This is one of my favorite tweets from the post-election period:
'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) October 16, 2015
Via TPM, we now have a (metaphorically eaten) face and name to attach to that sentiment:
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.
She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington, D.C. And she knew Trump’s pick for Treasury—Steven Mnuchin—all too well.
OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.
“I just wish that I had not voted,” said Colebrook, 59.
Me too, Ms. Colebrook. Me too.
It’s tempting to wish Ms. Colebrook would just start punching herself in the face now and not stop until 2020, but there is something admirable about her willingness to admit she fucked up.
I suspect that won’t be the case with the lion’s leopard’s share of Trump voters, who will continue to proudly and belligerently proclaim their allegiance to Hair Furor, even when he and his minions are feasting on their noses.
There’s a whole lot of gassing about whether or not Trump voters are reachable by Democrats, and as usual when we’re talking about millions of people, a straight yes-or-no answer is almost certainly too simplistic to be accurate.
I suspect at least some small minority of them are like Colebrook, stupid and/or uninformed enough to be willing to gamble on a terrible person like Trump despite his yawning deficits as a human being rather than voting for the shitgibbon because he’s a racist, sexist, xenophobic bully.
But it doesn’t make any sense to me to remake the party to pursue people like Colebrook, any more than I’d want the party to hand out Corvettes and bottles of Jack to sew up the drunk driver vote.
Anyhoo, open thread.
schrodinger's cat
A significant minority of this country has voted for greed, avarice and hate and against decency, kindness and reason. We are all going to pay the price.
Brooklyn Michael
Like BREXITers who had to Google what the hell they’d done the next day…
https://trumpgrets.tumblr.com/
Major Major Major Major
On the one hand,
is true. On the other hand,
shows a troubling inability to understand the distinction between not doing something bad and doing something anti-bad.
germy
I also wish she had not voted.
SiubhanDuinne
The date on that tweet is 16 October 2015. Not sure it matters — it’s a funny line, regardless — but it ain’t post-this-election.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brooklyn Michael:
Maybe what we need is a political “morning after” pill.
trollhattan
I don’t know how voter innumeracy can be overcome. We’ve grown the economy and added jerbs every stinking month since the stimulus and yet Trump’s “Sturm und Drang” [sounds better in the original German like everything he says] message is their reality. i.e., there’s no defense against idiocy, other than treating everybody like an idiot, yourself. Not a winning strategy for Dems.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Interesting — I never noticed that! It was retweeted widely after the election, which was the first time I’d ever seen it.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: Well, as if we needed any further evidence, this year showed that elections aren’t won on facts. It also showed that elections aren’t won on character, so I don’t know what we really have left.
Cermet
What the demorats need to focus on is increasing their strength in key states like North Carolina, make a strong effort to win back some of the red area’s in Florida, and maybe Georgia. Plan on Texas after 2020 but fight like hell for areas that can be won over. Maybe not select a weak, indifferent person to run for a local seat or even a Gov or Senator like they have done far too often.
crawdad
Why did the bank foreclose?
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Well, I love the whole concept of a Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, so it’s all good. Glad you shared; I hadn’t seen it.
pamelabrown53
@Betty Cracker: #8
Betty, if you can edit your post, I’d suggest you include a couple sentences more: if memory serves me, it’s when she blames the “guvmint” for her lack of judgement.
germy
@Betty Cracker: Many twitter humorists saw it coming. Remember the wag who tweeted the five stages of Trump? And this was back when we were laughing and thinking he’d be another Herman Cain.
germy
“I never dreamed the weasels would rip MY flesh”
GregB
It will be tough getting a thing done these next four years because all of my time will be consumed by smugly laughing in peoples’ faces.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Innumeracy is part of it for sure, but there’s a level of stupid that goes beyond innumeracy when someone buys the “reformer” act from an alleged billionaire who lives in a golden penthouse that Liberace would find over the top and has a long track record of fleecing working people.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: It just reminds me a lot of Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
WereBear
@Major Major Major Major: What we are dealing with is a hardcore group who have been listening to Fox News/talk radio/RWNJ friends and relations for so long that reality is whatever Hannity says it is.
Fortunately, this is barely 1/4 of the electorate. So screw them, forget them, and see what was itching the people who didn’t show up to vote at all.
Gin & Tonic
Aaaand Germy beat me to it. Damn you.
Poopyman
@Major Major Major Major:
Spite. Pure spite.
germy
washington post headline:
Trump threatens ‘consequences’ for U.S. firms that relocate offshore
Tax breaks?
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
I don’t give her any credit, because it was too easy to figure out that a rich tangerine born-spoiled asshole from NYC who has declared bankruptcy and left smaller businesses holding the bag wouldn’t give a damn about the little guy/gal and would be hooking his rich cheating asshole buddies up with top level positions. Even people who voted for him thought he was unfit. These people are fucking stupid and MIGHT live to regret their decision.
Notice I said “might.”
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
They were chanting all the oldies at his rally last night…including drain the swamp. This AFTER he’s obviously decided that rather than drain the swamp he’s going to just dump the untreated contents of the local municipal sewer system into it. Nothing but the raw entertainment value seems to matter to these people. They view this whole thing as though it were a WWF event with a bunch of macho posturing and crude over the top language. To them this is all just entertainment and the guy they’re a fan of “won” so they’re happy until he starts to do damage. At that point it stops becoming idle entertainment and starts to hurt. That’s maybe when some of them wake up. Maybe.
germy
@Gin & Tonic: Great minds and all that.
schrodinger's cat
Interesting factoid I learned today: there used to be a monument to Cornwallis in Mumbai!
Starfish
@SiubhanDuinne: Also, the dude lives in the UK.
waspuppet
I think you’re assuming she won’t vote for Trump in 2020*. He’ll come out with some catch phrase two weeks before the election and — well, I would put the chance of her voting for him again at under 50%, but not much.
*(And that’s assuming he runs in 2020, which I think is far from certain.)
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: We need our own media operation. That’s where the wingers have us beat.
Raphael Kearns
Just like the fucking TEA Party.
Taxed Enough Already!
What horse shit.
Wait til all those motherfuckers lose their health insurance and that Medicare they were waiting to get.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@trollhattan: Yeah, I have a FB friend who was a huge Trump fan, telling me how awful the economy was out there in the hinterlands (I live in the DC area) where he lives…which would be credible except he just took two of his kids on a trophy hunting trip to Africa. Like, how bad can the economy really be for you if you can afford something like that? They say that stuff and it has no connection to reality, even for them, but they believe it anyway.
germy
@schrodinger’s cat: Exactly. And liberal satellite radio doesn’t cut it, and neither do obscure podcasts. The WWC (as they’re called) merely have to switch on their car and truck radios to hear local and nationally-syndicated RWTalk. My last oil change, I sat in the waiting room and was treated to Fox talkers on the TV.
Humdog
I am going with the loose 25 percent diagnosis. 25% voted for the competent candidate. 25% couldn’t be bothered to vote for some reason. 25% were oppressed from voting, either the voter law changes caught them or they couldn’t get away from work or whatever. 25% are unreachable because they are either too stupid or are evil and they voted for the rancid Cheeto. We get candidates that are both competent and inspirational to get the HRC and cannot be bothered quarters. And we help the oppressed get their voting rights and support to help them get to the polls. This can also help with inspiration. Ignore the deplorable quadrant.
satby
deleted
Hellbastard
IN light of recent events I went ahead and started reading How Democratic is the Constitution? by Robert Dahl. He hits on the usual sore points… the electoral college, the senate, etc. Makes the good point that the senate wasn’t the result of some high-minded commitment to fairness and equal representation but simply a compromise that had to be made to get all 13 colonies on board. He even devotes and entire appendix to the “We’re not a democracy, we’re a republic” nonsense. Worth a read…
schrodinger's cat
@germy: Also there is no liberal media. MSM are acolytes of Paul Ryan.
The Moar You Know
Let me be the 20th (I’m assuming) person on this thread to point out that she did not, in fact, admit she fucked up.
Ella in New Mexico
The problem right now is, how do we in the rest of the world who doesn’t get all their news from Steve Dooshy and Friends find a way to get real news news to these people?
I’ve been forcing myself to tune into Fox News during the day, just to see what the folks back home are hearing about the exciting plans in store for them from PEOTUS Scrotum Hairpiece and to be honest, they’re more focused on crap like some guy needing money to buy X-mas wreaths to put on soldiers graves or jailing flag burners than they are discussing Trumps cabinet picks.
I’m amazed this Colebrook woman even KNOWS who the Treasury pick is, much less how he fucked her and that 90 year-old lady who’s account was 27cents over due right up the ass.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not just a media operation — we need a propaganda outlet, like Breitbart and the innumerable other paying propaganda shops that the right wing has set up. We don’t have to lie like they do, but we do need to broadcast the truth just as loudly and insistently as they broadcast their lies.
geg6
@germy:
I don’t know why you put up with it. When I go into places like the tire shop or the oil change place, I will ask them nicely to change the channel if FOX or CNN are on. And I tell them that, if they don’t, I will not be patronizing their place of business any more. And then I will ask for my keys and walk out.
I’ve done it. Well, not the walked out part. Yet. The one time it went far enough that I requested my keys, they finally backed down when they realized I was dead serious.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Agreed!
Major Major Major Major
@germy: What you did there, it was seen.
@Humdog: Pareto principle in action!
Turgidson
All the “Democrats need to reach out to WWC voters” navel gazing floating around out there is getting tiresome.
The Democrats, with all their warts and shortcomings and whatever else, are the only party that’s delivered jack squat to that demographic in terms of tangible policy. What they haven’t done is stop the onward march of time so that the heyday of solid blue collar manufacturing jobs is frozen in time for all eternity. What they haven’t done is directly appeal to those voters’ grievances and biases. At some point, the grievances and biases and the need to be told comforting lies about bringing back a past that is long gone trumped (pun only partially intended) actual, tangible policy gains when these voters entered the voting booth.
The Democrats should still campaign on delivering improvements to these voters’ lives via sensible policy because it is the right thing to do – but NOT out of a cynical expectation that it’s going to flip that voting demographic back. Hillary Clinton had a goddamn encyclopedia’s worth of ideas and proposals that no one ever heard about because EMAILS and SHADOWS and LOCK HER UP. But the reality of the situation is that all the policy proposals in the world, and for that matter, all the brutal rogerings they’re going to get from the GOP cabal of crooks and nutjobs they keep voting for, are not going to flip that voting demographic back to the Democrats in large numbers.
