If you’re willing to read one more piece connected with the Yiannopoulos shit-show, make it this essay by Laurie Penny: “On the Milo Bus with the Lost Boys of America’s New Right.” (Brought to our attention in the overnight thread by valued commenter TheMightyTrowel.)
As the title suggests, the article isn’t so much about Yiannopoulos himself but his entourage, a crew one can imagine comprises involuntarily celibate young men who bonded over online gang-harassment of anyone who’s visibly female or nonwhite while hiding behind ironically customized Nazi frog avatars. An excerpt:
Many of them don’t agree with what Yiannopoulos says, let alone what Trump says. They agree with the way he says it, because their life experience does not extend beyond interpreting being criticized as censorship. Yiannopoulos’ brand is all about “fuck your feelings.” But the kids following him around are nothing but feelings…
These boys will be allowed to forget everything but their own immediate feelings for as long as society allows them, and this society allows straight white boys to dodge personal and emotional responsibility until at least the age of 70. The current man-child president would be Exhibit A, but not every lost boy gets a golden throne. In this culture war, most of them are cannon fodder.
The post-election media coverage of Trump voters focuses obsessively on white working class economic anxiety, even though there’s much evidence to suggest that focus is misplaced. Anecdote isn’t data, but the Trump voters I know have more in common with the “lost boys” described in this article than out-of-work coal miners.
They may be grown-ass adults with jobs and mates, but they share the militantly anti-PC, “you’re not the boss of me” pose that disguises deep insecurity and a gibbering fear of victimhood. Small wonder they fell for conmen like Trump and Yiannopoulos.
As for how we address it electorally, my feeling is we have to turn out our own and get unengaged people who share our values off the sidelines. Could be the “lost boys” are just that — lost.
Corner Stone
This is why you can’t let your guard down when dealing with any “sane” conservative who speaks negatively about Trump.
Charlie Sykes is on MSNBC defending and promoting ZEGS and his policies/plans. And how he’s thoughtful and does not want to undo the social safety net.
rikyrah
Hey Kay….
don’t ya know….only the little people pay taxes….
Ivanka Trump hit with lien in New York for failure to pay taxes on her high end jewelry business
Tom Boggioni TOM BOGGIONI
21 FEB 2017 AT 19:16 ET
It has been a tough month for presidential first daughter Ivanka Trump, with retailers dropping her fashion lines due to poor sales, and it got worse as it was revealed that she has been hit with a lien for failure to pay back taxes owed by her New York jewelry store.
According to documents acquired by the Daily Mail, Trump owes over $5,000 in taxes related to Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry — officially listed as Madison Avenue Diamonds LLC — located in Trump Tower.
According to the report, the high-end jewelry business routinely sells items in the $1,000 to $20,000 range.
rikyrah
Trump’s lawyer responds to Russia questions with evolving answers
02/22/17 08:43 AM—UPDATED 02/22/17 08:58 AM
By Steve Benen
Last month, a controversial meeting took place in a hotel lobby in New York. In attendance were Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal attorney; Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko, a member of a pro-Putin party; and Felix Sater, a businessman who’s worked for years to facilitate Trump business deals in Russia. The trio discussed a plan to end hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, effectively by giving Vladimir Putin everything he wants in exchange for nothing.
So far, these basic details are not in dispute. We know there was a meeting; we know who attended; and we know what they discussed.
Understanding what happened next is more complicated.
According to the New York Times, after the meeting, Cohen took a sealed envelope with the outline of the plan to the White House and delivered it to National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s office before Flynn’s resignation. The Times’ reporting, according to the paper, was based on Cohen’s own assessment of what transpired.
Soon after, however, Cohen talked to the Washington Post and gave a very different version of events, saying he attended the meeting and took a written copy of the plan, but never delivered it to Flynn or anyone else at the White House.
Soon after, it was time for Version #3.
Corner Stone
B Crack, I think you just need to try a little harder to understand the different flavors of Trump supporters. IMO, we honestly haven’t given them enough of a chance to show who they really are and why we should make a stronger effort to reach out.
rikyrah
The Myth of the Immigration Crisis — a good reality check on the state of illegal immigration in US https://t.co/uxzlfYkCvW pic.twitter.com/W9v2qduHn5
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) February 22, 2017
rikyrah
Trump’s immigration order will tear America’s social fabric & usher in ugly scapegoating politics. My take on CNN
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) February 22, 2017
rikyrah
At his White House press conference last week, Donald Trump acknowledged the progressive activists working to protect their health care benefits, but the president quickly added that these Americans don’t really count.
“We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare,” he said. “Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It’s a disaster. You can say, ‘Oh, Obamacare.’ I mean, they fill up our rallies with people that you wonder how they get there, but they’re not the Republican people that our representatives are representing.”
It was a bizarre peek into the thinking of a president who doesn’t fully understand the basics of our democracy. Elected Republican officials, in Trump’s mind, should focus on representing “Republican people.” Others may speak up and petition the government for redress of grievances, but as far as Trump is concerned, their voices are neither important nor relevant.
Republicans are elected to represent Republicans, the argument goes, not all of their constituents. It’s a zero-sum game: if your side of the political divide isn’t in a position of power, then you might as well sit down, shut up, and stop asking impertinent questions at town-hall forums in which GOP officials want to hear from “the Republican people” – as opposed to, say, the American people.
rikyrah
For those who still don’t understand ACA (or know they now have no benefit caps) read this piece on what that means.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) February 22, 2017
Roger Moore
“Fuck your feelings” makes more sense as their motto when you put the emphasis on “your” instead of “fuck”. They may not say it that way, but it’s what they really mean.
SRW1
That this Laurie journo is of the female variety probably makes the piece even sting an itsy bitsy bit harder
bupalos
@Corner Stone: In my opinion there are only two kinds of people, US and THEM. And what we need to do is just decide and label who is who and then go out and try to find as many of US as we can so THEM can be defeated once and for all. This will usher in the age of aquarius.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
They should not be allowed to use the word PATRIOTISM in your presence.
Not.A.One.
Many Republican voters decide Putin’s not so bad after all
02/22/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
When Donald Trump invested quite a bit of energy in 2016 singing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s praises, there was an inherent electoral risk. Putin is not only the leader of an American adversary, but he’s also an authoritarian whom the American mainstream broadly disapproves of.
As it turns out, the risk didn’t matter – Trump won the election anyway, thanks in part to an illegal Russian espionage operation – and the Republican president’s success managed to change some Americans’ perceptions. Gallup reported yesterday:
Raoul
The recent spate of thumb-suckers about how liberals are alienating Trump voters have been a pile of junk. I’ve been saying, basically, we need to get unengaged people who share our values off the sidelines, so right on, Betty.
