Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Bark louder, little dog.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

T R E 4 5 O N

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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355Comments

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    Every day, I come in from my morning walk and hope that something has stopped this march to inaugurating a traitorous toddler.

    It’s insane.

  3. 3.

    hovercraft

    A great image, it expresses my feelings exactly.

    The Vichy Times had an interesting take on our failed media experiment.

    Amanda Hess/NY Times:
    But the place suits Mr. Trump’s purposes fine. For the guy who’s all about appearances, Twitter provides the veneer of populist connection without the hassle of accountability. Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s incoming press secretary, has suggested that Twitter town halls and Reddit forums may replace some typical presidential press interactions, where he can easily make himself available to anonymous fans instead of the scrutiny of the press. The social media platforms that were once heralded as democratic tools could also be used to undermine democratic norms.

    All of this works because one group is as intoxicated by Twitter as Mr. Trump is: journalists. It’s hard to explain to a normal person — one of the 79 percent of American adults who don’t use Twitter — why the platform mesmerizes the news media. Its all-powerful search function means you can conjure material on any kind of news topic — or just spend your time searching for your own name. Reporters still crave the ego rush of a published byline, but that pales in comparison to the animated feedback loop that Twitter offers. The more time you spend, and the more tweets you send, the bigger your following becomes. But Twitter provides little actual reach — compared with Facebook or Google, it hardly drives any traffic to articles. It’s like a video game for professional validation.

  4. 4.

    Jeff

    The Friday D.C. weather forecast is 80% chance of rain from 10am to 4 pm. Hope it’s a very breezy storm with lots of wind gusts messing up his hair.

  6. 6.

    aimai

    I feel exactly this way. Just stunned that it came to this. Stunned. The USA today op ed by the 25 year old (white) female trump voter who voted for Trump as some kind of “change agent” and who is shocked to find out he is going to let the Republicans destroy planned parenthood is instructive. White American voters are too stupid to be allowed to vote–and I say that even though I am one.

  8. 8.

    Aleta

    I remember how insulted he (claimed he) was that the press did not do their job and just print exactly what he said. That (not his hairpiece of populist spirit) is why the twitter. To a narc. sociopath any criticism is misrepresentation. You must maintain control to get the lies out there. eta, And maintain control in order to keep magnifying yourself.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    as somebody on twitter said, the bloated circus peanut has Red Square envy.

    “Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country,” Trump said. “And we’re going to show the people as we build up our military, we’re going to display our military.

    “That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military,” he added.

    how long before he announces, and Congress authorizes, a Presidential uniform, with lots of gold braid

  13. 13.

    schrodingers_cat

    @aimai: Its not just restricted to the RWNJ, it also infects our purity ponies on the soshulist bandwagon. I can’t count the number of people I know IRL who fell for Snowden and then later BS. Everyone one wants easy answers to hard problems. The press is there to entertain not inform.

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    @aimai:

    The USA today op ed by the 25 year old (white) female trump voter who voted for Trump as some kind of “change agent” and who is shocked to find out he is going to let the Republicans destroy planned parenthood is instructive.

    I’ve said it before, I will say it again..

    As a non-White, there was nothing about the history of America that didn’t make me believe the man and take him at his word.

  17. 17.

    Ohio Mom

    My goal — which I admittedly don’t always reach — is to begin each weekday by starting a load of laundry, giving the kitchen a quick once-over, and trying to chat up yet another Republican intern.

    Today’s lucky fellow works in Mitch McConnell’s Louisville office. He had a lovely accent and was in a cranky mood. I hope that is because his day is one citizen unhappy with McConnell after another.

    I keep aiming for someone working for Paul Ryan but all his local office lines are always busy, it is very suspicious. I’m beginning to wonder if they have a way of identifying out-of-state area codes. And forget Ryan’s DC office, there is an answering machine.

    Meanwhile, this morning’s paper had an article about my Representative, Brad Wenstrup, becoming vauger and vaguer about his stand on the ACA. Seems I’m not the only one of his constituents who are letting him know we want his paws off ACA repeal.

    It is just drops in the ocean but they are my drops.

  18. 18.

    catclub

    @Elizabelle:

    Every day, I come in from my morning walk and hope that something has stopped this march to inaugurating a traitorous toddler.

    Remember all those times when everybody said he would not live to the GOP convention, that his health is bad and he is a heart attack/stroke waiting to happen? Good times.

  22. 22.

    Mary G

    I am the toddler throwing the howling, kicking, screaming, red-faced, snot-flying, clinging to Daddy’s leg like a limpet so he can’t get out the door tantrum.

  24. 24.

    OGLiberal

    OK, I’ll start. I’m still asking how a vulgar reality TV show host became President of this country. My boss, who is a Brit and equally appalled at Brexit and Boris and Farage and who is a Christian who is trying to find ways to disavow the wingnut evangelicals wondered if maybe Trump is America, that he embodies what we truly are. Regardless of the 3M pop vote advantage, I don’t think his argument is illegitimate.

    How could anybody, even far right conservatives, allow this to happen? But that’s assuming that “elites’ can prevent the popular will. Yeah, 3M, but in states Hillary should have been able to breeze through, he won, she lost. John McCain and Lindsey Graham could have campaigned for Hillary in Wisconsin and I actually think that would have increased his winning percentage.

    Here’s the problem. Blacks see cops as an issue. Immigrants see walls to becoming a citizen as an issue. Kids see rising costs of college as an issue. The uninsured see, well, being uninsured (or, until recently, uninsured but now insured, thanks to the ACA) as an issue. Gays folks think it’s just crazy Christian holdouts in red states. But white folks see an existential threat to their primacy, their privilege. As long as they feel this way, they will come out to vote more than our side. Need to make our voters realize that the threats they face aren’t just on the edges, they are a threat to their way of life. And unlike the imagined fears of the privileged, insecure, coward white folks, these fears are real. No more talk about good Republicans or how we just need to understand those gay hating evangelicals or the folks who are racist because of how they were raised. Don’t say we need to understand them….call them what they are – the enemy, evil, barriers to progress, people who want you to suffer. If you see them as that – which is how conservative white folks see anybody who doesn’t agree with everything they said – you’ll be more likely to vote.

    In other words, stop being polite, which seems to be the default position of the Democratic party – adopt their playbook. Because, you know what?…it works. And, ironically, I think by being dicks we’d actually win over/back some of the folks who voted for Trump or somebody else or nobody this year…just by virtue of being dicks. Sad, but true.

    Obama was a decent guy, not a dick. But he lost every mid-term, had his agenda blocked by Mitch/Boehner/Ryan, and his pick to be president after him lost. Not being a dick gets you 60% approval ratings leaving office but we still have a GOP Congress and a lunatic in the WH. No more being nice…doesn’t pay. I like that Obama tried nice and civil – at least we tried. But now, to paraphrase Swayze, it’s time to not be nice.

  25. 25.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Ohio Mom: I think it’s bad to assume he’s an insane unhinged narcissistic evil racist “because of” something (Alzheimer’s or whatever) rather than that he just is that, and always has been as is amply demonstrated. Maybe his filter has been slipping lately but that happens as people get older and more powerful, and it’s not neurodegenerative.

  26. 26.

    GregB

    We really need to understand that after the Inauguration there will be an ideological bllitzkrieg that will overwhelm us and confirm our deepest fears.

    Economy, environment, education, government, laws, military.

    They plan to disrupt the world order quickly.

  27. 27.

    Spanky

    Bears. Yeah, that.

    Citing grizzlies, education nominee says states should determine school gun policies

    Washington (CNN) Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, said it should be up to states whether guns are allowed in schools, citing grizzly bear protection as part of her answer.

    During her nomination hearing, of course. Ripped from the CNN website.

  29. 29.

    hovercraft

    @Patricia Kayden # 9

    Amid those glowing reviews, one-quarter of Americans (25%) say Obama is one of the nation’s greatest presidents, far outpacing the share who felt that way about other recent presidents as their terms ended (11% described Reagan that way, 10% Clinton, and 5% or fewer said so about either President Bush). Still, nearly as many (23%) call Obama a poor president, more than said so about Reagan, Clinton or the first president Bush, but well below the 46% who said George W. Bush was a poor president as he prepared to leave the White House.

    While 54% of Democrats consider Obama one of the greatest presidents, 54% of Republicans call him a poor president. Though he has earned near universal approval among Democrats (95% approve), just 18% of Republicans say they approve of how he handled the presidency. That gap explains the difference between Obama’s approval rating and those of the two former presidents who left office with higher marks.

    Bitter people are bitter that Shrub was atrocious.

    Most of us do miss him already.

  30. 30.

    Major Major Major Major

    @GregB:

    We really need to understand that after the Inauguration there will be an ideological bllitzkrieg that will overwhelm us and confirm our deepest fears.

    Economy, environment, education, government, laws, military.

    They plan to disrupt the world order quickly.

    This is definitely my expectation. They say to take a list every day/week of things that have changed so it’s easier not to acclimate.

  34. 34.

    schrodingers_cat

    They want to repeal the 20th century, they won’t succeed but they will do tremendous damage whilst trying to turn back the clock. The arrow of time has only one direction.

  35. 35.

    Bobby D

    That’s a nice image. After repeated gloating by some Drumpfkins at work, I’ve plastered several large Obama photos on my office walls. The staring down Putin image is the first thing anyone sees walking by. Then I ordered some of the official Obama Presidential photos (the ones you see hanging in govt bldgs…I had to look at that smug prick Cheney’s snarling mug for 8 years grrrr!), framed em and put one of my wall, gave one to my colleague a muslim lady who is a big BO fan and seriously distraught over the election results.

    Within two days after hanging the first one, I had three young TSgts quietly peek in, point to the photo, “I love the picture, thanks for that”. The gloating asshole have now basically STFU as the reality of the disaster that is unfolding becomes clear to them. I’m not a nice person, I plan to rub their faces in it everytime this tangerine turd gurgles up some of his bullshit. Fukem.

  36. 36.

    Rob

    @japa21:
    Very much so. I immediately teared up when I saw the graphic. For some reason it made me think of Leonard Cohen’s song “Dance Me to the End of Love” so I teared up even more as I listened to it.

  37. 37.

    Pogonip

    Tamara, I have a question. The other day something happened that has never happened in 47 years (!) of cooking. I was shelling boiled eggs; the carton had been in the fridge 2 weeks. One egg could not be shelled. It wasn’t difficult to shell, like with a very fresh egg; it was impossible. It was like the shell was glued to the white. No amount of rolling or crackling made any difference. What would cause this?

  39. 39.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    As I said in the previous thread, I think he, Pence, Ryan, and Mitch McConnell should stand on top of the mausoleum where we have Lincoln’s body mummified and salute the troops and tanks as they pass by.

  40. 40.

    ThresherK

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: A little Maurice Starr + a little Idi Amin?

    @hovercraft: I don’t care if Hess publishes this. I want to know, when will this finding inform how the NYT does its job?

    Up in the Green Mountains we once asked a local about some direction; turns out he was a firefighter. The narrow and treacherous roads, topography, water supply, colder winter weather, and isolated nature of peoples’ homes in the woods are a heck more rural than my suburb.

    This Vermonter said, “We’re great at putting out foundations”, half-jokingly, referring to the battles they had simply to get the water, people, and machines to the fire.

    But they understand this. The NYT doesn’t. The Times won’t learn anything.

  41. 41.

    Mustang Bobby

    I hear all this talk about how the Republicans will come to their senses and impeach him; that he won’t last two years, blah, blah, blah. Excuse me, but they had plenty of time and wherewithal to yank the rug off his head and yet they were so obsessed with hating Hillary and wiping the legacy of Barack Obama off the map that they would have let anyone — obviously — run. Not only that, an electorate that believes what they read in the National Enquirer about Elvis working the night shift at a Burger King in Grand Rapids and who think the metric system is a socialist plot were easy pickings. He will shoulder through and run for re-election and probably, like Bush Jr., turn whoever the Democrats choose into a lily-livered Commie (while still paying tribute to Putin)… and the Democrats will let him.

    Being sober for 24 years has its drawbacks.

  42. 42.

    Dog Mom

    Someone on my FB page is bitching about all the free stuff that Michelle got and why isn’t anyone bringing that up in the latest Kerfuffle about Marla and Tiff and their stylist who would has the audacity to want to be paid. My response will be: Wow – so glad you shared this awful slight to them – the #blowoutbutthurt must be unimaginable. I can’t do anything for them, but I will be donating some hair brushes and shampoo to my local women’s shelter to recognize their struggle.

  43. 43.

    Yarrow

    I happened to catch this on the Today Show on Monday. Nicole Wallace did a series of interviews with voters in swing states who voted for Trump. Some (or maybe all) of them voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. Here’s the link to the one from Erie, PA.

    Near the end of the piece there’s this woman at a diner. Wallace asks her, “Is he a good man?” and she can’t answer, “Yes.” She looks like she’s pondering the question–puts her hands over her mouth (body language experts would have a field day with that)–and then raises her eyebrows up, widens her eyes, leans in and says, “He’s not any worse than the politicians!” Wallace then asks if he’s “better” and she says, “I hope. I hope.” It’s chilling to watch. These people really have no idea what they voted for.

  44. 44.

    Woodrowfan

    @rikyrah: As a non-White, there was nothing about the history of America that didn’t make me believe the man and take him at his word.

    Hell, as a white guy (Scots-Irish and English, if I were any whiter I’d be mayonnaise) I didn;t see any reason not to take him at his word.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    As I said in the previous thread, I think he, Pence, Ryan, and Mitch McConnell should stand on top of the mausoleum where we have Lincoln’s body mummified and salute the troops and tanks as they pass by.

    Why do you hate Springfield, Illinois?

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    @hovercraft:

    Bitter people are bitter that Shrub was atrocious.

    Most of us do miss him already.

    They really resent the depth of our love.
    They thought that they would erase his accomplishments.
    By selecting this buffoon, they have insured that Barack Obama will stand up even more.
    But, you are correct that they resent the hell out of Shrub being such an unmitigated disaster.