Trump is a terrifyingly ignorant and reckless moron when it comes to actually running the government and knowing his ass from a health care policy white paper. But he’s pretty good at telling these idiots what they want to hear. So he’ll keep doing it – keep blaming blacks and browns for everything, keep making empty promises, keep throwing red meat – even as he and his pets in Congress are emptying these voters’ pockets and shaking them upside down to get the last few pennies to fall out. And no amount of Bernie Sanders-style progressive populism will get past that flattering con job.
gvg
well i was pleasantly surprised at Thanksgiving that apparently the gun nut side of my family didn’t vote for Trump. 3 voted Clinton and supposedly the not present young white male cop voted Johnson. I was wondering how it would work out. The real hard core gun lover dad is a vietnam vet who voted GOP for decades but went with Obama because he thought Bush had screwed up a lot like Vietnam. I was really surprised before 2008 when he expressed that disgust. Young female cousin considers herself conservative and was probably Romney but has been scared of Trump throughout. We tried to stay off politics, but we kept slipping all of us and saying I can’t believe…..I intend to work on the cousin who thinks she is conservative because I think her idea of conservative isn’t where the GOP is these days.
Calouste
In slightly positive news for today, race-baiting selfimportant Troy asshole Zac Goldsmith lost his seat to the Lib-Dems in a by-election that he forced himself. A small blow against Brexit, and the Tory majority is now down to 13. There is another by-election in a former Tory seat next week.
hitchhiker
I’m starting to wonder if we’re going to see a DT-divorce boomlet. There are a lot of people for whom this election has become a defining moment — you’re willfully ignorant / an eager racist / willing to allow ignorance & racism in return for tax cuts OR you’re not.
If you’re in the NOT pile and you’re forced to acknowledge that you’ve married one of them … ouch. All that hand-wringing in the media over how to deal with your horrible relatives on Turkey Day is, imo, a pretty strong signal that lots of relationships won’t survive this catastrophe.
Cacti
Do I feel sorry for suckers who end up getting sucker punched?
Nope.
Not even a little.
Villago Delenda Est
“You fucked up! You trusted us!”
trollhattan
@Turgidson:
Agreed and I’m done accepting it as something “to be fixed.” We need to knock off key governorships and reverse voter suppression in those states, not “tactically” stop acting like adults where belligerence works more better.
Major Major Major Major
Hi everybody! Several colleagues of mine were involved in this, and it got written up in the New Yorker, and it’s a good primer on digital security for during a Trump administration, especially for activists & the more outspoken such as us. Ideally one of y’all could front-page it ;)
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/trump-preparedness-digital-security-101
Pittsburgh Mike
In fairness, that’s exactly how I felt when Obama nominated Tim Geithner in 2009: “Uh oh.”
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: Hence, my nym.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Ella in New Mexico
@crawdad:
To get to the other side of the River Hades?
Lurking Canadian
I submit that one more or fewer vote for Trump in the Los Angeles area probably wasn’t a significant factor.
trollhattan
@gvg:
Sounds somehow…promising. Let’s hope shell-shocked decent Republican types get their voting acts together in 2018.
Betty Cracker
@hitchhiker: I wonder about that too. I’ve been shunning my only surviving parent for weeks over the election, and I’ve heard similar stories from lots of folks. I can’t think of any other civic event that has so divided people.
lethargytartare
I’m not sure this scans – she’s pissed that his BS about helping the WWC was BS, she doesn’t seem to care about the Racism, Sexism, Xenophobia, or Bullying. That would all be fine if he’d just pay off her mortgage.
Chris
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
Seriously. Not knowing that Donald Trump would do something like this is like not knowing that Mafia kingpins would deal drugs. It’s like not knowing that al-Qaeda would attack the United States. It’s like not knowing that Lex Luthor hates Superman. It’s who he is. It’s all he is. It’s all he’s ever been for thirty years spent in the public eye. His fucking catchphrase is “you’re fired!” What the hell was it going to take to get this through to her? A fucking Geico commercial? “If you’re Donald Trump, you screw the little guy. It’s what you do. If you want to save 15% or more on car insurance, you switch to Geico. It’s what you do.”
Served
[Trump stabs Rust Belt voter in neck]
Rust Belt Voter: Well at least he’s doing something.
Chris
@waspuppet:
No lower than 27%, surely.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Turgidson:
Exactly – I’m sick of hearing about these ignorant fucktards and hope they all die early preventable miserable deaths. Good riddance. Exhibit A is the story Betty Cracker posted this morning from the WaPo about the family in Alabama whose 4 yr old killed the 9 yr old with a gun left out, out of 100s of guns in this extended family’s homes. All of them overweight, all of them smoking, all of them with guns in every room and in all of the cars, all underemployed, and full of resentment at the gubmint comin’ to take their precious guns away. Can’t imagine why we would miss them.
Tyler Forrest
I’m having a hard time seeing his path towards popularity – I think Election Day was his high water mark. What can he possibly do to change the minds of the 40% of white voters who didn’t vote for him? Or to woo PoC? If denounces the racism, he looses more then he gains.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Which one of the shit-gibbons horde Made the statement the other day that facts don’t exist
This is the anti-fact party.
Their leaders know that facts don’t support them so they don’t use facts. They do know bullshit though. Mainly as it flows from their mouths in unbelievable amounts at all times.
trollhattan
Oh boy, Donny can’t stop treading on his own dick. For a “media star” he doesn’t understand optics very well.
Please proceed, douchenozzle.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
This woman is deeply stupid. I have zero sympathy for her. You know fucking what? I have economic anxiety, and it is based on the fact that the Republican party has been trying to screw everyone of us out of everything we have. That’s why I’ll never vote for them ever. I truly hope this woman loses everything she has.
kindness
I don’t know. Seems to me too many are ignoring why so many people are angry and have decided hating and hurting other Americans is more important than getting things they want.
Look no further than Fox News. We had angry and we had fringe prior to the 90s. It just wasn’t packaged so well and delivered up 24/7 to those willing to swill from it’s taps. We can’t really combat Fox as they aren’t going to change. Hopefully their demographic dies out soon.
Belafon
“They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in.”
You voted for the candidate that did that. The other one promised to help as much as possible. But you chose the one that made you feel good/angry.
trollhattan
@Tyler Forrest:
Last night he proclaimed winning “a landslide” in front of his howler monkeys. His spewage of lies has to continue and I will be fascinated to see what he’ll have to say to congress in January. Is Joe Wilson ready? Has he been working with a voice coach?
Ruckus
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Those maybes are doing an awful lot of work there. I’m pretty sure maybe is not that capable.
Chris
@Served:
“Hillary would’ve stabbed me with a rusty knife!”
Belafon
As for changing the party, the consensus seems to be building that we’re going to try to make these people feel like they should join the party, rather than the party changing to fit them in. A lot of that will involve Democrats getting involved locally, which, while they do that in some places, I can tell you it’s not universal.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: Hmm. On the one hand, recounts that don’t reveal anything (like these are almost certainly going to be) would diminish the credibility of his “fraud!” theory. On the other hand, blocking them makes it look like he has something to hide. Weird!
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major:
She was already in that column because she had a perfectly decent loan but when they waved all of that extra cash at her she willingly signed up for their crappy loan.
The banks constantly offered us similar deals to refi so we could take $400k out of our modest little house in Anaheim because it was suddenly worth $700k. I knew we couldn’t afford a $700,000 mortgage even at a decent interest rate so I told them to get lost, repeatedly. The first thing I always asked was if they could offer me a 30 year fixed 1st at lower than 5% and the answer was always “no”. In 2008, 5% was a great rate on a 30 year fixed.
The people who finally bought that house from us in 2010 for just under $500k (far more than the first realtor we talked to wanted to list it at) were losing their house to the banks because they’d bitten on one of those ridiculous offers. They were fans of Glen Beck and were moving from a huge house they couldn’t afford to my just under 1600 sq ft house with three kids and two gigantic dogs.
The neighbor at one corner of our cul de sac bought his house the same day we bought ours in 2003, paid about the same amount for his much bigger place, and lost it to foreclosure because when they offered him the $700,000 he couldn’t resist, but no one seems to know what they did with that money; he replaced the windows but they didn’t remodel the kitchen or fix the oddities that came from the addition of a family room behind the living room.
Roger Moore
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
It has connection to the reality that they’re worried about the economy because they don’t trust the Democrats. There was some very good stuff before the election showing that people’s perception of the economy more closely reflected their pre-existing political beliefs than the actual state of the economy. IOW the WWC may very well have been feeling economically anxious, but that’s because they hate Obama, not because their objective economic conditions should provoke anxiety.
narya
@trollhattan: The latest vote totals show that the difference in Wisconsin was 22,177 votes; in Pennsylvania, 64,374 votes, and in Michigan, 10,704 votes. 97,255 total. Which kind of boggles my mind, when I can stop ranting long enough.
And yes, what is he “afraid” of?
Matt McIrvin
@hitchhiker:
I was wondering if the rash of suicides would be statistically visible. I know there have been some (there are a few every time, of course) but anecdotally, the wave of suicidal ideation has been incredible this time.
Major Major Major Major
@opiejeanne: I didn’t say she wasn’t already in that column. It’s just weird that right now, with a very explicit slap in the face (none of that big-number, interest-rate-based voodoo stuff), she can’t even grok the difference.
TBH it’s a pretty common gap in most people’s ethical understanding, which I still find baffling.
ETA: @Roger Moore: There was also data showing that they changed their political-economic beliefs on e.g. trade to match Trump’s even though they’d been pro-trade Republicans before; and now these same people who thought the country was a communist shithole before the election now think the economy is going gangbusters.
Matt McIrvin
@Tyler Forrest:
War.
janeform
Commenting on this blog aside, I don’t think that calling Trump voters stupid serves us well. There is a group of people who are in desperate situations and who have been misinformed. If we can inform these voters face-to-face or through ads/media it’s all to the good.
raven
@janeform: And I’m Father Flannigan from Boys Town.