I think the hard work of figuring out what affirmative message(s) we need to broadcast — and have the chops for — needs to be done ASAP, so that we are bringing in those unengaged people. They are not going to engage for “we’re not Trump!” Well, some of them might, but particularly for the mid-terms, that isn’t enough, IMO.
We don’t need some glorious 15-point plan for how this or that will be better, though as Democrats I’m sure they’ll make some of em. (Maybe if they were listicles with pretty pictures, it’d work??)
No, what we need is our own, legit version of (barf) Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill sort of thing. What are we for!? How will registered but indifferent (or registrable) voters feel like their lives will be like if they show up and vote D? We gotta tell them that, now and over and over till election day.
rikyrah
YES
Trump deportation agenda exposes how US economy has long rested heavily on large part of labor force having no legal rights & protections
— Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) February 21, 2017
PST
The Laurie Penny essay is amazingly good. It makes Milo’s following sound evanescent, as I suspect it is. Those are not the people we have to worry about. And if Milo himself resurfaces, it could be as something completely different. I wonder if there isn’t some David Brock in him (and that’s without regard to his sexuality).
rikyrah
While Pence poses for cameras with U.S. allies, “President Bannon” meets in private to destroy them
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 22, 2017
rikyrah
Also, don’t forget, unlike with Trump, Obama’s travel expenses weren’t paid mainly to…Obama.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 21, 2017
rikyrah
Annoyed by pushback, Trump takes aim at progressive activism
02/22/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
At his White House press conference last week, Donald Trump acknowledged the progressive activists working to protect their health care benefits, but the president quickly added that these Americans don’t really count.
“We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare,” he said. “Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It’s a disaster. You can say, ‘Oh, Obamacare.’ I mean, they fill up our rallies with people that you wonder how they get there, but they’re not the Republican people that our representatives are representing.”
It was a bizarre peek into the thinking of a president who doesn’t fully understand the basics of our democracy. Elected Republican officials, in Trump’s mind, should focus on representing “Republican people.” Others may speak up and petition the government for redress of grievances, but as far as Trump is concerned, their voices are neither important nor relevant.
Republicans are elected to represent Republicans, the argument goes, not all of their constituents. It’s a zero-sum game: if your side of the political divide isn’t in a position of power, then you might as well sit down, shut up, and stop asking impertinent questions at town-hall forums in which GOP officials want to hear from “the Republican people” – as opposed to, say, the American people.
chris
This. There were roughly one hundred million eligible voters who didn’t vote. If some of you (sorry, I’m Canadian) could drag one of them to the polling place… The math does itself.
Happy birthday, Betty!
rikyrah
Democratic recruiters see new zeal for public service in office
Rachel Maddow reports on the surge in enthusiasm that Democratic Party officials are seeing while recruiting new candidates for local legislative office, and the energized crowds that members of Congress are encountering in their home districts
Betty Cracker
@Raoul: Great points, but I sometimes wonder if positive messaging is really as important in midterm elections as it is during the general. Midterm elections seem to be a more intensely partisan affairs. When the Repubs cleaned our clock back in 2010, their message was “Obama Aaaargh,” and it worked.
I don’t mean to imply we shouldn’t put forth a positive message. But stoking partisan anger seems to be important for midterms turnout, and Trump is certainly giving us plenty to be pissed off about so far.
Big Ole Hound
@rikyrah: Yeah but U.S. citizens won’t do the jobs for the same pay and lack of rights so when this deportation starts the farm and fast food industries are in big trouble. The biggies in those businesses all voted for Trump and have no idea what they are about lose.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
I’m sick and tired of all this analysis of why morons voted for their fellow moron. Can’t we just leave it at that, like sticks with like? They are willfully ignorant, they like his lies because they fit in with their preconceived notions of why they aren’t as “rich” as Twitler yet, they don’t have the woman they want because reasons, and those people are stealing all the best ones, I mean come on Heidi Klum married Seal and bore his kids, why not me, what am I, chopped liver? That Spic, Chink, Ni**er, or bitch stole my promotion, has the bigger car, house, better life. Nothing that’s “wrong” with their lives is on them, I put the quotes because in many cases there is nothing wrong with their lives, they are comfortably middle class, but they see the world changing, they see those people also advancing themselves, they are no longer automatically guaranteed shit and that pisses them off, having to actually earn shit and compete for it. Used to be that their status as white men meant that they would have every advancement, now they only have some of the advantages and that pisses them off. We cannot compete for people who are mad that their “God given” privilege is slipping away. Progress cannot be stopped or put on hold to pacify these snowflakes, the lost boys are indeed lost, perhaps we should send them off to explore the Steppe’s of Siberia, communing with nature is a great way to find yourself. Added bonus, Putin is manly and all about preserving a white patriarchal society, and given his history with Snowden, he is open to accepting lost white boys.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft:
Preach it sister friend. Its the coddling of the irredeemable smug stupidity that has led us to the current juncture. I am looking at you too, anti-vaxxers and JS voters.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Didn’t he say he would unite the country or some such bullshit in his inaugural? I’m assuming that he did because that’s what new presidents do even when they don’t mean it. Or did he get up there and say we won suck it libs? Because if he said the former, then the media should get in to his and Spicey’s faces asking if he represents all American’s or just the ones who voted for him, and if it’s the latter then he represents a small minority, because that leaves the vast majority of us unrepresented.
scav
@Big Ole Hound: What’ll you bet they,ll turn to prison labor. Especially with private prisons getting in their slice of profit instead of the actual laborers. And, hey, golly, look at all the experienced labor they’re suddenly swooping up? They might very well see it as a win-win-profit sucess.
tobie
@Raoul:
I agree with you on this but I don’t know what the slogan would be. I actually liked the motto “Stronger Together” but evidently it didn’t play enough on people’s fears. “Make America Great Again” worked because it implied that we’re going down the drain and only one (authoritarian) man and one (hate-filled) class (the WWC) could save us. The only possible Dem slogan I can think of right now would be “Restoring the American Dream…with liberty and justice for all.”
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
President Asshole was elected primarily by “True Patriots” who love their country, so his presidency and any expenses or profits associated with it are totally legitimate. President Obama was elected by a coalition of Americans who reflect the growing diversity of our nation, since he lost the majority of white voters, twice, his elections and therefore presidency was not legitimate and deserved all the scrutiny republicans gave it. Hush your whining, massa’s back in charge now, he’ll take care of everything.