  48. 48.

    Ohio Mom

    @Major Major Major Major: I agree with you. What I meant by “we need a different diagnosis” is my fantasy that Trump develops some condition that makes it impossible to continue as president. That isn’t too far out to imagine even if we can’t count on it.

    i won’t be happy with Pence but as I’ve said before, at least he won’t be stuffing his pockets with his kids by his side.

  50. 50.

    zhena gogolia

    At the dentist yesterday I got in an argument with both the dentist and the nurse about the current political situation. It was horrible, and I won’t go into the details. But I will note that they never once offered a word of defense or praise of Trump. It was all about, oh, isn’t the Hamilton cast terrible and isn’t John Lewis terrible (“anarchist!”) and isn’t Meryl Streep terrible. But once my mouth was free I gave them whatever the liberal version of the Gish Gallop is about all the questions and problems with Trump, and they had not one word to say in his defense.

  53. 53.

    ? Martin

    @rikyrah:

    As a non-White, there was nothing about the history of America that didn’t make me believe the man and take him at his word.

    As a white who remembers Trump’s crusade against the Central Park 5, there was nothing about the history of Trump that didn’t make me believe the man and take him at his word.

  54. 54.

    FlipYrWhig

    @hovercraft:

    he has earned near universal approval among Democrats (95% approve)

    BTW, keep this number in mind when people who are chagrined that Obama wasn’t liberal enough try to say that they represent the Democratic “base.” Because there are also a number of Democrats who think he’s been _too_ liberal (think of Jim Webb and Joe Manchin and some of their constituents). So someone left of Obama to the point of disapproving of Obama is representative of probably 1.67% of the population.

  56. 56.

    hovercraft

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Turning back Obamacare, let alone the 20th century may prove harder than they expect.

    Crowd Grills Top GOPer Over His Support Of ACA Repeal Without Replacement

    A critical crowd of constituents confronted House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady (R-TX) at an event Tuesday afternoon to grill him over his support for plans to repeal Obamacare without a replacement ready.

    Fifty or so attendees came to an hourlong session billed by Brady’s staff as an opportunity for “local people affected by ObamaCare” to “share their experiences with rising costs and loss of coverage and choice,” according to a report by the Houston Chronicle.

    “Don’t lie!” one attendee shouted when Brady claimed that Planned Parenthood uses taxpayer money for abortion. The Hyde Amendment prohibits using federal funds to pay for any health coverage that includes abortion, as the attendee noted.

    Brady said that he was not shaken by the apparent opposition he faced, however.

    “This is health care,” he said, as quoted by the Chronicle. “They should be passionate.”
    ————————————

    If we keep the pressure up, we can shake at least some of these people. This asshole is in Texas, so maybe not him, but as Josh Marshall said, It’s Growing.
    We’re seeing more and more instances of pro-Obamacare crowds showing up at district meetings with Republican representatives and Senators.

  58. 58.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Bobby D:

    I’m not a nice person

    You sound fine to me. Good move. Where I work, I have a fan with the entire Obama clan in my office. I look at it from time to time for hope.

  59. 59.

    rikyrah

    @OGLiberal:

    But white folks see an existential threat to their primacy, their privilege. As long as they feel this way, they will come out to vote more than our side. Need to make our voters realize that the threats they face aren’t just on the edges, they are a threat to their way of life. And unlike the imagined fears of the privileged, insecure, coward white folks, these fears are real. No more talk about good Republicans or how we just need to understand those gay hating evangelicals or the folks who are racist because of how they were raised. Don’t say we need to understand them….call them what they are – the enemy, evil, barriers to progress, people who want you to suffer. If you see them as that – which is how conservative white folks see anybody who doesn’t agree with everything they said – you’ll be more likely to vote.

    In other words, stop being polite, which seems to be the default position of the Democratic party – adopt their playbook. Because, you know what?…it works.

    I can’t disagree with anything you wrote. I used to have compassion – until this election. Now, I want them to suffer. I really do. I want all sorts of videos to pop up on youtube when these stupid muthaphuckas get the letters that they don’t have healthcare, or that their social security is gone or medicare. I will enjoy their tears.

    I didn’t used to be this person. But, their willingness to bring the Hunger Games to America has brought me to this.

  60. 60.

    FlipYrWhig

    @schrodingers_cat: IMHO the profession as a whole became so detached, cynical, and ironic about politics, to the point where they think it’s all bullshit and that earnestness is for suckers, that they decided they had a perverse admiration for bullshit artists who don’t apologize for it. They see Republicans as antiheroes, like Walter White or something. Like, “I can’t wait to see what he gets away with next!”

  61. 61.

    Ohio Mom

    @rikyrah: @randy khan:
    Aw shucks. But anybody can do the same. I actually manage only three or four calls a week (and also only manage the laundry three or four days a week, hence those piles looking at me right now). Really, it’s five minutes of a day and it gets your blood flowing. I highly recommend it.

  62. 62.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @hovercraft: If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back to do the usual things, (kill Hitler, stop Dealy plaza etc.), nope, I would go back and kill twitter.

  63. 63.

    Patricia Kayden

    @hovercraft: Wow!! That is awesome. Love the push back against these heartless creeps. My only puzzlement is why these people expect anything different from Repubs. They have demonstrated that they don’t care whether or not their fellow Americans have access to affordable healthcare. I wasn’t born in this country and I’ve figured that out.

  64. 64.

    Kryptik

    @Yarrow:

    The only thing I keep coming back to from the Obama-to-Trump voters essentially boils down to three words: “Hillary, therefore evil.”

    The idea that anything had to be better than “literally the worst human-like creature in the entire history of the world Hillary Clinton”, because they’ve heard 30 odd years of the same drumbeat, that Hillary is the most evil thing ever. Even Dems ended up on the side of treating her like the literal fucking Anti-Christ. How do you fight that kind of absolute built in animosity that no amount of proof or rhetoric will ever disprove?

  66. 66.

    darrel wright

    @aimai:

    White American voters are too stupid to be allowed to vote–and I say that even though I am one.

    On my new principle of “if you see something, say something,” IMO we really need to stop thinking in these terms, it absolutely is a huge part how of this is happening, and I feel like it is absolutely playing into Trump’s hand of chaotic division and media distraction. “White people” are not the problem, “Men” are not the problem, “religious people” are not the problem, “less educated people” are not the problem.

  67. 67.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    I’ve said it before, I will say it again..

    As a non-White, there was nothing about the history of America that didn’t make me believe the man and take him at his word.

    There was also nothing about Trump’s own personal history and behavior that made me believe he’d act any differently as president – worse, actually.

  69. 69.

    hovercraft

    @Thor Heyerdahl:
    I read that many overseas are maneuvering to get things, plans, agreements in place before 12.01 Friday. They are also looking at ways to continue things like the Paris Accord without the participation of the US. They are in other words trying to Trump- proof as much of the world as possible. He will destroy or damage much of what he touches, but they are at least trying to mitigate the damage. China also has to contend with the fact that their cities are choking to death on smog, between the smog and their slowing economy they had to do something.

  72. 72.

    Kryptik

    @OGLiberal:

    Honestly, it’s time to play dirty, but I wonder how much mileage we’ll get out of fighting on their terms again, because of one simple fact: IOKIYAR.

    We’ll get crucified for our misdemeanors before they get wrist-slapped for their mortal sins, over and over, and over again. That’s half the reason Obama had to win like he did: he was as squeaky-ass-clean as possible to be as unimpeachable as possible. That was, and may sadly still be, the only way for a Dem to break through the mindless bubble fallback of treating GOP rule as the eternal default for America.

  74. 74.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @Bobby D: I like your choice of Pinocchio too. But with Donny his nose would be longer than a pole vault…longer than his wall is high.

  75. 75.

    Calouste

    @schrodingers_cat: Not just the 20th century. At least also the 19th and 18th centuries. And possibly the 17th, 16th, 15th, and 14th. Who needs the benefits of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance?

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    Btw folks, here’s some more ‘smoking gun’ – going to re-tweet this to David Fahrenthold in a minute: Was Trump behind GOP policy changes on Ukraine?

    An unverified dossier provided to US intelligence officials alleges that President-elect Donald Trump “agreed to sideline” the issue of Russian intervention in Ukraine during his campaign after Russia promised to feed the emails it stole from prominent Democrats’ inboxes to WikiLeaks

    The amendment [in question]…”was controversial if you hold Donald Trump’s express views on Russia, but it wasn’t controversial with regard to GOP orthodoxy on the issue. So this change on Ukraine definitely came from Trump staffers — not from RNC staffers.”

    It was particularly surprising, the member added, given the Trump campaign representatives’ “relatively hands-off approach” to other parts of the GOP’s national-security platform.

    That approach seems to have extended to the six other subcommittees tasked with crafting different parts of the GOP platform before the convention. Boyd Matheson, a Utah delegate on the Constitution Subcommittee, told The Daily Beast that the Trump campaign was “nowhere to be seen” during their deliberations.

    Gordon, Trump’s representative for the national security committee, said that every subcommittee “featured Trump campaign representatives at side tables to monitor the process and facilitate any questions from delegates.”

    Trump’s campaign manager at the time of the convention, Paul Manafort, told MSNBC at the time that the change in the GOP’s Ukraine policy “absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign.”

    But [Trump’s] tone on Ukraine and Crimea appeared to shift after he hired Manafort to manage his campaign in April 2016, as Politico’s Michael Crowley has reported.

    At the end of July, for instance, Trump told ABC that “the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also.” Days earlier, he had told reporters that he “would be looking at” the possibility of lifting sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea.

    Paul Manafort, please pick up the white courtesy phone, Paul Manafort, your subpoena is waiting…

  77. 77.

    OGLiberal

    @aimai: I’m not a woman but if I were I’d buy a plane ticket to Phoenix to personally punch this woman in the face. Cry me a river, Melody. If you or somebody you care about needs services from Planned Parenthood and they ain’t there because Trump and Paul Ryan defunded them, go fuck yourself. You voted for this, you own it. You did this.

    Seriously, how fucking stupid can you be to be surprised that this would happen with a Donald Trump presidency, to the extent that you’re writing a citizen’s op-ed about it? If you’re not going to pay close enough attention to know this would happen then, please, don’t fucking vote.

  79. 79.

    hovercraft

    @ThresherK:

    I want to know, when will this finding inform how the NYT does its job?

    No, it won’t, these “journalists” are not journalists, they are courtiers, and so until they get some actual journalists on staff nothing will change. They will continue to follow each days or hours SQUIRREL !! and ignore the real shit the congresscritters and the Shitgibbon are doing. I think the NY Times is sadly beyond redemption, the damage they did to our country during the election, and their continued refusal to acknowledge their mistakes, doomed them. They are not to be trusted.

  82. 82.

    Kathleen

    @Ohio Mom: I saw video on Twitter in which one of his constituents was almost in tears over Planned Parenthood cuts and ACA repeal. It. was shot at a meeting but I didn’t know if it was meeting with him or a Democratic strategy meeting. Ohio Dem Party posted video. I have Congressman. Combover in 1st District. I need to call him. I once nicely told his intern that Republicans were mean and heartless.

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    @Yarrow:

    Wallace then asks if he’s “better” and she says, “I hope. I hope.” It’s chilling to watch. These people really have no idea what they voted for.

    Phuck that. They know exactly what they voted for. They just don’t want to accept responsibility for their actions, and I’m tired of people trying to make excuses for them.

  89. 89.

    burnspbesq

    @hovercraft:

    Brady’s one of my least favorite people in Congress these days ( border-adjustable cash flow tax? FUCK NO, ASSHOLE), so anything that causes him consternation and butthurt is totally fine with me. More, every day, please.

  90. 90.

    darrel wright

    @rikyrah:

    I didn’t used to be this person. But, their willingness to bring the Hunger Games to America has brought me to this.

    We all have our limits. I think a lot of the deepest anger I’ve felt is because I feel like this will challenge my ability to be who I am and want to be. We all have our limits.

  91. 91.

    Jeffro

    @zhena gogolia:

    This is the Indivisible playbook, and it’s probably our only chance.

    Yup – get the cowards running scared, and let our own guys know we support them.

  92. 92.

    catclub

    They have demonstrated that they don’t care whether or not their fellow Americans have access to affordable healthcare.

    All those CBO statements that 32 Million people will lose health insurance do not affect them. They affect us.

  94. 94.

    Spanky

    @rikyrah:

    I didn’t used to be this person. But, their willingness to bring the Hunger Games to America has brought me to this.

    I’ve been saying this on this here blog. They’ve taught me well how to hate. And as an Irish-American I thought I already had a pretty good handle on that.

  95. 95.

    The Moar You Know

    At the dentist yesterday I got in an argument with both the dentist and the nurse about the current political situation.

    @zhena gogolia: Christ, going to the dentist is awful enough as it is. DO NOT PUT UP WITH THAT SHIT.

    Anecdote: I had the same dentist from age 7 until age 45 (me not him lol), when he retired and sold his practice to guy a “100% solid guy”. The dentist wasn’t bad. The hygenist was another story, full Fox/Breitbart nutcase, and took full advantage of her captive audience, and when we were done I went up to his office, closed the door, and explained I’d never return until she was fired. He looked horrified, not at what she’d done (tell #1 that he was not a “100% solid guy”) but apparently a good lead hygenist is really hard to find and he was in a bad financial position as it was. I told him that was not my problem and went without dental care for about two years until I found a really great one, old school locals, dad and son practice, and both of them knew my old dentist. So I’ve never been back and the FNG who bought my old dentist’s practice cleared out the office last month and left. Guess I wasn’t the only one unwilling to put up with his hygenist’s bullshit.

    Again: NEVER PUT UP WITH THAT BULLSHIT.

  96. 96.

    Emerald

    I am just in a “watch the whole thing unfold” mode. I know that he will kill thousands at a minimum, I know that he will destroy people’s lives. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t even march, because I’m facing at least one hip replacement (gotta get it done while there’s still Medicare). I’m just watching it as history unfolding before my eyes. I might try to join people confronting my Congresscritter in his next town halls, if he has any, but my Congresscritter is Darryl Issa.

