@TUSK81 pic.twitter.com/mjZ3ZTPQxf
— Chief's Wife (@sharondigi) November 26, 2016
No garden pics this week — in much of the country, it’s too late for outdoor shots and too early to start planning for next year. It was such a crappy garden year for me that even before the election I was thinking about taking next year off from the Tomato Temptation. Theoretically, that would leave me time/energy to deal with the rest of the (badly neglected) garden, dig up all the flower beds & separate the perennials. We’ll have to see what I feel like in February…
What’s on the agenda as we wrap up the long weekend?
***********
Charles Blow, despite his position at the NYTimes, is another conscientious objector to the New Trump Normalization:
… I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.
It’s not that I don’t believe that people can change and grow. They can. But real growth comes from the accepting of responsibility and repenting of culpability. Expedient reversal isn’t growth; it’s gross…
So let me say this on Thanksgiving: I’m thankful to have this platform because as long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.
I’m thankful that I have the endurance and can assume a posture that will never allow what you represent to ever be seen as everyday and ordinary.
No, Mr. Trump, we will not all just get along. For as long as a threat to the state is the head of state, all citizens of good faith and national fidelity — and certainly this columnist — have an absolute obligation to meet you and your agenda with resistance at every turn…
RealityBites
One way to resist is to control the argument. When the Trump tax cuts are introduced in Congress, call them “looting the Treasury” because that is what they are. And if they pass, the loss of income to the government will help the rethugs justify their proposed “modifications” to Medicare and Medicaid. Don’t let them get away with defining the vocabulary. ALWAYS call Ryan “granny starver”. Don’t call white supremacists and Nazis “alt-right”. We must have hard words and hard truths to combat their propaganda. We must call them out and make them own every evil thing they do.
satby
I put that first quote up on FB a couple of days after the election as soon as I saw it shared, because it perfectly summed up my disgust with the people who would have voted for Drumpf. I know I’ve been unfriended by about a dozen people by my friend count, one of which was a cousin. And I’m fine with that, but I hope a twinge of shame went along with the fury as they Xed me from their lists. Because I want that to be the last thing I leave them with.
Yoda dog
@RealityBites: THIS. All day, every day. It’s easier said than done though. It’s exhausting. Republicans and their word-salad-bullshit are so damn exhausting.
donnah
I’ve been getting a lot of smug, snotty pushback from Trump voters. On a chat board, I was mocked because Hillary lost and was reminded that there were plenty of Republicans who didn’t like Obama and had to “suffer” two terms with him, but did so because they are Americans and he was their elected President.
I responded by saying Trump will never be my president and his politics are not even the main issue, but rather the fact that he’s a misogynist, racist bully who has virtually no experience in governance nor even a glimmer of knowledge of history. His supporters won’t see him any other way than a successful businessman who is going to shake things up and magically fix their concept of what’s wrong in America: getting rid of immigrants, putting women in their “place”, creating jobs out of nowhere, and showing the rest of the world what a bunch of wimps they are.
I will be vacating that group because I won’t be bullied or shamed for refusing to acknowledge Trump as my president. He is what he is and I’ll not reconcile with that.
rikyrah
Morning, Everyone????
rikyrah
@donnah:
Amen.
And, they didn’t suffer through Obama. They disrespected him and his family for 8 years. We have the receipts.
rikyrah
@RealityBites:
Yes yes and more yes
HeartlandLiberal
Checking in from south central Indiana, Bloomington. For the sports fans reading, who are trying not to die from Post Trump Stress Disorder, I will just talk about something other than the coming death of the Republic under Trump.
Attended the Indiana vs Purdue traditional rivalry football game yesterday here in Bloomington. Indiana won, fourth year in a row, but the ending was a heart stopper. We stopped a Purdue drive in the last two minutes with an interception in the endzone. And a good thing it was. With just over a minute left, we had to play, could not take a knee, apparently because defense had timeouts left. I had to look up the rules to understand why we did not take the knee and run the clock out. We ran three plays, could not get a first down, leading by two points. On fourth play, our guy ran around behind the line of scrimmage, trying to run clock down. He got taken down in infield. One second left on clock. We had to kick to Purdue from 20 yard line. The ycaught the ball, started to try the lateral pass toss to keep it alive, but one of our players intercepted it and hit the ground. Game over. Time for heart to start working again.
I will also say that I saw some of the worst calls by referees in a game in a long time;. Hell for some of the refs should be having to watch the video of plays they have miscalled for all eternity and have the errors rubbed in their faces. The worst was a pass interference called when our player did not even touch the receiver. Horrible, horrible calls, again and again, for the whole game. Those of us who continue to support Indiana football would appreciate a little respect, it is hard enough having a program that historically is one of the worst 10 in the nation in terms of its record. But to have the refs obviously loading the dice just smarts, and is really disgusting.
As for basketball, will be going this afternoon to another powder puff game, Indiana vs Mississippi State. We shall see. After beating Kansas at Hawaii a few weeks ago, and getting ranked 5/6, we managed to run up state this past week and LOSE to the f****** Fort Wayne Mastadons! Talk about how a team should be embarrassed. You have to just wonder some time what goes on in their heads. I think overconfidence is a killer for a team. Maybe getting beat by the f***** Fort Wayne Mastadons will be the evolutionary wake up call the team needs!!
My wife laughs at me, because I was never a sports fan when young. But I worked with Athletics program for 15 years until I retired in a staff position, and have to say I continue to support the program for the good end to my career it provided. It also makes me be less of a hermit, and stay in touch with friends, who I take to the games with me. An important thing for us geezers to do, I have heard.
I realized the other day that all of the drawer full of cool tee shirts I accumulated for free over the years are wearing out, and I am going to have to actually spend money to buy tee shirts for the first time in 20 years!
Baud
@rikyrah: Morning, rikyrah.
Baud
@satby: I’m sorry for your loss of friends, but I support your actions.
m.j.
In addition to being a horrible excuse for a human-being Trump is also an embarrassment. Lest we forget, this is a guy who felt it was necessary, during a GOP presidential debate, to assure the American public that his cock was of sufficient size.
Sloane Ranger
Just to make your day complete (snark) British media is reporting that Nigel Farage is heading your way. Either for a “lucrative speaking tour” or according to some reports, to settle there in the expectation of a well paying gig on Faux News or even role in the Trumpenfuhrer’s administration.
Happy he won’t be polluting our shores but sorry for you. I apologise on behalf of my nation.
Baud
@rikyrah: Right. After Clinton and Obama, are we really worried that it’ll be our actions that will cause them to disrespect a Democratic president?
satby
@Baud: meh. FB friends are often mostly not close ones anyway so not much of a loss. And I’ve been the oddball cousin for years.
Honestly, I feel closer to you and the crowd here than to most of my FB feed. You can pick your friends ?
satby
@rikyrah: Disrespected, defamed, and implacably opposed to the detriment of the nation. Seditious traitors, the lot of them.
Baud
@satby: ?
ETA:. That emoji was androgynous on my phone keyboard.
satby
@Baud: Mine too. Maybe should have gone with a sun ?
Edited to add: since it’s the only one I’ve seen since I got back. My SAD gets worse every winter.
Baud
@satby: Here’s a puppy. ?
ETA:. Again, different.
satby
@RealityBites: and back to the topic: what you said. Make them drop the euphemism and call out what they’re really doing.
satby
@Baud: ?
Yoda Dog
@donnah: I love how republicans act like they all did us this huge favor by not going full Ft. Sumter the day after the ’08 election. Fuck them. The gall to act like we’re supposed to accept this fucking furball they coughed up after 8 years of total scorched earth against the president that brought us back from financial ruin, saved the auto industry and insured 20 million people. Yea, thanks for “putting up” with that “nightmare” and then turning around and acting like electing a fucking toddler is the same damn thing. Fuck them forver.
satby
@Yoda Dog: YES!!
TriassicSands
If anyone is feeling a little too cheerful (meds working overtime?) and wants to be brought down a little, if you haven’t yet, check out the NY Times’ “interview” with Trump the other day. Our so-called premier daily newspaper. Sulzberger Jr. seems like the intellectual peer of Trump — a vapid dolt.
It is hard to tell what the worst aspect of the “interview” was — Trump’s endless, mindless rambling about how great he and everything he touches is or the pathetic job the Times’ personnel did in questioning Trump. I’m pretty sure a lot of high school newspapers could have done a better job. The reason I put “interview” in quotes is because it wasn’t so much an interview as it was a sickening schmooze fest. The fact that the Times posted the transcript is a depressing sign that they don’t realize what a dismal job they did. It does not bode well for the next four years. We desperately need a strong, adversarial press in this country, but it looks like the overriding consideration, at least at the Times and probably at most, if not all, other newspapers (as well as TV media) will be access.
Baud
@TriassicSands: I have long written off the Times.
Alain the site fixer
@Baud: that’s cuz the emoji spec leaves details to each company, so what shows up on iPhone is often different than Android than WordPress.
Baud
@Alain the site fixer: That’s the kind of crap that’s going to start a world war one day.
Alain the site fixer
If Majorx4 is around, here’s a Chrome anti fake news widget. propornot.com. Just found it last night but it’s similar to what you were talking about. No idea who or how good.
Alain the site fixer
@Baud: at least they don’t use emoji for spacecraft! We have enough trouble with metric-Imperial conversions already!
TriassicSands
@Baud:
There are some good people working for the Times and they offer some good reporting. That said, there are an increasing number of hacks who perform no useful work, and with Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at the helm the outlook is grim indeed.
Blow mentions that he did not attend the Trump interview. I have mixed feelings about that. By staying away he ensured that Trump wouldn’t have at least one appropriately adversarial questioner. I imagine Blow felt he would behave in a way that would be unacceptable to his bosses and that he couldn’t bring himself to even pretend to respect Trump at all. Unlike the execrable Thomas Friedman who seemed quite comfortable schmoozing with Trump. It was good to learn (cough, cough) that climate change is an issue “near and dear” to Friedman’s heart, while Trump has an open mind on the subject. He, Trump, brought up the faux scandal a few years back in which the deniers claimed to have found the smoking gun proving that climate change is a hoax. Zero push back on the part of any of the Times attendees. Sickening.
What the hell does it mean to say that climate change is “near and dear to my heart?” What kind of idiotic way is that to refer to the greatest challenge facing humanity today? My skin crawls whenever I read anything written or said by Friedman. Which is why I haven’t read him in many, many years.
Wil
The American people did not vote for the racist little prince.
The American people voted for Hillary, who leads by about 2.5 million votes currently.
Trump will be the 2nd Republiklan in a row to take office without the support of the American people.
He is only the ‘winner’ thanks to an antiquated electoral system originally put in place to protect slavery.
It’s ironic that the racists need a system set up to support slavery to ‘win’ elections now.
Trump voters are racists. No argument allowed. If you voted for Trump, you are a racist.
Repeat to Trumpskis as necessary, which is often.
Jeffro
@Yoda Dog:
AY
MEN
No normalization, period. Not now, not ever.
Baud
@TriassicSands:
They are there to add credibility to their lies.
TS
@TriassicSands:
Did he have a choice? I can imagine Trump or the NYT owners saying who could and could not attend. Trump doesn’t talk to anyone who questions/criticizes or disagrees with him.
J.
I’m fine with my relatives. It’s my neighbors, whom I’m stuck with, that are the problem.
Baud
@J.: Ugh. The proximity.
satby
@TS: I expect there will be enormous pressure on outlets to fire writers like Blow who are critical of Drumpf.
DCF
Jeffro
Btw does everyone have their action plan for the week? Just 10-15 minutes a day gets several calls made to Senators and Reps or media figures, gets a letter-to-the-editor written, gets a donation to the ACLU or Planned Parenthood made. Less than 2 hours a week is the least we can do – pencil these things in and let’s be happy (and effective) warriors!