ChrisGrrr
@trollhattan: Jon Stewart talked to Charlie Rose about the overgeneralization of seeing so many voters as racists, but I’m more and more with you. The inability to project the future under Drumpf from the past (recent months, or the decades) is a lack of intelligence that scares me.
I’ll work my butt off. Non- straight white males deserve nothing that’s coming. Inside, though, I have no more hope of democracy winning out than I do of any national media source ever practicing objective journalism again.
Steve in the ATL
@germy:
Shit, Fox News was on the hotel lobby TV yesterday in freakin’ Portland, Oregon!
O. Felix Culpa
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks! Here’s another article on the topic of digital security for protesters: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/11/digital-security-tips-for-protesters
Roger Moore
@hitchhiker:
Not until he finds a replacement for Melania.
lollipopguild
One thing that struck me during the election was how so much of the media and voters treated the election as a GAME. As if the next person in the White House did not really matter. So many people on the right hate our country as it currently exists and want to burn it all to the ground because…… maybe a nuclear war with China or Florida underwater or both may bring people to their senses but I would not bet on it. Facts and reality do not matter anymore. Until they bite our face off.
Texasboyshaun
Hoocoodanode that a con artist billionaire would pick Wall Street thieves over common people?! This ill-informed jackass should’ve done her homework before she voted. Elections have consequences, lady!
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: I’m sure another illegal immigrant would be happy to take her job.
hitchhiker
@Betty Cracker:
I have 2 family members who aren’t speaking to me at all & likely more to come. Oh, well. I left Michigan in the ’70s for a reason, and where I’ve made my home we voted for HRC by a margin of 11 to 1.
I can’t even imagine how it would be to be surrounded by DT fans. It’s still unthinkable that anybody checked the box by his name.
Baud
Back to the drawing board for Baud! 2020!
Chris
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
This is what’s increasingly made me want to punch people in the face with the whole “white working class economic anxiety” narrative of the past month. I work the local minimum wage, have never had anything but temporary jobs or internships usually for minimum wage or close for a decade, have quite a bit of debt, would be unable to pay for health insurance without Medicaid, and I’d be in even worse shape if not for the excellent (coastal and liberal) friends that are letting me live in their basement for a pittance at the moment. And I’m whiter than a Klansman’s robes. You want to talk to the white working class? Hi. Pleased to meet you. Now please stop carrying water for the pieces of shit that have voted time and time again to screw me over because they think I’m a parasite and/or because screwing over blacks and immigrants is just so important to them that people like me’s ability to live decently is considered expendable. And pretty please stop excusing a bunch of people from all income levels and professional backgrounds with the pathetic lie that they’re all or even mostly “working class” and “economically anxious.”
Turgidson
@Belafon:
Right. My post wasn’t intended to mean “fuck those people, I don’t want their votes anyway,” even though that is the emotionally satisfying feeling post-election that I have certainly indulged in as well.
It’s more just that I’m tired of the Thomas Frank-esque lectures about how this all happened because the Democrats haven’t been banging the progressive economic populist drum hard enough. I just think that’s bunk and that’s not what is motivating these voters to go for the GOP in general and Hair Furor in particular at this point, if it ever was.
Of course Democrats should be on the ground locally and make their case to these voters, and if that case includes a dollop of Sanders or Warren-style populism, that’s fine. Every vote helps, even if it comes from a suspected deplorable. But Democrats should not expect a huge reversal among these voters just because they promised to crack down on Wall Street and make the Single Payer Unicorn real. Nor should they indulge the grievances and resentments of these voters at the expense of their own far more multiethnic base. The one “populist”-ish issue I think they should run on even harder than they already do in the rust belt and similarly situated areas is that the Democrats are the fucking party of labor and labor unions. Sherrod Brown does that pretty well and he keeps winning in Ohio.
Major Major Major Major
Keep in mind too that almost every “economically anxious white working class” voter is a Republican anyway. There were not very many voters who flipped from Obama 2012 to Trump 2016, at all.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
He seems to have done OK for himself so far. I wouldn’t bet that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
low-tech cyclist
IME, many people still don’t grasp the huge divide between the parties. People my age (early 60s) and older still have a picture in their heads of the conservative-but-still-rational party that the GOP used to be, the party of Howard Baker and Bob Dole. And I suspect this mislead
If the next few months don’t take care of this without any assistance, the Dems need to do a messaging campaign where they make the differences between the parties crystal-clear to people, so that nobody’s got any doubt which party wants to eat their faces. And they shouldn’t wait until fall 2018; they need to take advantage of the opportunities as they come up. People should already know which party’s on their side, and which party isn’t, well before we ever get to 2018.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Turgidson:
Populism in a majority white country will always end up at white nationalism. Always. We just witnessed it. For all the unicorn lefty Berniebros who comment here whining about how awful neoliberalism is and no one likes it and why the Dems were rejected (whatever the fuck it even means), we didn’t see it being rejected because of the overwhelming demand for Scandianavian style socialism, we saw the demand for neofascism. White people are the problem, not Democratic policies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“I suspect that won’t be the case with the lion’s leopard’s share of Trump voters, who will continue to proudly and belligerently proclaim their allegiance to Hair Furor, even when he and his minions are feasting on their noses. ”
I predict that when Trump falls they will be claiming they voted for Rubo who was the Republican canidate, Trump is a Democrate and Obama was the last good Republican president. They are post truthers so when Trump’s failure becomes undeniable they will just rewrite history so Trump was never one of them.
greennotGreen
Teena’s solution to voting for the (obviously) wrong candidate is to not vote. This reminds me of some people I know who, when an M.D. doesn’t cure their illness, instead of seeking another medical opinion, say, “Okay, all doctors are quacks. I’m using herbs and healing crystals!” In other words, there’s a serious lack of rationality at the core of both responses. It’s going to be really difficult to use facts and logic to reach anyone who doesn’t have the ability to reason.
Baud
@Turgidson:
Agree. Lots of people want to tell us what to do. Very few are willing to tell us what they will do.
Chris
@kindness:
Yeah, I do increasingly think the nineties, even more than Nixon or Reagan, was the tipping point.
It was a combination of two things: in Washington, the arrival to power of Gingrich and his posse and the implementation of an party-wide policy that said that gaining and keeping power came first, over any and all other considerations, including governing and the national interest. And in the nation in general, the launch of Fox News, which was soon imitated by smaller talk radio outlets and later blogs and the like. It took the hate radio and literature that had always existed for a sizable fringe of Americans and made it completely mainstream, and it locked the majority of Republican voters into a bubble inside which they were increasingly taught to view the other half (by this point, the majority) of their fellow citizens not as misguided neighbors but as battlefield enemies.
We’ve seen bad presidents come and go, the system is set up to survive them. The nineties is when the entire political sphere became toxic, among politicians and among ordinary citizens both.
SamR
@low-tech cyclist: In 2012, Democrats were going to run ads describing Ryan’s Medicare plan. They did a test run with a focus group. The focus group REFUSED to believe the ads.
Its harder than it seems to get the point across.
hitchhiker
@lollipopguild:
It was a game because they never thought it would be close. They were free, therefore, to fuck with HRC as much as they wanted. (Which was a lot!) Also to let things slide w/respect to things like DT’s business conflicts.
< 100k people in 3 states changed all that.
Kathryn
Surely she should give Mr. Mnuchin a chance!
Juice Box
@Turgidson: Gore had an encyclopedia of proposals and ideas and nobody ever heard them because all people heard was “earth tones”, “love canal”, and “I invented the internet”. Kerry had an encyclopedia of proposals and ideas and nobody ever heard them because all people heard was “windsurfing”, “flip-flopper”, and “fake purple hearts”. It seems to be a systemic problem.
I don’t know how you reach people who have no idea how the government works and no interest in learning. “It’s boring.”
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: I want to do the tandava, Shiva’s dance of destruction of cosmic destruction. Where he opens his third eye and destroys evil.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@janeform: You got a cable network and radio stations for this ?
Shakti
No. There is not a shred to admire about her.
She’s a 59 year old woman who is well past the age of naivete required to believe someone who fucks other people over loudly & unrepentantly would not operate the same way with her. She saw it and liked it because it was not her. She only came to this belated conclusion because she saw the name of someone she blames personally for fucking her over. She is willfully ignorant and delusional and expects people like me, who she loathes, to pay her Social Security and Medicare benefits so she doesn’t eat cat food. I wish nothing good for her.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@SamR: I have made this point many times on this very blog. People would not believe Ryan meant what he said.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
The obvious response is that Trump understands optics enough to win.
The other response is that he doesn’t have to give a shit about the BS conventional wisdom of optics.
He is simply behaving the way that Trump behaves. Stein’s recount madness is bullshit, and she has got Trump tangled in her bullshit with more bullshit of his own because his fragile ego can’t deal with even the weakest challenge, especially for a woman.
But the transition rolls on, and this little interlude will pass as well.
This is who “the people” elected, a giant man baby. The only question is how he will act when real pressure comes, and whether the country will suffer for it.
NotMax
So it looks as if we’re going to end up with a cabinet whose combined asset value is greater than the budget of some entire countries.
opiejeanne
@crawdad: Read the article: she couldn’t make the mortgage payments when her tenants lost their jobs in the recession, or so she claims. More likely she couldn’t make the mortgage payments when the real cost of that stinker loan kicked in. Zero interest loans are so attractive for the first 3-5 years until the actual payment is re-figured to cover the actual principle and interest.
Or, she may have had a “liar’s loan” and was given loans she had no hope of ever paying back.
It’s unclear what she did with the money she took out: she says she was going to remodel the rentals she already had and possibly purchase more rental property. She may have just blown through that money because it was so tempting.
Turgidson
@Chris:
And also it allowed these people to live in a parallel universe where up is down, the sky is pink and hamburgers eat people, and all of their resentments and biases are not only justified by something to be proud of. They now believe in a world that bears almost no resemblance to empirical reality, at least as respects politics. It’s fucking awful.
Juice Box
@gvg: That’s how it starts. In 1992 my parents were so repulsed by Iran-contra and my mom was so pro-choice that they voted for the Big Dog as a vote against GHWB. It was a one off protest vote, but the scales fell from their eyes and by the impeachment, my father was sending me articles he had torn from Mother Jones.
germy
@Juice Box:
And the assholes at SNL kept mocking the lockbox with their stupid “edgy” humor.