Lapassionara
@rikyrah: preach it!
Maybe someone should send him the essays of Edmund Burke.
Corner Stone
@hovercraft:
Oh come on, that’s a little unfair don’t you think? It’s more likely that they see the real America they live and grew up in disappearing because their values are no longer respected. It’s tough working everyday and doing the hard, dirty work that elites on the coast disdain so much. After a while it has to get at you. I don’t think we can blame them for being open to a message of economic anxiety that promises to restore all the true American ideals they believe in.
Chris
@rikyrah:
It makes sense if you remember that to them, the ultimate enemy isn’t Russians or jihadis, but Democrats. Anyone they figure will help them keep the boot on their neck, is welcome.
Chris
@rikyrah:
There are comparisons to be made between our economic model and that of the Saudis and all the other Gulf monarchies, where a stupendous amount of the work is done by an imported workforce with no rights.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Excellent! Now you need your own newspaper column, Mr. Brooks.
Chris
@hovercraft:
Co-signed. I’m fine with trying to figure out how to make voters turn out who stayed home. People who voted for Trump, not so much.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was listening to an NPR call-in show and a thirty-two year old single man called in to righteously preach against the individual mandate. He kept emphasizing the words “choose” and “choice”– because I choose not to buy health insurance… because of my choice…– in a way that showed he thought he was some Appalachian farmer in 1778 standing alone with a musket ready to fend off the Hessians from his little plot of heaven. All I could think, and what several later callers more or less said, that if he hits a patch of black ice or trips while crossing against a light because that bus is almost full block away, he’ll bankrupt himself, more than likely his parents, and wind up a burden of the dread State.
bmaccnm
@Corner Stone: I trust you simply forgot to use your snark font. Otherwise, fuck their feelings.
Barbara
@Big Ole Hound: I think people who say what you said need to recognize that this statement is more or less true depending on where in the country you live. It’s not quite universal. Where I grew up, maids and housekeepers at motels and daycare workers are still native born and usually caucasian (proportionate to the population, at least). My white cousin has worked on a landscaping crew for more than 30 years. What’s true in California isn’t necessarily the case in Western Pennsylvania. On the other hand, it’s not as if white people in Western Pennsylvania are going to move in droves to California for housekeeping, daycare and landscaping jobs. But talking as if the only people who ever do “these kinds” of jobs are immigrants isn’t just inaccurate, it makes it sound like all these other mostly white people doing these jobs are just invisible to you.
Amaranthine RBG
@Corner Stone: Yes the default assumption that all Trump supporters are unreachable racists just makes it easy for the true believer moderate liberals to avoid the necessary self-examination of how, exactly, did we manage to lose an election we should have won by double digits.
amk
@Amaranthine RBG: clueless troll
bupalos
Wow, thanks for bringing that article (and author) to my attention Betty. Incredible essay. Best thing I’ve read in I don’t know how long. Maybe years? That’s journalism as art.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Well, meeting with the German ambassador isn’t what I would characterize as a private meeting. Anyone can see that the EU has problems, for one thing, the kind of regional differences we see in the U.S. are basically multiplied by 10 when they represent longstanding national differences, punctuated by different languages and competing national governments with no overall, truly sovereign central government. So, okay, that makes the EU less great than it could be. But that lack of greatness is mostly a problem for EU countries themselves, especially the “lesser partners” with the lower GDPs and entrenched patronage like Greece. As for the U.S., I don’t see what the U.S. gains by fomenting hypernationalism among EU countries. At all. I am guessing that Bannon’s project is essentially a short term fuck you to Angela Merkel because he hates Muslims that much, but long term, there is nothing but fail for the U.S. facing European countries at odds with each other.
amk
@Raoul: Yup, dems should concentrate more on policy messages than bright object personalities.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@amk: old troll, new nym, ho hum
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
The value that black people are inferior, lazy, dishonest, stupid?
The value that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant?
The value that she was asking for it,because of what she wore?
The value that a man can’t rape his wife, or since she invited you in she was asking for it?
The value that queers are sick and perverted and kicking their asses will set them straight?
I could go on but fuck them and their values. Times are changing for all of us, the changes wrought by globalization alone are causing true economic anxiety to us all, why the hell do they need to be handled differently than the rest of us? As to the cultural changes, no one likes to lose their position of privilege, but shit happens, we are not going back into the closet, the back of the bus, or back into the kitchen, get over it, Neanderthals died out, these assholes will too,( I know these are the young ones, but they will be forced to adapt, evolve, or go into the closet, they are enjoying their moment in the sun, but this too shall pass). Respect is earned, throwing a tantrum by electing your id will earn you none of mine.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: CS was being sarcastic.
hovercraft
@bmaccnm:
I’m assuming he’s just messing with me, but I’m playing along. As for the troll, will, not, feed.
jayboat
@hovercraft:
Truth.
Weaselone
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’m going to reiterate something I said a couple of weeks ago. I have more respect for the racists that voted for Trump than the rest of his supporters. At least they knew what he was and voted for what they wanted. The other people who voted for him were either criminally clueless, or were perfectly willing to saddle us with the corrupt, racist piece of shit in because they wanted to troll us or actually fell for his MAGA bull crap. Either way, these aren’t really people I want on my side in the future. I just want them to never, ever, ever, ever vote ever again, because they fucking suck at it.
bemused
@Amaranthine RBG:
Trump voters are unreachable until they get hit by a semi load of reality. Even then, many of them will still think the stinkin’ liberals are to blame.
There’s so much to lose and so much to defend in this country now. I got no time to spend much on pig headed Trumpsters.
bupalos
@tobie: I’d go for the old tried and true of what the right will call “class warfare.” And I’d couch it the same way that Trump got his racial hysteria through – this is your very last chance to save the country from the billionaire international oligarchs and their robot armies and nazi allies. Happens to have the benefit of being more or less true.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: Funny how it is always our side that has to do the reaching out. I don’t recall any articles after 2008 or 2012 where Republicans were told over and over again to reach out to people like me after they lost the presidential elections. Why do we have to reach out to racists and bigots or at the very least to people who are okay with electing racists and bigots? And who do we have to throw under the bus in our outreach? They hate racial, sexual and religious minorities who make up the base of the Democratic Party. I don’t anticipate that they are reachable.
Big Ole Hound
@Barbara: Maybe so but in the metropolitan areas nationwide most all hotel, fast food and service workers are immigrants. Same is true anywhere a large animal/bird processing is located. I agree in rural and small town areas( I lived in them for 50 years) this is untrue but these spots are becoming rarer and rarer as part of an ideal old fashioned America.
satby
@Corner Stone: not all your audience is getting your sarcasm.