NotMax
Who needs a bit of a smile?
donnah
Well, here’s another thing that’s pissing me off. In our local newspaper today there are a couple of different articles about Trump’s campaign promises and how they absolutely will have a terrible impact on American citizens. One of them outlined how his tax cuts will, of course, give yooge breaks for big corporations while sticking it to single parent and some average middle class families. Ruh roh, Trump followers! You may be surrendering more money to your overlord at tax time!
And another article spelled out how states like Ohio, my home state, won’t actually be able to recover all the lost jobs in manufacturing under Trump or anyone else, for that matter. Mining isn’t coming back, nor steel. Automation and changes in what we manufacture have changed from the “good old days” and again, Trump was just making shit up about bringing jobs back.
But here’s the thing: no matter what Trump does, no matter how screwed these idiots get, they’ll still back him. They won, they won, they won, and even if the Big Cheetoh stabs them in the back, and he will, they’ll never ever admit it.
Baud
@donnah: Right. They are lost causes. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone at this point.
Hellbastard
Solid piece from CHarles Pierce on the folks voting to dismantle the very social programs they depend on:
“I hate the impulse to consider them stupid and ill-informed. I hate the impulse to shrug and say that these people brought it on themselves and good luck to them. I hate how goddamn easy it would be to give thanks to Whomever that I’m lucky enough to live in this Commonwealth (God save it!) and not that one, and to pat myself on the back for the political discernment it takes to make sure you don’t cut your own throat every time you walk into a voting booth. I hate the sin against charity that these kind of stories make so easy.”
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a50874/clay-county-kentucky-healthcare-trump/
Baud
@Hellbastard: Glad he’s admitting he doesn’t know what to do instead of giving faux advice.
Mai.naem.mobile
I live in the county in the country where Trump got the largest raw number of votes ~700K votes. TBH,its a little misleading because AZ has physically pretty large counties and Maricopa County includes not only metro Phoenix but some rural towns. Regardless, it often occurs to me when I am walking around in public that a good bunch of these morons voted for Trumpy. When I see somebody doing something stupid or rude I think to myself that they must have voted for Trumpy.
Baud
@Mai.naem.mobile: I’m luckily in a blue area, but I know what you mean, especially when I travel to red areas.
K488
@HeartlandLiberal: We can hear the game from our house, so good to have a description of what generated all the happy noise at the end!
Iowa Old Lady
My son has been called to a Grand Jury for the month of December. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who was on a Grand Jury. It’s a huge time commitment. His employer is dismayed.
Gindy51
@Sloane Ranger: Oh hell let all the slime from the whole world come here and slurp up the shit from the trough. Might as well share the wealth so to speak.
Betty Cracker
In Casa de Cracker, the era of polite disagreement is over. Trump voters fall into two categories: the malicious and the dangerously stupid, and they will be treated accordingly when they reveal themselves. Let those fuckers walk on eggshells around political topics. I’m done playing nice for the sake of peace.
Iowa Old Lady
I see Jerry Falwell Jr says Trump offered him the Secretary of Education job first. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from this nightmare.
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: Had a similar thought: the bigoted, bible-humping fraud wouldn’t take the job, so the shit-gibbon gave it to the billionaire grifter instead. It would be hard to assemble a worse cabinet without emptying prisons and lunatic asylums.
bemused
@RealityBites:
Hit white Republican voters where it hurts. Tell them repeatedly that yooge Trump tax cuts to 1% will take money right out of their pockets, robbing them to give it all to the wealthy elites.
Yoda dog
@Jeffro: I’m a the gym now, TRYING to blow off some stress. But on one of the TVs in my face is a fucking “Christian” assclown talking about “God’s Free Health Care Plan”… there is no escape from the absurdity anymore, it seems.. (just keep swimming, just keep swimming…)
Morzer
@Betty Cracker:
Well, they’ve got Giuliani on board, so the lunatic asylum demographic is taken care of, and Chris Christie is heading for prison with all deliberate speed, which ought to count for something, given his long and loyal service as the McDonald’s procurer.
Morzer
@Yoda dog:
The one with the plague of frogs, the river of blood and the death of the first-born?
WereBear
@satby: I got a lightbox and it was wonderful. We had a discussion a while back; I was really impressed by the difference it makes.
bemused
@Yoda dog:
Oh wow, which news channel? I’m trying to imagine how the Christian fraud explained what “God’s Free Health Care Plan” is.
Gindy51
@bemused: We tried, my husband’s country club buddies (not one is even close to a 1%er) all think they are not going to feel a thing. We told them to hang on and good luck. Most are not under a health care plan other than medicare… bummer for them.
Yoda dog
@Morzer: I can’t hear the volume but I assume so, yea. Complete with a crowd full of mole people, nodding along and slurping it up with a smile.
OzarkHillbilly
RWNJ Wrestlemania is over and as expected everybody but Alzheimered MIL behaved as they promised, all were perfectly likeable and pleasant and I managed to keep my mouth shut when MIL blurted out her opinion’s on the Muslim invasion of Europe and Europe’s lack of standing armies to repel them. At least she didn’t talk about the hoax of climate change.
sigh…. She really is a sweet old woman who once was a high school music teacher with the voice of an angel and volunteers at various local orgs every week. It’s hard to hate a person like that. No, it’s impossible. I suppose that is why I had to go.
Forget Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, even Donald Trump and co, they are just the latest personifications of a vile philosophy, and when they are gone new standard bearers will arise to carry forth. You want this shit to end? Kill FOX News. Kill the Rush RedundantTreeBranch radio network, kill the financial gain that makes the turning of sweet little grandmothers who never met a person they didn’t like into raging Islamophobes the profit making enterprise it is.
But don’t ask me how. I don’t have a clue.
satby
@WereBear: Yeah, I have a full spectrum light I just need to replace the bulb. I agree it makes a difference, the combination of overcast gray sky and jet lag made me a zombie for my days off last week. I can’t afford that, it’s really affecting my ability to keep up with everything.
Inmourning
What Jeffro said. The fight for the 2018 midterms has begun. If you live in a red state with a democratic senator, then see what you can do to help him or her win re-election. Trump is a narcissistic bully and a danger to the nation, so resist the attempts to normalize him. In a sane world, the person with 2 million more votes would have won the election, so no mandate talk and no honeymoon!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: isn’t it ironic that all through our childhood we heard about the Soviet propaganda deluding the people there to support a regime that hurt them and the lesson that the right wing took from that was to promote propaganda everywhere?
bemused
@Gindy51:
True of most of them. Sigh. They won’t believe GOP is planning to replace their Medicare with rip off coupons either. Hell. they won’t even believe it when right wing news tells them. They’d probably believe they could flap their arms, jump off the roof and fly if Trump told them to. Won’t stop me from telling them over an over though. If just one gets a bad feeling he/she has been Trump scammed, it will be worth it.
WereBear
Agreed.
I just finished reading the excellent Oates bio of Lincoln. It was a wonderful explanation of the political riptides of the time; with a lot of application to our present time.
The country was tearing itself apart over the spread of slavery. Lincoln ran on keeping slavery in its present states and not letting it spread through the new areas the country was acquiring. But the Confederacy (like now) was not satisfied with that, and screamed and screwed with laws and became so belligerent that they seceded, attacked Fort Sumter, and demanded that we grind them into the dust and lose slavery all together.
And it looks like we have to do it again.
germy
@WereBear: Except they just installed andrew jackson, not Lincoln.
Betty Cracker
@satby: Great point.
Patricia Kayden
@donnah:
And there lies the rub. Trump is not going to magically fix our problems or the problems his supporters think exist. He’s not going to shake his fist at the heavens and shout “Radical Islamic Terrorists” three times and thus rid the world of ISIS. He’s not going to stamp his feet and summon a wind to drive the “illegal” rapist Mexicans out of this country. He’s not going to spin around three times and secure jobs in coal country or for jobless inner city residents.
The only thing Trump may succeed at doing is destroying the ACA, social security and Medicare. He may also succeed at cutting taxes for his fellow 1%-ers.
Trump is a failed businessman and more importantly an unqualified bigot. When he fails, his supporters should be reminded over and over again that they were conned. Badly.
Hal
Yeah, Trump voters keep pretending they suffered under Obama so now it’s our turn. Uh, no. You didn’t suffer at all. You indulge in the benefits of the past 8 years of economic improvement and health care expansion all the while claiming hell on earth. It’s going to be impossible to reach people who may have had their lives saved by the ACA and still voted against it by voting for Trump.
Fuck em. I said before, Hillary won the popular vote and barely lost the swing states. We don’t need these people or need to appeal to them to win an election.
WereBear
@satby: Yes. It turned out the Right Wing wasn’t so much apprehensive as they were envious.
Schlemazel
If you are in need of a few laughs I suggest checking out the reviews and the questions on the amazon listing for the Make America Great Again Christmas ornament
I’m still trying not to think about the next 4 years.
Patricia Kayden
@Yoda dog: LOL!! God’s free health care plan = don’t get sick. Ever.
WereBear
I can tell Charles Pierce what is going on with Clay County, Kentucky.
The Religious Right has demonically blended politics with religion for decades now. So you have unthinking, blindly obedient voters who will march right into the crematoriums themselves. No need for guards!
debbie
@satby:
I just took a screen shot of that quote and put it on FB. My family hasn’t unfriended me yet, so I hope they’ll see it. I couldn’t stay calm enough to explain my disgust to them in any rational way.
Patricia Kayden
@Hal: The irony is that many of those who voted out of spite for Trump are probably going to be hurt worse than many of us who voted for Secretary Clinton. Those “poorly educated” voters aren’t going to be helped by Trump at all and if they live in hardcore red states, they’re going to be really screwed when the ACA is repealed and Ryan gets through strangling their entitlement programs.
debbie
@donnah:
Which is why I wish the focus would be on litigating his conflict of interests. Also, it would hit him where it hurts most: his money belt.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Thy enemies “truth” is always mere propaganda. The thing is, within all propaganda are nestled some truths, truths upon which the perceived “wisdoms” are built. We had our own propaganda machine during the cold war. We also had a strong free press to push back against it and tear down the perceived wisdoms of a “domino effect” in SE Asia, or of corporate “benevolence” and American “exceptionalism”.
Our press isn’t so free these days. It is hedged in on all sides by fiscal pressures, by “information wanting to be free”, by corporate mergers in the interest of profit, by all too many players who learned the lessons of the 50s, 60s and 70s better than the press did, culminating in Trump who seems capable of playing them like a fiddle, and they willingly go along with all too much of it..
cosima
I love the part in this where the guys ask if they’re making things worse. This just makes me despair. Not just that people are willing to do this horrible thing that they know if awful & horrible to make (a lot of) money, but that they feed anger and hate and violence in doing so.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/us/for-the-%E2%80%98new-yellow-journalists%E2%80%99-opportunity-comes-in-clicks-and-bucks/ar-AAkBK4e?li=AAdeCd7&ocid=spartanntp
Morzer
@WereBear:
–Matt Taibbi
Schlemazel
Not sure if this has been mentioned here before but it is an interesting tidbit to toss into those arguments showing the huge expanses of tumbleweed and cactus Trump won compared to the small areas where people actually live that Clinton won.
The 2000+ counties that Trump won are responsible for 32% of US GDP
The 500+ counties Clinton carried are responsible for 67% of US GDP
Bonus point: Clinton’s current margin of victory is larger than the population of 12 states Trump carried.
Patricia Kayden
@m.j.: Trump is an embarrassment to people like you and me but his supporters are very proud of him. I just read a story about a White woman getting fired from her bank job after she wrote on social media that Mrs. Obama is an embarrassment and ugly versus the classy Melania and other such nonsense. Racists like her are certainly not embarrassed by Trump or his wife.
debbie
@Baud:
I do miss the Book Review.