    I have a list of positive things that have resulted from the catastrophe:

    1. We will not have to watch the a$$holes in Congress investigate and impeach Hillary over and over for the next four years, with the NYT leading massive media smears, yet again, because the media would not have stopped smearing her.

    That is my list.

    So I watch and I read BJ and people I follow on Twitter. (Although I will not watch the inauguration.)

    I do have a question, however. Something I do not understand: we now have concrete evidence that we are about to inaugurate an actual traitor as POTUS. Can we not, as Laurence Tribe has been screaming for days, at least appoint an independent prosecutor to look into it?

    Oh, one other question: Any other actual democracy, if they learned that a hostile foreign power had stolen their election, would hold another election. Why can’t we? Are we so inert and supine? Apparently so.

  97. 97.

    darrel wright

    @OGLiberal:

    If you or somebody you care about needs services from Planned Parenthood and they ain’t there because Trump and Paul Ryan defunded them, go fuck yourself. You voted for this, you own it. You did this.

    If a kid was too “stupid” to spell his own name despite years of schooling, would you punch him in the face? We need to get a grip here.

  98. 98.

    hovercraft

    @rikyrah: I’ve never loved a politician, or felt personally invested in his success before. They tried everything they could to diminish this man and his wife, but here they are after 8 years, not just still standing, but standing tall, stronger than ever. They are role models for all of us, they show us how two strong independent people can thrive together, can enhance one another’s strengths. They clung to Shrub because he was their president, we stayed with Obama because of who he is, what he did, not in spite of it, that’s the difference.

    @FlipYrWhig:
    These are the same purity ponies who wanted Obama to be primaried back in 2012, Wilmer was one of them. So they can all go fuck themselves.

  99. 99.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @hovercraft:

    , has suggested that Twitter town halls and Reddit forums may replace some typical presidential press interactions, where he can easily make himself available to anonymous fans instead of the scrutiny of the press.

    again, a naracassit, Trump saw he can’t control the press last week, so he wants to ignore them.

    I bet if comes down to an impeachment it will be because it’s unworkable to have the presidenting hiding from everyone and comunicating by tweets.

  101. 101.

    Ohio Mom

    @Kathleen: Wenstrup seems to hold fairly regular town halls. I am obviously not on the invite list because I only find out about them through those “join us LIVE now” phone calls or follow-up newspaper stories.

    I’m so old, I know that all of Cincinnati used to be in one Congressional district and we sent Democratic Reps to DC., before we were gerrymandered. I remember when Chabot first ran for Cincinnati City Council. IIRC, he started out as a history teacher.

  103. 103.

    catclub

    @Yarrow:

    Here’s the link to the one from Erie, PA.

    Why the fuck can both NPR and NBC only find one town in the entire US to interview people from?

  105. 105.

    OGLiberal

    @Kryptik: IOKIYAR only happens because they are never apologetic, never admit being wrong, never admit that what they stand for is unpopular. Never apologize, deflect and always say that you are doing what the people want, regardless of what the polls say. (which are usually in our favor but it works for Republicans when they aren’t so should work better for us) We need to be partisan and unapologetic about it. Like Atrios always says, it’s not a bad thing that our parties disagree about almost everything – that’s the way it should be. Be proud of your partisanship because you think it’s the right thing. If we start using the GOP’s playbook re: partisanship the IOKIYAR will go away because only our opponents will say what we did was wrong and the press never takes that seriously, regardless of the validity of the claims. But once anybody on your side – and, seriously, only elected folks count to the DC press so pundits don’t matter – says “well, maybe we were wrong” or “maybe we should have compromised a bit more” or “maybe the ACA wasn’t perfect”, it gives the press a chance to say, “even some Dems say…” All Democratic legislation, even if imperfect, should be the greatest thing ever. Every Democratic president, senator, congressman, candidate, should be the greatest American ever. That’s what they do and it works. Hell, most of them even held their nose for the shitbag entering office later this week, even though they know he’s a shitshow in waiting. It works for them even though the policies they support are less popular than the ones we support. The immature electorate we have likes conviction, confidence, the perception of power, and will take that over being right, over facts. Need to play the game by the rules we, unfortunately, have, not the ones we’d like to have. Don’t need to change what we stand for – just act like it’s the right way, the only way, and be fucking proud about it.

  106. 106.

    sigaba

    @zhena gogolia: Nobody defends Trump. Trump voters will drag you through how Hillary was worse, how Obama was worse, how everybody’s awful and liberals’ heads are all exploding, yee haw. But you can never get anyone to say they actually wanted Trump to be president. They’ll say they voted for him but they’ll take pains to not own him in any way.

    No Trump voter ever says anything positive about Trump, even as a lie. That Trump is a terrible president is a non-partisan issue, the only point of contention is wether people are allowed to say it out loud.

  108. 108.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @Emerald:

    I might try to join people confronting my Congresscritter in his next town halls, if he has any, but my Congresscritter is Darryl Issa.

    Issa doesn’t have town halls? After all the shit he’s pulled over the years, I’d love to see a feisty town hall making him sweat.

  110. 110.

    SenyorDave

    @Jeff: The Friday D.C. weather forecast is 80% chance of rain from 10am to 4 pm. Hope it’s a very breezy storm with lots of wind gusts messing up his hair.

    Sounds like rain, Trump will be pretty happy if it is. I’ve heard he likes showers on occasion.

  111. 111.

    Jeffro

    Here’s a good one for forwarding to idiot RWNJ relatives and friends, so that they can at least see how the scam worked: Anti-Clinton Fake News Writer Tells All.

    The ballot box story, promoted by a half-dozen Facebook pages Mr. Harris had created for the purpose, flew around the web, fueled by indignant comments from people who were certain that Mrs. Clinton was going to cheat Mr. Trump of victory and who welcomed the proof. It was eventually shared with six million people, according to CrowdTangle, which tracks web audiences.

    That was exactly the insight on which Mr. Harris said he built his transient business: that people wanted to be fed evidence, however implausible, to support their beliefs. “At first it kind of shocked me — the response I was getting,” he said. “How easily people would believe it. It was almost like a sociological experiment,” added Mr. Harris, who majored in political science and economics.

    By his account, though he voted for Mr. Trump, his early preference had been for Senator Marco Rubio. Mr. Harris said he would have been willing to promote Mrs. Clinton and smear Mr. Trump had those tactics been lucrative. But as other seekers of clicks discovered, Mr. Trump’s supporters were far more fervent than Mrs. Clinton’s.

    “Fervent” is not quite the word I would have chosen here…

  112. 112.

    Jerzy Russian

    @The Moar You Know: If I were in charge, I would mandate universal Shutting The Fuck Up lessons. Certain professions will have to attend class more than others (dentists, professional golfers, etc), but it would be universal.

  113. 113.

    The Moar You Know

    If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back to do the usual things, (kill Hitler, stop Dealy plaza etc.), nope, I would go back and kill twitter.

    @Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Twitter’s role in providing Pumpkin Hitler a free platform worth billions to spew his lying filth has been THE unexamined story of this presidential campaign. And they need to be called to account for it – specifically, if they’re going to provide politicians with a platform for disseminating information, that needs to be dealt with the same as any other campaign contribution. In other words, that shit’s gotta stop, and now.

  114. 114.

    Miss Bianca

    @Yarrow: Yeah, one of the guys in my hunt club is going to be sorry he friended me on FB after I trolled the shit out of him for posting a link to some garbage article about Tom Hanks saying we all had to “hope for a good outcome!”

    So, like…here’s the way some people are apparently seeing it:

    1. Elect a puzzy-grabbing businessman who manages to go bankrupt running CASINOS, stiffs the contractors who works for him, spends his time tweeting when he should be boning up on national security reports, has no political experience, no curbs on his id or ego, who can’t get qualified people who want to work for him, and who has a man-crush on Vladimir Putin, to the most powerful post on the planet;

    2. “HOPE FOR THE BEST!!”

    3. ???

    Jesus wept.

  116. 116.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Bobby D:

    The staring down Putin image is the first thing anyone sees walking by

    What an awsome idea. That really spells out what’s wrong with Trump in terms even the conservatards can get.

  117. 117.

    hovercraft

    @rikyrah:

    I can’t disagree with anything you wrote. I used to have compassion – until this election. Now, I want them to suffer. I really do. I want all sorts of videos to pop up on youtube when these stupid muthaphuckas get the letters that they don’t have healthcare, or that their social security is gone or medicare. I will enjoy their tears.

    I didn’t used to be this person. But, their willingness to bring the Hunger Games to America has brought me to this.

    Tell it Sister.

    When people talk about the seminal moments in their lives where everything hanged, this is was mine. I can no longer just look at people who voted for him as people who just disagree with me. They voted to harm me and my family, they voted to make sure that I was put back into my place, and that I stay there. This was not about tax policy, or some other policy, it was about finally turning America back to the time of white male primacy, (I actually think white supremacy, but I don’t want to be shrill), before it’s too late. I have no sympathy for these people, they are not children, their ignorance is no excuse, presidents are responsible for making life and death decisions, your refusal to acquire basic information is no excuse. I hope that as they suffer whatever comes their way, there is someone there to keep reminding them that they voted for this shit. I’m comfortable with who this election has made me.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @sigaba:

    No Trump voter ever says anything positive about Trump, even as a lie. That Trump is a terrible president is a non-partisan issue, the only point of contention is wether people are allowed to say it out loud.

    Sadly, not true. I hear a lot of people who just can’t wait for Trump to get started making America great again.

    And some of these people are so deep into the Trump cult that they brush off little things, such as the fact that they hated and feared Putin and the Russias like good Republicans before Trump was elected, but now are looking forward to a new age of international co-operation based on the Trumpian foreign policy.

  120. 120.

    OGLiberal

    @darrel wright: Nope, no grip. Not with this one. She wrote a well-written but wrongly guided op-ed for a national publication. She’s presumably a college grad. She’s employed. She made a willfully ignorant decision in this election and now she’s worried she’ll regret it. I was 25 once and was never this stupid. She deserves no sympathy. Sorry, she’s lost. If she made this immature decision at 25 she’ll make it when she’s 35 or 45. She’s not going to change. This is not a mindset that will likely change. Wasting energy trying to win her over is not a winning strategy because she’ll always be wishy washy…all it took this election was some bitchy woman to turn her to a lunatic like Trump, despite him clearly standing against something she holds dear. What will it be next election?

    And no, I wouldn’t actually punch her in the face…I just feel like I want to. I’m 46 and never punched a person in their face in my life so won’t start now. It just symbolizes how frustrated I feel with idiots like this.

  121. 121.

    Cacti

    The all around grace, class, and dignity of the Obamas, despite everything the GOP could throw at them for 8-years…

    Just makes what’s about to replace them seem so very small, petty, and ugly.

  122. 122.

    Jeffro

    Btw at least one person has figured out how to drive sales in the age of Trumpian Tweet-nonsense: author Isaac Marion is posted fake Trump tweets attacking his newest book (which has nothing to do with Trump, as far as I can tell). He’ll probably have sold 100K books before the day is out. =)

  123. 123.

    amk

    @Cacti: I could have even possibly accepted if the rethugs voted for jeb. But this crass corrupt con clown? What twisted minds.

  124. 124.

    Brachiator

    @OGLiberal:

    Here’s the problem. Blacks see cops as an issue. Immigrants see walls to becoming a citizen as an issue. Kids see rising costs of college as an issue. The uninsured see, well, being uninsured (or, until recently, uninsured but now insured, thanks to the ACA) as an issue. Gays folks think it’s just crazy Christian holdouts in red states.

    This is both wrong and reductive.

    But white folks see an existential threat to their primacy, their privilege. As long as they feel this way, they will come out to vote more than our side.

    Uh, more people voted for Clinton than voted for Trump. The Democrats just had a problem with the way the state vote was distributed.

    In other words, stop being polite, which seems to be the default position of the Democratic party – adopt their playbook.

    It always seems to come down to this. Be as shitty as the Republicans. Obama won, twice, without being as shitty as the Republicans. Somehow, people refuse to learn from this.

  125. 125.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @zhena gogolia:

    It’s the siren song of white supremacy. They can’t admit it, can’t quite articulate it politely, but that’s what’s at the root of it.

  127. 127.

    WereBear

    @OGLiberal: The immature electorate we have likes conviction, confidence, the perception of power, and will take that over being right, over facts.

    OMG I wish you weren’t right. But you are.

  128. 128.

    japa21

    @Cacti: I have seen a lot of people point this out. Obama’s ratings will continue to rise, if for no other reason than how he looks compared to Trump. And Trump’s are likely to sink even lower.

    And as that happens it will drive Trump crazy, or should I say it will make him even crazier than he is now.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @zhena gogolia:

    I am very lucky that my dentist is a nice immigrant from Russia and his assistant is a nice immigrant from the Philippines. They are all just as appalled about Trump as I am.

  132. 132.

    The Moar You Know

    If a kid was too “stupid” to spell his own name despite years of schooling, would you punch him in the face?

    @darrel wright: If the kid is over 18? Yep. No hesitation. There’s no penalty for being stupid in America anymore and we now have the political representation to prove it.

    I might try to join people confronting my Congresscritter in his next town halls, if he has any, but my Congresscritter is Darryl Issa.

    @Emerald: He’s never had one. I, like you, have the sad “privilege” of living in his district. Got tossed into his when redistricting took Bilbray’s seat from him. Bilbray was awful but not Issa-level awful. He could at least occasionally be reasoned with.

    (It’s actually is one of the most lovely parts of the US, and I was born here and will probably die here, but damn, we don’t deserve the politicians we’ve had)

  133. 133.

    darrel wright

    @OGLiberal: to me it’s just a question of what we worry about now. Infuriatingly irresponsible people suffering the consequences they deserve and not being let out of the box they’ve put themselves in, or honestly trying as hard as we can to get back to where we were and going forward to somewhere better. I now believe these are mutually exclusive options.