Patricia Kayden
@Amaranthine RBG: Please direct me to articles in mainstream newspapers which speak to Republicans having to reach out to Democratic voters like me. Then we can talk about the reverse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is the new (I think?) GOP senator from Montana
and I, as Pierce likes to say, am Tsar of All The Russias
according to the Indivisible guidebook (available as a free audiobook) and every Hill staffer I’ve heard in the last couple of months, this is playing about like a scripted nightmare for the R’s. Long way to go, nothing is a given, they will win more than they lose over the next two years, et cetera et cetera, but keep it up.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
I know, that is why there were no expletives in my response ;-)
OK, I just checked there was one, I couldn’t help myself ;-)
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
preach.
TELL IT
bupalos
@Weaselone: This sentiment doesn’t surprise me. I think there’s a significant contingent here that is currently more challenged by things that suggest shades of grey, when they are desperately yearning for black and white, than they are by actual hardened evil. You prefer the people who really love and embrace the dirtiest nuggets of Trumpublicanism to accidental hangers-on, foolish people, careless dice-throwers, and the easily misled (which of course counts a majority of humanity?) At least the Nazi’s had the courage of their convictions to actually go ahead and gas children, right?
Fester Addams
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hows about: he gets to choose not to buy health insurance but if he gets badly hurt or sick, when he runs out of money we get to part him out.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
UH HUH
UH HUH
rdldot
@Barbara: But it makes sense if you understand that Bannon is working as much for Russia as for us. Russia wants to weaken all the EU and NATO alliances to strengthen itself.
MattF
I’m not so sympathetic about Milo’s entourage. Yes, growing up can be a chore– even painful on occasion. But some of that needs to come first.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: I know you’re just quoting Benen here:
but he doesn’t know shit about Ukrainian politics. Artemenko was not a member of a pro-Putin party, he was at least notionally a member of a Ukrainian nationalist party – which drummed him out the other day after these reports came out. He is at best just a bagman for the pro-Putin (and Manafort-created) Oppo Bloc, and more likely a traitor and FSB asset.
rikyrah
Why Is Congress Undermining Retirement Security for Millions of Americans?
Helping Americans save for retirement doesn’t sound like a very divisive issue, but that’s exactly what House Republicans have made it.
by Justin King and David Newville
February 22, 2017
When you think about all of the contentious issues that have defined the past few years—especially the last presidential campaign—what comes to mind? Our guess: issues like immigration, tax reform, and climate change. But helping Americans save for retirement? That probably doesn’t strike you as being very divisive—but that’s exactly what House Republicans have made it.
Yesterday the House passed two bills that would undo key regulations that the Department of Labor put in place last year. These regulations clarify the right of states, and certain municipalities, to offer automatic enrollment retirement savings plans (often called Secure Choice plans) to workers who are not offered a 401(k) or similar type of plan by their employer—some 40 million working-age households.
The House used a rare and sweeping law called the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to do this. The CRA allows Congress to overturn regulations issued by government agencies. Only successfully used by Congress once before this year—in 2001—the act is now back in play as Republicans rush to overturn Obama-era regulations. The new Congress is attempting to rollback regulations concerning everything from consumer financial protection to environmental issues, as well as firearm sales to some individuals with diagnosed mental disorders. Unlike more common mechanisms of policy change, CRA disapproval does long-term damage to the ability of the government to put effective policy in place, since it prohibits “substantially similar” rules from being issued without additional Congressional action.
…………………………
Back in 2009, President Barack Obama tried to address this impending crisis by introducing a national automatic individual retirement account (auto-IRA) proposal along with improved tax subsidies to help low- and moderate-income workers save for retirement. Despite the inclusion of the auto-IRA proposal in his annual budgets, the Republican majorities that took hold of Congress in 2011 refused to pass any meaningful retirement savings legislation. Some states have responded by taking action into their own hands. Backed by extensive market and policy research, five states—California, Illinois, Connecticut, Oregon, and Maryland—have started their own auto-IRA programs to help cover the millions of their citizens who lack access to a retirement account through their employer. Other states are studying and developing plans of their own, and 11 states have introduced legislation to create a plan or study in 2017, according to the Georgetown Center for Retirement Initiatives.
But now Congress is putting all of that in jeopardy.
These rollbacks won’t directly kill existing Secure Choice plans, but they’ll open the door to legal challenges that will drag on for years, preventing additional states from acting—and harming the retirement prospects of millions of workers.
House Republicans and the US Chamber of Commerce have offered a wide array of arguments against the regulations. Sponsors of the resolutions argued that a “patchwork of rules” would harm businesses, a surprising argument given the usual party support for federalism over centralized control. For example, state-facilitated individual savings accounts for college, commonly called 529 plans, were brought into being thanks in part to the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). 529 plans have operated successfully for decades and are the model on which Secure Choice plans are being built. Both 529s and Secure Choice are operated out of state treasurer’s offices, in some cases by the same staff, and using the same private sector partners to manage investments. In recent years, 529s have enjoyed vociferous Republican support.
rikyrah
Kansas Republicans send Brownback a tax hike
02/22/17 10:06 AM
By Steve Benen
In the 21st century, it’s effectively impossible to get Republican officials to support raising taxes on anyone, by any amount, for any reason. But in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback’s (R) radical economic experiment has failed so spectacularly, GOP officials believe they’ve run out of choices.
The Kansas City Star reported late last week that the state legislature, where Republicans dominate in both chambers in one of the nation’s reddest red states, “passed a bill to increase taxes Friday that could mark the end of many of the policies long championed by Gov. Sam Brownback.”
To be sure, if local reporting is any indication, state lawmakers weren’t altogether pleased with their solution, but Brownback’s tax cuts have left the state’s finances in such shambles, even Kansas’ Republican-led chambers have found themselves ready to change direction.
MattF
@rikyrah: And Brownback will veto it. They’ve got a ways to go yet.
rikyrah
Benen gives these phuckers the benefit of the doubt about what they ‘ understand.’
I don’t.
…………………
The White House’s response to Islamophobia is familiar, but wrong
02/22/17 10:40 AM
By Steve Benen
In October, during the second presidential debate, a young woman posed a good question to the candidates: “There are 3.3 million Muslims in the United States, and I’m one of them. You’ve mentioned working with Muslim nations, but with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled as a threat to the country after the election is over?”