Morzer
@Schlemazel:
Bonus point: white share of the electorate – 69%, down 2 points from 4 years ago. This is exactly the trend the demographers have been predicting and it’s why Trump is going to have to try unprecedented amounts of vote suppression to have a chance next time. That’s why he’s brought in Kobach and Sessions and why he’ll fight like mad to keep them. Majority minority is going to happen in the USA – the only question is just how far the right wing is willing to go to strip away the rights of Americans so they can cling to power.
Tyler Forrest
Rather than wallowing in recriminations, we should just hammer what a fluke this election was. The orange cheeto got lucky. His whole team thought they were going to loose. Narrowest “win” in history. Lost the pop vote by a lot. Got crushed in the 400 counties that drive the economy. His voters are dying. Ours are turning 18. He’s technically president, but he still lost 46-54. It would take near unanimous approval from white folks to get his popularity to 55%.
He won on a fluke. That doesn’t make him less of a nightmare. But I bet it would really piss him off if that was the official D position.
Morzer
@efgoldman:
Trump has exactly no incentive to learn any of the lessons he needs to learn to have a chance of being a decent president. Not that I imagine he would learn them even if he had such an incentive – he’s patently happy with crass, boorish ignorance as his signature style.
Schlemazel
@Morzer:
I assume they are willing to go all the way. They have been building towards it for years now. The Kochs learned a valuable lesson in the 90s. Government is limited but the defused control and the simplest way to control the Federal arm is to control the states. The sates are much easier to buy because of the lack of decent press and the low price to buy elections. Once you own a state you gerrymander and pass hundreds of awful laws most of which get overturned but a few stick and feed a larger disaster being built by the gerrymandered Congress. The Kochs own 32 states right now so we are screwed for the foreseeable future, I really don’t see a peaceful way out of this. It will be the wingnuts who voted all of it on us that will go haywire first, I assume they will attack the scapegoats.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel:
That’s exactly what I expected and now I have the #s for one of the arguments I want to make. Thanx.
gogol's wife
@Jeffro:
I have a list ready to go tomorrow! Joining ACLU and SPLC, calling the House Oversight Committee, calling back a Chris Murphy staffer who finally returned my call last week and left a voice mail. It’s the only thing that keeps me from melting into a puddle of rage and despair.
I said to my husband this morning, it’s as if they saw Nixon with all that we learned about him during Watergate, and they elected him anyway.
Morzer
@efgoldman:
Can we call you Methuselah?
WereBear
@Morzer: Exactly.
Morzer
@Schlemazel:
Our best chance might be a fight between Trump and the Kochs. I doubt that either side wants to share the proceeds of fiscal terrorism with the other.
MomSense
@Schlemazel:
The resulting presidency is anti democratic especially when you consider that the Republicans also had to disenfranchise a million people to prevent them from exercising their right to vote.
Glidwrith
@Morzer: Something I wrote and read to the office of the excretable Duncan Hunter who is thankfully re-districted so he is no longer my rep:
Imagine for a moment you are on a battlefield. You can’t see the enemy, but your soldiers take hits at random all the same. Some folks are better armored than others; they can keep on fighting even if they get hit. Plenty of others are wounded, though, some of which can stagger from the field of battle and be tended to.
What about the ones that can’t move? Gut-shot, leg wounds or just short of mortal wounds? There are only a handful of medics that can dash out and retrieve the wounded. There actually could be quite a few more, but the generals don’t want to spend the cash for them.
Now, some of the leg wounds manage to drag themselves to near-safety; maybe even one or two gut-shot. That is when they find out their uniform doesn’t match the division they dragged themselves near. They are part of the same Army, just not that division. That particular division? They see the uniform isn’t cut just the same as theirs, so they jeer at the wounded and in many cases shoot them in the head.
Some of those wounded are kids. Some are pregnant women. Those women get special treatment – they get staked down in place until they give birth to a live baby or dead fetus; it doesn’t matter which.
And of course, all of these wounded are told it’s their own fault for being wounded. And the medics are jeered at as well, for risking themselves to aid the wounded.
The battlefield is our economy. The wounded are people or children that happened to lose their job, parents or are sick or injured, in truth. The ones with the somewhat different uniform? They’re someone else’s kids, black, brown, gay or women. The medics? Those of us that think the wounded should be rescued, that a little help will be more than enough.
MomSense
@gogol’s wife:
I’ve called Poliquin, Collins and King about Medicare and the ACA.
WereBear
Only it is not a question. They will stop at nothing. Nothing.
The lesson of our entire history is that they have to be stopped.
debbie
@satby:
The Party of Reagan has become the Pawn of Putin.
WereBear
@Glidwrith: That is excellent.
MomSense
@WereBear:
They won’t stop. It’s a big part of why it’s so hard to make progress in this country. We can never just focus on moving forward because we have to deal with the assholes who look at 50 unbelievably successful years not only in health outcomes but also in reversing the horrific poverty trends seniors were living in and cannot wait to dismantle it.
RealityBites
@WereBear: I used to shock some people by calling the statues on Monument Ave in Richmond VA “participation prizes”, but now I know I was declaring victory too soon.
Patricia Kayden
@Tyler Forrest: Hmmmm. I don’t see that Trump or his supporters care about how he won. Remember that Republicans have no problems boasting about suppressing Black voters just as long as it helps them win elections. They appear to have zero problem with the fact that Russia may have hacked into their opponent’s computer systems either. I just don’t see Trump being ashamed that he won the electoral college but lost the popular vote or that the election was so close. He certainly has a high opinion of himself and won’t accept that he won on a fluke.
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: Point taken.
JMG
There is nothing Trump could do, even if he had a plan to do so, to halt the economic and social stagnation of places like Hazelton, Pa., the rural areas of Wisconsin, or for that matter, the old mill towns of Western Mass. If anything, his trade policies could make them much worse. All he can do is let them bask in vicarious kicking down with telegenic displays of government persecution of immigrants, Muslims and people of color generally. Urban civil strife in the cities will be the opiate of the declining white masses in the areas of this country that are not likely to be great again, at least not by 20/20.
germy
“His voters are dying. Ours are turning 18.”
There’s that logic I keep seeing here again and again. “Only OLD people love trump, and soon they’ll die and we’ll all be progressive again.”
Of course the so-called “alts” are young, the loudest cheering at the rallies were all young people, and here’s a comment I saw on LGM:
Our problems won’t be solved when all the old people die out, no matter how many commenters here hate boomers. New generations of monsters are appearing every year.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I’m stealing that.
WereBear
@efgoldman: And that, in itself, is a demonstration of incredible privilege. They can be as stupid, rude, and pointless as they wish; someone will always step in and save their shit for them.
I observed many patriarchal cultures where the sons in a family could literally do no wrong. Then the families turn on a dime and demand maturation from them; and even if it ended well, the process was excruciating. Especially if it did not end well.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I wouldn’t put my family members in either category. Maybe Drunk and Hungover from Obama Derangement.
Botsplainer
OT – but as a REALLY disappointed Louisville Cards fan, I just started checking Twitter about our dipshit defensive coordinator, and note that #firetoddgrantham seems to follow him from job to job.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
LOL. I’m trying to figure out whether I should buy holiday presents for my family. I was thinking about donating to groups they hate, but maybe I’ll have t-shirts printed with that instead? I can’t decide!
Tyler Forrest
@Patricia Kayden: You really don’t think repeatedly being referred to as a fluke president wouldn’t get under his skin? I disagree. It is an easy way to delegitimize his presidency. He doesn’t have democratic consent and never will bc of his lopsided popular vote loss + his racist rejection of 40% of the population. It was a fluke.
charluckles
@Patricia Kayden:
Does Trump really care about most any of that stuff or was it all just food his masses? I don’t think he does a damn thing about ISIS or immigrants until he needs scapegoats or his followers force him. Part of me thinks it was all just smoke and mirrors, a cover for the far-right agenda that is about to smack this country. I kept telling myself during the election that it wasn’t 1980 anymore, but in many ways it seems like it. Rich people are about to get a massive tax cut, deregulation and destruction of the bureaucracy will be a huge focus, working people are about to get hammered, total dismantling of the safety net, voting rights interference etc etc etc. They are going to go big.
debbie
@Tyler Forrest:
I think one of Trump’s recent Tweets called his victory “decisive.”
Jeffro
@bemused:
Wait…don’t tell me: “The Lord will provide”?
Or barring that: “We should take care of our brethren in their time of need, without government forcing us”. Because that was WORKING SO WELL, eh Christian Right? See also, “senior poverty levels and lifespans before Social Security”. These people…
Jeffro
@gogol’s wife:I
This is AWESOME – nice work! Keep it up every week, every day, and we’ll get there!
gene108
Just ran across the goofiest scandal on Facebook, Pizzagate.
Apparently there’s a pizza place in DC, which has been revealed to be the center of a global child pornograpjy ring from Podesta’s hacked e-mails. Central to this ring are the pizza parlor owner, a Democratic supporter, and thus has embroiled Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama (but somehow not Michelle) and George Soros.
Looked up #pizzagate on Twitter and a lot of folks have bought into this hit piece against the Democratic Party. There was a YouTube link to a video by Anonymous that was pure conspiracy theory drivel, but every person mentioned was associated with Democrats, though there is a disclaimer at the end saying this goes beyond Democrats, but no one else is mentioned.
I doubt the folks, who are buying into this will be likely or regular voters, let alione Democratic voters, but they are not hard core Republicans either. But this sort of fake news just poisons the well against Democrats that much more and it is being deliberately targeted against Democrats.
I am not linking to Twitter or YouTube related to this, because I do not want them to get more clicks or views.
Jeffro
@MomSense:
Excellent! Keep it up – they need to hear from us a few times a week. Costs us nothing, helps them know we’ve got their back. NO CHANGES. Lump it all in there together: Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare. NO CHANGES.
Kay
Democrats are flailing around with no direction and no focus. We won’t beat him like this. We’ll lose.
The Party needs to calm down and think this thru instead of lashing out in a different direction every day. Until they do I won’t personally take part in it. I’m not joining up with a panicked, ineffective opposition. It’s a waste of my time and energy and it won’t work anyway.
“Do something!” isn’t a plan. It’s a recipe for disaster. Don’t do anything until you figure out what happened and then do one or two things WELL. I’ll join that.
Patricia Kayden
@Tyler Forrest: So let’s say it was a fluke (and you may be right about that). Do you think that being called a fluke President will impact how Trump acts or how Republicans in Congress act when it comes to passing awful laws and enacting horrible policies? I don’t given the ego and narcissism I’ve seen from Trump and Republican Congress Critters.
I’d love to see Democratic politicians collectively stand up against his legislative efforts and even legally challenge his Executive Orders (which is what Republicans did to President Obama repeatedly). That may piss him off more than being called a fluke by people he perceives as losers.
Jeffro
8 new, post-election reasons why the Electoral College shouldn’t vote for Trump. This needs to be spread far and wide.
Glidwrith
As an update, we have numerous Juicers that want to see voters get their ID so they can register to vote:
Elizabelle
gogol’s wife
WarMunchkin
Geg6
Another Scott
From Both Sides of the Pond
bemused senior
Applejinx
Debbie
SiubhanDuinne
Major Major Major Major
LookingForACanadian
Omnes Omnibus
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
jacy
Boussinesque
Another Holocene Human
Ruemara
Felanius Kootea
SenyorDave
PsiFighter37
Aunt Kathy
Kathleen
Various skills are on offer (time, money, driving, accounting, database management, writing, lawyering).
Courtesy of Mnemosyne, it looks like voter registration is conducted within the Democratic Party at the level of precinct captain. This position appears strictly voluntary and is often not filled.
There are also several hundred voter registration organizations, but I haven’t had the time to look at how active these organizations are.
I do not yet know how we can organize ourselves to help in those states that need voter registration. The best I have come up with so far is that a Juicer living in that state either tracks down precinct captain(s) or becomes one and utilizes funding from us to help voters acquire ID for registration.
I think we also need to triage which states to target.