    I’ve been pretty much swimming in the pool of hatred for the last two months. Something clicked for me on MLK day. Something clicks when I look at Obama. We can’t carry the burden of hate and lift what needs lifting. Positive change is hard and slow and we just found out we aren’t even where we thought we were. We don’t have time to be as small as they are.

  134. 134.

    Cacti

    @japa21:

    I have seen a lot of people point this out. Obama’s ratings will continue to rise, if for no other reason than how he looks compared to Trump. And Trump’s are likely to sink even lower.

    Obama’s 8-years will be bookended by George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

    I have no doubt history will remember him very warmly.

  135. 135.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    At the dentist yesterday I got in an argument with both the dentist and the nurse about the current political situation. It was horrible, and I won’t go into the details. But I will note that they never once offered a word of defense or praise of Trump. It was all about, oh, isn’t the Hamilton cast terrible and isn’t John Lewis terrible (“anarchist!”) and isn’t Meryl Streep terrible.

    Do they do good work? A really good dentist is hard to find.

    I admit though, that I would be really steamed over the Hamilton diss.

  137. 137.

    Peale

    @rikyrah: Yep. There are too many progressives who don’t understand that progress can come to a halt AND go backwards. And stay backwards for quite some time. There will be a lot of people shocked, shocked, that if they keep electing people who promise to end social security, it will end and that once broken, its not coming back. Or that endangered species laws can be thrown away. Or Unions ended for their lifetimes. Or literacy rates falling and teen pregnancies rising and disabled kids thrown out of school because they are “too expensive.”

    But the Trump voters who wish to revote – well it ain’t happening.

  139. 139.

    Brachiator

    @amk:

    Now, you are being reductive. Obama was and is an once-in-lifetime phenomenon.

    Bullshit. The next Obama, and the next even-better-than-Obama is out there, waiting for his or her opportunity.

    Hell, we have to make sure that Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.

  141. 141.

    Weaselone

    @darrel wright:

    37 year old white guy here. So exactly what is the problem? We can pile lots of blame on the press, on Comey, on Hillary’s campaign, on Bernie, etc., but when it comes down to it the truth that Trump was a racist, corrupt incompetent, narcissist conman who had no business being anywhere near the levers of power was out there. No need for Mulder and Scully to find it for you either as the media was fond of showing his raw, uncut asshattery in full high definition directly after running a half hour of the empty podium show.

    Now maybe a handful of people can be excused because they woke from a coma only a few hours before the election and really like red hats, but that doesn’t apply to the bulk of his voters. The best of them are stone cold racists who get stiffies thinking about the Fort Pillow massacre. They at least knew what they were voting for, wanted it and cast votes for him. The 2nd group is a bunch of self-centered, narrow minded shitbirds who willingly swapped the rights of minorities and the future of the country for the swill being peddled by the world’s most obvious conman. The last group is so criminally misinformed and/or stupid that divine intervention is required to prevent them from decapitating themselves with spoons while eating cereal, or gouging out their eyes with jello at a church potluck.

  144. 144.

    albertZ

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve never heard any politics discussed in my dentists office – but seeing that she is a black woman , I’m going to guess she’s not a Trump fan.

  146. 146.

    rikyrah

    @Cacti:

    The all around grace, class, and dignity of the Obamas, despite everything the GOP could throw at them for 8-years…

    Just makes what’s about to replace them seem so very small, petty, and ugly.

    The GOP knows this, and it drives them nuts that not only do we know it, but we’re not ashamed to make the comparisons.

    They really are bothered that we just haven’t ‘fallen in line’, like we always do.

    They don’t get it, and I mean this.

    I mean this when the VOTE ITSELF, is a definer of your lack of character.

    This isn’t 2000, when those of us who believed that Shrub’s ‘ compassionate conservative’ schtick was nothing but bullshyt, but didn’t have all the proof.

    This isn’t even 2004, because even though Shrub had lied us into 2 wars by that time, he didn’t go around telling people that 1 billion Muslims are the enemy.

    This vote defines who they are.
    He didn’t use any Frank Luntz approved dogwhistles. I said this over and over again in the campaign.

    Because he didn’t, that means that those who voted for him can’t hide behind the excuse that he used dogwhistles, and they didn’t know what they meant.

    No. He was in your face racist. Sexist. anti-Muslim. Cruel to a person with disabilities. These are things that we saw. He peddled in hatred and vile his entire campaign.

    You don’t get to pretend that he didn’t.

    No. your vote for him DEFINES you – and your lack of character.

    Your vote for him DEFINED YOU – and what you will bring to this country – The Hunger Games.

    Add into it, that this is also a vote for someone, who is a foreign power, and you are siding with foreign power to undermine American sovereignty.

    I am a patriot of this country. My people have been here since before 1800. I’m not going anywhere. And, as a patriot, I can be pissed about this. Like I said yesterday, Hell muthaphuckin’ no to allowing any Republican utter patriotism from now on. Hell no.

    Uh huh.

  148. 148.

    darrel wright

    @Peale:

    But the Trump voters who wish to revote – well it ain’t happening.

    The 2018 campaigns have practically already started, and we’ll soon be auditioning for what liberal can best intone the line “I have 2 words for you sir – You’re Fired” for 2020. We will win, and we will be stronger for what happened here. It’s a question of how long that takes.

  149. 149.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Calouste: Without the Renaissance and the scientific awakening that followed, there would be no European domination of the globe. No Columbus or Magellan, no British Navy that made the Empire possible etc. etc..

  150. 150.

    PaulW

    Looking back, I can’t recall the previous Presidential years as being so… intense in my life. Reagan wasn’t a big deal to me, Bush the Elder was something of a disappointment, Bill Clinton was just… amiable enough a figure to respect but not to love, Bush the Lesser was akin to having a skin rash that wouldn’t go away, and somehow I came to view Cheney as the greater threat.

    Obama felt like being in an 8-year war for the soul of America. Where we had our victories, and now sadly our setbacks as the Republicans bully their way into one more attempt to destroy everybody who isn’t a wealthy white guy over 55. So of course this war isn’t over, but I feel proud in having Obama as the general leading us into battle.

  151. 151.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @OGLiberal: Amen brother. One of my greatest pre-election regrets is not being way more vocal and proud of my position. Anytime “emails” or anything else came up, instead of hemming and hawing, the right answer was just to scream “NOOOOOOOO!” over and over again like that cool biker guy that stood down that hitler-youth kid. I’ve been way too nice, way too deferential my whole life. Mostly because (as I sense many of you are as well) I’m naturally polite and easy-going. But they broke something inside me on 11/9, and I’m never going to forget or forgive or tolerate ever again.

    We need an An-tea Party. We need it now. We need to copy their tactics to an absolute T while embracing the exact opposite of their policies and aganda.

  153. 153.

    Cacti

    @Peale:

    Yep. There are too many progressives who don’t understand that progress can come to a halt AND go backwards. And stay backwards for quite some time. There will be a lot of people shocked, shocked, that if they keep electing people who promise to end social security, it will end and that once broken, its not coming back. Or that endangered species laws can be thrown away. Or Unions ended for their lifetimes. Or literacy rates falling and teen pregnancies rising and disabled kids thrown out of school because they are “too expensive.”

    The ideologically rigid wankers of the left fringe are worse than useless. They’re destructive.

    They haven’t gotten a single ideological leftist in the White House or created a leftist congressional majority.

    But they have contributed mightily to the elections of Presidents Nixon, W. Bush, and Trump.

  154. 154.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Yoda Dog Democrat:

    Amen brother. One of my greatest pre-election regrets is not being way more vocal and proud of my position. Anytime “emails” or anything else came up instead of hemming and hawing, the right answer was just to scream “NOOOOOOOO!” over and over again like that cool biker guy that stood down that hitler-youth kid.

    I basically did this and was on more than a few occasions privately thanked for being an out and proud Hillary supporter by people who couldn’t put up with the harassment they’d get for it. Which is to say, women–us guys didn’t get harassed nearly as much for our Hillary support and our careers weren’t as likely to suffer because of political beliefs.

  155. 155.

    Brachiator

    @amk:

    yeah, good luck with both.

    Luck is for suckers.

    For everybody else, the hard work of political engagement is all we’ve got.

  156. 156.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Woodrowfan: Definitely. I asked about a new dentist on my local Pantsuit Nation group a few weeks ago and got a lot of great recommendations.

  160. 160.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kryptik: I was speaking to a good friend (older African American woman) and was surprised when she claimed that Secretary Clinton was evil. She voted for her but doesn’t like her. I don’t understand that way of thinking at all. It’s obvious that Secretary Clinton just couldn’t outrun the 30-year plus smear job that Republicans have subjected her to since forever. Sad because whatever her flaws, she would be much better than the Bigot about to be sworn in. I guess we’re all going to learn a hard lesson about wanting perfect politicians.

  162. 162.

    artem1s

    anyone feeling guilty about making Twitler and the Trumpanzees own their trainwrecks might want to read this…
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-brings-uncertainty-and-nacissism-to-white-house-a-1129925.html#ref=nl-international

    In Trump’s world, even just the appearance of disloyalty is an unforgivable sin. He encourages his readers to react in such cases with brutal vengeance. Ultimately, the woman lost her home and her husband left her, Trump relates. “I was glad.” In subsequent years, he continued speaking poorly of her, he writes. “Now I go out of my way to make her life miserable.”

    At the end of the chapter called “Revenge,” Trump advises his readers to constantly seek to take revenge. “Always make a list of people who hurt you. Then sit back and wait for the appropriate time to get revenge. When they least expect it, go after them with a vengeance. Go for their jugular.”

  163. 163.

    Kay

    I’m having a lot of fun telling Republicans I’m excited about free health care for all. I ask them if Mexico is going to pay for it. They’re all cranky and irritable and out of sorts :)

    You really have to embrace being in the opposition. It’s delightful.

  165. 165.

    darrel wright

    @Weaselone: Well I can’t deny that even in the Zen trance I’ve managed to get myself into, I almost spat my Subway Spicy Italian on the keyboard with a couple of those turns of phrase.

    I guess my point is that dividing people into broad blame-groups and shouting “fuck-you-I-will-never-forgive-or-let-you-forget” is simply and pragmatically what the forces of Trump want to happen. I will not act as if I care who is to blame, individually or collectively. I’m well aware millions of people have acted with inexcusable mendacity and stupidity and ignorance and perverted hearts. And I will make excuses for all of them. I will provide the easiest, surest route for their retreat towards my camp. They had it too hard. They were confronted with forces beyond their control or capacity. Whatever helps give them the space for their hearts to change. Or their childrens’ hearts. Or their childrens’ children.

  167. 167.

    Emerald

    @The Moar You Know:

    Howdy neighbor! We ought to have a meet-up! Ever go to the Chocolate Bar on Carlsbad Village Drive?

    Yeah, Applegate really got close. My fear is that our local Democrats won’t run him again next time. We’re always running unknowns because they won’t back anyone who loses once. However, the Colonel seems like a fairly forceful person. Perhaps he can persuade them. (Now if we could get a Latino Marine Colonel!!!)

    I believe we will finally get Issa someday, if we are allowed to vote in free and fair elections after this catastrophe, that is.

  170. 170.

    darrel wright

    @artem1s:

    anyone feeling guilty about making Twitler and the Trumpanzees own their trainwrecks

    Are you arguing we suppress our natural, better inclinations and devolve to the Trumpian?

  173. 173.

    Weaselone

    @darrel wright:

    I guess I’m torn. We may need their votes and buy in to fix things, but unless they have real changes of heart they will be fickle and questionable allies at best.

  175. 175.

    Miss Bianca

    @Yarrow: This will be dupe post because moderation but oh, well..

    One of the guys in my hunt club is going to be sorry he friended me on FB after I trolled the shit out of him for posting a link to some garbage article about Tom Hanks saying we all had to “hope for a good outcome!”

    So, like…here’s the way some people are apparently seeing it:

    1. Elect a puzzy-grabbing businessman who manages to go bankrupt running CAS!NOS, stiffs the contractors who works for him, spends his time tweeting when he should be boning up on national security reports, has no political experience, no curbs on his id or ego, who can’t get qualified people who want to work for him, and who has a man-crush on Vladimir Putin, to the most powerful post on the planet;

    2. “HOPE FOR THE BEST!!”

    3. ???

    4. Jesus wept.

  176. 176.

    Van Buren

    I once had a new supervisor who hated the old one with a passion and thus overturned every policy and protocol that the old one had enacted in an effort to erase him from history, no matter how sensible said policy was.
    I feel this experience will be repeated on a nationwide scale in the next few months.

  177. 177.

    ruckus

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Simple answers to complex issues do not exist. The Mad Men culture of very short attention span, repetitive bullshit slogans, and hard sell of nothingness has fully caught up to politics.

  178. 178.

    zhena gogolia

    @sigaba:

    I said, “We’re probably not going to survive him.” The dentist said, “What’s your definition of ‘survive’?” I said, “I mean like actually still being alive, and not killed by a nuclear war incited by a stupid tweet!” They were both eerily silent after that and didn’t say another word about it. I could tell they knew I was right.

  180. 180.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @schrodingers_cat: You guys/gals all have so much more patience and wherewithal than I, and I commend you for it. I cannot stomach to debate these people, by and large. I ineveitably just want to lead off with something like, “My word, you just cannot be this fucking stupid. It’s impossible.” I readily admit I need to work on my diplomacy.

  181. 181.

    Kay

    @schrodingers_cat:

    For 8 years I heard how nothing is free and health care is some crazy pipe dream and now here comes dopey assuring everyone they’re getting a national health service or something. Next week I’ll start asking them where I sign up for my free TrumpCare.

  182. 182.

    ruemara

    @Mustang Bobby: Why is it always the Democrats’ fault/ You know, you train them that they have the least reliable bunch of voters possible, why the fuck do you think they’re not strong? When will it be the voters’ fault that they’re either insane or unreliable? And even then, it’s only a certain demographic that can’t work out how critical it is to show up. The others have to run through all the hoops and obstacles while listening to the allies whine about the Dems.

