” stuff you hate and you’ll be much happier.
Lynn Dee
@WereBear:
And David Frum.
OGLiberal
@DCF: I’m sorry, the “he’s a commie and proud of it”, and the Jewish dog whistles would have been too much to overcome, no matter how populist Bernie was. And it’s hindsight because he was never going to be the nominee. It’s like all the folks on both sides who said the Dems would regret nominating Obama….I’ll bet they are the same ones saying it about Hillary this year.
jaygee
@BillinGlendaleCA: It’s time to change your values to “win at any cost.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wouldn’t even have gotten that far, once “Free College” became “tax increases”
and then there’s this
Big Picture Pathologist
@Starfish:
Very late comment, but this was my personal experience.