Suggestions? Ideas?
HRA
@Kay:
Perfect! Exactly my thoughts as I continue to read here and elsewhere. Thank you, Kay!.
MomSense
@Kay:
The problem is that the brogressive wing of the Democratic Party is capitalizing on the loss to push their agenda of abandoning multi culturalism even though their assumptions about what happened in the election are not supported by any data – including the actual election results.
Far too many in our coalition are finding it quite convenient to blame the woman at the head of the ticket and women in the party, especially women of color.
It’s a good reminder to me of the insidious nature of erasure, racism, and misogyny and how we are always hanging on to inclusion by our fingernails.
gene108
@gogol’s wife:
The lesson Republicans drew from Nixon is to record nothing. Nixon did what he had to do to win, and they respected and revered him for that, but he made a critical mistake of recording his machinations.
This is lesson was taken to heart by future Republican administrations, which is why Reagan had plausible deniability after Iran-Contra and Bush, Jr & Co used non-government e-mails to conduct business and then destroyed those e-mails and the servers they were on.
If Trump has anyone from the old Nixon crew on-board, do not expect any way to actually pin Trump down on any of the open looting that willl happen.
Jeffro
@Kay: Here are some steps we all ought to consider regardless of what anyone else does:
1) Join the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, SPLC, and Sierra Club
2) Contact your local and state Democratic parties, sign up to volunteer, attend their next event, make sure they have a voter registration drive going in the near future, and make sure they have candidates for every possible office
3) Call your Senators and Rep and tell them “NO CHANGES” to Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. No, there’s no legislation actually before Congress at this moment. Yes there certainly will be. NO CHANGES covers our positions quite well, because the system is working pretty well as is.
4) Write a letter to the editor or op-ed for your paper as to why the Electors must not vote for Trump (see article linked to at #120)
All of these are easy to do and will help at multiple levels. No need to wait for a national figure to direct the resistance…it will happen soon enough…we can get going now, today. =)
Tyler Forrest
@debbie: exactly – @Patricia Kayden: He is going to be a clusterfuck of pain and suffering as a president no matter what. The point is to rob him of democratic consent. This will help the mayors and governors who will be the first line of defense against trumpisimo.
Every time we make the chaos cheeto defend loosing by 2.5 mil, we win. Especially since half of his supporters think he won the pop vote, it might be the only way they find out he lost.
MomSense
@Glidwrith:
League of Women Voters is quite active in voter registration. Honestly I started doing voter registration when Jesse Jackson did a big campaign push for it in 87 and I’ve been part of voter registration drives every election since. The best by far at voter registration was the Obama Campaign. I’m hoping this is part of what Obama and Holder will lead going forward.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I think I would donate to groups they hate, Planned Parenthood, the SPLC, ACLU etc etc, in their names with their addresses so they can get monthly/quarterly updates on the war on Trump. But then I’m just a mean SOB. ;-)
InternetDragons
@germy: I’m with you in thinking that the declarations about how shifts in age-based demographics will eventually ensure that Democratic votes prevail are not realistic.
Clinton lost young voters (for now I’ll call ‘young’ under 30, though she also had less support among 18-24 year olds) that supported Obama in 2012.
Waiting for older voters to die off is not a solution, and honestly that kind of statement just adds to needless divisions. Pulling this country out of the grips of Trump’s demagoguery is going to require specific, targeted outreach across every demographic category.
I work occasionally (just because I enjoy it and it’s so different from my actual career path) with online gaming companies, and I can tell you that the neo-Nazi/”alt-right” contingent is strongly represented among young people, as is an even larger group that vehemently expresses deep distrust for both Republicans and Democrats.
And before anyone here tries to start the “We Hate Bernie” chants again, not all of these young people are fans of Sanders, either. They just don’t feel like our current political structures are offering to build them anything remotely like a good future. A lot of them see no point in voting at all. I’m certain they can be reached, but it’s going to take outreach that is specific to them and their concerns.
Kay
@HRA:
There’s probably lots of positive energy to tap in MI, OH, PA and WI. Instead pf planning the next Presidential race why not win governor’s races in WI, MI and OH (PA has a Dem governor)?
It isn’t just Trump. These states were weak going in. How do I know? Because they have two term GOP governors and they didn’t elect people like Feingold. Forget Clinton- Russ Feingold lost in WI.
We have a problem and we HAD a problem going into this. Flailing around will make it worse. Win 3 governors races in formerly blue states. Do that. It’s hard and boring but it’s A PLAN.
germy
@InternetDragons:
Exactly. And when we’re divided, the Paul Ryans of the world succeed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Or as I like to say, “Don’t just do something, sit there!”
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe you already said and I missed it, but how did Thanksgiving with your step-daughter’s in-laws go?
Kay
Here’s the one thing anyone needs to know about the Green Party. The Green Party is as opposed to Democrats as the Republican Party.
That’s true. The Green Party hope to BEAT the Democrats. In fact, that;s the only way the Green Party can ever win. The reason they focus on beating Democrats is because they cannot be a national Party unless the Democrats fail, utterly. Their majority will come from Democratic voters or it won’t come at all. They know this. Democrats should know this too.
There’s nothing really wrong with it. It’s just a fact. But to think the Greens are somehow your ally is ridiculous. They don’t win a national election unless they peel off a majority of Democratic voters. That’s always been true and they have always acted accordingly.
JMG
@Kay:Democrats flail around with little or no direction when they’re winning, too. It’s part of the package. As a matter of cold reality directions for effective resistance to Trump will be set by Schumer and Pelosi for the immediate future. For us groundlings, financial and volunteer support for worthy organizations and local party organizations seem like the most practical steps. I will participate to the max in the Medicare fight because I’m on it, and have no desire to be handed a subsidy worth 25 percent of any policy I could get when I’m in my mid-’70s.
Glidwrith
@MomSense: The League of Women Voters does pop up constantly – I think they are probably the best for us to help out. Do you or anyone else have names from the Obama campaign that did such a good job?
Hellbastard
@WereBear: I don’t even know where to begin with these people. Working class concerns? How about accessible health care, increasing the minimum wage, making college cheaper, and strong labor unions? All that, and all they need to do is keep their pro-life views to themselves and treat others with the same respect that they would expect for themselves. But that’s a bridge too far for some folks.
I’m cool with the dems taking a step back on some sensitive social issues (like gun control) to cast a wider net, but I refuse to go over to the dark side of bigotry and hate like Trump.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: From up above at #59 @OzarkHillbilly:
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Oops. I did miss that. Glad it went well.
Carolina Dave
@HeartlandLiberal: Wednesday night there will be a big game in your town.
SgrAstar
@TriassicSands: I thought the NYT stood back and let the Thing fully reveal its ignorance, stupidity, and narcissism. No one who read that interview could come away thinking that It was anything other than a complete fool.
Aleta
@satby: I put my light box on a timer to automatically switch on by my bed in the morning. It works well to readjust my inner clock to morning, even after jet lag. (I like to set it to come on before I need to get up so I can bask and wake up slowly. But either way my body starts waking up at that time on its own, after a couple days. )
gene108
@Morzer:
But it is not going to happen everywhere. PA, MI, WI, etc are not getting inundated with Latinos.
What this election showed is because of the way our system is set-up, rural-ish (mostly white) voters, have a disproportionate impact on the outcome.
Maybe Texas or Florida start becoming more competitive, but damn if this demographic trend is going to overtake other places.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: Happens all the time. Does a Hillbilly speaking in the Ozark woods make a sound? Mostly not. ;-)
Brachiator
@JMG:
So, what did the Democrats offer instead?
The slick bullshit that Trump offered was simple and understandable. The alternative was so nuanced it was vague and unconvincing.
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: I knew my mom’s dementia had eclipsed her (lifelong passionate Democrat and voter) reasoning when I came in in 2004 and a nurse had left the TV switched to Fox News and mom was talking about not switching presidents in the middle of a war.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
@Patricia Kayden: Half or more of the “government never did anything for me” commentary is because the “red states” have been bought & beholden to the highest bidders for years. (my inner Dad voice is ranting about “that’s not the traditional color coding for the Republican Party!”)
Anyway, the orange man is just going to do the same to us all at the federal level. Then government won’t work for anyone & the libertarians’ project will finally win. Because as far as I can tell that’s the end game of this let’s demonize government project of the past ~ 50-80 years. That’s the real long con here.
The same rural places that would never have had Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, electricity, telephony, plumbing or roads & bridges etc. have forgotten how they ever got those things in the first place. We have no means to reach inside that bubble of Faux et al and tell them what they could be doing instead of blaming outsiders for their troubles. Their bubble is choking them.
—
Pierce is right about the occasion for sin. We will have to watch them hurting us all (& themselves often worse) because they cannot/will not accept outsider help because that help comes with one emphatic string attached: it must be equally shared.
For some reason, I was thinking a lot this weekend about what driftglass & bluegal said on the last episode of their podcast about how these bubble people won, but they’re all still angry. And I think that’s because they know, deep down, they won by foul means and by endangering themselves. Like the colleague who stabbed you in the back to get the promotion, but has no clue how to do that job- people who didn’t win fair & square tend to be sore winners.
In my previous experience with sore winners, the only way I’ve ever successfully dealt with it was to leave that job. But that’s really not an option for me right now, and not one I want to even contemplate. So anyone have thoughts on dealing with the sore winners in our midst?
DCF
@Kay:
The Democrats’ biggest mistakes
What were the 5 biggest Dem errors?
http://www.samefacts.com/2016/11/political-science/the-democrats-biggest-mistakes/
1) Creating the email and speech problems, and being brittle and defensive about cleaning them up.
2) Overconfidence and complacency across the political spectrum.
3) Signaling to older rural white voters that we didn’t want them, and indeed would leave them behind.
4) Democrats underestimated the power of partisan polarization to bring Republican voters back to Trump.
5) The Clinton campaign never was able to break through with a compelling economic policy narrative that ordinary voters could understand amidst the clutter.
gene108
@InternetDragons:
This was sort of my experience, in my 20’s, when I did not vote. But Bush & Co’s lying about the Iraq War, torture, etc. shocked me out of my apathy.
I do not know, what would do it for this younger generation.
Also, do not expect them to reflexively vote for Democrats. From what I have observed, the younger cynical non-voter has deeply ingrained the philosophy of “government is not the solution, government is the problem.”
Emma
@Glidwrith: Add me to the list please. I volunteer to research those voter registration organizations.
Kay
@DCF:
Okay, but Democrats were weak going into rust belt states before Clinton ever announced. You don’t lose governors races across the entire Great Lakes region unless you’re weak.
No one wanted to talk about it. They still don’t want to talk about. The states, the states, the states. They’re key to 90% of Democratic priroties, from criminal justice to voting rights.
Stop obsessing over national elections. That won’t get you where you want to go. Start thinking differently or keep losing. Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders can’t save you and Hillary Clinton didn’t destroy you. That isn’t how this works.
GrandJury
NYTimes opinion pages doesn’t mean much. Only people who agree with the opinions read those. It’s all that bullshit on the front pages that is the problem.
NYTimes will play along with the carrot/stick game that Dr. Orange is playing just like they always do. No use even talking about it. The media will never change. If they didn’t learn after 8 years of Bush and all his bullshit they happily reported as fact, then they never will.
ruemara
@Glidwrith: wow, thanks for the list. I liked Debbie’s idea of a mobile voter id solution. Take the paperwork to the disenfranchised, have them fill it out, file it for them. Add in a fund for paying for the id paperwork. Maybe a strike team type of thing where a bus laptops and volunteers help? I was considering starting a GoFundMe and laying out a plan for a larger agency to use but the funds have to go towards voting id and registration.
Morning all.
Kay
Here’s something else that’s true. Democrats don’t focus on states because state-level action doesn’t require national pundits and high priced consultants. There are a lot of interested parties on the Democratic side who rely on Democrats focusing exclusively on DC.