  183. 183.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jerzy Russian:

    I guess I feel that he was brave to make his feelings known to me, since he knew what my politics are, so I feel bad about penalizing him for that. It seems like a Trumpian thing to do. And again, neither he nor she actually defended Trump, they were just pearl-clutching about the disrespect to the presidency and vice presidency displayed by Streep, Lewis, and the Hamilton cast. For me that doesn’t quite cross the line. And I felt as if I got through to them on some level. As I said, they were stunned into silence.

  184. 184.

    SiubhanDuinne

    George H. W. Bush has been moved to ICU and Barbara Bush has just been admitted to hospital. Per MSNBC.

  185. 185.

    OGLiberal

    @Brachiator: What I’m saying is that there is a huge chunk of white folks who, wrongly, see their privilege and existence at risk. And because of that, they vote…in more numbers than our side. (yes, I know white folks vote for Dems as well but I’m talking about the majority of white folks who, yes, do vote for the GOP and probably always will as long as they appeal to white people fears…and there are still as many of them around as the Dem coalition) The voters the GOP hates needs to feel the same way. Yes, a lot of them vote, but if a few more of them voted in WI, MI and PA we wouldn’t be where we are today. Yes, I know that more people voted for Hillary than Trump but not in the places that mattered. increase turnout in those places just a bit and we win. How to increase turnout…scare the shit out of folks. Was never a fan of this tactic until I became legitimately scared with this election.

    Obama won twice because he was an exceptional, once-in-a-generation candidate. But at this point, I think inspiration and “generational change” and “transformative” and all that are a losing game. Have to scare the shit out of folks. And sometimes, doing that means you have to be a dick. So that’s what I’m for.

  187. 187.

    pamelabrown53

    @darrel wright: #90

    I, too, fear that this past election has brought me past the cusp of the person I ant to be. I’m declining invitations and plans to be with “friends” and family (my spouses side) who voted for Trump. It’s beginning to cause friction in my life, plus, I’m resentful and angry most of the time.A big reason for my feelings is how eager many are to normalize Trump.

    When I read reports of Trump’s interview with “Bild” and the “London Times”, I felt such lance’s stab of fear and loathing.

  189. 189.

    hovercraft

    @Cacti:

    Obama’s 8-years will be bookended by George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

    History will ask how is it that he is sandwiched by two of the worst president in history? The former was because the Supreme Court appointed him, and then then media helped him stay in place, to all our detriment. He was so bad that even racists voted for Obama. “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”, economics trumped racism. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of white people voted for him for the right reasons, his intellect, his eloquence, his temperament and his platform, this blog is full of those people, but for many it was out of desperation. Those are the people who as soon as the ni**er had cleaned up the mess left behind by the last anointed scion, ran back to look for a new scion to take his rightful place leading the country. Obama was supposed to behave like a good house ni**er, clean up and disappear, let massa take all the credit.
    So now everything is chugging along, back to normal, but this Obama keeps wanting credit for all the things he did, what the hell is wrong with him, doesn’t he see that he is empowering those people by setting the example he has, now they want access to the things that have always been ours. Time to send a message, he was just an aberration, we run this country, and no matter what you think, it belongs to us.
    History will show that this setback was temporary, they lost by “winning”. They woke so many of us up, we thought we were further along the road to that “more perfect union” than we are. The thing is we are more determined than ever to get there.
    One glaring thing has also been laid bare by this election and the two men who sandwich Obama, white male privilege. Bush and the PEOTUS are two mediocre men who through family connections and money both managed to fail upwards their entire lives, Obama and Hillary Clinton worked hard and earned everything they have themselves, and yet Obama all things considered won a close(relatively) race against McCain, and Clinton barely lost to the Shitgibbon. Despite superior campaigns and obviously being the better choice, the old guard fought back tooth and nail to hold on.
    So history will regard what came after Obama as one of the last gasps of those who wanted to maintain white supremacy. You cannot put the genie back into the bottle, try as you might.

    History will hold President Barrack Hussein Obama in very high regard, Shrub and the Shitgibbon as two of our worst.

  190. 190.

    zhena gogolia

    @Mnemosyne:

    You really are lucky, because I don’t know too many Russian immigrants who aren’t for Trump, or at least Clinton-haters.

  191. 191.

    p.a.

    the jug heads hit the city from every country round the globe

    the ships pulled in the drinks were free the ticker tape came out in rolls

    i was sitting in a bar watching this on tv

    to me it looked like a failure but they called it victory

    well if you can sleep at night go ahead that’s great

    you’re just dreaming anyway if you don’t get irate

    chorus (twice)

    come on turn it into hate turn it into hate

    send your little boys and girls to go and play in a giant sandbox
    put your movie stars on the cover of people for goin’ in for a detox
    let your happy-face news readers share a little joke
    at the end of the night’s transmission
    let’s see the world through the eyes
    of some clown gonna make all of your decisions

    well if you can sleep at night go ahead that’s great
    it’s all been manufactured like the junk that’s on your plate

    chorus repeat

    some of them lead the marching band suddenly they’re war heroes
    some of them fall in a foreign land suddenly they’re just zeroes
    some of us go back to sleep some of us learn to fear it
    there’s a siren blowin’ in your heart you just don’t want to hear it

    well if you can sleep at night go ahead that’s all right
    ah just don’t start a fight with anyone rich and white

    chorus repeat

    turn it, turn it, turn it, turn it turn it into hate

    Graham Parker, 1991 plus ça change…

  192. 192.

    bemused

    @PaulW:

    Reagan, Bush 1 and 2 were still speaking in code, cranking out slogans such as “compassionate conservatives” and claiming sole ownership of values, morals and principles, camouflaging the rot within. Trump was right up in our faces, no pretenses, just raw, ugly bigotry on every level.

  193. 193.

    zhena gogolia

    @darrel wright:

    Nice comment, something to think about. I have to say I’m alarmed at myself with my hatred for the whole Trump clan, and those who voted for him. Hatred is not a good emotion to hang onto for very long.

  194. 194.

    Neldob

    That mighty fine cartoon needs a byline. Please.

    Also, Nixon said to be careful who you hate as it ties you to them. He should know.

  197. 197.

    ruckus

    @Major Major Major Major:
    It is both.
    He has always been this asshole. He is just more public and pronounced now. But none of this is being helped by what many of us think is Alheimer’s. Along with a few other issues.

  198. 198.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay: Yeah, I’ve decided that relentlessly upbeat ridicule is my best defense.

    Like when one guy said to me how he thought Trump not being a politician was a plus because he was so not happy with the political status quo in this country, I was all like, “yeah, I hear you! I feel the same way about the state of American medicine. So I’ve decided that the next time someone tells me I need surgery, that I’m just going to get my hairdresser to do it. Because, experience and expertise are so overrated! And then I’m going to hope for the best! Because WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?”

  199. 199.

    Citizen Alan

    @darrel wright:

    Stupidity is forgivable. Ignorance is forgivable. WILLFUL ignorance, that is ignorance born of an intentional refusal to acknowledge facts that one finds disagreeable, is not forgivable. In fact, I would describe it as a mortal sin.

  200. 200.

    Major Major Major Major

    @The Moar You Know: You said

    if they’re going to provide politicians with a platform for disseminating information, that needs to be dealt with the same as any other campaign contribution.

    Would you say the same for any other dissemination medium? Say, just off the top of my head, a privately-owned wall that let anybody paint on it? Or the comment section of a blog, perhaps? What part becomes the ‘contribution’? How do you assign a value?

  201. 201.

    GregB

    I think it is important to not lump everyone into the Trump true believer category.

    You need to offer an exit ramp for people who were fooled ir weren’t aware of how dreadful thus will be.

    I mean even John Cole came to his senses during the Bush era.

    They then become allies in the counter cause.

  202. 202.

    Kathleen

    @Ohio Mom: That is correct. I worked with a young African American man who remembered how Chabot came to Bonf Hill and sat on his grandmother’s front porch and chatted w when he ran for. Cit u Council. Remember Tom Luken? Or worst, Charlie Luken?

  203. 203.

    J R in WV

    TaMara:

    Who’s art is that? Very effective. Love it.

    Was talking to a friend just now, his wife and a friend are driving to Maryland tomorrow morning to meet friend’s sister/friends coming down from Mass. They have a block of motel rooms booked near a METRO stop, planning to take the Metro downtown for the Saturday demonstration.

    I hypothesize that Friday night/early Saturday morning, DHS sends armed agents to METRO operations center to protect our nation’s capitol, and closes METRO so that it won’t be subject to expected terrorist attack Saturday. Those women can walk into DC if they want to, and can pass through the security systems in place to protect DC residents from un-American terror. Or be arrested for being part of the terror network opposing Dear Trump Leader.

    I have a Lovecraftian imagination… hoping it doesn’t get that bad that quick. But no limits on Trump’s evil. So expecting the worst.

  204. 204.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @darrel wright: That is a good post. I liked it…. But you know they hate you, right? They fucking hate you. And they don’t “want us to hate back” so much as they don’t give a flying fuck what we think. They want you to die. They fucking hate you and one of their missions in life is to teach their children and their children’s children to hate you as well. This outreach needs to happen, I suppose, and god bless those of you with the heart for it. Mine’s broken. Fuck them forever.

  205. 205.

    Brachiator

    @amk:

    hard political engagement is what being advocated here, not some touchyfeely stuff, you seem to be fond of

    You may have me confused with someone else. The only touchyfeely stuff I advocate involves a closed fist swung upside someone’s head, politically speaking.

  207. 207.

    hovercraft

    @Brachiator:
    “Bullshit. The next Obama, and the next even-better-than-Obama is out there, waiting for his or her opportunity.”
    It depends on what you mean by this statement. Are there politicians out there? Possibly
    Someone well to the left of him, who can actually get themselves elected president? Maybe
    But for me, he connected with me on a personal level. There are politicians I like and admire, but with him it was different. When they say a “once in a life-time or once in a generation” politician, this is what they are talking about. People who loved JFK and Camelot, had it cut short, they didn’t get the full 4 or 8 years, it was frozen November 22, 1963, they romanticized his presidency. For those of us saying there will never be another like Obama for us, we got the full 8 years warts and all, we see his flaws, but the connection is still there, the accomplishments appreciated, we will never feel this way for another politician, period. I was all in for Hillary, and will be all in for our next nominee, but it won’t be the same.

    Hell, we have to make sure that Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.

    I’m 110% with you on this one.

  208. 208.

    Calouste

    @SiubhanDuinne: I was speculating just yesterday, after reading about LBJ passing away two days after Nixon’s second inauguration causing the cancellation of a number of events, how the shitgibbon would react to GHW Bush passing away a day before the inauguration.

  209. 209.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    Yes, he’s very meticulous, and I’ve been going to him for 20 years. We never, ever talked about politics before.

    Well, I guess the option is to never, ever talk about politics again.

  211. 211.

    darrel wright

    @Yoda Dog Democrat: They think they hate me. Many of them. They don’t know me, so it’s hard to be bothered by that kind of “hate.” And I agree they don’t especially “want us to hate back” (although actually, they kind of do, it validates) but I believe the oppositional system that protects and ensures their ignorance requires it.

  213. 213.

    ruemara

    @Emerald: We are fucking comfortable in this country and many of the majority are either not angry enough to stand up or perfectly ok, because their side won. We’ll need serious death & destruction for off our asses to be a national movement.

  216. 216.

    rikyrah

    @hovercraft:

    One glaring thing has also been laid bare by this election and the two men who sandwich Obama, white male privilege. Bush and the PEOTUS are two mediocre men who through family connections and money both managed to fail upwards their entire lives, Obama and Hillary Clinton worked hard and earned everything they have themselves, and yet Obama all things considered won a close(relatively) race against McCain, and Clinton barely lost to the Shitgibbon. Despite superior campaigns and obviously being the better choice, the old guard fought back tooth and nail to hold on.

    So history will regard what came after Obama as one of the last gasps of those who wanted to maintain white supremacy. You cannot put the genie back into the bottle, try as you might.

    Absolutely true.

  218. 218.

    sigaba

    @zhena gogolia: Yeah I’m telling people, I’m sure there are some people who really think Trump is tops but these don’t seem to be very common.

    Most Trump voters and online supporters are people who want to make Hillary’s loss into a victory, but if you put them on the spot and don’t take their Trump love for granted, they’ll do anything to change the subject back to angry liberals. That’s all they wanted out of the election, make libs angry, and that’s all they’re going to get.

  220. 220.

    Elizabelle

    @Calouste: Saw that quip yesterday; was trying to remember who tempted the fates when I saw that GHWB was hospitalized.

    Maybe he’s relaxing more since it’s obvious his son will not remain the worst US president of the 21st century for long.

  222. 222.

    Kathleen

    @schrodingers_cat: I so agree with that. I don’t miss him one bit. He skewed Fox and CNN very well but they are low hanging fruit. Done with him a long time ago. Also too I’m with you 100 pet cent regarding your recent comments on Wilmer and Regressive Pure Left.

  224. 224.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @darrel wright: I’m with you to a degree, but ultimately my opinion is this kind of thinking is a mitigating factor in why we keep getting fucking bulldozed every election.

  226. 226.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Calouste:

    I remember seeing your comment, which is probably why my ears perked up when they announced it on the radio a short while ago. Relatively speaking, I don’t hateBush 41 and am not wishing immediate death on him, but I am petty enough to love the idea of the passing of a former POTUS sucking oxygen away from T’s inaugural.

  227. 227.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Hope someone is going to put up a fresh thread for Obama’s final press conference. I’ll watch it later* but always love seeing BJ comments unfold during such events.

    *(Not watching in real time, as I’m seeing Singin’ in the Rain starting in about 10 minutes. Bought my ticket last week, before I knew it would compete with my Preznit.)

  228. 228.