Tom Burg
Teena has a more interesting background than this piece would indicate.
http://www.gopoly.com/inside_athletics/hof/Colebrook_Teena?view=bio
Major Major Major Major
@germy: Well, that is their job, to be fair.
Chris
@lollipopguild:
I wanted to throttle them on election night when – and this was hours before I was even really worried about the outcome – I heard them looking at the close returns and giggling that “oh, if you’re a politics junkie, you are in for a really fun night!” No. No, we’re not. Those of us who are politics junkies are politics junkies because we understand that what happens tonight will have consequences for better or for worse in our lives and those of millions of others. We’re not staying up because we want to see which team scored the most touchdowns, we’re staying up because we literally want to know whether we’ll be able to afford health care or food, or whether our families might be broken up and deported or sent back to a war zone. It’s not a fucking game.
If America really is doomed to collapse into a Mad Max esque failed state some day, I really hope these guys are among those who are here to suffer from it. Maybe then they’ll finally have an inkling of what the thing they’ve been treating as a sports competition this entire time actually means for the other 90% of us.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Surprise
You can read about it at here. With nice graphs etc.
The “left” such as it is, better learn something real fast, that decades of propaganda work. We should be doing the same thing. Unless you see the “left” making strategic moves to have a large scale messaging operation involving many radio stations, broadcast and cable outlets, then all else is just bullshit.
EBT
@Gin & Tonic: http://lh6.ggpht.com/-N4PAzcxN__w/UvUyL-_9QAI/AAAAAAAAezk/LL7YDJQF8JQ/Weasels%252520Ripped%252520My%252520Flesh%252520story.%252520Man%252527s%252520Life%25252C%252520Sept%2525201956-8×6.jpg?imgmax=800
Chris
@Turgidson:
Yeah. And the other half isn’t that much better off, because a huge amount of it has no one to rely on but the mainstream media, whose image of reality at this point is plenty distorted in the direction of the Fox bubble as well. Half the media may be saying “the Earth is flat,” but the other half is saying “shape of Earth: views differ.”
Botsplainer
So Greenwald is in a twitter battle with Scott Lemieux from LGM. Greenwald is like a particularly retarded dog with a shit covered bone with regard to Hillary still.
Somebody needs to tell him to move on.
On some frightening notes, I’ve been spending a great deal of time in my car lately, thinking about the various social, economic and foreign policy miseries likely with the installation of the Trump regime.
My question today is whether all orders for military action (plus nuclear strike) have to pass first through the hands of SECDEF, or whether he has a secondary channel? And are the members of the JCS administration specific, or are their terms indefinite?
The reason for the nightmare fuel is that while Mattis is overly aggressive, he isn’t crazy and he’s got the sense of honor as a Marine. Should we luck into Petraeus, he’s not crazy either.
What concerns me is that Trump is both stupid AND crazy, and could easily bypass their advice and the advice of the JCS, going straight to some Dominionist nutbags at the USAF for some real nuttiness, bypassing the much saner commands of the Navy, Marines and Army.
Trump is brilliant at nothing – Trump is just Trump and Americans fall for his shit at their grave peril.
We elected a combination of Greg Stillson and Nehemiah Scudder.
p.a.
tRump voter: shit, he nominated someone that screwed me. oh well. at least he’ll screw the coloreds worse. now pass me the roast sparrow…
Turgidson
@Juice Box:
Absolutely. This election just turned the dial to eleventy-billion on that long-standing problem. HRC had probably the most detailed policy platform ever, and was able to actually talk about it probably the least of any recent Democratic nominee. And I have no idea how to fix this problem other than to cultivate ways to talk around the mainstream press. Obama started doing this once he realized there was no point in trying to reason with Chucklehead Todd or Ron Fournier, with some success. But there’s a lot of work to do to make it an actual counterweight, and the other side can poison the same wells, as they did with success this cycle with the fake news operations.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris:
Word. That’s what irritates me most about MSM political journalism. Its a fucking game to them. Even the News Hour which I haven’t seen in a month. All the women, from Judy Woodruff to Amy Walter, they used to be incessantly giggling.
Это курам на смех
Teaser on the Time’s editorial page today:
Fuck the fucking NYT.
Botsplainer
@Chris:
That was on whichever network Stephanopoulos appears on. We were in a dive trip in Bonaire, and had slipped back into our room in horror to watch the catastrophe unfold.
Turgidson
@Botsplainer:
True, but irony will be officially murdered, then dug up and murdered again a few dozen times, if Hair Furor takes his election “win”, based disproportionately on screaming about Hillary’s emails and making shit up about how she passed classified info all over the place as Secretary of State, and hands that very same position to the guy who willingly, admittedly, passed classified info to his fucking mistress.
All that said, I’ll still take that scumbag over most of the other names Hair Furor seems to be considering. Even Willard Mitt “Mittens” Romney. And that fact is truly appalling.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Это курам на смех: And at the same time Corey is calling for the arrest of the NYT editor for publishing Trump’s “tax return.” These guys are playing us all like a fine Stradivarius and we’re all just sitting around derping about it.
Botsplainer
@Turgidson:
Beating a few of them to death with a baseball bat outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner comes to mind….
Turgidson
@Это курам на смех:
Jesus fucking Christ. Did they run an editorial like that when Obama saved millions upon millions of jobs bailing out Detroit or passing the ARRA? If they did, I certainly missed it.
Major Major Major Major
@Turgidson: obama was able to talk around the press, and it worked for a while, until other propaganda sources started using the same alternative channels. Now we have to find a way around THOSE.
schrodinger's cat
@Это курам на смех: NYT has been bought and paid for, see their election coverage for example. Why do you even bother to hate read it.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: I may have worded that poorly if you thought that.
People who lost their houses because of choices like that still make me damned angry because they didn’t just hurt themselves, they hurt their neighbors. There was a period of two years that if we’d wanted or needed to sell our house we would have been in dire straits because of all of the foreclosures around us by idiots who took out loans they couldn’t afford, who never asked what their payments would look like when the chickens came home to roost. I do not understand people like that.
I do know that a friend’s innumerate son got a great job pushing mortgages in 2005; I think it was on commission. When I asked how he could possibly do that job because his dad had told us repeatedly that the young man had no head for math and had washed out of college, the friend told me there was no math involved and that his smarter, older brother had gotten him the job.
No math involved in selling a mortgage. The mind boggles.
Botsplainer
@Это курам на смех:
Seeing something indicating Trump has some UT stock.
hjs
I cordially invite Colebrook and any other Trump supporters who now feel buyer’s remorse to eat shit and die.
Citizen_X
@Chris:
I’m surprised nobody on our side actually did this, honestly.
Brachiator
@Juice Box:
You get a good candidate and win.
Kerry’s campaign was smothered with lies and nonsense. The story has yet to be written about how Hillary Clinton lost to an ignorant, strutting shitgibbon. But,
Gore won the election, but was cheated out of it.
Obama kicked ass twice.
Turgidson
@Botsplainer:
Red Wedding? Ugh, nevermind. I don’t want to give Trump any ideas.
schrodinger's cat
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: We need to ignore NYT and MSM in general, they are not our friends. The free media they gave DT is in large part responsible for our current predicament. That and never ending talk about emails.
Juice Box
@Turgidson: I kept having unbelievably confusing conversations with well-meaning conservatives who have no idea how the government works. “Obama passed a law”, “Obama didn’t pass a law”, “OMG, executive orders!”, “If I made a mistake with a classified document, I’d go to jail”. Clueless. Most of them well-meaning, but absolutely clueless.
Another Scott
@raven: Hello Father!!!1
Democrats should not be in the business of punching down. Teabaggers do that enough as it is.
We should be in the business of punching up, and fighting for everyone else.
We should be going after the institutions that are profiting by making the electorate stupider. We should be calling for boycotts of advertisers on Breitbart, Fox News/Fox Inc., the WSJ and all of Murdoch’s properties, all of Koch’s properties, and the like.
They understand money. Crapping on the electorate and making money in the process isn’t going to stop until they stop making money doing it.
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
@Brachiator: For that matter, Hillary Clinton was cheated, too.
germy
LeonS
@Baud: So how *do* we sew up the drunk driver vote then?
Redshift
@lollipopguild:
It’s worse than that, even. They treated the partisan refusal to confirm Garland as a game, rather than an outrage against democracy. They treated the open opposition to everything Obama proposed, regardless of the damage to the country, as a game. They treated it as a game when Republicans declared themselves opposed to compromise in principle, and voted against deals that, by their own admission, gave them 90% of what they wanted, because if it didn’t give them everything, and more important, give the Democrats nothing they wanted, it wasn’t a compromise.
#thisisnotnormal goes back way before Trump.
Major Major Major Major
Don’t look, but
RussiaWikileaks is for I’m sure completely innocent, transparency related reasons releasing Snowden-related documents that just happen to make Merkel look bad in advance of the German elections.@opiejeanne: I was being condescending when I called it hard to understand voodoo.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Scott: I see you left out venerable institutions like NPR and NYT, which in my opinion are worse because although they push the Republican agenda non-stop they are perceived as neutral or worse still, liberal.
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: Why do you think that is? Maybe the spectre of a good portion of the citizenry expressing a wish for your death? Maybe the idea of losing access to life saving medical care? Suicidal ideation is the RATIONAL response to those circumstances.
Iowa Old Lady
@Turgidson: He’s on probation. He’d be subject to warrantless searches from his probation officer and would need permission every time he leaves the country. The hand wringing about criminal Clinton was obvious hypocrisy even before.
Chris
@Citizen_X:
I know. I love those commercials, and I normally hate commercials.
@Major Major Major Major:
Oy, vey. Yeah, I’m crossing my fingers pretty hard for France and Germany next year. I don’t need either of them to actually go left, but I’ll settle for “not far right,” in countries that still make a distinction between center right and far right.
(As pissed off as I remain with Merkel over the entire Greece thing, she deserves mad props for not backing down on the issue of taking in Syrian refugees).
TylerF
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe – really depends on the war though.