Glidwrith
@Emma: Will do.
Mikefromarlington
So here in Ireland, a friend is a primary school teacher for 9-10 yr olds. They all wrote Trump letters to mail him. Unbelievable what these kids wrote. Most hoped he wouldn’t be racist, sexist and a number of those things he ran on. I would love to post pics of them as they were disheartening what these kids saw in our president elect
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
@germy: You’re not wrong that new monsters are born every day. But change happens. Whenever I hear stories like this I revert to history & remind myself that the Civil War is two little old ladies lives ago, the Depression is younger than my father, & I was born into an era where people marched for civil rights, and women’s rights & won etc. It brings hope to remember that it really hasn’t been very long – & it’s also a huge reminder that we cannot ever relax & rest on our laurels.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: With all due respect to your family members, that sounds like a brand of stupid to me.
Kay
@JMG:
My daughter called Paul Ryan’s Obamacare line to register her support for Obamcare There’s an option where you can press 2 to say more so she did that.
Of course she did :) I LOL’ed. She’ll be the A student of activism.
She’s relatively new at this and a very earnest person. That’s the kind of energy Democrats could tap if they could focus on one thing. There are a lot of Democrats! Give them one or two things to do that are effective and smart. They want to contribute but don’t waste their time. Energy dissipates if isn’t effectively focused.
Pangloss
Seems to me the problem is Republicans are deftly able to exploit the handicap that Democrats sometimes have a conscience, a limit to which they will go to win an election, a sense of shame, some loose set of morals, and a capacity to feel guilt.
None of these things hinders Republicans. They talk a good game, feigning moral outrage over things like abortion, civility, obligation to the taxpayers, family values, hyper-patriotism, etc. But that’s just a ruse to corral a political constituency, a bludgeon to concuss the proles, an origin story for their Greek chorus narrators on talk radio and Fox News. The GOP myth of “Principled Conservative” died for good with their election of this President. How can you claim to have principles about government, equal treatment of all Americans, truth, or basic civility and vote for Trump? You can’t.
But another casualty of the election is faith in the electoral system. Democrats have won the majority of votes in four of the last five presidential elections, but assumed office in only two of them. Likewise, gerrymandering at the state and congressional level has resulted in absurd– really absurd– advantages for Republicans at every level of government. The GOP has a majority of state houses and governorships, money in elections at the state level is less regulated and more effective. Democratic Senate candidates got 5.9 million votes more votes than Republicans, but the GOP won 21 of the 33 seats. In 2012, Democratic house members won 1.4 million more votes than Republicans and had 33 fewer seats.
Losing governorships, state senate, and state house races at catastrophic levels destroys the bench, diminishes leadership opportunities, and ends a lot of careers before they get started. Maybe it’s time to focus on cities…. promoting mayors to state office, talking about urban and suburban issues. But allowing angry rural people to decide the course of the nation by electing a CLOWN out of pique, outrage, and revenge against prosperous people in cities and suburbs is NOT the way to run a 1st world nation in the 21st Century.
O. Felix Culpa
@Glidwrith: I recommend VoterRiders.org, a non-profit whose mission is “to ensure that all citizens are able to exercise their right to vote. VoteRiders informs and helps citizens to secure their voter ID as well as inspires and supports organizations, local volunteers, and communities to sustain voter ID education and assistance efforts.”
Glidwrith
@ruemara: I like it as well – set up outside graduation ceremonies. Also, because the bastards will seize registration cards (e.g. Indiana and 45,000 cards seized) because there are ‘questions’, I think the new voter must be the one to submit the registration. If we keep that part decentralized, the Thugs can’t grab them wholesale. It would also provide a little protection for the organizers – if they don’t have filled-out registration cards, the authorities won’t have any proof of ‘fraud’.
Yes, if it gets bad enough they will make shit up and prosecute anyway, but at least the voters themselves keep their registration intact.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
No argument here. I can’t explain it.
JMG
@Kay: I agree completely. I gave money to Foster Campbell, because it was something I am in position to do, My Representative is Kathleen Clark, who seems to be most engaged in Trump’s personal corruption, so I phoned an “attawaytogo” to her office, because I’m a constituent. That’s two I think are effective for me, plus Medicare is three.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
Sarcasm. It beats killing people.
Glidwrith
@O. Felix Culpa: I have seen them as well and approve – they made available the requirements for all 50 states in this last round.
@Emma: Would you look more in-depth at the League of Women Voters and VoteRiders? Who funds them and how it is used? Can you tell what states they are active in?
germy
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
Thank you. Well said.
OzarkHillbilly
@DCF:
Correction: Signaling to older rural white voters that we understand that their votes are lost to us and have been since Reagan but that we will fight for SS and Medicare whether they wanted to or not.
FTFY, you’ll get my bill in the mail.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Amen and amen. I try to monitor FL politics fairly closely, and there’s alarmingly little talk about who is going to oppose whichever Republican knob runs to replace the odious and unpopular Rick Scott in 2018. It could be a huge pickup opportunity; even Republicans don’t like Scott (he never got even 50% of the vote), and it’s probably safe to assume the Trump administration will be mired in scores of self-dealing scandals by the time this race heats up. We should be preparing right now.
WereBear
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones): I see them as family members who are so deep into rage and addiction and self-destruction (aka slow suicide) that we have to cut them off to save the rest of the family.
In this case, reduce the overwhelming unnatural advantage they have from the present vote counting system.
germy
@Aleta:
Elder abuse.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay:
This. We’re organizing NOW in New Mexico to take back the governorship, and retain (or win back) other local and state-level offices. I hope that folks in other states are doing the same.
AND – we need to work at the federal level, to do what we can to protect the ACA, Medicare, funding for climate change research, etc. Phoning congresscritters and providing financial support for Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, environmental organizations, among others. It’s both/and, friends! We can’t allow ourselves to get tired and retreat (although rest breaks are allowed). There’s too much at stake for us, our children and grandchildren, and the planet.
Betty Cracker
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
I’ve recently (as in, this weekend) started taunting them in return for being a conman’s easy mark.
D58826
@JMG: Will Rodgers said it in the 1930’s – he doesn’t belong to an organized party. he is a democrat
WereBear
@Kay: I totally agree with everything you are saying here. It has to be a party again, not just a President machine.
Yoda Dog
@Kay: Indeed, Kay, you are spot on with everything you’ve said, as usual. And I would add, this is exactly how we’ve gotten into this national debacle in the first place; by getting outmanuevered and beaten first and foremost at the state level over the past decade. We have to win at the state level and reverse the trend of gerrymandering and voter supression or we will never win anything ever again. We’re out there trying to medal in figure skating with a busted kneecap as it stands right now.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
@Betty Cracker: I’ve watched most of this video; it’s old fashioned & corny, but still so on point it’s scary. Don’t Be a Sucker (1947) | U.S. War Department https://youtu.be/Ag40XYIj4hE h/t @ JamesFallows
gene108
@Pangloss:
CA had a Senate race, in 2016. Both people up for the job were Democrats. That can skew national vote totals.
And yes, CA has more people than several states combined, that had Senatorial elections this year, but each state gets two Senators.
Democrats need a strategy to win each state. And that strategy, and those candidates, will all be slightly different than the liberal ideal.
Running up the vote totals in CA and NYC is meaningless, if you cannot win races in KS (had Dem governor until 2008), for example, for revitalizing the Dem Party.
Aleta
Is there anything to do right now to support the Dems in the NC battle over the governorship (which controls the state board of elections) and AG ?
Betty Cracker
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
Lizzy L
@Yoda Dog: I hope the state party organizations turn around and look at the state(s) which the Democratic party has been largely, though not completely successful. I’m thinking of California, but there are others. Talk to the California Democratic party, find out what they did that worked, and see what’s applicable in your state.
Poopyman
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
No, they’re angry and resentful because that’s all they know. I doubt there’s any possibility of redemption for them.
If there were a painless way to cut them loose, I would.
rikyrah
Toni Morrison: Fear of losing white privilege led to Trump’s election.
“The comfort of being ‘naturally better than’ is hard to give up.”
Toni Morrison has written a powerful essay in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, and it gets right to the heart of why Trump won.
In a piece titled “Mourning For Whiteness” from the November 21 print issue of the New Yorker (published online Monday), the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist argues that Trump won due to the terror of privileged white men in the face of a rapidly diversifying country.
“Under slave laws, the necessity for color rankings was obvious, but in America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost,” Morrison writes.
“There are ‘people of color’ everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.”
Emma
@Glidwrith: Sure. Do we want also to look at state-level efforts? Kay’s right about that.
Citizen_X
@Betty Cracker:
CRACKER FOR FLORIDA 2018!
(I kid.)
Glidwrith
I’m stepping away now – family is up and time for tea and brekkie. I will look in on the thread later.
Play nice y’all!
gene108
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think you are wrong. We did note write-off older rural voters.
Democrats, in 2016, made a very open stand that they supported gay rights, civil rights – including the excessive, lethal, use of police power against blacks – and a host of other social issues.
There is no reason that one should think embracing gay rights somehow automatically ignores the economic anxiety of older rural white voters.
Democrats did talk about bringing new industry jobs to rural areas, because, in reality, the old industry jobs are not coming back.
But somehow those solutions did not address their economic anxiety and made them think those jobs were just earmarked for the gays and blacks.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m available, as long as I don’t have to move there. #steppingstone
DCF
@Kay:
Not all Democrats were ‘weak’ in the Rust Belt states (i.e., Michigan)….
From your mouth to DWS’ ear…the DNC (and the regional Party organizations) need to focus at the state level….
We’re not thinking differently. My ‘obsession’, as it were, is to field (change) candidates who can win.
#RIPMyShillaries
An end to the era of professionally explained candidates
David V. Johnson November 22, 2016
http://thebaffler.com/blog/rip-my-shillaries-johnson
Who’s To Blame For Hillary Clinton’s Loss?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNZmXhxuThU
Glidwrith
@Emma: Eep – just as I was checking out.
YES! National won’t work – folks here are right. We need this at the state level.
J R in WV
@Iowa Old Lady:
I was on a grand jury once. But ours is a very rural county. We went through dozens of crimes, a law enforcement officer or the prosecutor would show or testify to the evidence, they would leave the room, we would vote by raising our arms. 17 jurors, 12 needed to indict, so often some of us would not raise our arms.
We covered at least a dozen major felonies, including several varieties of child abuse, which were the worst. Some appeared to be family disputes, where someone was trying to get grandpa put away, but several were multiple child rapes.
Harder for me that sitting on a petite jury hearing a murder trial! But over quickly, just that one very long day, many cases. No white collar crime, very few white collars in our county!
OzarkHillbilly
@gene108:
I think you misread me, or at least put the wrong emphasis on what I said.
You are correct, there is no reason to think the embrace of one automatically excludes the other, and yet for 85-90% (more????) of older rural voters that is exactly what it means, because “somehow those solutions did not address their economic anxiety and made them think those jobs were just earmarked for the gays and blacks.” never mind, again, that DEMs have always been the first and foremost defenders of SS and Medicare, the very 2 things that most directly address economic anxieties. These people don’t know any blacks, have never met one outside of standing in line next to one at the local Walmart. The only Hispanic they know is the waiter at the local Mexican diner, and they don’t know they know a gay wo/man or 2 because if a gay wo/man ever came out they’d be risking more than just the loss of their job. They don’t fear the “other” they fear the very idea of an other.
Democrats have not and will not turn their backs on older rural white voters. That however has nothing to do with the fact that older rural white voters HAVE in fact by and large turned their backs on Democrats. As far as the reasons for this, I am sure they are many, but make no mistake, racism, homophobia, jingoism etc etc play a role in it and it is no small part.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Glad you used his favorite photo!