Donald Trump was the first to respond, and he offered a memorable answer. The Republican said, “Well, you’re right about Islamophobia, and that’s a shame, but…” Trump proceeded to talk at great length about his perceptions about security threats posed by Muslims, his concerns that Muslims don’t report potential violence in advance, and his outrage that President Obama and Hillary Clinton don’t throw around the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
In other words, an American expressed concerns about Islamophobia, and Trump responded by effectively endorsing Islamophobia.
With this in mind White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked yesterday about a recent report showing that the number of organized anti-Muslim groups in the United States tripled last year. In response to pressure, the president eventually spoke out against anti-Semitism, but will Trump be forceful about addressing Islamophobia? Spicer responded:
It’s as if he didn’t understand the question. Asked about anti-Muslim hate groups, the White House press secretary immediately spoke about Trump’s “desire to combat radical Islamic terrorism.”
amk
@rikyrah: sucks for those folks who wilfully reelected him.
Corner Stone
OMG. I just saw this on someone’s twit feed. The sub head on the front page of WaPo is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. Is that normally there? I almost never click through to WaPo links any longer.
Barbara
@rdldot: Well yes, but whenever someone specifically says that Trump and Bannon are working for Russia it tends to end the conversation. So I think probably the better way in is to ask point blank what the U.S. gains by the dissolution of the E.U. There is no answer to that question that does not start with the idea that we need better relations with Russia.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: He understood the question just fine. He doesn’t care about Islamophobia or the feelings of Muslims. He, like many on the Right, have created Muslim Boogeymen (and women) who are dangerous and should be regarded with deep suspicion just because. Ask them about Christianist terrorists and they’ll stroke out with rage.
Thru the Looking Glass...
Well, it’s nice to hear Drumpf openly admit that he and his don’t see themselves as serving the rest of us… we don’t count… or matter, as far as they’re concerned…
The Shitzkrieg continues…
rikyrah
Kay,
these are local people, on the ground, getting the job done, from beginning to end.
You are right. This process needs to be all over the country.
An Alternative Strategy for Democratic Success: Growing a New Electorate
by Nancy LeTourneau
February 22, 2017 10:30 AM
POLITICAL ANIMAL BLOG
We often hear that the problem Democrats are facing is that they not only lost the presidency in 2016, but are getting trounced at the state and local level. Much has been written about that challenge, but we rarely dive into the weeds about solutions or shine a spotlight on successes.
What if I was to tell you about a county in a red state where Democrats won almost every slot on the ballot in 2016 (some for the first time in decades) and Clinton won by over 160,000 votes, after Obama’s margin was less than a thousand in 2012? That is exactly the story Andrew Cockburn tells us about Harris County Texas (Houston and the surrounding suburbs).
Cockburn credits the work of three women for those results: Michelle Tremolo, Ginny Goldman and Crystal Zermeno—two of whom met while working for the now-defunct organization ACORN. They created an organization called the Texas Organizing Project (TOP). Given that Texas has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country, the first order of business for TOP was to find out who was not voting.
The next step was one that is too often skipped. TOP wanted to learn why 4 million registered voters of color (likely Democrats) in Texas don’t show up at the polls. They conducted a series of focus groups and, armed with the results, began organizing them to have an impact on local concerns, predominantly criminal justice issues. Starting with the 2012 election, they began mobilizing both volunteers and paid staff to work in their own neighborhoods with relentless efforts to get out the vote. As a result, in that year Latino turnout in Harris County increased by 5%. In 2016, the success wasn’t limited to Harris County.
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: I think they added it recently in response to Trump’s calling the press the enemy of the American people.
Thru the Looking Glass...
Neither do rightwing extremists, you frickin’ dingbat…
Barbara
@MattF: I always hated the story of Peter Pan, even the Disney version, so I never bothered to read the book. The article informed me that in the book, when boys get tired of being boys and try to leave the island, Peter Pan kills them. I don’t know what kind of metaphor J.M. Barrie was reaching for, although I might try to find out, but it is certainly a salutary message: when you try to escape the fantasy world and become an adult, there are an awful lot of people with a very strong interest in forcing you to stay within their fantasy. To leave would lessen their own power by removing you from its control.
Chris
@Barbara:
American right wingers hate Europe. They see it as a continent of socialist, degenerate, eggheaded intellectuals, unpatriotic bureaucrats, and lazy protesters, pacifists, and union members. They also hate the EU specifically because it’s an attempt to unify the continent into a power bloc that could conceivably at some point rival the U.S. – same reason they once freaked out about Japan, and are now freaking out about China.
They don’t need a reason, much less a game plan for how this benefits them, to fuck with Europe, any more than they do to fuck with black people, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQs or poor people right here at home.
ThresherK
The post-election media coverage of Trump voters focuses obsessively on white working class economic anxiety
More of that shit coming up on NPR’s All Things Considered. They’re even calling them “Trump Democrats”. I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting for the Nice Polite Republicans to ask Trump voters about the Her Emails scandal dissolving into nothing.
The promo mentions the “blue wall being smashed” yet of course nothing about voter suppression or the popular vote. NPR has basically fucking forgotten how unpopular Trump was on election day and how he’s getting moreso
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ThresherK: I’ve also seen a lot of Concern about how more voters trust the White House than trust the media. It never seems to occur to them that there are some of us who distrust “the media” because they’re gutless patsies for the Republican party
Corner Stone
@Chris:
Please tell me that the libertine sex and sexual attitudes fall under “degenerate”. I gotta hold on to my illusion that there’s lots of sex involved when I finally make it over there.
Patricia Kayden
@ThresherK: That’s interesting because I read yesterday that Trump plans to cut funding for NPR/PBS. Perhaps NPR will go all in for Rightwingers and become a mini-Fox News radio station after it loses government funding.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
This is from your neck of the woods, tell me what you think.
Caution it’s a really LONG READ, you’ve been warned, now click on over to Harpers magazine.
Texas is the Future
Can Democrats reconquer the Lone Star State?
By Andrew Cockburn
Ask anyone who was present at Hillary Clinton’s presumptive victory celebration on November 8 and they will tell you of the stunned silence, broken only by sobs, that settled across the vast glass enclosure of the Javits Center in Manhattan…………….
This funereal atmosphere was replicated wherever Democrats were gathered across the nation — with one instructive exception. In the Heights neighborhood of Houston, hundreds of revelers thronged bars along Studewood Street late into the night. “Any Houston Democrat who was anybody was there,” Doug Miller, a local reporter, told me later. “I looked up at the TV screens on the walls, I could see the whole country turning red, but everyone there seemed happy!”