DCF
– Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
Get Used to This Phrase During the Trump Years: American Authoritarianism
Dear leader tours the nation holding raucous rallies for the worshipping faithful.
Charles P. Pierce
Dec 2, 2016
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51184/trump-american-authoritarianism/
Jeffro
it’s 3pm on a Friday – aren’t we about due for a nice document dump of some kind??
I’ll settle for PBO letting the country know the full extent of Russian election shenanigans, what say you Mr. President? Doesn’t have to be today of course, anytime up ’til about Dec 15th is fine.
Cacti
@Botsplainer:
It fills me with all sorts of smug to read the February tweet from Greenwald’s idiot protégé Snowden that 2016 was “an election between Donald Trump and Goldman Sachs”.
Good call, Ed.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Cacti: Script kiddie says what ? How this person became the expert on cyber anything is beyond me.
schrodinger's cat
What is it going to take for people to stop taking NYT seriously. This is the third Democratic nominee they have stabbed in the back. They are as bad as WSJ if not worse. I haven’t forgotten their role in Iraq war either.
Major Major Major Major
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Don’t diss Snowden’s 1337 skills. He asked a general for his password one time–he’s that good.
Jeffro
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Well remember, the Right needed all that to counter us libs and our liberal-leaning media, always reporting “facts” and things like that. That’s really what their messaging does: pulls factual reporting to the Right (in addition to shoring up their base so hard, no fact can penetrate)
Amir Khalid
i see Teena Colebrook rather more sympathetically. She strikes me as someone who found herself in a vulnerable situation and was easily suggestible because of it. Not necessarily stupid or gullible, but being in that kind of jam can make someone an easy mark for a con artist seeming to offer a lifeline. She voted for a president who promised to fight people like Mnuchin, rather than ally with them. She’s not the only person to fall for Donald Trump’s lies and bullshit. I hope she’s learned her lesson now about trusting him and people he associates with, but I’m aware that not everyone does.
Mnemosyne
@janeform:
I’m totally comfotravel calling my upper-class evangelical Trump-voting cousin a moron. If you’re living in a McMansion in Waukesha and sending your kids to expensive private schools, you don’t get to complain that you’re feeling “economically insecure.”
Botsplainer
@Turgidson:
They could broadcast it on Pay Per View. The revenue from all the watching and rewatching would probably take care of the national debt. Admit it, watching Chuck Todd run screaming tripping his head gets cleaved with an axe or seeing Chris Matthews splutter wet pleas for his life just before being chainsawed would be some funny shit…
LAO
This is my fucking subway stop! I swear to dog — if I were present, I’d have punched one of these punks in the face.
Mnemosyne
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Interesting coincidence that Snowden ended up in Russia, innit? So many coincidences this year that just happen to converge in Russia.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
They’re coming out of the woodwork everywhere, even in very blue areas. I’ve heard stories from all over California.
cokane
amazing the amount of wisdom someone can lack at age fifty-fucking-nine
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Mnemosyne: Yep. You’d think it would be enough for at least one patriotic American working for the CIA or the NSA to spill the goods on Trump, but I guess not.
Chris
@Jeffro:
As a friend of mine pointed out years ago, it kind of says something about them that their reaction to the premise of “the media is liberally biased” isn’t “we must have a media that strives to be objective and without liberal bias,” but “we must have a media that’s conservatively biased.”
D58826
I saw this earlier in the day but lost the link.
I have no idea about the truth of the charges but it will be interesting to see if this come up in the Senate confirmation hearings. After all we have had 4 years or Hillary was personally responsible for the deaths of the 4 Americans in Benghazi even though she had no way to send help. Will Mattis be grilled on this by the GOP?
Karma can be a real b*******
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/former-special-forces-officer-gen-mad-dog-mattis-left-my-n691211
gogol's wife
@geg6:
Yes, my oil change place sticks to the Today show or similar fluff now — I’ve complained enough times.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
Also, too, I know a lot of us white liberals are reluctant to call the police, but this is one of those situations where having a “respectable” middle-class white person backing the abused person up and giving a witness statement to the cops can make a big difference.
GregB
Fascistleaks has a new target you say?
cosima
@schrodinger’s cat: This is one of my many soapboxes!
FU NPR. Once they headed for the center, presumably in fear of losing some government funding &/or being subjected to a bunch of hateful emails from McCain/Palin supporters (because yes, it started way back then), they were dead to me! What they did not seem to get — and I am completely at a loss as to why — was that their supporters/listeners would have stepped in to fill the breach monetarily, or voiced our support loudly, as we’ve done for Planned Parenthood.
If NPR had had some spine I’d have continued to support them with the auto-pay every month. And the annual (bi-annual?) fundraisers. Buying tickets to whatever sports event was supporting them. But they did not and so I was (am) done with them.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: I’m reluctant to call the police as a general rule because I’m a scum sucking defense attorney BUT that policy is permanently waived for Trump thugs.
Juice Box
@Brachiator: HuffPo has a story about Ryan tutoring Rump about the constitution and separation of powers. The clueless citizenry has truly elected one of their own.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-donald-trump-constitution_us_58416be3e4b017f37fe40cad
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@D58826: Nothing will happen, but I see the Republicans may still be going after Hillary about her emails.
Another Scott
@schrodinger’s cat: The list isn’t exhaustive. ;-)
NPR and PBS gets a lot of flack around here, but we would be much, much worse-off without
itthem.No time to look for a link, maybe efg can correct me, but my understanding is that NPR stations budgets are determined, to a great degree, by how much money they raise from normal people and how many normal people are “members”. They can’t raise $10M from Charles Koch if they only have, say, $50k in donations from real people and still call themselves “public radio”. If we want our public radio stations to be better, we need to join and tell them what we want.
Politicians pay attention to voters. Charities pay attention to donors, and those that depend on mass public support have to listen to their members.
Money counts for a lot, but the way to make public institutions better isn’t to abandon them to the cranks and the oligarchs. It’s to get in there and make ourselves heard.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who still isn’t giving any money to the NYTimes but donates annually to his local NPR and PBS stations.)
notoriousJRT
@schrodinger’s cat:
This makes me cry at least once a day.
mai naem mobile
There was a couple from Southern California Rex and Rose Schaffer – had to go look up the story to get the names – same thing – they got foreclosed on by One West who refused to do a loan mod and voted for Trumpy. Fucking morons. The wife was just hoping and praying Trumpy wouldn’t nominate Mnuchin as Treasury Sec. There were two stories before the election of people who got scammed by Trumpy U and were still going to vote for Trumpy. You can’t fix stupid.
Betty Cracker
@LAO: Assholes. The very name of the shitgibbon has become a de facto racist slur.
Major Major Major Major
@GregB: Well, they’re really only concerned with
ethics in game journalismtransparency. It’s just a coincidence that they’re releasing Snowden-related documents right before the election that will determine the fate of the last bastion of European Christian liberal democracy.schrodinger's cat
@DCF: Fuck CP, he was on the Bernie bandwagon and calling HRC names long after Bernie had any realistic chance of winning the nom.
gogol's wife
@hitchhiker:
That’s my theory as regards the MSM. They thought they could just weaken her, but she’d still win and keep civil society going, but she’d be too damaged to be able to do anything dastardly like raise their taxes a teeny bit. They miscalculated.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: Agreed. He’s pretty firmly on the white-leftist bandwagon.
gogol's wife
@Chris:
I have no further use for Sam Wang, who was giggling about how he’d have to REALLY eat a bug. I was shivering, my teeth were chattering, and he’s laughing as if the only thing at stake were his eating a bug.
schrodinger's cat
@Major Major Major Major: But he has clever insults, half of which are incomprehensible to someone not his age and is a Balloon Juice darling.
gogol's wife
@Turgidson:
I think the NYT was very positive about Obama saving the car business.
OGLiberal
@Juice Box: I just wrote an email to Josh Marshall in response to his recent post on the “identity politics” BS. I agree with him but what has me baffled is the county where I spend a lot of my time – Lackawanna County, PA. It’s 92% white with a lot of “WWC” folks. Dems rule in registered voters…over 65%. Obama beat McCain 63%-36% and Romney 62%-36%. But Clinton only won the county 50%-48%. Almost all of Trump’s gain came at Hillary’s expense – third-parties had little impact. How to explain that large of a swing in just four years? Yeah, Biden but I just don’t believe that his absence from the scene would result in such a big difference. And Clinton’s dad was born and raised in Scranton. The swing in this county amazes me more than the statewide swings in WI and MI or PA overall.
Yes, the media focused on “emails” and “Benghazi” and other BS, drowning out Clinton’s message. You mentioned how they did something similar to Gore. But he outperformed Clinton by 10% and Kerry outperformed her by 6%. The last time a Dem performed worse than Clinton in Lackawanna was in 1992 when her husband got 47% of the vote. But GHWB only got 35% that year, with the rest going to another rich guy with a populist message, only one who wasn’t as rude and vulgar.
I’m sure race was a factor to some extent but probably not much more than in 2008 or 2012, where a black dude breezed to victory, the later after the “national tragedy” that is Obamacare…certainly not enough to explain a 13% swing. Lackawanna is urban (Scranton), suburban, exurban and rural (with most of the population in the urban and suburban areas) so it’s not like a revolt of the rural voters caused her to just barely eke out a win here.
This is a sad county in terms of growth and economic future. Obama presented a message of hope. Trump simply lied about bringing jobs back and making America great again. In economically depressed places like this, do people just prefer soaring rhetoric or baseless, generic statements and lies to concrete policy proposals that will actually help them? Heck, she was basically running on Obama’s agenda, for Obama’s third term, and they seemed to really like that as recently as four years ago…and things are better now than they were then. It just baffles me.
gogol's wife
@Citizen_X:
See numerous Hillary Clinton ads.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: I think you are way too kind in your assessment of the MSM. They rooted for T and wanted him to win. They got what they (or their bosses) wanted. Mission accomplished.
MomSense
@Botsplainer:
Nuclear proliferation, use of nuclear weapons, and a bunch of other issues the shitgibbon is unfit to handle routinely wake me up at 3:00 a.m.
trollhattan
@D58826:
I’m going with “no” for a thousand, Alex.
D58826
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: yep
Baud
@OGLiberal: Sexism.