    WereBear

    @Emerald: We’re always running unknowns because they won’t back anyone who loses once.

    That sounds stupid. Show me a politician who never lost… heck, President Obama lost his first race.

  230. 230.

    FlipYrWhig

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The same applies to, the sainted Jon Stewart.

    Ha! I had a whole paragraph about Jon Stewart in there and edited it out before posting. IMHO Stewart is actually an idealist, though. It’s the people who think they can be mini-Jons, like Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza, who infected journalism with that seen-it-all blasé attitude about Republicans being disgusting because, hey, buddy, whaddya expect ’em ta do, gotta hand it to ’em, least they act like they mean it? Ick.

  233. 233.

    Brachiator

    @hovercraft:

    For those of us saying there will never be another like Obama for us, we got the full 8 years warts and all, we see his flaws, but the connection is still there, the accomplishments appreciated, we will never feel this way for another politician, period.

    History is full of surprises. I have relatives who loved the muthafucking shit out of FDR and Eleanor. They later loved them some JFK. I had a history teacher whose heart was broken, and had to take time out from school, when Robert Kennedy was murdered. She found her heart again with Obama.

    I vividly remember an early op-ed piece that Caroline Kennedy wrote, called, “A Man Like My Father,” about Obama. I wondered, what in the hell was she talking about. Later, I understood.

    I knew that the food truck guy who comes by our office would be my buddy when he (an Armenian immigrant) said, one day, “Obama is my president.”

    But I also know people who thought that Bill Clinton was special, and who later also loved Obama.

    I was all in for Hillary, and will be all in for our next nominee, but it won’t be the same.

    I see what you are saying, but the fact is that we have a history of presidents who have touched the people deeply, and a good number of them have been Democrats. I have absolutely no doubt at all that there will be another president, maybe a black president, or not, who will take more risks than Obama did, but will continue the example that he set and be just as loved and admired by the citizens. And it just might happen in your lifetime.

  234. 234.

    hovercraft

    New York Gov. Cuomo, Trump Circle Each Other On Obamacare Repeal

    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said he and Donald Trump discussed the effects that repealing the Affordable Care Act would have on residents of New York and Trump’s knowledge of the subject during a Wednesday meeting.

    Cuomo told reporters at Trump Tower that he wanted to make sure Trump “had the context of New York” and other large states in mind as he considers policy decisions, per a transition pool report.

    “We discussed how the Affordable Care Act affects New York, and the pitfalls of a repeal plan, which would be dramatic on the state of New York,” Cuomo said. “He is a New Yorker, and my sense is that he understood exactly what I was saying and the magnitude of what I was saying. Three million uninsured people would be a problem.”

    He said that their conversation was “not adversarial” and that Trump “was knowledgeable” about options under discussion to replace Obamacare.

    “He was knowledgeable about the issues on the Affordable Care Act and the different options that were being discussed. He was knowledgeable about the issue of state and local destructibility, which is a very big issue,” Cuomo said, per the pool report. “So he’s been briefed on the federal side. I wanted to make sure he had the New York state perspective from the budget point of view as he’s considering those federal issues.”

    Keep an eye on your healthcare NY, this weasel looks like he’s getting ready to sell you out. I know it helps to blow smoke up it’s ass, but seriously calling it “knowledgeable” about anything is bullshit.

  235. 235.

    Aleta

    @Bobby D:

    I plan to rub their faces in it

    Be sure to mention out loud every colossal waste of taxpayer money. And each rise in unemployment. Predict the loss of worker benefits. Predict the rise in shipping costs for shopping by mail as the post office is (right now being) dismantled, and reduced home delivery outside of cities.

  236. 236.

    darrel wright

    @Major Major Major Major: They really don’t. By effort and circumstance I have managed to stay in pretty close contact with many elements of the Fox crowd. They like me. I’m a little naive and misguided on some things but it turns out I’m nothing like MOST OF THE LIBERALS.

    Trump does not want his crowd to meet me. He wants me to stop talking to my neighbor because she voted for Trump. In fact, he pretty much NEEDS that to happen. No thank you.

  238. 238.

    bemused

    @Miss Bianca:

    Love this. Sarcasm is a great way to go. The truth teller gets the point across (hopefully) and it’s easier on his/her blood pressure.

  243. 243.

    The Moar You Know

    Would you say the same for any other dissemination medium? Say, just off the top of my head, a privately-owned wall that let anybody paint on it? Or the comment section of a blog, perhaps? What part becomes the ‘contribution’? How do you assign a value?

    @Major Major Major Major: This is actually all covered, extensively, by campaign finance laws.

    So, in order, absolutely, yes, if the painter is working for the campaign (that includes volunteers), yes, if the poster is working for the campaign (again, that includes volunteers), the “contribution” is the number of viewers (this can be a “reasonable” estimate), the value is the same value as campaign advertising in similar media (cost of TV ads, radio, newspaper, banner ads, Facebook ads [who charge price per x/number of users where the ad is displayed on their feed, a model which would work perfectly for Twitter as well], etc.)

    Not rocket science. The only issue is that nobody has bothered to apply it to Twitter. And that needs to start.

  246. 246.

    chopper

    @hovercraft:

    and yet Obama all things considered won a close(relatively) race against McCain

    this is something i pointed out before. in 08 the GOP was on the ropes. 8 years of shitty presidenting, katrina, the economic collapse, they were just eating shit every day. and in spite of the fact that they put fucking palin on the ticket and we put up obama for president, the most talented politician in generations, 46 percent of americans still voted GOP. this country is still very reflexively republican and very reflexively white supremacist.

  247. 247.

    The Moar You Know

    But you know they hate you, right? They fucking hate you. And they don’t “want us to hate back” so much as they don’t give a flying fuck what we think. They want you to die. They fucking hate you and one of their missions in life is to teach their children and their children’s children to hate you as well. This outreach needs to happen, I suppose, and god bless those of you with the heart for it. Mine’s broken. Fuck them forever.

    @Yoda Dog Democrat: 100% agree. You nailed this to the wall. And I know more than enough of these fuckers to testify to the truth of it. Amazing what some people will say when they think everyone in the room agrees with them (I work a job in which you’d rarely find a liberal, to put it bluntly).

  248. 248.

    NR

    The great thing about the “everyone who’s against us is a dirty, dirty racist” argument is that it makes things so very easy. We’re perfect, you see, and so we don’t have to ask ourselves any hard questions, we don’t have to make any effort to change or improve. We only lost because the people against us are all terrible people.

    Well, here’s a news flash for you: Obama himself has admitted that he is partly at fault for Democratic losses while he was president. I have my share of problems with his policy and political decisions, but I definitely admire the fact that he has the courage and the emotional maturity to take a hard look at the decisions he’s made and admit his part in what went wrong.

    All of you who claim to admire the man so much, you should listen to him now and think about following the example he’s setting here. Spend less time demonizing everyone who voted in a way you don’t approve of and focus on what we can do better.

  249. 249.

    Kathleen

    @Cacti: They’re more toxic than the right in my opinion because Democrats feel like they have to “win them over” and kiss The One’s glutes. I have no use for his rabid minions.

  251. 251.

    catclub

    @chopper: Who else pointed out that FDR was elected only after the GOP had held the burning bag o shit for nearly 4 years. Obama was handed the burning bag o shit after 3 months.

    And it was still not a certain thing that the citizens of the US were willing to break with the GOP daddies.

  253. 253.

    Mnemosyne

    @darrel wright:

    I can’t speak for anyone else, but I may eventually be able to forgive the people who admit they were wrong and promise to listen to liberals in the future.

    The ones who will try to pretend they never supported Trump and never actually admit they were wrong? No sale.

  254. 254.

    chopper

    @NR:

    say, didn’t i ask you before to go get eaten alive by red ants? why come you haven’t done that yet? why come?

  255. 255.

    darrel wright

    @Major Major Major Major: Prefer the Bard. And until I can’t, I’m going with a “shot the arrow over the house, and hurt my brother.”

    If you’ve brushed up your Shakespeare, this sets up as a pretty good straight line for something about a murder/suicide/bloodbath ending, but I’ll still leave it there.

  258. 258.

    The Moar You Know

    That sounds stupid. Show me a politician who never lost… heck, President Obama lost his first race.

    @WereBear: It is stupid. Our local Dem party simply cannot be worked with. I threw the towel in on those folks back in the early 2000s, when the last good challenger for that seat, with a solid lead at that point, got up in front of a room full of GOP voters, on camera and on tape, and announced that illegal aliens could and should vote for her. Now, I agree, but that’s not something you can say in public in this district, not even now, and expect to win. They’re a special kind of idiot I’ve never encountered anywhere else.

  259. 259.

    Kryptik

    @hovercraft:

    One glaring thing has also been laid bare by this election and the two men who sandwich Obama, white male privilege. Bush and the PEOTUS are two mediocre men who through family connections and money both managed to fail upwards their entire lives, Obama and Hillary Clinton worked hard and earned everything they have themselves, and yet Obama all things considered won a close(relatively) race against McCain, and Clinton barely lost to the Shitgibbon. Despite superior campaigns and obviously being the better choice, the old guard fought back tooth and nail to hold on.
    So history will regard what came after Obama as one of the last gasps of those who wanted to maintain white supremacy. You cannot put the genie back into the bottle, try as you might.

    I want this to be true.

    But my sense of optimism is kind of permanently broken, and I fear that @Major Major Major Major may be more right than any of us want. I fear this election is simply the “real owners” of America putting us “Fake” ones back in our place and reminding us they will fucking win forever, every time, because they are, forever and anon, “America”, and trying to change that will result in the unifying power of hate and spite winning the day again, and again, and again, until we finally get the drift that we will never belong.

  261. 261.

    NR

    @Cacti: Well it sure is a good thing we have you reasonable centrists to show us dumb hippies how to win elections.

    Oh, wait. You haven’t been doing such a great job of that lately, have you? Hmm.

  263. 263.

    chopper

    @catclub:

    yep. from a political standpoint the financial crisis happened too late, it let the GOP off too easy. from the everything else standpoint it was good because it minimized the GOP’s ability to fuck up the response and make the whole thing a thousand times worse.

  265. 265.

    chopper

    @NR:

    ‘reasonable centrists’ have won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections. how have the ‘dumb hippie’ candidates done?

  266. 266.

    Aleta

    Though this is old news, it strikes me now how it resembles the nuclear weapons story the NYT published at the peak of the opposition to Cheney-Bush’s proposed invasion of Iraq.

    (From Media Matters)

    The New York Times reported on October 31, 2016, that FBI officials had not been able to uncover any evidence that Russian operatives, through allegedly hacking Democratic emails, were trying to help elect Donald Trump.

    “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” read the October 31 Times headline which relied on unnamed “law enforcement officials.”

    Acting as an almost unofficial time-out, and one that came with the Times’ seal of approval, the article helped put the media brakes on the unfolding Russian hacking story; the same Russian hacking story that has now morphed into a full-scale Trump scandal.

    The message from the Times’ sources was unmistakable: There’s no conclusive connection between Trump and the Russians, and the Russians’ efforts were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (Question: How do you not pick sides in a two-person election if you only undermine one of the candidates, the way Russian hackers only undermined the Democrat?)

  268. 268.

    NR

    @chopper: Hey, that’s great. What’s the prize for winning the popular vote in a US presidential election, again?

    And I seem to recall that there are other political offices in the US besides the president, too. How have you guys been doing in those?

  269. 269.

    The Moar You Know

    So if I post a comment here with a link to the Major^4 For Congress mailing list sign-up form, what happens?

    @Major Major Major Major: Depends. Have you declared for real? I’ll sign it, you’re not insane. Your campaign legal people can hash out what the value of each signature is.

  270. 270.

    hovercraft

    @Elizabelle:
    He just released a funny statement saying he cannot attend the inauguration, he said his doctor said if he sits outside in January, it will put him 6 feet under.

  271. 271.

    ruemara

    @darrel wright: I’m gonna help you out with something. I’ve got personal friends who are republican and who have expressed disenchantment with the GOP and every single policy they’ve had for over a decade. They are friends with my tight group of liberal political friends. They celebrated Bernie Sanders. They said Kerry was a better option than 4 more years of Bush. They support Planned Parenthood and are vocal supporters of Roe vs Wade. They love equal pay and marriage equality. They were opposed to Hillary as she was the same old DNC corporatist machine and her Goldman Sachs speeches plus her private server. Each fucking time these Republicans got the chance to vote against the candidates they despised in an election, they voted republican straight down the line. They voted Obama at least once but most voted McCain & Romney. They HATED the devolution of the Grand Old Party and they handed it power every goddamned time they could.

    You think conservatives are reachable? You think people who could carefully sidestep the racism, misogyny, criminality and seditious nature of our current PEOTUS are going to look within their hearts, feel shame and admit they were wrong? Have you met people? They would rather kill you, me, their children and all their family than admit shame and wrongness. You’d do better to convince people who thought they could use that herd immunity against bad things and constantly sit shit out to stop sitting shit out. And you’re not going to do that singing kumbaya and appealing to reason. They are past believing in reason because it does not fit their worldview. They’re not your friends, they don’t give a flying fuck if they destroy it all, as long as they get to torch their enemies first. This is exactly who they are.

  275. 275.

    Pogonip

    George Bush Sr. has pneumonia, I fear the nation will be saying goodbye to another ex-pres soon.

  276. 276.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @NR: If you bothered to read the article you link to, you might find it doesn’t really buttress your argument. In the only applicable quote, he takes the blame for being elected at the height of the great recession. That’s not really taking blame at all. He goes on to talk about gerrymandering and voter turnout.

    You’re a fucking clown and noone takes you seriously for very good reason.

  277. 277.

    chopper

    @NR:

    What’s the prize for winning the popular vote in a US presidential election, again?

    what’s the prize for spending your entire life in the peanut gallery bitching about the guys who actually win from time to time?

    And I seem to recall that there are other political offices in the US besides the president, too. How have you guys been doing in those?

    i dunno, how have the dumb hippies been doing? not so well as far as i can tell.