O. Felix Culpa
Action opportunity:
This is from Josh Marshall at TPM. It would be great if BJ-ers who are represented by the above Congresscritters contact them and express your opposition to the Granny Starver’s granny starving plan. Let Richard Mayhew know how they respond for his tally too.
debbie
@rikyrah:
He’s an elite only in his own mind, but the most appalling thing I’ve ever heard Glenn Beck say is, “Diversity and tolerance have destroyed the Constitution.”
Fishfry
It is so painful being married to a man that voted for that pile of garbage. Since I am a woman and a POC, I tried talking to him about doing what was morally right, but it fell on deaf ears and he truly let me down. It has been difficult these last few weeks and I have to say that I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for the man. Tried to tell him that this wasn’t about an election. Hell, if any of the other clowns in the clown car had been elected, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me how he voted. I think because he is an older, white male, other peoples fears don’t concern him. Time to question my future.
Kay
@DCF:
I don’t accept analysis of Wisconsin that ignores Feingold’s loss.
I knew people would end up blaming Clinton because no one wants to admit that “merit” often doesn’t matter at all in the United States. Does it bother you at all that all of media jumped on the blame Clinton bandwagon? They did a lousy job. Of course they will deflect blame.
That’s too scary. We have to pretend this has something to do with merit or the whole fantasy falls down.
Emma
@Fishfry: I am sorry to hear it has reached that point for you.
OzarkHillbilly
@gene108: One thing to add to what I said up above: Religion. Dems do not place nearly as much emphasis on being a “good Christian” as Repubs do, in fact we embrace all religions more or less equally. This is an insult to the special snowflakes that are Evangelicals who feel absolute acceptance of Jesus as the sole savior and the only way thru the Pearly Gates is central to their entire existence. Church is very big out here. The quickest way to keep one’s neighbors from bothering you is to let them know you are an atheist. Works every time.
And now I gotta go. Have a good day.
Kay
No shit. This is a NYTimes story done after Trump was elected.
Does someone in media want to explain to the public why this work wasn’t done during his 2 year campaign?
It’s a little godammned LATE for this, is it not? They vet Trump only after he fucking WINS? I mean come on. WTF happened here? No one could do this work over 24 months?
OzarkHillbilly
@Fishfry: So sorry to hear this. May you find peace where ever your choices may take you.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay:
Barbara
@Kay: I don’t think it has as much to do with consultants as it does with Democrats being more comfortable with the idea that the country needs federal solutions for its most vexing problems and thus putting their energy into what they think is most important in the long run. The trouble is, the short run matters for the long run. My most important election this year is the governor of Virginia and the very gerrymandered Virginia assembly.
Kay
Breaking News: Trump Family Empire Could Pose Corruption Risk
News you can use, right? They report this out after the election.
He operated in their backyard for 40 years and the NYTimes couldn’t vet him?
Barbara
@Fishfry: Oh my. I am sorry this cuts so close to the bone for you. I hope you can find the clarity and insight to give you comfort about your future.
Patricia Kayden
@Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones):
Keep harping on the fact that they are voting against their own interests by voting for the party of the 1%. I can’t see anything else we can do but point to actual facts to counter their nonsense Fox News/Alex Jones arguments. I have only lived in the U.S. since 1995 but have already figured out that racism plays a huge role in why poor/working class Whites vote for a party which could care less about their needs. I don’t see that changing any time soon and Trump’s win is the end result of people wanting to hurt “those people” via politics. Dying to see their shock when they see Black/Brown/Muslim/Liberal people still doing well despite Trump’s presidency.
cosima
@Fishfry: This is definitely a watershed moment & issue for you. Definitely seek counselling about this if you’re able. Do you have family to help you through this, or close friends? I think that I’d be heartbroken too, well, I *know* that I would be. I hope that you’ll do what it takes to make yourself emotionally & mentally safe.
WereBear
@Fishfry: yikes. That is really tough. But you are facing a truth in the face, and no matter how difficult that is, I have never regretted doing so.
Kay
@Barbara:
True, there’s an ideological bent towards federal power among liberals and that’s legit.
But don’t kid yourself. Democrats in DC are comfy with all the power residing in DC and so are national activists and pundits. It’s about power. The less power Democrats in states have the more power national Democrats have.
It isn’t new. It was a big debate after Kerry lost. The Greens were presenting themselves as saviors after Kerry lost too :)
Emma
@Kay: Co-signed. I am disheartened by the number of liberals and progressives who have decided that it HAS to be Hillary’s fault. They try to ignore all the signs of liberalism being driven into irrelevance by any means the opposition can use.
Patricia Kayden
@Fishfry: ((Fishfry)). Thought of this article when I read your comment. Good luck with whatever you decide to do moving forward.
Kay
I don’t support Howard Dean as chair, either. He’s a Morning Joe pundit who was or is a lobbyist. You may as well hire Ed Rendell.
If you like the 50 state strategy advocate for that, not “Dean”. There’s nothing unusually talented about Dean. No more saviors. Commit to slow hard work or get crushed. Dean has always been over-rated. It doesn’t even make sense. He’s not that liberal. He’s much closer to Hillary Clinton that Bernie Sanders, on the ideological spectrum.
Have any of you ever heard him debate? He’s not that bright.
CaseyL
@Glidwrith: I want to work on this project! And I do think we should triage the states: we should focus on purple states, in the hopes of turning them blue in 2018.
We should also fundraise to get the goddamn Voter IDs the states require. That may involve working with people one-on-one to obtain whatever documents are needed to get the ID (birth certs, naturalization papers, etc.)
I’m good at research. I wouldn’t mind being put to work to find out how one gets a Voter ID in the targeted states.
Kay
Because Rahm Emanuel dislikes Howard Dean does not make Howard Dean talented or even “on the Left”
“The enemy of your enemy is your friend” is nonsense. It’s almost never true. I don’t even know why it’s a cliche. At least “bring a knife to a gun fight” makes some sense.
ruemara
@Fishfry: I am truly sorry. That’s heartbreak and betrayal. And for me, definitely grounds to consider the future. Immediately. Hang in there, seek counseling and do what your heart moves you to.
Also, may I just say fuck your cousins, neighbors, & grandma, if they voted for Trump. Fuck blaming the Dems for not being able to say no to a fascists. Fuck all of this. Trump was dangerous, worthless scum with barely an inch scratched off the surface. Basic intelligence said avoid this man. Human decency said never give him power. My compassion is reserved for the weak in the families of these despicable people, who will suffer. But my hand is stayed. I’ve been working for policies that benefit that dumbass rural voter who’d prefer to see me enslaved or dead. Don’t tell me the Dems left them behind. The Dems are constantly looking to win them over and treating people like me as given because of the toxic nature of the opposition. But fuck all that “left them poor whites out” crap. We gave those goddamn cousinfucking squirrel munchers the first dental care they’ve had in decades. Diabetes drugs, chronic health problems covered, accountability for their vassal coal lords when they kill off a few of the community in preventable coal mining accidents. Done with them. Let them rot. And let anyone else rot who wants to excuse it.
Kay
As far as the Greens go, they’re not even the enemy of your enemy. The Greens work to defeat the Democrats every election because the Greens can’t win without the Democrats losing voters to the Greens.
There’s X number of voters. The Greens aren’t looking for GOP voters. That’s why they never run against the GOP.
gogol's wife
@Yoda Dog:
AMEN
Fishfry
@Emma: Thanks for letting me share this, it helps.
debbie
@Emma:
Could it not be all of the above?
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Baud:
I have emoji anxiety. My phone is about three(?) years old, and when I get hipster emoji messages from people sometimes there are blanks shown by an X-in-a-box icon. Always wonder what nuance I am missing. ?
ETA: Huh. The emoji here looks different from the one I entered. Time for an emoji ethics panel!
debbie
@Kay:
It’s the corruption and business conflicts that I think we need to focus on.
Baud
@Kay: I also would like to see someone else. I wish Ellison wasn’t a sitting legislator. I don’t know why the DNC chair needs to be ideological. I don’t see that as their job.
Baud
@Steeplejack (tablet): We’re all talking about you in emoji.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mikefromarlington: Do you have pictures of them? They would be awesome to circulate (obviously with any identifying information redacted). Probably including specific country of origin, sadly.
@Kay:
Exactly. Which is why there has to be a plan beyond “do something! anything! everything!” as people often suggest in 3D.
As you mentioned earlier: suggest a concrete plan of action I can get behind, and I will. Also too, your kids are awesome (no one is surprised).
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: John posted a link to a piece (I think WaPo) on that statistic about counties’ wealth and how they voted. Some of his rural friends took issue with it, saying that it counts the wealth of a company as coming from headquarters and thus doesn’t count the value of the raw resources, presumably produced or mined in some of the red counties. But I think the critical point is that the value added part of the company has to be located in a city, with proximity to an educated workforce and transportation hubs and possibly research institutions. The part of the work that requires effort but not a great deal of skill or intellectual power can be done in more loosely populated areas.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
She didn’t intend for that to be a funny story but by the time she got to “press 2 to continue message’ and then told us she said her name and “me again” I was crying I was laughing so hard.
Emma
@debbie: Not really, no. It’s funny, I was one of those “not Hillary again!” folk at first. But she was far braver and much stronger than I had ever given her credit for. I grew to admire her. Were there missteps in the campaign? Probably. All campaigns screw up at some point. But to say that she was a lousy candidate, not liberal enough, not this, too much that…. all I keep hearing is people whining loudly about the lack of a magical savior. It irritates me.
Alain the site fixer
@Steeplejack (tablet): emojis are a standard and iOS and Android and Windows and WordPress render them differently. And old tech likely doesn’t have the newer versions and variations.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay:
I fixed your typo. It is a national disgrace that none of this was reported prior to November 9, by (allegedly) actual press local to the issue, with (allegedly) real reporters and everything.
Oldgold
This election was lost in ’10.
I will never fully understand why the country turned away from the Dems that year. Hell, we rescued the country.
We lost key governorships and legislatures. The resulting gerrymandering and voter suppression led to this debacle.
Perhaps, despite its merits, going for the ACA was a huge mistake.
Elie
I will never accept Trump and its hard for me to think of unifying with “the rest” — ever. I will never forget not only what he said, but what was done by these assholes to Obama for 8 years.
Our time at the top of the heap is over. There will be no easy slow decline but a hard and at times violent slide IMHO. I am personally concerned that we will have both terrorism and war as a means of controlling the masses and public opinion as well as the media. All of our major institutions are in danger.
I am a dual citizen of Brazil and am renewing my passport in case we have to escape. I will not abandon my United States and will look for ways to fight back, until I feel directly endangered.
These white so called “Americans” have no idea what they have done. That the overwhelming majority of whites in this country — largest ever, voted for this horrible creature is a stain that will be hard to look past in the years ahead. We had a great, diverse country based on the rule of law, fairness and justice — one they helped build and said that they loved…
I am still so sad about this….. I am longing to feel hope again, but I just don’t see that anytime soon.
HeartlandLiberal
@Carolina Dave: Yes, Wed North Carolina will be here. A good friend who is still working as IT director and special projects guru will be going with me.
Kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
“Leaders” and “activists” is a two way street. The leaders have an obligation to the activists not to waste their time and money. It isn’t a free for all. It comes with a duty. Don’t betray the grunts. Their time and energy has value.
Elie
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
We still know very little about him or his finances and encumbrances … The press completely failed — FAILED – No, they do not have the complete blame, but a fair amount…
Kay
If I were doing a voting rights push I would focus on one state at a time. The state I would pick would be 1. North Carolina or 2. if people don’t like that, Wisconsin.