O. Felix Culpa
@OGLiberal:
I suspect people prefer men. I don’t know how to measure the effect of conscious or unconscious misogyny on the election. but I do find it intriguing that this factor is often brushed over lightly or mentioned not at all, most likely because the analysts themselves are blind to their own misogyny and to how deep-rooted it is in our society.
liberal
@Brachiator:
Wait…are you saying…no…can’t be…
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Yup. On the same wavelength.
germy
@OGLiberal:
He worked his ass off for every vote. He just made it look easy.
liberal
@mai naem mobile:
Or, as Schiller said, “Against stupidity/The gods themselves/Contend in vain.”
These people are just fucking morons.
liberal
@Mnemosyne: Nah. I think just beating the living shit out of them is the preferable option.
germy
Ambrose Bierce
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat: Yep. That’s what caused HRC to lose the general.
RealityBites
I had an “end of thread” comment on Richard Mayhew’s post (#42) that touched on some of the main themes discussed here. I may repost it later, but mainly I want to say how encouraging it is to see so many good ideas about how we can get our message out at a time when so many of the main outlets for news and information are useless, if not actively hostile to the facts. So many people have incorporated the “received wisdom” of the right wing propaganda machine into their thought processes that it sometimes seems hopeless. Thank you all for your ideas and creativity. It’s hard not to be depressed thinking about the consequences of failing this challenge.
OGLiberal
@Baud: Oh, I certainly think sexism was a big factor in the reason why WI and MI swung to Trump – numbers back it up. And it’s not just sexism on the part of men – that Clinton didn’t really improve upon Obama’s performance among women is telling. I’m sure sexism was a factor in PA as well. But the swing in Lackawanna was so significant, so big, that it left me flabbergasted.
And yes, I agree that not enough people are talking about the role of sexism in this election. While my wife and I were both hopeful and confident that Clinton would win, we both agreed – and have for years – that it’s easier for a black man to get elected in this country than a white woman. Now, we have proof. If only the media would notice but they’re content with the “imperfect, stained, boring” narrative than even considering that maybe, just maybe, Clinton’s gender played a role in her loss.
liberal
@Another Scott: I call BS.
Maybe some local-generated content, but listening to politics on NPR sets my teeth on edge. At best, when I’ve (rarely) listened to it, they come off as poorly informed centrists.
AFAICT they listen to their corporate funders.
liberal
@RealityBites: Yeah…it seems pretty hopeless when you see all these right-wing automatons retweeting #PizzaGate shit.
lollipopguild
@Amir Khalid: Nice to see you back. I have missed you.
EBT
@D58826: Yes, Mattis refused to throw more troops in to a gristle mill to rescue someone who made a bad decision. This is the sort of “hard” choice that gets made a lot.
ingrediorum
@Betty Cracker: Corvettes n Jack? I voted for HRC, but if you’ll give me a mid-60s Corvette or late 60s muscle car of any make/model, you can keep the bottle of Jack for yourself, and I’ll proudly proclaim that that was only because you reformed me!
Miss Bianca
@Humdog: I second that emotion.
Corner Stone
Some FP’er needs to make a post out of this bit. I know it’s DailyBeast but it’s still testimony:
Donald Trump’s Pollster Says the Election Came Down to Five Counties
“This wasn’t a “landslide,” Tony Fabrizio says, it was a squeaker—and James Comey helped pull the Republican across the finish line.”
Chris
@MomSense:
Being an IR nerd, you’d expect me to be like this too with the “finger on the nuclear button” stuff, but no, actually, it’s the small picture stuff that keeps my from sleeping right now.
I’m worried for my own future in terms of health insurance and general economic health. I’m worried for what an era of more xenophobic laws and tight border controls might do for my mother’s green card and ability to keep coming to the U.S. I’m worried for the friend whose basement I’m living in, who’s Jewish, has a multiracial family, and has a federal job working with (primarily Middle Eastern) refugees. I’m worried for the friend of Mexican-Iranian descent that I have in Texas, who’s 100% American-born and legal but is going to be a prime target for this kind of harassment. I’m worried for the friend I had a crush on in undergrad who’s a hijab-wearing Iraqi immigrant who’d already put up with more crap by the time she hit puberty than most people could handle in ten lifetimes. And so on, and so forth.
ETA: and the only thing all of us have to count on right now is the size of the Democrats’ balls. God help us.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@SamR: In their defense, what Ryan is proposing is pretty hard to believe. He calls Obamacare a disaster that must be repealed for six years and counting, and then proposes to transform Medicare into that very same disaster. That is essentially what his Medicare plan is – Obamacare for senior citizens. I mean, the frickin gall.
Brachiator
@WereBear:
Nope. Sorry. She lost.
khead
@Baud:
@OGLiberal:
92% white. So, I’ll go with “whiteness”. And I don’t mean straight up racism. I mean they won’t vote for “stuff white people don’t like”. They may have voted for a nice black man for POTUS – key word being “nice”- but they don’t much care for protesting black folks who refuse to stand for the anthem or black folks who have the audacity to complain about being shot by the police. Those voters want that kind of shit to stop.
O. Felix Culpa
@OGLiberal:
It sets my teeth on edge whenever the media and commentators talk about HRC as a “flawed” candidate. Has there ever been an unflawed candidate? Seems to me her major “flaw” comes down to that pesky missing y chromosome.
Ksmiami
@RealityBites: I want to start a political action committee that seeks to educate people about social security, the aca and Medicare and how those programs will be a bulwark for the middle class and a savior for working class people, I think due to time passing etc that most people today really don’t understand those programs and why we need intergenetational insurance to keep everyone afloat. I’m thinking of calling it either bulwark or the fuck Paul Ryan PAC but if anyone has ideas etc I’d love to hear how I can help.
D58826
@EBT: As I said, I don’t know the details. He may well have made the correct decision. Knowing the Marine tradition of no one left behind it seems like ly he had a good reason for what he did.
My point was what will the GOP do with this after 4 years of blaming Hillary for something she had little or no control over. Remember the grieving mom at the RNC convention who accused Hillary of murder?
O. Felix Culpa
@D58826:
Bwahahaha! You are expecting consistency and equal treatment perhaps? Spluttersnort.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne: Intresting concidence Snowden start with he leaks right when the pressure was on the boycott the Russian Winter Olympics over the gay bashing there.
D58826
FSM, he ain’t even POTUS yet and he is screwing up the planet. First he invites the thug President of the Philippines to the WH as one of his first guests. Now he is making phone calls to the president of Taiwan and pissing off the Chinese government
https://www.ft.com/content/fd19907e-b8d4-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d
D58826
@O. Felix Culpa: of course I’m not
O. Felix Culpa
@D58826: Will adjust snark-o-meter. :)
Brachiator
@O. Felix Culpa:
If you don’t know how to measure the misogyny yourself, it doesn’t help much to blame analysts, some of whom are also women, for being blind to their own misogyny.
You could also talk about the triple whammy of anti-Establishment sentiment, sexism and racism. Clinton reasonably embraced Obama’s legacy and talked about extending it. But to voters who were letting their racism freak fly, this added fuel to the fire. There were voters who wanted to reject Obama and who used this to doubly reject Clinton as his surrogate.
Some of the sexism was typical of conservatives, some was weird. I overheard a conversation where a woman invoked a standard interpretation of the Bible that women should not be leaders or be raised over men. But there was also a talk radio host who clearly had problems seeing a woman as a leader. He had previously gushed over Ronald Reagan, who looked like the men he looked up to. But on one show he said, “I love my mother and my grandmother, but I wouldn’t want them to be president.” He didn’t elaborate on this idiocy, but clearly sees women as belonging in loving, supportive roles. I suppose that this would be something else for historians to investigate. And the bottom line is that Clinton failed to pull enough white women over to her side.
@OGLiberal:
Things were better, but large numbers of people really bought into Trump’s blather that he was going to make things great.
And there were two other big issues. People who voted for Trump want something dramatic done with respect to stopping immigration. Democrats sounded like soft open border advocates. And people who voted for Trump want something dramatic done with respect to stopping terrorism and are willing to sacrifice the civil rights of Muslims in this country. The Democrats could not satisfy Trump voters on these issues, no matter how good the economy was doing.
gogol's wife
@D58826:
This is what’s giving me a pain in the stomach all the time. He is flouting all the norms of diplomacy developed over the entire 20th-21st centuries. And no one can stop him.
Major Major Major Major
@liberal: Whether or not something directly and single-handedly caused Hillary to lose the election, of course, is the sole metric by which you’re allowed to choose to hate it.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Late to the thread since my phone was updating for damn ever….
Can there be a Frontpager forum the way 538 rounds up its people and does it? I’d love to hear the take from AL, Tom, Adam, Betty, (and the rest) as to what went wrong and how to fix it.
There’s no simple answer… Hillary’s message was/wasn’t sound; the millennials and POC did/did not come out; voter ID laws f***ed it up; Comey is/is not to blame… Russian hackers, Wikileaks, and so on.
Mostly I want Trump, Conway, Pence, et al, to spontaneously combust.
jenn
@hitchhiker: I’ve wondered that myself.
OGLiberal
@Brachiator: Nor should they have. Sad that fear – even irrational fear – is always a winner.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Democrats are soft open-border advocates, and lots of Americans, even otherwise liberal ones, really do want to strictly limit Muslim immigration and are scared of Muslims. We can’t get those back without lying or changing our policies, if they’re determinative factors.
D58826
And the hits keep coming from the FBI
But der Fuhrer is impressed with the man.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article82469027.html#storylink=cpy
workworkwork
@Juice Box: Good government, like banking, is supposed to be boring.
If I want excitement, I can go to the movies.
Another Scott
@Baud: Yup.
Cheers,
Scott.
OGLiberal
@Brachiator: And what gets me is that never said how he was going to make America “great” again, just that he was going to do it, big league, and only he could do it. And a lot of people bought it, even the non-racists. Or maybe it was all based on race…when he said “make American great again”, a lot of them heard, “make America white again”….and he did present, regularly, simple – albeit, unlikely – ways to do that…build a wall, ban Muslims, tough on crime, etc.
mai naem mobile
Maybe Obama being black knew he had to work his ass off for every vote and Hillary thought “hey inexperienced black guy won, qualified wife of popular former POTUS running against a moron is a gimme winner” and didn’t work as hard. I think Clinton kind of forgot she had to win the contest and was looking past to governing. Also,IMHO,I don’t think the Clintons respect/appreciate Obamas skills as a politician or his oratory skills.
jenn
@janeform: I agree. While there are certainly times I like/need to vent, a lot of these folks I think of as akin to cult victims. So many have been lied to, so darn much. When thinking about messaging, looking into cult deprogramming might be useful!