Ask anyone who was present at Hillary Clinton’s presumptive victory celebration on November 8 and they will tell you of the stunned silence, broken only by sobs, that settled across the vast glass enclosure of the Javits Center in Manhattan. Upstairs, in the suite where the candidate was closeted with her family and associates, the trauma was even more intense…………..
This funereal atmosphere was replicated wherever Democrats were gathered across the nation — with one instructive exception. In the Heights neighborhood of Houston, hundreds of revelers thronged bars along Studewood Street late into the night. “Any Houston Democrat who was anybody was there,” Doug Miller, a local reporter, told me later. “I looked up at the TV screens on the walls, I could see the whole country turning red, but everyone there seemed happy!”…………….
The reason was simple. Unlike the rest of the country, Houston Democrats had a full-scale Republican rout to celebrate. The party had swept the polls in Harris County, the vast region encompassing Houston, arguably the nation’s most diverse city (as locals never tire of repeating). With 4.5 million inhabitants, the county is more populous than half the states in America. Now Harris voters had elected a Democratic district attorney — a very powerful post in Texas law enforcement — for the first time in thirty-six years. The Democrats had also captured almost every other slot on the ballot, including the tax assessor’s office, which oversees voter registration: a crucial win in an age of Republican voter suppression.
Furthermore, these local victories carried over to the top of the ticket. Though it probably did little to lighten the mood in the Javits Center, Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump by more than 160,000 votes in a county that Barack Obama had carried by fewer than a thousand in 2012. While others in the defeated party were subsiding into melancholy, hand-wringing, and consolatory tales of Russian hackers, the county’s newly elected sheriff, former Houston police sergeant Ed Gonzalez, was assuring supporters that he would defy any orders to round up undocumented immigrants. Across the street, the new D.A., Kim Ogg, promised her exuberant audience a progressive agenda: “We’re going to have a system that doesn’t oppress the poor.”
…………………The prospect of life under an administration populated with avaricious plutocrats, xenophobes, and religious fanatics may chill the blood of countless Americans, but Texans have been living in such conditions for decades. Pertinent examples abound, not least the unremitting legislative assaults on Texan women, the latest being a proposed rule requiring that fetal tissue from abortions or miscarriages be expensively interred or cremated. Add to that cash-starved public schools, cuts in services for disabled children, record-breaking numbers of uninsured, lack of compensation for injured workers, the wholesale gutting of environmental regulations, soaring inequality, hostility to immigrants, and multiple restrictions on voting rights. Texas may therefore serve as an example of what could be in store for the rest of us. “The Texas Republicans have done a good job on voter suppression,” Craig Varoga, a Democratic political consultant and veteran of many election battles across the state, told me gloomily. “Now you’re going to see the same thing happening nationally, with the blessing of the Department of Justice.”………..
Amid the happy lawyers, journalists, and other movers and shakers at the victory parties, one group of seventy-five men and women, who had arrived on a chartered bus, stood out. Most of them were Latinos, like Petra Vargas, a Mexican-born hotel worker who had spent the day walking her fellow immigrants to the polls. Others were African Americans, such as Rosie McCutcheon, who had campaigned relentlessly for the ticket while raising six grandchildren on a tiny income. All of them wore turquoise T-shirts bearing the logo top. Not only had they made a key contribution to the day’s results — they represented a new and entirely promising way of doing politics in Texas.
The Texas Organizing Project was launched in 2009 by a small group of veteran community organizers. Michelle Tremillo, a fourth-generation Tejana (a Texan of Mexican descent), grew up in public housing in San Antonio, where her single mother worked as a janitor. Making it to Stanford on a scholarship, she was quickly drawn into politics, beginning with a student walkout in protest of Proposition 187, California’s infamous anti-immigrant ballot measure. By the time she graduated, the elite university had changed her view of the world. “I always knew I was poor growing up, and I even understood that I was poorer than some of my peers that I went to school with,” Tremillo told me. What she eventually came to understand was the sheer accumulation of wealth in America and its leveling effect on the rest of the population: “We were all poor.”
Both Tremillo and her TOP cofounder Ginny Goldman, a Long Island native, had worked for ACORN, the progressive national community organization that enjoyed considerable success — registering, for example, half a million minority voters in 2008 — before becoming a target of calculated assaults by right-wing operatives. By 2009, the group was foundering, and it was dissolved a year later.
In response, the activists came up with TOP. Goldman, who was its first executive director, told me that TOP was designed to focus on specific Texan needs and realities and thereby avoid the “national cookie-cutter approach.” The organization would work on three levels: doorstep canvassing, intense research on policy and strategy, and mobilizing voter turnout among people customarily neglected by the powers that be………..
Click to read this looong article in full
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: Happy B’Day, Ms. Cracker!! Hope you have a good one.
Brachiator
It’s not like the ancient old days, when a huge group of men without women had a massive impact on human culture. From a recent PNAS publication by Stanford researcher Amy Goldberg:
In other words, a whole bunch of mens without womens transformed European population 5,000 years ago. Not having video games they may have resorted to warfare to help get what they wanted (although I think it likely that trade and other cultural exchange may have played a huge role).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Thru the Looking Glass...
They just didn’t weaponize fragility… they monetized it too…
Always, always, always look for the financial angle in this endless river of shit…
On the other hand, this is kinda cool…
The French are training eagles to take down suspected terrorist drones…
(warning… the link is to the WaPo, if you don’t those folks…)
Now, if we could only get some sharks w/ frickin’ laser beams…
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m a little late to what may be a dying thread, but I want to offer a couple thoughts…
First, while I am a big believer in redemption, I don’t think a substantial number of true racists can be reached, can be taught, can be educated and made into quality people.
(What I mean by “true racists” are not those who blithely, ignorantly enjoy the benefits of privilege and institutional racism.) As a 55 Year old white cisgendered straight man, I had to learn about institutional racism and privilege. As the father of a daughter, I am keenly aware of how the patriarchy (with all too many indoctrinated females) actively works to diminish girls and women.
But I DO want to understand the workings of Trump voters. By turning our backs on them, we risk losing too much; we risk nominating another Trump. We’re talking about 62,000,000 people, sixty-two million fathers, mothers, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, preachers, and predatory creatures who exert an influence on other people.
I am not saying we worry about their precious fears and feelings. To them, their feelings and fear are perhaps real. To me, they’re not. But I want to understand them the way a researcher understands the workings of cancer or viruses so that we can contain the potential damage.