North Carolina Democrats must be fucking outraged right about now. It’s the natural place to start.
trollhattan
@Elie:
Don’t be so sure. The same cohort who’ve whispered unkind things about the current president while maintaining the mask of civility may publicly tisk-tisk the Donald’s rough edges but are performing inner cartwheels. They’re weary from toting the burden of “political correctness,” the poor things.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Emma: I was never, “Not Hillary again!”, I was more in the “show me a strong candidate” camp. No one ever did. Maybe Biden could’ve beat Trump, maybe Bobby Kennedy could’ve beat Nixon, maybe Old Man Cuomo could’ve beat Old Man Bush (Waiting for Mario played in ’88, right?). But Terrible Candidate Hillary outperformed Dem Senate candidates in, IIANM, FL, OH and WI, the almost-as-pure-(and-almost-as-self-righteous)-as-Bernie Russ Feingold
I don’t think Ellison will be our savior, he may fall on his face, but maybe he will reinvigorate the DNC have success in building the party down ticket and around the country. I don’t see an obviously stronger alternative. (I also don’t have a vote) We/They might as well give him a chance
In the long and high recommended David Remnick interview with Obama in the latest New Yorker, Obama says he started touring downstate Illinois when Michelle was pregnant with Malia. If I have her age and the math right, that would mean the late 90s, long before he ran for the Senate seat. That’s the long game, the slow and hard and boring boring of hard boards. There’s more to this than charisma and rhetoric– though I wouldn’t dismiss the importance of those.
Also of interest, MO is reported, not quoted, as saying that the whole “go high when they go low” and maintaining the no-drama Obama calm in public is a lot harder than the family make it look. Not a surprise, but interesting that they, if I’m reading correctly between the lines, wanted Remnick to include that in the piece.
Repatriated
@OzarkHillbilly: The problem with “religion” as a factor is that it usually gets simplified down to the Great Conservative Blood Libel: “Liberals want to kill babies!” (i.e. abortion rights).
And from that perspective, almost any political/social policy outcome short of a literal Holocaust is preferable.
Nuance on the issue needs to be reintroduced, but getting that nuance through the information bubble is going to be difficult at best.
gene108
@Oldgold:
1. The 2008 election saw a surge in first time voters or irregular voters, who were excited by Obama, but became discouraged at the slow pace of the recovery.
2. This is why, in 2010, a big part of the GOP platform was “jobs, jobs, jobs,”.
3. There was a strong anti-Obama sentiment, in some parts of the country, that defied reason, as evidenced by the spike in gun sales, in the fall of 2008, and the mad run on ammo that actually created an ammo shortage, by winter 2009.
4a. The biggest reason was the Citizen’s United decision. Republicans set about lining up rich people in key states, to flood down ballot races with attacks on Democrats. Democrats were asleep here and did not seem to see this coming.
4b. Obama, Axelrod, et al shut down OfA. It was a successful grassroots organization, with thousands of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers and I don’t know how many paid staff. It was a force for Obama and could have been a force for Democrats, as a whole, but it was shut down, with nothing to take its place.
Suzanne
@Kay: YES. I have been very frustrated with this since the “election” of Prince Trumperdink. Everyone is saying, “Organize! Get involved! Volunteer! Do something!”, which is great. But okay, how? Then I see more lefties saying, “Don’t wear safety pins, do something meaningful”, or “Protests are ineffective, you should do something else instead!”. Missing from all of these exhortations are concrete proposals for what to do instead.
For those of us who are not community organizers, or who have jobs and families and other obligations, WHAT SHOULD WE DO? What is the consensus for the most effective place to out our energies? I signed up to be a Precinct Committee-person with my local Legislative District. I have time and talent to volunteer. But I reach out to nonprofits, and they just want money. So I give some money, but No one seems to know what to do with effort and energy.
Major Major Major Major
@Pangloss:
This is… not true?
Yoda Dog
@Kay: I’m a Raleigh democrat. Yea, its beyond infuriating. And heartbreaking.
sukabi
@Betty Cracker: you’d end up with a more honest, qualified cabinet, that’s what would happen.
D58826
And the Romney saga continues. Trump has consulted Fabio and a few other non-entities on the choice of Sec of State. Newt and KellyAnne have made it very plain that Romney is unacceptable. All of which leads to two theories:
1. Trump is just publicly humiliating Romney for his past refusal to support him
2. Trump really wants Romney but the Trump team doesn’t so they have gone public.
Which leads to a couple of thoughts.
1. If option 1, why would any person with the least shred of personal dignity remain silent like Romney has? Does he really want the job and it’s 15 minutes of fame that much.
2. If option 2 and Trump gets his way can you imagine what the confirmation hearings will look like? The Romans had more pity when they feed the Christians to the lions. But just suppose that he is confirmed, will there be any member of the international community that does not laugh in his face (other than maybe Putin). At this point he is totally compromised as some one to cleanup after the Trump dogs (if he has any) let alone Sec. of State,
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Remember the woman who stood up at an Obama town hall less than six months (IIRC) after the inauguration and said she was exhausted from defending him when he hadn’t fixed things yet? One more low-information voter, but then St Stewart at the Great Rally About Nothing gave her a “Medal of Reasonable-ness”, because she criticized Obama and she was… you know… um… from a demographic where one would not expect to find a critic of Obama. Aside from all the Hipster Broderism (remember the Lincoln Tunnel analogy?) and precious self -congratulation (“Medal of Reasonable-Ness”, a standard set by one millionaire who started reading his own press) of that spectacle (at least Stewart’s half of it), I was always surprised no one pointed out the soft and smarmy bigotry of that moment.
Looking at the wiki page on that rally, Velma Hart was the only person who got one of Stewart’s Stickers of Approval who was directly related to politics
TL/DR version: People are dumb
debbie
@Emma:
That isn’t what I was pointing to. I think the problem was that her supporters underestimated (or chose to believe her platform would be sufficient to neutralize) the absolute hatred for her in this country.
sukabi
@Morzer: pretty sure “God’s free health plan” only kicks in once you DIE. It’s all about the afterlife baby.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
Non sequitur.
According to history/music Twitter Jimi Hendrix would have been 74 today.
debbie
@Baud:
Good. So I can bring up Michelle Obama again?
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: Let’s stick with people who have demonstrated any interest in running for office and not, you know, the exact opposite.
tobie
@Kay:
Amy Chozick was too busy fanning the flames of Clinton hate to do her job. And she had public editor Liz Spade to defend her, so what was there to lose?
germy
My local PBS station is in full fund-drive mode. Non stop quack doctors pushing vitamins and brain scans. And for political discussion…
Iowa Old Lady
OT. According to the Canadian govt website, I am probably a Canadian citizen, though it would take some complicated bureaucratic actions to certify it. The crucial question was “Was one of your parents a Canadian citizen by birth or naturalization before Jan 1, 1947?”
Yes. My father was Canadian. He became a naturalized US citizen after he married my US born mother.
Hm. I doubt if I’ll pursue this but I find the idea of dual citizenship appealing. It feels like being more broadminded.
Jeffro
BREAKING (apparently): Trump is in free-fall on Twitter, raging at the coming recount. Kellyanne Conway’s telling America that Trump has been “gracious” by not prosecuting Clinton even though she’s now participating in the recount. WOW. Had no idea an American president had that kind of power.
Are we ready to push hard on the Electors yet folks? Just as soon as he’s sworn in, it’ll be payback time. He must not. take. the oath of office.
sukabi
@Morzer: drumpf is 70 now, he’s not going to be in any condition to run @ 74 even if he only devotes just 15% of his time to being president. (Which I think is on the high side of what he’s capable of.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@debbie: Thanks (belatedly!) for the “secret” info you sent the other day. Please feel free to use that addy to communicate, also too.
Elizabelle
@tobie: I know. Amy Chozick, Liz Spayd, Patrick Healey. The national politics desk.
But the fish rots at the head, and in this case: Editor Dean Baquet sounds like he has both Clinton Derangement Syndrome and NO news judgment. If true, that quote of his, that the NYTimes was not any harder on Trump than it was on Clinton, should be grounds for firing. Because they fucking missed the story and failed the country and their profession.
The New York Times is no longer the paper of record. I don’t know if we have such a thing, but the Times has been witless and wrong too many times.
This year, they were reminding us they’re The Judith Miller New York Times.
But they went even more wrong and putrid. EMAILS EMAILS EMAILS EMAILS EMAILS EMAILS. Clinton Foundation corrupt. Clinton Foundation corrupt.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826: 1. Trump is just publicly humiliating Romney for his past refusal to support him
2. Trump really wants Romney but the Trump team doesn’t so they have gone public.
These two are not mutually exclusive. I could see in Trump’s mind where Romney taking the job is the ultimate expression of submission. And I think Romney both wants a high-profile position that will get him in (at least some) history books, and wants to preserve the family brand with all wings of the GOP for the sake of whichever Mittlet they think can finally be the Mormon JFK
I suspect the Democrats on that committee will fall all over themselves praising him in a vain hope of putting a non-crazy face on US foreign policy.
Major Major Major Major
@germy:
This is not actually an outlandish thing to think if you spend much time on e.g. Feminist Twitter or are, in general, under 30.
Elizabelle
@tobie: Wasn’t Chozick an entertainment reporter with The Wall Street Journal? Covering TV?
Brilliant move, NYTimes. She would do less damage covering Game of Thrones, and probably be kept more honest on that beat, too.
sukabi
@Jeffro: he started his twit fit yesterday, which is another indication that the recounts are IMPORTANT, not just for the amusement factors, but there is a very real possibility that drumpf knows he won thru suppressing valid voters, throwing out legitimate votes, ect.
Ruckus
@HeartlandLiberal:
Worst part of growing old. Your entire wardrobe wears out or shrinks at the same time. And there is nothing that is at all stylish available that you’d be seen wearing. Of course the last part may have been true for the last 40-70 yrs.
debbie
@Jeffro:
I saw a Tweet where he told Keith Olberman what he could do with his eight double chins. Ah, the language of diplomacy!
ETA: Skip the difficult work of the recount; let’s instead make his head explode on Twitter! ;)
Suzanne
@Major Major Major Major: I always hate this question. The left is trying to appeal to decency, and to make certain expressions socially anathema. They are not trying to throw anyone in jail or deny them civil rights. Now, I think there’s a valid question about whether or not it is ultimately good or bad for society if people can’t express certain ideas without social consequences, but it it certainly isn’t a free speech issue.
I always feel like there is so much more opportunity for common ground in these issues (same with the “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” discussions), but it is always shot all to hell.
Jeffro
@sukabi: Yup. Whole can o’ worms, just waiting to be opened over the next few weeks! Three more weeks for him to show – just based on his behavior since Election Day – that he is unfit and that he cannot serve as president.
– nominating the absolute worst possible people (Russian connections, privatizers, billionaires, mental cases, and utter morons) to serve in his cabinet
– ranting about SNL, Hamilton, and Jill Stein…but not once denouncing neo-Nazi acts of vandalism and violence
– growing awareness of his massive conflicts of interest around the globe
– possibility of more info dropping about the extent of Russian hacking and disinformation campaign
– possibility of actual evidence of Russian $$$ behind his campaign
– (to say nothing of his own Trump Foundation $$$ being used in the campaign)
America, this isn’t going to work…tell the Electors
Ruckus
@m.j.:
For a gnat, maybe.
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne: It’s a problem, it really actually is! But nobody seems capable of expressing what the problem actually is, which is… also a problem. Sigh.
Ruckus
@Sloane Ranger:
We’d like to do the same but it’s difficult to apologize for dropping trou and taking a huge steaming dump on the holiday table. And even worse, most of the people who did this won’t ever realize that it was wrong.
NW Phil
@Schlemazel: Another election tidbit –
Both Senate candidates (two Democrats) in California received more votes than Trump in that state and Trump even managed to get 4,238,545 votes. Which was 100k+ less than the loser in the Senate race.
Suzanne
@Ruckus: He’s so unbelievably trashy. He’s exactly like what Europeans say about Americans who go tour overseas and act like boorish assholes. Certainly he has worse flaws, but this is the aspect of Trump that will likely annoy me the most over the next four years.
How long until he wears socks with sandals to a state dinner?
God, socks with sandals is the perfect metaphor for this gauche dumpster fire.