Last night, I was reading Mlodinow’s _Subliminal_, and was struck by one of the experiments on in-group vs out-group behavior, wherein it showed that rather than maximizing benefits to the in-group, people within the group subconsciously looked to maximize the difference in benefits in favor of the in-group. Actual experimental proof of the sparrows and a curtain rod effect.
Barbara
@D58826:
Gosh, I don’t know, why don’t you ask Hillary Clinton? And the FBI is still spiking the punch bowl.
Baud
@mai naem mobile: I saw no basis for that view.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator:
Really? Such high standards for commenting on a top-10,000 blog, or whatever B-J’s standing is. Please to provide a tutorial on the correct way to measure and discuss qualitative issues such as misogyny.
The Truffle
@Calouste: What is the story with this Goldsmith dude? I’ve read about him, and supposedly he was an environmentalist? Or am I wrong?
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@D58826: Motherfucker (resigned anger) – we’re going to play Two Chinas again?
This is so goddamned stupid.
There are as many people in Beijing itself as in all of Formosa. A paltry 24 million, against a major power nation state with about a billion and a half.
There is utterly NOTHING Taiwan has to offer the US that does anything for the US.
O. Felix Culpa
@mai naem mobile:
Not buying it. Barack and Hillary worked together closely and clearly have a high regard for each other. Assumes impossible and counter-factual insight into another person’s soul, which is not borne out by their words or actions.
D58826
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I don’t think the democrats have to worry about rebuilding for 2018. I’m not sure the world will see Feb. 2017. (sigh)
Trentrunner
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Trump is looking for business in Taiwan (reported 2 weeks or so ago).
So…yeah.
Chris
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Which, to be fair, doesn’t mean we should dump the island in order to make friends with the Chinese. But the way we’ve threaded the needle for forty years has been by cultivating ambiguity, which naturally, Trump (and to be fair, the entire Republican Party)’s brain isn’t wired for.
Major Major Major Major
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
*looks at Taiwan on a map*
This is not true.
Also, y’know, democracy and all that. Doesn’t do anything for you?
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@D58826:
Jesus Christ. He’s practically begging Putin to roll back into the Baltics and fuck with everything in Central Europe for financial gain by abandoning NATO, yet wants to confront Beijing over goddamned Taiwan? When the Taiwanese would likely actually do pretty well under true Chinese governance once all the Kai Shek propaganda got swept aside?
That is fucking nuts.
So what future is it going to be? Jericho, where rogue paramilitaries support a shadowy cabal that tries to take over in the vacuum that arises after Trump’s impeachment and removal (or really, a cabal led by Trump himself)? Is it going to be the movie The Postman or the book The Postman?
Or are we going to swing from error to error, as our new CoDominium with Russia quickly falls apart after a bungled joint Russian/US led Middle East war and Putin closes his Winter Palace at the White House , followed by a nuclear attack on his rogue North American province for either a The Day After or a Canticle for Leibowitz scenario?
schrodinger's cat
@liberal: It was one of the factors, not the only factor.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Major Major Major Major:
The Chinese aren’t what we’ve been conditioned to believe they are, and their government isn’t as monolithically indifferent or nonresponsive as we expect.
In fact, I’d argue that it may be more reflective of the collective will of the Chinese people than ours.
Major Major Major Major
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I know China’s not super duper evil empire awful Communist boogeyman, but Taiwan also doesn’t want to be China, and got to be where it is largely as a result of the uncomfortable, silent peace we helped broker.
jenn
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t think that, precisely. I think a lot of it was that they didn’t think he could win, so he wasn’t worth covering as a candidate, and was safe to cover as entertainment.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Chris:
The Chinese are fine with that ambiguity, frankly. There are now a great number of business ties, and special expedited passport windows for ROC travelers at Beijing.
D58826
Der Fuhrer has released a statement about his phone call to the Pres. of Taiwan. They discussed the close economic, political and military ties between the two countries. He also congratulated her on her election.
Spare us the suspense and just declare war on China. No big deal they only have over 1 billion people, nuclear weapons, hold trillions of US dollars and are the only country that has even a small amount of influence over N. Korea..
D58826
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
As long as the US goes along with that ambiguity things work out. Der Fuhrer just blew that sky high.
Christine Stier
Please check Cook Report for 2016 vote updates: Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania is 47K as of today.
HRA
Blaming others for the loss of this election is futile. It is more productive to admit and accept the truth of losing it.
There were moments when I thought “No, don’t say it.” and it was too late. One was “I am not like my husband Bill and Obama….. No! Stop!
“We’re going to put the coal industry out of business…. Oh crap!
“Baskets of deplorables….” Voters -they are voters!
“I am sorry and I won’t do it again.” Never ever say you are sorry -Damn
Last days of the campaign – rundown of the mmmmm DT sordid history over and over again – I can only hope for the best. I stayed away from the TV that evening and was still shocked by the loss. The next morning I was distracted by those huge billows of smoke I could see from my bedroom and hoped the wind did not shift my way. I worried about my friends living in the area. I asked them to come here and they would not leave their homes.
I am spent. It is what it is.
Chris
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Yeah. We’ve spent forty years settling down into a nice pattern that everyone, America, China, and Taiwan, are fine with, even if it looks a little surreal from the outside, and fucking with it isn’t going to be good for anyone.
(Especially if any Taiwanese nationalist sentiment latches onto Trump and starts doing something stupid like declaring independence, because Jesus Christ, does anybody believe that prick wouldn’t fold like a cheap lawn chair once the Chinese got all riled up and pissed?)
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: @Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: What Chris said is basically what I was trying to say, with an assist from @D58826.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@D58826:
Thinking of figuring out a way to offer some sort of services to the PRC. I do have a spanking new multientry 10 year visa that the idiot is probably jeopardizing; maybe I can get over before it is canceled.
They may need American legal assistance for the purpose of facilitating some form of a functional economy in the areas they’ll occupy west of the Rocky Mountains….
Lizzy L
@Chris:
I believe that there’s no way to know what T would do. I don’t think he knows himself. The thought of T as CinC keeps me awake at night.
Brachiator
@liberal: RE: You get a good candidate and win.
That’s right, Bernie should have been the candidate, dammit.
Actually, nobody truly saw Trump coming. Nobody.
trollhattan
@HRA:
As opposed to every instantly disqualifiable statement Trump made, yet continued forward? We failed to win like he failed to lose–explain that and then we’re getting somewhere.
schrodinger's cat
@jenn: In an election with a binary choice, if you wound one deliberately the chances of the second choice succeeding increases. If they didn’t they think of that, then they are morons.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: You seem to have a touching faith in the benevolence of the Chinese.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@trollhattan:
Honestly? I am afraid that the WWC of the Rust Belt was lost to any Democrat in 2016. They were going to fuck with people simply for the pleasure of inflicting pain – they’ve been propagandized for the last 30 years, and acted like it.
Major Major Major Major
@HRA: @Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: We lost. It was death by a thousand cuts, but we would have squeaked by if there had only been 999 of them; everybody is blaming their pet issue for being the 1000th.
ETA: I think the rust belt WWC was gone too, that Trump’s white nationalism energized the soft R’s who hadn’t voted in 2008/2012 but would turn out for the guy who said what they were all thinking, and that was just barely enough to drag him across the finish line. But there were 999 other cuts too.
Brachiator
@Chris:
Bullshit. We’ve spent 40 years accommodating to the reality of Chinese power. And people in the West conveniently turn their heads away when democracy movements erupt in Hong Kong.
Nobody has any idea what Trump would do. Not even Trump.
@Major Major Major Major:
Actually, they are as much a vile regime as say, Saudi Arabia. We’ve done business with them since Nixon made his overtures, but that has never shifted the government there to democracy. The Brits gave up Hong Kong because they were toothless, and both China and the UK pretended that all agreements were mutual.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I didn’t say I liked China.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@schrodinger’s cat:
I have to rely on someone. I can’t rely on Western Europe, as they’re in the grasp of assholes as bad as Trump these days. Eastern Europe is a nervous mix of protofascists and people terrified of Putin. Russia is an evil, kleptocratic monstrosity run by a murderous tyrant. The countries of Southern Africa are decent but only just now getting their shit together. India has problems due to poverty plus Modi, and aside from some aspects of Iran that present some hope for the future, the Muslim world sucks. Israel is begging for attacks, and basically is why I don’t flee to Beirut, its favorite punching bag.
Mexico and Central America are going to get hammered by Trumpian economics. The Caribbean is going to suffer as tourism declines. South America has its own economic issues.
That leaves Australia (which is wingnut curious), New Zealand (I hate Lord of the Rings), Japan (impossibly expensive or China/Southeast Asia.
Panurge
@low-tech cyclist:
In that case, they need an image they can relate to. Tell them the Republicans have finally become the party of Joe McCarthy and they’ll understand.
O. Felix Culpa
@Panurge:
Fixt.
HRA
@trollhattan:
They flocked to his rallies for free entertainment. A good portion of them were his fans. That was my initial thought. Then when I asked someone who was absolutely for him, it was “he says it like it is.” Honestly this was from someone who worked with the disabled and took very good care of them. I said “Did you like the way he mocked the disabled reporter?” He didn’t mean it. He was having fun. Huh! Later I found out he was a never Clinton person first and foremost.
The only real R relative I have voted for Johnson. He has a disabled sister, has daughters and is a minister of his faith.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: Right. Diplomacy isn’t about liking another country. The reality is China has 1 billion plus people, nuclear weapons, an expanding economy and global political ambitions. It makes no sense to poke them in the eye over Taiwan. If this thing goes south it will make the Iraq mess look like a walk in the park. Not saying war but the economic and diplomatic implications through out Asia are frightening. Heck TPP, what ever its plus/minus, was as much about containing China’s ambitions as it was strictly trade.