Wow, way longer than I intended. Thanks for reading.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Corner Stone: And drugs… don’t forget the drugs… too…
Iowa Old Lady
@Big Ole Hound: ICE raided a meat packing plant here a few years back because they were using undocumented labor.
Goku
@bupalos:
Well, I mean, yeah, at least the Nazis knew what they wanted and understood the implications of their beliefs, as vile as those beliefs were and still are. A lot of these Trump voters voted for someone who was clearly racist, incompetent, authoritarian, etc. That’s ultimately their fault. From January, 20th on, whatever happens, if that’s nuclear war or what is on their on their heads. If Trump and the Rs are able to establish an authoritarian police state in the fashion of 20th century South Africa, and destroy the post-WW2 order, that will be on their heads and they will have to live with that. The R behind his name and the possibility of ramming through their unpopular agenda was too much to resist for many of them; their tribal identity too strong to overcome. I have no doubt some were genuinely duped and will eventually peel away. The question remains how many eventually will and whether it will be too late by then. The ongoing resistance gives me some hope. Finally, people have every right to be pissed at those who voted away their country to rich oligarchs, both American and Russian.
ThresherK
@Patricia Kayden: NPR become a mini-Fox News? To quote Dorothy Parker on Cal Coolidge’s passing, “How would we know?”
I don’t think they will. I think the fake “liberal”, genuine “not call a liar a liar” stuff is more valuable for the right-wing puke funnel to have around.
I call it Amtrakking: I can see NPR being kept alive as a subverted, functionally useless organization that can be pointed to as a strawman by its political enemies. And if there’s anything NPR has no fucking sense about, it’s that they have political enemies and they can’t apologize their way into stopping the beatings.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
Sex is a given, after all they don’t believe in marriage, or if they do, they don’t believe in monogamy. Can you imagine an American president with a wife and a mistress everyone knows about. Oh shit, I keep forgetting, while up until recently that would have been unthinkable, now we have Melania and Ivanka.
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: Thank you! Hey, is the email associated with your BJ registration valid? I have a question / comment for you that probably isn’t of general interest to the group…
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
Lost is they polite way to say irredeemable. Grown ass men acting out like children by electing a man-child just to spite the rest of us. They can fuck right off.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
Happy birthday Ms Cracker :- )
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@MattF:
I’d like to believe that the majority or at least plurality of us do grow up and mature. I’d like to know why some don’t. Is it shitty parenting, arrogance and intellectual disinterest? Do we blame Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and MTV (no, obviously, though some will blame TV, hip hip and metal, video games–they’re an easy but wrong target).
Is it Rush Limblob and Fox News to blame? Institutional racism and sexism — the patriarchy — are complex and not easily fixed.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
JM Barrie’s Peter Pan may have some roots in his attempts to deal with personal family trauma.
Early on, Barrie got the message from his mother that it is better never to grow up. His dead brother, on the other hand, became a magical child, perpetually frozen in time. Another tidbit from Barrie’s life:
I don’t think that literature is mechanically autobiographical, but clearly Barrie used parts of his life to create a character and a fictional universe that has captivated many, and appalled others.
MattF
@West of the Rockies (been a while): FWIW, I tend to take a pseudo-Freudian view– that there’s a lot of unresolved Family Drama going on, and not growing up means you can keep fighting about it.
Barbara
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Perhaps the concept of what it means to be an adult differs depending on the cultural context in which you grew up? Socialization in gender roles is a huge factor here — if you are socialized to expect to be the head of the household and find that your salary and day to day life as well as your potential mates make that an impossible dream, you might find that the adulthood available to you is not the one you imagined. Not the ordinary mismatch between expectations and reality that we all face but a complete cognitive dissonance between what you were led to believe is good and what actually is. Conservative churches that bray on and on about how women are supposed to submit to their husbands and husbands are supposed to be the breadwinner are doing people no favors whatsoever when there is no fucking way that most people can live like that. Add whatever you want about glorifying strength and manual labor and belittling educational attainment when that is exactly what is required to obtain any marketable skills whatsoever for most people and you have a host of people whose concept of what should be is totally at odds with what is or can be. Many do figure it out because no one wants to be homeless. But there are a lot of unhappy and unfulfilled campers out there who can’t figure out why they feel so miserable. I would feel sorrier for them if they didn’t have a strong penchant for blaming other people nonstop.
Amaranthine RBG
@Weaselone: Yes, there are committed racists who are Trump supporters. And, yes, there are pepe-loving kids who just want to blow things up. But there are also people who are amenable to properly targeted outreach.
The point of this exercise isn’t to be nice to clueless people and give up our values. The point is to get them to vote for Democrats.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker: It’s your Beed-Dey? Hiv a hoppie.
Amaranthine RBG
@Patricia Kayden: The simple fact is that we lost the electoral college by a significant margin.
For too many democrats, the idea of outreach is “You are imperfect so I don’t even want your vote no how.”
That his how we lose elections.
gorram
Sure are, the thing is they don’t want to be found.
hovercraft
@Barbara:
Life is hard, period, no matter what your economic circumstance, growing up means accepting and understanding that reality. Our trips and falls may differ in severity, but we all have them. How we deal with them is the true test of character and maturity. These people have never accepted that we all have trails and tribulations, some of us just handle them better than others. They envy the lives they see others living never understanding what those people had to do to get there. Everyone has failed at something, everyone, accepting your responsibility for that failure allows you to learn and grow, dwelling on it and blaming others for it, means you will never be free of it, you will never move past it, and it will fester and hold you back. I wanted to marry Micheal Jackson and be as big a superstar as he was, sadly I failed, but I’m okay with that ;-(
Just my 0.02 cents of armchair psychology.
Gin & Tonic
@Amaranthine RBG:
Actually one of the smallest margins in history.
Goku
@Amaranthine RBG: In an election, your personal feelings don’t matter. To let it matter so much that someone will vote for an obviously incompetent authoritarian traitor, means that they’re so thin-skinned that they might bleed like a sieve if they got a paper-cut. That’s their fault. As citizens and voters, they have a responsibility to make the best possible choice they can make. The world we live in is imperfect and our choices for leaders are not as pure as we would like. Reality is what it is. People can either accept that and work to make the country and the world they live in a better place or they can choose to throw a temper tantrum because some people were a little mean to them. That’s ultimately on them. If former Trump supporters admit that they were wrong and work with us than then they are welcome. But they can’t act as if some of the vitriol aimed their way isn’t justified.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amaranthine RBG: So how do you reach out to them? Specifically, how do you do it without fucking over women, POC, etc (you know, the base of the party)?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: the final result would probably fill me with rage, but I am a little surprised that I haven’t seen one story about Jill Stein voters, from the Sarandonites sticking with “not a dime’s worth a difference” to the precious bleaters who wanted to “send a message”, of course those last are probably investing all that emo-energy into the DNC chair thing, in spite of not having a clue as to what that office actually is
Amaranthine RBG
@Gin & Tonic:
304 to 227. Bush Kerry was 286 to 251, for starters.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Perhaps by foregrounding the issues that most Americans care about and selecting a candidate who is a bit less flawed than Clinton.