  278. 278.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    For 8 years I heard how nothing is free and health care is some crazy pipe dream and now here comes dopey assuring everyone they’re getting a national health service or something. Next week I’ll start asking them where I sign up for my free TrumpCare.

    TROLL THEM, KAY.

    TROLL THEM.

  280. 280.

    NR

    @Yoda Dog Democrat:

    If you bothered to read the article you link to, you might find it doesn’t really buttress your argument. In the only applicable quote, he takes the blame for being elected at the height of the great recession. That’s not really taking blame at all.

    Okay, let’s go to the tape:

    So– so some of this was circumstances. But what I think that what is also true is that partly because my docket was really full here, so I couldn’t be both chief organizer of the Democratic Party and function as Commander-in-Chief and President of the United States. We did not begin what I think needs to happen over the long haul, and that is rebuild the Democratic Party at the ground level.

    So yes, he clearly is accepting some responsibility. Which is admirable, and puts him miles above pretty much everyone here.

    You’re a fucking clown and noone takes you seriously

    And look what’s happened to the Democratic party as a result of that. If you’d taken people like me seriously over the last eight years, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today. But it’s never too late to start.

  281. 281.

    Bill Arnold

    @Elizabelle:
    Here’s another. Mind you, I’m not a climate scientist but have talked with a couple and they are a lot more worried in private than these excerpts. (“Despair” is a closer capture of their emotional state. “Loss of hope” is another.)
    Scientists react to Earth’s warmest year: ‘We are heading into a new unknown’
    When they say “new unknown” they mean that the modeling is inadequate for feedback effects and for systems like ocean currents, but that the existing models generate a lot of scary stuff, and seem in practice to be wrong mostly in the bad (underestimate of severity) direction.

  282. 282.

    NR

    @chopper: The “dumb hippies” haven’t been in charge of the Democratic party for the last eight years. You guys have. The electoral disaster that’s befallen the party is on you, not us.

  283. 283.

    chopper

    @NR:

    You’re a fucking clown and noone takes you seriously

    And look what’s happened to the Democratic party as a result of that.

    damn, and here i thought trump was a narcissist.

  285. 285.

    NR

    @Yoda Dog Democrat: Look, I know it’s hard being proven wrong, but it happens to everyone. You admire Obama, right? So how about you follow his example and own up to your mistakes?

  286. 286.

    The Moar You Know

    First post mentioning Bernie’s name posted just before 1:00pm, NR here by 2:00pm.

  287. 287.

    chopper

    @NR:

    The “dumb hippies” haven’t been in charge of the Democratic party for the last eight years.

    thank fucking god for that. otherwise we’d be dealing with mcgovern-level losses in every fucking election.

    this is like having your 8 year old swearing up and down that they can totally drive the car. hey, maybe the kid can. maybe the kid’ll totally surprise you. but chances are it’s gonna be horrible, so no.

  288. 288.

    NR

    @chopper: I specifically said it wasn’t just me in my comment. Anyone even slightly to the left of Obama has been frozen out of decision-making in the Democratic party for a long time now. With disastrous results.

  289. 289.

    OGLiberal

    @GregB: People who say they fooled by this are lying…they’re embarrassed. They weren’t fooled – this guy was ridiculously obvious. They’re looking for excuses now to try to explain their heartfelt but emotion driven vote. They were willingly fooled by this guy. Better to go after the many, many folks who didn’t vote who would have voted for Clinton or somebody like her. The folks who say they were fooled by Trump? They can save it – have fun with the guy you so loved, the “change agent”, the guy who was going to “drain the swamp”.

  290. 290.

    hovercraft

    @Kryptik:
    I strongly disagree. I am not a slave, I can vote, I can own property, there are many things that the “owners” want, that they don’t have. That is what drives them nuts, that is why they are constantly fighting to take “their country” back. It is the very fact that we are winning that infuriates them. We still have a ways to go, progress is always slow, and there are always bumps in the road, but eventually we get back on the right path. They will not just give up, this is where we keep making a mistake. We think when we win these battles that the fight is over, but they don’t give up, they keep fighting, while we go back to living our lives. We need to be more diligent, understand that the fight is always ongoing.
    Do not give up, they want us to, but understand we are winning, America today is a very different place from the one I was born into in 1967, ask any woman, LGBT person, or any person of color. We have made progress and will continue to do so. Setbacks are part of the process. Just look at how repealing Obamacare is already giving them fits.

  291. 291.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @aimai:

    The USA today op ed by the 25 year old (white) female trump voter who voted for Trump as some kind of “change agent” and who is shocked to find out he is going to let the Republicans destroy planned parenthood is instructive.

    Stupid is as stupid does. (Gently weeps)

  293. 293.

    NR

    @chopper:

    thank fucking god for that. otherwise we’d be dealing with mcgovern-level losses in every fucking election.

    Instead we’re just dealing with Hillary-level losses. That’s so much better!

    Oh, and at the state level, it’s actually much worse than that. Compare 2009 to today. That’s an absolutely epic collapse of the Democratic party that you guys brought about.

    But hey, if you want to pretend that your fantasies about liberals doing worse are in any way reflective of reality, go ahead. You guys took the Democratic party from being the dominant national party to being a regional party confined to the northeast and the west coast, but we’re supposed to believe that liberals would somehow have done worse. Sure.

  294. 294.

    The Moar You Know

    The USA today op ed by the 25 year old (white) female trump voter who voted for Trump as some kind of “change agent” and who is shocked to find out he is going to let the Republicans destroy planned parenthood is instructive.

    @O. Felix Culpa: Company officer here voted for Trump to “shake things up”, his oldest kid is/was on Obamacare and has a massive “cerebrovascular accident” at the start of December. He’s now in some sort of nursing home for people in danger of dying. I asked him what the hell they were going to do when the ACA got repealed. He said confidently “that won’t happen for years”.

    Kid’s insurance dropped him day before yesterday and refuses to put him back on. They’ll win that waiting game. I feel fucking awful for the guy, but damn, HE FUCKING VOTED FOR THIS.

  295. 295.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NR: Conservatives used to vote for conservative Democrats along with conservative Republicans, and now they vote exclusively for conservative Republicans. Somehow for you this means MOAR LIBERAL HASTA WIN. Because you are inconceivably, staggeringly motherfucking stupid on every possible level.

  296. 296.

    hovercraft

    @The Moar You Know:
    I feel for the kid, BUT I have NO FUCKING sympathy for the father, he thought this would only happen to other people, so he voted for it. That’s that thing with life, it will shake things up for you in ways that you cannot imagine without your having to go out and elect stupid ignorant racist, misogynist assholes. Fuck him, I hope for his son that they figure something out.

  297. 297.

    Kay

    I heard on Michigan radio that Obama is the most scandal and corruption-free President since Eisenhower. I don’t know how they measure that, but that’s a really nice legacy.

    In 2020 I plan to tell Republicans I want to bring “honor and dignity back to the White House” :)

  299. 299.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NR: Oh my motherfucking God. So for you the fact that Arkansas, West Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi had Democratic statehouses in 2009, but don’t in 2017, means something about catering to liberals? In those glorious years Before Obama there were stalwart Democrats there, only to be betrayed by Barack Obama’s _conservatism_? Good God you’re ridiculous.

  300. 300.

    NR

    @Kay:

    I heard on Michigan radio that Obama is the most scandal and corruption-free President since Eisenhower. I don’t know how they measure that, but that’s a really nice legacy.

    Yep, that is one of the biggest things I’ve appreciated about him.

  301. 301.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NR: Yeah, I’m sure the problem was that Alabama and Arkansas Democrats didn’t listen enough to all the hippie liberals in their states pleading with them to move to the left and win forever.

  302. 302.

    NR

    @FlipYrWhig: Or, you know, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire….

    And I’ve said over and over that I don’t believe this is completely Obama’s fault. It was a failure of the party leadership at every level.

  303. 303.

    darrel wright

    @ruemara: Well, I was waiting for “Kumbaya” to come into this, I admit it enters my own internal dialogue now and then. In fact, I admit this whole line is one I’ve taken myself.

    Something has changed in this for me. I think part of it is that there is something so pitiful and so obviously mentally wrong with Trump that it’s making me look at the opposition a little differently this time around. It’s hard to voice quite adequately.

    For one thing, I have no desire to hear them say they are wrong or admit shame, and I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t know how politically reachable or remediable any particular Trump voter is, I don’t know that the magic 27% is ever changing. The stance I’m coming to is one I feel is based on a radical pragmatism. Avoiding them, hating them, wanting their misery and insularity and shame to increase is simply a recipe for them to get worse. It’s also a recipe for ME to get worse. There are what we can argue are anything from reasons to excuses for how the Trumpers came to their current Trumpery, but to dip back into my Shakespeare, ‘this cause defective comes by cause’ and I’m not sure anyone is really 100% innocent or 100% guilty. I know there’s a lot of work to be done.

    They are past believing in reason because it does not fit their worldview. They’re not your friends, they don’t give a flying fuck if they destroy it all, as long as they get to torch their enemies first. This is exactly who they are.

    As sure as I am that this describes some of these burnt children that are fully and completely Fox Up Beyond All Recognition, I’m even more sure that it does not describe all of them. It doesn’t describe half of them. (Look, we’re veering dangerously close to that infamous Basket-math!). Talking in these terms AT ALL is a very serious part of the problem, we need to recognize this.

    None of that means we don’t oppose the evil this cataclysm currently portends with everything we’ve got. Quite the contrary. The point is that ‘everything we’ve got’ includes not wasting time and energy looking back in anger and looking for vengeance.

  304. 304.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NR: If I were a political consultant I’d say the difference in the maps strongly indicates that the Democratic Party moved too far left at the federal level, and voters took it out on them at the state level. What the party failed to do was to keep conservatives voting for conservative Democrats. If it indicates anything it’s THE POLAR OPPOSITE of what you keep claiming it does. Stop making this dumb argument. Make a different one that isn’t dumb. Maybe you have it in you. This ain’t it.

  305. 305.

    Mnemosyne

    @hovercraft:

    I can’t get on YouTube right now, but the song about how there’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama still makes me giggle every time I see it.

  306. 306.

    NR

    @FlipYrWhig:

    If I were a political consultant I’d say the difference in the maps strongly indicates that the Democratic Party moved too far left at the federal level, and voters took it out on them at the state level.

    Except the party didn’t move left at the federal level. At the federal level, it mostly spent its time passing weak, watered-down policy that was at best center-right. The party’s signature achievement, the ACA, was a Republican policy from the 1990s, and 70% of the country wanted it to be more “liberal” than it was.

    The so-called “centrist” leadership has been in charge of the Democratic party for the last eight years, and they’ve seen to it that the party didn’t move left. The simple fact is that we don’t know whether liberals would have won or lost. But we do know for a fact that the “centrists” lost. Overwhelmingly.

  307. 307.

    J R in WV

    @zhena gogolia:

    My dentist is a smart. compassionate Jew who I respect and admire for his hard work to help people with their oral health while not causing any pain. If I thought he would vote for Trump I would move to Russia tomorrow to work for Putin’s glory!

    In other words: No Fuqing WAY, Jack!! under the sun he would do such a stupid thing.

    If I were you, I would have told them what you said, and then added that it made me sick to think that their hands had been in and around my mouth! Who knows where those fingers have been? And don’t recommend another dentist, I don’t trust you not to send me to a sadistic monster. Good bye, mail me copies of my charts for my future care.

    Monsters!

  308. 308.

    AxelFoley

    @rikyrah:

    They really resent the depth of our love.
    They thought that they would erase his accomplishments.
    By selecting this buffoon, they have insured that Barack Obama will stand up even more.
    But, you are correct that they resent the hell out of Shrub being such an unmitigated disaster.

    If they’re embarrassed about Bush, they ain’t seen nothing yet. And you’re right, by selecting Trump, they’ve guaranteed Obama will go down as one of the greatest presidents ever after Trump is done destroying everything this nation claims it holds dear.

  309. 309.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NR: Horseshit. Tell Democrats in Arkansas and Alabama that the party’s problem was people like Mike Beebe and Don Siegelman instead of people like Bernie Sanders, who lost among Alabama Democrats 78%-20%. Then, find your ass after they separate it from your back, and try to snap it back on.

  310. 310.

    J R in WV

    @darrel wright:

    You say:

    “White people” are not the problem, “Men” are not the problem, “religious people” are not the problem, “less educated people” are not the problem.

    Who then, Darrel, is the problem?

  311. 311.

    Miss Bianca

    @NR: you know, NimRod, all it takes for your vaunted lefty-liberals to wrest control of the Democratic Party leadership away from the “centrists” is to SHOW UP, DO THE WORK, AND GET THE VOTES. Got that? Despite what die-hard Sandernistas seem to think, there is no sinister plot afoot, either at the DNC or anywhere else, that’s keeping them from doing that.

    Once again, for the benefit of the blinkered and tiny-brained among us: SHOW UP at Democratic Party meetings. DO THE WORK of volunteering for central committee positions. GET THE VOTES to get elected Party Chair, precinct captain, or nominee for office.

    I don’t know why I bother, because I’ve come to the conclusion that most “leftists” of your ilk would rather sit around and whine about how unfair things are or trash the Democrats and bitch about how every candidate sucks and how “centrists” have to come to leftist Jesus/get purged/do something other than what they’re doing. Fuck that shit. Get out there and do the work to prepare ye the way for leftist Jesus yourselves or SHUT UP already.

  312. 312.

    NR

    @FlipYrWhig: None of that addresses the fact that the party didn’t move left at the federal level, so there’s no way that voters could have been punishing it for that.

    The simple fact is that the country has resoundingly rejected the so-called “reasonable centrism” that the Democratic party has been offering for the last eight years. It’s time to let the liberals have a try.

  314. 314.

    NR

    @Miss Bianca: That would be a great idea except for the fact that apparently people are still in “tell liberals to shut the fuck up” mode even after everything that’s happened in the last eight years.

    But eventually people will learn. It’s just a question of when.