Brachiator
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yes, the high quality of my comments helps keep B-J high in the standings. Pay attention to my comments and you will learn much more than if I provided a formal tutorial.
Yeah, I’m being snarky. I also clearly agreed with you more than I disagreed. But when you say “I suspect” and “I don’t know how to measure the effect of conscious or unconscious misogyny” but want to definitively bash analysts for being blind “to their own misogyny,” I don’t think that you are being fair. Obviously, you don’t have to be, but that doesn’t mean that it should not be noted.
D58826
Even Ari Fleisher is horrified
There is no putting this genie back in the bottle.
https://twitter.com/AriFleischer/status/804824427087228928
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Sorry, I have friends whose relatives were imprisoned and left to wither and die by the Chinese communists because they were middle class. And indirectly know of friends of friends whose lives are not safe today.
So, I don’t know if China counts as super duper evil, but they are evil enough.
SiubhanDuinne
@D58826:
Also, when he talked to Teresa May, he said “If you ever happen to be visiting the U.S., be sure to give me a call” (paraphrase, but not by much), and he had a conversation with the PM of Pakistan the other day in which he reportedly said (again, slight paraphrase) “You are fantastic, the Pakistani people are fantastic, Pakistan is a fantastic country, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be John Kerry right now.
Lizzy L
From the NYT:
This is what Obama now has to deal with.
Brachiator
@Lizzy L:
Trump not only knows more than all the generals, he knows more than all the diplomats.
Next, he’ll be signing treaties before January 20.
He’s Trump,
Now where’d I put my Twitter?
He’s Trump
You’ll like my golden glitter!
Born in New York, City
His wives so very pretty,
He’s Trump
(song to the tune of Steve Martin’s King Tut)
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Это курам на смех:
The actual editorial is much less benign and more critical of Trump.
Brachiator
A little something from Iceland:
All this anti-Establishment stuff. Must be something in the air.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator: Well, the “Hang that bitch” chant at Trump rallies just might have a whiff of misogyny.
And to be [somewhat] fair to analysts, some have noted sexism along the way. That said – and in the absence of having done a formal meta-analysis of campaign postmortems – it seems that misogyny is not the most frequently cited factor. Nor do I believe it’s the only factor. As major^4 commented, it was death by a thousand cuts, misogyny being a big one.
I would also add that racism/sexism/homophobia are often insidious and hard to prove. Hence, terminology such as “I suspect” is appropriate. A person who has been on the receiving end of these behaviors can sense the dynamic, even if others don’t pick up on it.
Colleeniem
@O. Felix Culpa: this. This this this this this. I took an implicit bias test several years ago, and I, a white woman with no kids and a career, with liberal values, steeped in feminization ideas (but work in a mail dominated industry), reacted in a biased way towards women working outside the home.
If I am doing this, and recognize it, how come so many can’t admit it? Cowards!
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: India is a big country. There is more to India than Modi. There is a robust press and other democratic institutions. For example, its stock market is far more robust and transparent compared to China. Indian democracy has withstood the test of time. Its elections are free and fair and conducted by an election commission a non partisan, non political entity. Its robust culturally not just economically. China is not all that. Ask Tibetans and their other ethnic minorities. India with all its problems is better. YMMV.
Mike g
@hitchhiker:
I’m starting to wonder if we’re going to see a DT-divorce boomlet. There are a lot of people for whom this election has become a defining moment — you’re willfully ignorant / an eager racist / willing to allow ignorance & racism in return for tax cuts OR you’re not.
I knew more than one married couple, where one partner was an immigrant, who split up over Bush’s reign of incompetency and arrogance in Iraq. 9/11 made some parochial Americans go hardcore Scared Stupid in a way that the more worldly did not.
Trump is going to be like Bush on steroids in the aggressiveness and stupidity stakes.
Kathleen
@schrodinger’s cat: I know this is a dead thread but I had to say this here. I so totally agree with you about CP. And I’d better stop here because I could go on and on about him.
Corner Stone
@Colleeniem:
What do I need to do to get you to stop junking me?
D58826
An interesting take on der Fuhrer’s foreign policy. It is by design.
link to the twitter threat https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/804835883153178624
and link to the article : https://newrepublic.com/article/132044/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-revolution
In the mean time someone must have puilled Ari Fleischer chain since he now says as long as this is a well developed policy position he is fine with it.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Well, yes. This was inevitable, between the fact that China is simply too big a player to ignore and the fact that Taiwan is an issue it’s hypersensitive to. But we also didn’t abandon Taiwan at the time, and so you have the present status quo. Okay, yes; “fine” may be an overstatement, but everybody’s gotten used to it in the last forty years, nobody’s getting everything they want but, as someone else noted, trade between “the two Chinas” has grown to not-insignificant levels and in the meantime you’ve got peace. No one’s thrilled with the situation, but no one’s really ready to try to upend it – Taiwan’s afraid that we won’t defend it, China’s afraid that we will, and we’re afraid that we’ll have to choose.
The possibility of Trump shooting his mouth off and dynamiting this arrangement is a Big Biden Deal, and not in any kind of a good way. I agree entirely with your distaste of the PRC, for what that’s worth. But they’re not going anywhere. If push came to shove, my instinct would be to back Taiwan and the devil take the consequences. But because I know what those consequences would look like, I’m also very much not eager to be in that position.
Chris
@SiubhanDuinne:
I can.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, this is my last silver lining. That if the West does finally go tits-up, undone by its far right movements, liberal democracy will go on and hopefully spread itself again from some major countries in the rest of the world that are too big for Russia or China to fuck up. India, Brazil, South Africa, etc. All of them with loads of problems, but who are we kidding, so are we right now.
Chris
@D58826:
Hating on the allies is the international relations version of hippie-punching. Sadly, while Trump is bringing it to a head, this has been building for a while. Remember 2002/2003? Judging by the rhetoric and public anger, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that France and not Iraq was the nation we were about to be at war with.
Ithink
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ain’t that about the best damn summarization of the Election 2016 results thus far here! FTW comment of the day.
@Turgidson:
Oh sweet baby Jesus, this is a damn close second! Please consider writing books or becoming a candidate yourself!
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: I don’t think United States is that fragile, I think it will outlast the present disaster, but the next few years are not going to be fun. It has been through much worse before, think Civil War.
India survived Indira Gandhi, separatist movements in Punjab and the entire unpleasantness in Sri Lanka.
Ithink
@Brachiator:
Can you please do the more sensible among is here and just STFU w/ this nonsense. If your gonna critique her, be specific and a little more gracious during times like these. Your only enabling and further empowering the troglodytes who managed to push Cheeto Hitler into King if the World status.
Ithink
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I don’t know if your white or not, bit I’d be plum scared of ever making thus argument publicly and in person. Even though I 100% agree w/ it!
J R in WV
@MomSense:
THIS ! !
Has he even started having the PDB presented to him?
When he called the president of Taiwan, was anyone able to inform him that China regards Taiwan as a runaway child? And would take any commitments made to Taiwan as either a brutal slap in the face or, more likely, a mid-night stab in the back? And if Trump called Taiwan BEFORE calling China, he might as well not bother calling China?
This is the kind of ignorant and silly thing that Trump can do that might be kicking a keystone out of the geopolitical stalemate that keeps the world from turning into mostly black glass that glows faintly in the dark!
We Are So Fucked !
misterpuff
Lady was just on All In, said she wished she hadn’t voted for the Shitgibbon, but said she could never vote for Hillary.
I tells ya, the Hillary Hate is deep, it is the true effect of the Fox Bubble.
We can get a lot of these voters back when we put up a candidate that doesn’t have 30 years of mud (real or imagined) on them.
Ithink
@Chris:
Chris, out of the purest curiosity, how old are you anyways?
Chris
@Ithink:
Twenty eight. (I was basically describing my entire adulthood).
No, wait. Twenty nine! Yesterday was my birthday.
Miss Bianca
@OGLiberal: Gosh, you don’t suppose…SEXISM could have had anything to do with it?
J R in WV
Taiwan is our unsinkable aircraft carrier near the South China Sea.
Like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Guam and Midway in the mid-Pacific – ships can be sunk, all it really takes is a tiny streak of bad luck.
Islands with fortifications cannot be sunk.
This is partly why Britain took the Falklands back, don’t you think? Otherwise only sheep farming, but a maritime power could control the south Atlantic from there, and movement thru the Straits of Magellan AND thru the Cape of Good Hope .
Miss Bianca
@mai naem mobile: And I think you’re full of shit. Seriously. “oh, Hillary Clinton thought the black guy won, so how hard could it be?” *Hillary Clinton*, policy wonk and successful two-time Senatorial candidate, didn’t “work hard enough for the vote?” Either you have no idea how racist and insulting that sounds, or you do know and you don’t care. Either way, just…ugh. Just fuck off with that shit. You have no evidence whatsoever for making such claims. Not when the woman won the popular vote by the margin she did.
schrodinger's cat
@Ithink: Thank You!
Jinchi
@Это курам на смех: Pick the fake news story:
“Carrier Jobs, Saved by Government”
“Trump Warns That Companies Shipping Jobs Overseas Will Be Slapped with Enormous Bribes”
Tehanu
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
We still get the LA Times delivered to the door, on paper (yes, I know it proves we’re old). Every day there’s at least one letter to the editor defending Il Douche, and they’re always — ALWAYS — from Pacific Palisades or Newport Beach or Palos Verdes Estates or Beverly Hills; never from low-income places like Hawaiian Gardens or Van Nuys or Tujunga. That guy from Nazareth was right about the love of money being the root of all evil.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Roger Moore: That is a good point and probably correct…just more evidence that no matter what, Republicans view the Democrat in charge as illegitimate. When the inevitable Republican recession hits though, they won’t be able to kid themselves anymore. And…look back to the Reagan Admin…that recession is inevitable. Reagan had two, H.W. had one, W. had two bookending his admin with the second being the Great Recession. Trump’s will probably put that one to shame given that so far he’s making W look like a paragon of competence and hard work.
ezra abrams
jeesus
We lost cause we had a crappy candidate
Stop putting the blame on Trump voters
We , or more precisely the Dem establishment, picked someone who is smart as a whip but didn’t understand the first thing about politics
Read
Mike Konczal
Learning From Trump in Retrospect