Suzanne
@Major Major Major Major: I know.
I feel like it always breaks down into two camps. One is the “nobly and intellectually committed to the free exchange of ideas!”, but fails to acknowledge that there’s a lot of ideas not worth exchanging, and that power differentials have convinced some people (namely rich white dudes) that every one of their ideas is a priceless jewel, while systematically excluding the ideas of marginalized people. Then there’s the worst stereotypes of the “safe spaces for everyone!” crowd, who have a horribly difficult time differentiating between perceived and real threat, and seem to forget that, even in the ideal future in which no one is marginalized and everyone has equal access to all institutions…..we’re all still going to argue about stuff.
I would like to think that there is a way forward that meets everyone’s needs.
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne: There’s also, I mean, we know there is an authoritarian streak on the left. And this combined with people who mean well but don’t quite get the concept that not everywhere is a safe space are basically trying to combine two worlds–a cloistered leftist university or social justice camp-like setting, which is good(!) but is necessarily cloistered, and a messy loud liberal world where you actually get out and talk to the press and do your protesting, where people can say whatever the fuck they want and have a tendency to make fun of you or yell racist shit. These are not mutually exclusive worlds but they can’t really bleed into each other much without significant friction.
Kristine
@Kay: And that’s one big reason why we lose.
I set up a monthly donation to the DLCC, which is focused on the state legislatures. I hope it’s more than a shot in the dark.
TriassicSands
@SgrAstar:
I wish that were true. It seems self-evident, but people have been listening to that same flood of drivel for Trump’s entire career and he’s somehow managed to wind up president.
I really think that the Times employees were there to ingratiate themselves with Trump to lay the groundwork for access the next four years. Sulzberger’s descriptions of the private meeting were needlessly flattering and based on everything I’ve seen and heard of Trump, almost certainly untrue.
Ruckus
@Wil:
This has been and will always be my starting point. It doesn’t matter what you say, you backed a racist. I don’t care that you think he might just maybe fix the economy. He won’t by the way, he’s about as successful a businessman as I am an NBA star. Not one of his underlings has the slightest actual idea how an economy works, how money works, how diplomacy works, how the government works (or why), how anyone works or why… They do know hate though, got to give them credit for that.
But if you voted for him, you voted for racism first of all. You also voted for misogyny, religious fundamentalism, the rich at the expense of everyone else – including yourself, lying, stupidity…… IOW you voted for the anti-positive candidate. I wrote just before the election that I voted for the party and person of inclusion and not the party/candidate of exclusion and was proud of that. They don’t get to say they voted for economic growth, which is bullshit-BTW, and that all the hate just came along for the ride. They voted for the hate. They get to own that.
ETA The you in there is the editorial you. My rant is not directed at you personally.
Kay
It’s almost like the Greens are working with the Trump campaign.
We’re now going to discuss these stupid fucking recounts instead of the fact that Trump is corrupt.
Stein ran against the Democrat. Why are people funding her campaign?
Suzanne
@Major Major Major Major: I know. As always, the only real way to accommodate everyone is for people to voluntarily and freely cease to behave like assholes, but we can’t even manage that on this blog.
I just feel, as someone who is deeply committed to both the free exchange of ideas as well as social justice and tearing down white patriarchy, that we really can DO BOTH THINGS.
NR
@Oldgold:
Because the Democrats didn’t use the opportunity they had and deliver the change they promised.
The country had just overwhelmingly voted Republicans out of office, and the party was disgraced after the Bush years. The time was right to move forward in a new progressive, Democratic direction. Instead, Obama made the rehabilitation of the GOP his mission in life, co-opting and endorsing their policies, and bragging about how many of their ideas he’d included in his legislation.
When the country explicitly says “We don’t want any more of this,” and you give them more of it under a different name, what do you expect?
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne: yeah I figured I was preaching to the choir but I don’t get to express this opinion a lot of places without howler monkeys descending, so I typed it out here.
jacy
@sukabi:
Trump just wants people to love and admire him. This is an indication that some people don’t love and admire him, ergo he hates it and it makes him angry. It’s as simple as that. People keep imputing Trump with some form of intelligence and motive. He has no motive except to have people love and admire him. He supports anything that he feels makes will make people love and admire him, and rants against anything that pops that bubble. Trump has no agenda but Trump. Trump cares for nothing but Trump.
Ruckus
@donnah:
Of course that’s because for all the bullshit about it being economics, it’s not. It’s fucking hate. Full Stop. They found their Hater in Chief. They had hoped that the last few republican presidents or candidates were worthy of the title but everyone of those guys didn’t hate hard enough. They even agreed when the pundits said they weren’t conservative enough. The pundits were right, they weren’t. This one though? Yeah, he’s Hater in Chief. They don’t care that he’ll tank the economy or tax the crap out of them or whatever, he is the Hater in Chief. And that is all they care about. They hate people for the color of their skin, the genitalia in their pants, and/or the size of their bank accounts. This is the conservative principle and has been for ever. It gets tarted up occasionally when the truth pops out, like now, but it is and has been the basis for their political concept for ever.
Kay
We owe him. That should be the new presidential seal.
Khan nailed this guy’s character with one sentence: “you have sacrificed nothing”.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I bet to differ. I think many who have served time for crimes might be better cabinet members than anyone drumph picks. I’ve met a few who have served lots of time and they would even make better presidents than drumph. 2 in the last 2 months alone.
debbie
@Kay:
Creepy talking about oneself in the third person.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: I think he was quoting Hillary.
Ruckus
@Hal:
The people who supported drumph also like to conveniently forget that the reason we aren’t doing as good as they think we should be is the starting point when he took office. There isn’t one actual conservative president who has made life better. And there are two presidents in the last 80 yrs for us, FDR and Obama, that made life a lot better after taking over for republicans, Hoover and GWB. Experience, logic, reason, facts are on our side, but that makes no difference to conservatives. That tells me that there is something that goes on in their minds that isn’t the economy. Considering the turnout, I bet I know what it is.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: The Electors for his states are HIS PEOPLE, there will be no faithless electors on his side. This is a pipe dream, give it up.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
Well, you are taller than I am*, it just might be true.
Ruckus
@Glidwrith:
It’s a great story.
If it is heard, it wouldn’t be understood. If it’s understood it won’t be cared about. If it’s cared about they wouldn’t be conservative in the first place. IOW, they don’t give a shit. They don’t think they will be the victims. They think if they strike first they can’t become victims.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Oops, thanks.
Ruckus
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I have played in Pauley Pavilion! Of course that was in pickup games during the week and I regularly got stuffed by second and third string college players but still, Pauley!
IOW I bet I couldn’t have been a water boy for the Bruins.
Ruckus
@InternetDragons:
I wonder how different this is from the past 200+ years? In my youth there was a lot of apathy, even with all the anti-Vietnam stuff happening. I think that apathy is a natural side effect of being young, you have a lot of new stuff on your plate. Trying to get laid, maybe school, a decent job, kids, moving out of parents house, trying to get laid, what career to attempt to follow……. Voting for someone to be governor or president is not on a lot of lists. It’s too distant, too theoretical, most haven’t had a lot of exposure to making decent decisions at 18.
Not sure how to change that but I’d bet social media will play a big part.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
It was neither. What it was was unheard. It was people who said it was vague and unconvincing over and over who helped make it unheard. Yes policy can be boring and can be beaten by bumpersticker phrases but policy is what works well, or not. Bumpersticker phrases make noise, not sense or guidance or information, policy does that. You can’t govern by being uninformed nor can you by properly governed by being uninformed. Clinton’s policies were and are not vague nor unconvincing but you had to actually read them, on her website or listen to them in her speeches, not read them on bumperstickers. And that failure to do so is not on her shoulders, that requires a mind that is involved, not one that just follows the crowd.
DCF
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’ve nailed it here…Christianists (Christian supremacists) are a significant force within the body politic:
Jeff Sharlet on “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”
Jeff Sharlet on “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”
DCF
Here is the link: https://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/12/sharlet
SFBayAreaGal
@Ruckus: I took a U S. history class at a local community college over 20 some odd years ago. The one of many things that stuck with me from that class was apathy was there before the US Revolution. My teacher said 1/3 was for the war, 1/3 against the rebellion, and 1/3 didn’t vote. The 1/3 that didn’t vote was because winning or losing the war wouldn’t change their life.
sunny raines
trump is everything good parents teach their children not to be,
Tehanu
@Ruckus:
“They don’t get to say they voted for economic growth, which is bullshit-BTW, and that all the hate just came along for the ride. They voted for the hate. They get to own that.” And, “They don’t think they will be the victims. They think if they strike first they can’t become victims. ”
What I’ve been noticing is the number of Trumpezoids whose rejoinder to everything is, “We love seeing liberal tears!” and adding that Trump won, so “get over it, losers!” All they care about is that feeling of being winners for once and getting to sneer at us, the way they imagine — and I emphasize “imagine” — we “liberal elitists” sneer at them. Pointing out that Hillary actually won the popular vote and that they are the minority doesn’t even touch them; they start quoting fake news about the vote count. It makes me think that the reason they don’t trust the “mainstream media” and “the government” is that they would gladly lie to promote their own causes and they think everyone else is just like them — and that everyone else SHOULD be a victim, not them. And Trump’s just the same: he can dish it out, but he sure can’t take it.
wenchacha
@donnah: I want to know how people suffered as a result of Obama’s presidency. Were they pulled over by cops for nothing? Did their investments take a giant hit? Did the kids’ schools become prisons of indoctrination? What? I want them to count the ways, and then we’ll talk.
Applejinx
The funny thing is I’ve been listening to talks by Douglas Rushkoff, and he’s got some concepts that make sense, but his prescription for fixing things is strikingly supportive of the Rust Belt. I do not know ONE other person whose analysis is like that.
Rushkoff says capitalism is dying because it’s expanded past the point where it can easily expand. There are no more exploitable hinterlands. But our whole economic system is based on endless growth. Wall Street is a perfect example, it must grow even when that makes no sense, because everything has to always be growing and expanding. I think this is why Obama made the choices he did and backed the TPP and all: he bought into this narrative because only catastrophe can dislodge it, and no-drama Obama is not about to wreck the system.
But it’s based on perpetual growth in a world where there are no new frontiers. Goes back to the invention of the first corporations and the very concept of what money is. Because of the way money is lent out, especially because of the way it’s leveraged now, it has to always grow even when it can’t anymore.
Rushkoff calls this out as insane, and I agree, but he goes on to explain stuff. We talk of how much more efficient big agribusiness is than small farmers: but that’s only true if you ignore whole industries of globalized transport. It’s wasteful to produce bulk foodstuffs in places and ship it all over. In fact shipping is in crisis because the frenzy of globalized activity is slumping. The system is collapsing not because it isn’t functional, but because it can only persist by constant expanding and it can’t do that anymore.
Rushkoff’s calling for localized economies, communities. There’s NO REASON this can’t happen in the Rust Belt, or anywhere: hell, it’s most plausible in exactly such places. But there have to be smaller-scale systems in place to support such communities and most importantly they cannot be judged by globalized standards and compelled to produce shareholder value comparable to globalized big businesses. Being able to do small local things must take on renewed relevance.
This is a sharp divergence from the Clinton program of ‘teach everybody to be competitively globalized, and get them to move where they are most effective’, and I like that about it. I don’t think Clinton’s aspirational stuff is moral, because the aspirations are wrong. They’re totally locked into the context of global capitalism and extreme mobility of labor and capital, and that would still be fine if there wasn’t an obligation to continue expanding forever and bringing investment returns. That’s what kills it.
West Podunk, MI might never be globally competitive, but it’s insane to think it couldn’t be a functional community. But you can’t have it competing on equal terms with Bangladesh. The Third World has made great strides and improvements in conditions of life. Unfortunately, that pressures West Podunk even worse. The terms of the game need to be changed.