  316. 316.

    chopper

    @Miss Bianca:

    all it takes for your vaunted lefty-liberals to wrest control of the Democratic Party leadership away from the “centrists” is to SHOW UP, DO THE WORK, AND GET THE VOTES.

    but that’s work!

    seriously, it’s hilarious how these guys can’t even get the democratic party to buy what they’re selling and somehow think republicans are going to buy it as well.

  317. 317.

    chopper

    @FlipYrWhig:

    i don’t understand how people can look at clinton’s platform, and that of the democratic party, in 2016 and say the party hasn’t moved to the left. this is straight-up pants-on-head stupid. this is like cask-strength stupid. it’s like it was assembled in a lab from parts of lesser stupidity.

  318. 318.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah:

    My paternal grandfather was born here, in NW Ohio, but his parents were born in e Switzerland, and grand-dad didn’t speak English until grade school. He became an orphan at 10, and lost his right leg at 13, and still worked to be successful.

    My other grandparents also worked hard, and those families have been in America like your, since before 1800. Pretty white, except for potential Indian wives on the frontier, but none of my friends voted for Mr Trump, and the relatives who did so are in bright red states, so it didn’t matter existentially.

    But these otherwise apparently smart looking people who voted for Trump, and are now looking round-eyed and shocked that they, yes THEY and their families are going to be screwed, deliberately, maliciously and on purpose, by the Republican party and Donald John Trump… just despicable!

  319. 319.

    FlipYrWhig

    @NR:

    None of that addresses the fact that the party didn’t move left at the federal level, so there’s no way that voters could have been punishing it for that.

    Come the fuck on. Compared to the Bill Clinton presidency, let alone the Jimmy Carter presidency, the Democratic Party’s baseline today is FAR TO THE LEFT. Good! But you won’t take yes for an answer. You’d rather make demands that a small sliver of the party deserves to run it without working for it or persuading anybody and while your standard-bearer candidate got shellacked in most of the blue-to-red states on your linked map by 30, 40, 50 points. You don’t even realize how laughable this is.

    Use this strategy to take Wisconsin or Michigan and it will be instantly copied. Get the activists of Madison, Detroit, Flint, wherever, to unify behind some candidates and win. You’ll be the toast of the town. BUT ITS SO HARD AND THE ESTABLISHMENT Fuck that, do it, either you or someone like you who’s actually willing to put some soul into it, or shut the fuck up.

    BTW, the two candidates who turned the red tide most recently were Roy Cooper and John Bel Edwards. FLAMING SWORD POPULISTS 4EVA

  320. 320.

    FlipYrWhig

    @chopper: They all start with a solution, which is that a small group of special talented people should run things instead because things would be better that way, and then moan about how “the establishment” prevents them but they’ll be sorry one day. It’s the lefty version of Going Galt.

  322. 322.

    chopper

    @FlipYrWhig:

    You’d rather make demands that a small sliver of the party deserves to run it without working for it or persuading anybody and while your standard-bearer candidate got shellacked in most of the blue-to-red states on your linked map by 30, 40, 50 points.

    you’re talking to a political hipster. winning is no good. winning means selling out. losing, OTOH, means you don’t have to get your hands dirty with actual governing, rather you get to keep the easy job of sitting on your couch and bitching about how you could do it better.

  327. 327.

    J R in WV

    @The Moar You Know:

    I don’t feel awful for the guy. Screw him, his kids, his wife(ves) and his parents.

    What will he do when his parents can’t live alone any more? He won’t be able to afford to care for them by checking them into an independent living or assisted living center, caring for his son will break him, financially.

    It ought to break his heart for voting so wrong, against his family’s interested, but sounds like he’s already convinced that I Got Mine, Fuq You is his go to. Except he didn’t get him in time, asshole. Got what he deserved. God is an iron, and irony is the ruling principle of this universe, this story is proof. There will be so many more.

  328. 328.

    NR

    @chopper:

    i don’t understand how people can look at clinton’s platform, and that of the democratic party, in 2016 and say the party hasn’t moved to the left.

    Talk is cheap. If you look at what the party did while in power, it was anything but “left.” The economic policy the party actually passed ran the political gamut from 1980s Republican to 1990s Republican with only scarce exceptions like Lily Ledbetter.

    The proof is in the pudding, and the Democrats didn’t deliver. And to pay more attention to words than to actions is pants-on-head stupid.

  329. 329.

    Cacti

    @FlipYrWhig:

    They all start with a solution, which is that a small group of special talented people should run things instead because things would be better that way, and then moan about how “the establishment” prevents them but they’ll be sorry one day. It’s the lefty version of Going Galt.

    Older than that.

    The idea of “philosopher kings” was first published by Plato about 2400 years ago.

  330. 330.

    NR

    @FlipYrWhig: I’ve said that I believe the biggest battles over the next two years will be fought at the state level. And I will support good candidates for those elections. But I can’t shake the feeling that candidates like that will have to fight their own party leadership just as hard as the Republicans. We’ll see.

    And no, it’s not about giving power to a small group of people. It’s about realizing that the approach the party has taken for the last eight years has been a disaster and recognizing that listening to the people who were right all along is probably a good idea.

  332. 332.

    Miss Bianca

    @NR: Oh, boo fucking hoo. That’s the excuse of a bunch of people whose shit is, frankly, weak.

    in my experience of working with the Democratic Party – going back a LOT of years – NO ONE who was willing to show, up, do the work, and get the votes was turned away or told to shut up.

    Of course, a lot of times the lefty- liberals who actually did do all three ended up changing their positions on things as they saw how the sausage actually gets made – became more “centrist”, if you will. The ones who just wanted everything handed to them or just wanted to burn shit down in a fit of purity-pony petulance usually left and then bitched about how neoliberal the Democrats were.

    ETA: and that “apparently” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. So, tell me..have *you* actually shown up, done the work, and gotten the votes? Or are you just boo-ing from the sidelines?

  334. 334.

    Cacti

    It is axiomatic on the left fringe that the most liberal candidate will always win a general election.

    Therefore, Zephyr Teachout and Russ Feingold definitely won. Right?

  335. 335.

    chopper

    @NR:

    Talk is cheap.

    the fact that you are saying this is, frankly, hilarious. the couch-sitter wing of the left saying ‘talk is cheap’, i mean, that’s just comedy gold.

  336. 336.

    Cacti

    It is axiomatic on the left fringe that their ideas are always the ones the public really wants.

    Therefore, blue Colorado definitely approved single payer 80-20, and not vice versa. Right?

  337. 337.

    NR

    @Miss Bianca: That’s funny, because the prevailing attitude in the Democratic party for a long time now has been that the party is entitled to liberal votes, and that if the party loses, it’s their fault, and if the party wins, they should just sit down and shut up and be happy with whatever scraps their “centrist” overlords deign to throw their way.

    Will the party change its tune? We’ll see. They might start having more success if they do, but there are a lot of institutional incentives not to.

  338. 338.

    NR

    @Cacti: When you have the presidential candidate of the supposedly “left” party attacking single-payer with right-wing talking points, of course it’s going to be difficult to build much support for it.

  339. 339.

    Cacti

    And as with the right fringe, left fringe ideas cannot fail. They can only be failed by the fecklessness of centrists.

  340. 340.

    Miss Bianca

    @NR: you didn’t answer my question, NimRod. In fact, you actively avoided it by meeping about some completely unrelated bullshit. Are you out there trying to get the Democratic Party to change – actively making the case within the party for your position – or are you not? If you’re not, and you’re just saying *someone* should do it, but the big ol’ meanies within the Party – you know, the ones who actually do the *work* of trying to win elections – just won’t let them, then let me repeat:

    Your.Shit.Is.Weak.

  341. 341.

    NR

    It is axiomatic among “centrists” that their policies and political approach is the only thing that can possibly succeed in America.

    Therefore, the country rewarded the reasonable and pragmatic “centrism” of 2009 and 2010 with resounding victories for Democrats at every level of government. Right?

  343. 343.

    NR

    @Miss Bianca: No, what I said is directly on point. The Democratic party wants liberals to show up and vote for their candidates without having to give them anything in return. And will then scapegoat them for anything and everything that goes wrong. That’s the attitude the Democratic party has toward liberals today.

    I persuade how and when I can. I persuaded a few people not to vote for Trump and even one to vote for Hillary (you’re welcome for that, by the way). But I can’t change the attitude of an entrenched party establishment by myself. People won’t change unless they want to change. And if they don’t want to change even after losing the whole country to the Republicans, that’s pretty sad.

  344. 344.

    J R in WV

    @NR:

    Bernie Sanders is not progressive, in any real way. He’s a Marxist, which isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t progressive. It was barely progressive 150 years ago when it was invented.

    Bernie isn’t a Democrat, and he’s a terrible senator. He lost primary after primary, because people don’t like him – not even liberal Democratic people. Perhaps especially liberal Democrats, because it’s so easy to tell Sanders isn’t liberal. He doesn’t care about providing food to the hungry, medical care to the sick, shelter to the homeless.

    He cares about changing the economic system. That’s all Bernie cares about politically – and, oh yes, he cares about Bernie doing well. Vacation home, bank account, Bernie cares about that, too. But people? Doesn’t give a shit.

    Won’t ever be anything but a crummy senator from a tiny state that doesn’t matter to anyone. A nobody, electorally speaking.

    Which is good. I don’t like him. He’s obnoxious, arrogant (for no good reason!) and condescending. Unlikable, abrasive, and likes being like that. Also doesn’t work hard in his day job, either, where we could use a hard worker.

    So don’t come around here with your Feel the Bern BS, please. Thanks. Goodbye.

  345. 345.

    Miss Bianca

    @NR: So, you silver-tongued devil…you managed to persuade people not to vote for Trump? And one to vote for Hillary? Well, that’s *something* concrete, anyway.

    But as for the rest of it, again…your shit is weak. “I can’t change the attitude of an entrenched party system by myself” – you don’t DO it by yourself, NimRod. You certainly don’t do it by sitting there and bitching. You change hearts and minds and attitudes by, as I said, DOING THE WORK. You volunteer to work on campaigns. You show up to do office work. You run for party office. That’s how you BECOME “the establishment”, you dipshit! It takes work, it takes time and sometimes – quite often, in fact – it takes money. And yeah – your vote is going to get taken for granted, if you don’t do the work – because where the hell else are you going to go, if you want to make a difference? And have you even noticed that there are more “centrists” than “leftists” in the electorate at large? Have you noticed any lefty candidates burning it up and winning elections out there? If so, where and why? You study those candidates, you study their campaigns, and you study their tactics, and you study where the hell they come from. You seem unable to grasp or accept the notion that what plays in San Francisco or Vermont won’t necessarily play in Peoria or West Virginia.

    And if more people did that, you might find that you had a different Democratic Party on your hands.

  346. 346.

    NR

    @J R in WV: Actually, I haven’t even mentioned Bernie Sanders in any comment I’ve made in this post. You guys are way more obsessed with him than I am.

    In any case, the things you said about him are demonstrably false, as even a cursory Google search will reveal. I understand that you hate him, but that doesn’t give you license to say things that are flat-out false.

    Oh, and Bernie Sanders is the most popular Senator in America. So much for your “no one likes him” BS.

  347. 347.

    NR

    @Miss Bianca:

    You seem unable to grasp or accept the notion that what plays in San Francisco or Vermont won’t necessarily play in Peoria or West Virginia.

    I certainly do understand that. But once upon a time, the Democratic party had an economic message that could appeal to people in all those places. The party abandoned it to chase corporate donations.

    I try to persuade where I can, when I can. And I support other people who do the same as best I can. But you can explain the current state of American politics with a single sentence: The Republican party leadership fears conservatives, and the Democratic party leadership hates liberals.

    Until the latter part of that sentence changes, it’s going to be impossible to reform the party, and the party will keep losing.

  348. 348.

    ruckus

    @Patricia Kayden:
    Wanting perfect politicians?
    The rabble didn’t care about perfection, they know their guys are not perfect, they wanted a racist. That’s who they voted for. No code words, an actual racist. Not someone who might do what they want. An actual racist.

  349. 349.

    J R in WV

    @NR:

    Most of what I said is opinion, which can’t be Googled. I don’t hate Bernie, I just think he’s an ass. I suspect Hillary Clinton is the most popular (former) senator in the US, as she beat Bernie 2 to 1 in primaries all over the country.

  350. 350.

    Miss Bianca

    @NR: Or in other words: “I am a gutless wonder of the kind who gives liberals the allegedly bad name they have with the Democratic Party. because I am content to bitch and moan and tell Democrats that they are DEMOCRATING WRONG but I won’t do jackshit to advance my oh-so-superior ideas.”

    It’s not *liberals* that Democrats hate, NimRod – it’s *whiny* liberals.

    ETA: Whiny liberals who think that all they have to do is whine and they ought to get what they want they don’t have to do any work. Much as I despise Tea Partiers for other reasons, at least they get out there and do the fucking WORK of persuading the Republicans that they ought to destroy the government. Your “liberal” can’t be bothered.

  351. 351.

    NR

    @J R in WV:

    Most of what I said is opinion, which can’t be Googled.

    You said he didn’t care about providing food to the hungry. That’s not a statement of opinion, that’s a factual assertion. One that’s easily proven false by Googling his actual record. You can start with the link I provided.

    And as for popularity, if we’re talking nationwide, Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America. He even beats out Obama. So you’re wrong again.

  352. 352.

    NR

    @Miss Bianca: It’s not whining to talk about the current state of the party, and to point out things that your overly simplistic “just go take over the party!” solution overlooks.

    What you describe is a potential way forward, but given the intense hostility that liberals have faced from the Democratic party, we can’t afford to put all our eggs in their basket. I certainly won’t be.

  353. 353.

    chopper

    @NR:

    I persuaded a few people not to vote for Trump and even one to vote for Hillary

    wow, that’s, like, super-activism! i take back everything i said before, this guy really walks the walk! i’ll bet you didn’t even get off your fucking couch.

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