@Goku:
Yes. This is about building coalitions and getting votes. Not trying to find the one perfect votor.
gvg
@Patricia Kayden:
Actually there were lots of mainstream articles saying that-the result was that report about how the GOP needed to reach out to Hispanics or they were doomed. they talked about it then did nothing. doesn’t seem to have hurt them does it? I can’t compromise or sympathize with full blown bigots. the policies being acted on will kill people and simply doing nothing except allowing things as is to continue would leave those people alive so I can’t see the point in reaching out. they can come beg us for help when they are in their own self caused disaster.
I guess we should study them like lab rats to figure out how to prevent some % of the bigotry from being passed down for yet another generation.
les
@Big Ole Hound:
Not so much. Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas food processing is very much immigrant labor.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Maybe by pointing out that many GOP policies will hurt them as much as they hurt everyone else, including people they incorrectly think are not like them.
Some of the defenses of the Affordable Care Act may be one of the wedges.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well now, that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?
Some of these people are irretrievably racist, sexist, ist, ist, ist. Some may be clinically sociopathic and irredeemably broken. The unreachable, don’t-waste-your-time types.
The others are perhaps reachable through a charismatic speaker, literature and film, by encountering the very people they fear and discovering something in common. It’s no easy or fast fix.
I’m told that the relationship between fictional characters Kurt and Burt Hummel on the TV show Glee (they were a gay son and straight father) served to educate some folks and actually change their thinking.
Climb Mount Fuji, snail… but slowly, slowly.
Ian G.
Bill Maher once said that what Islamic terrorists really need is to get laid. I can’t help but think that applies to these sad misfits too. Maybe one day they’ll get laid and lose interest in fascism.
Goku
@Amaranthine RBG:
I think you misunderstood my comment. I was directing it more at Trump voters more than anyone else. This whole Trump bullshit is on them. In a democratic republic like ours, power and legitimacy derives from the people, specifically voters. Trump voters need to take responsibility for their vote and admit they were clearly wrong. Their vote has potentially ruined this country and maybe the world. Whatever catastrophe happens from this point out is ultimately their fault. People have every right to be pissed off with them. By the way, Omnes was right about the electoral college victory being the most narrow in history. The election was extremely close and had many other factors, the least of which was Clinton’s purity.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
The most unrepentant Trump voters I know are the anti-abortion ones. They are completely unreachable, because they think it’s worth sacrificing our entire civil society to make abortion illegal, and they do not listen to reason.
So I’d love the troll to explain how we “reach out” to them and get them to vote for Democrats short of dropping our commitment to being pro-choice. I’m pretty sure I know what the answer is, though, because I get it from faux-liberal dudebros like him pretty often. Usually involves the phrase “social issues” and how we need to drop those in favor of “economic issues,” as though raising an unplanned child is not an economic issue.
Gin & Tonic
@Amaranthine RBG: The 2016 result was 48th out of 56. Yes, W v. Kerry was closer, but not many were.
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I think that turning non-voters into voters and working to make sure that everyone who wants to vote is able to do so are potentially more effective areas of focus.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree. I was suggesting a long game. But how do you get non-voters to actually fill out a card and drop it in the mail or ballot box? I’m not talking about those turned away by very real voter suppression efforts, but the I’m Too Busy Watching The Simpsons type.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: Yes it is valid. Please feel free to contact me. Thanks.
Brachiator
@Goku:
Sadly, this may not happen since these people feel that they are close to getting two of their heart’s desire: kicking Mexican illegal immigrants out of the country, and keeping Muslims from entering the country. And they don’t care if getting their way ruins the country. The only thing that might get through to them is if some Trump/Republican policy actually hurts them, or fails to get them what they want.
So far, these people don’t even care if if the Republicans blatantly lie to them about other policy issues.
@Mnemosyne:
Sadly, very true. And they eat up the lies which have made Planned Parenthood a scapegoat, and threatened the health and safety of many, many women.
Chris
@hovercraft:
Is it true that if it’s possible to go on welfare on Texas, but if you do, you have to pay the state back once you’re off the dole?
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Rockies (been a while): The first thing I would do is work on getting those who want to vote the tools they need to do so. A strong effort to get a valid ID into everyone’s hands. Next everyone needs to be pointing out to everyone they know that this election was so close that just a few more people in a few precincts would have swung it the other – that their vote matters. I was talking to a young AA woman the other day who expressed fear about Trumpism but also said that she did vote because her vote didn’t matter. We need to reach people like her.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
Count me among those who detest Peter Pan
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Of course…… It’s all important. There probably isn’t one message that will resonate with most democrats. We are too diverse, just look at this blog. We have people who regularly ridicule “normal” democrats and we end up voting for the same candidates. To use a military analogy, we need to bring all guns to bear. The hard core will vote (and work, hopefully) for a decent candidate, but the ones that may need convincing are those who either didn’t vote or who didn’t see any difference. And those are just two distinctly different groups and are probably going to need different messages.
Chris
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Personally, the problem is that I’ve never met one of these people who’d actually been argued out of their position. There are stories with happy endings, like Charles Johnson at LGF or our esteemed John Cole right here, but in both cases they reasoned themselves out of this mess; they didn’t meet an unusually persuasive or emphatic Democrat who suddenly opened their eyes. Alternatively, I’ve met people (usually in college) who come from a sheltered red-state cocoon and are basically discovering for the first time that there are other ways to think. But neither of these seem like the kind of thing that you can really base an electoral campaign on.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Just wanted to highlight this since the conversation seems to be headed in that direction: rather than try and win back white voters in Texas, a group of former ACORN employees located non-voters of color and got them sufficiently energized to take back their district.
THIS is the future, not a futile effort to convince single-issue anti-abortion or pro-gun voters to become Democrats.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
all three major candidates for the DNC talk about the need increase local organization over national messaging, taking money away from TV ads and putting it to work at the grassroots level. As much as I want to like Perez, as much as he emphasizes his success in turning around and successfully and progressively managing large dispirited bureaucracies (the post-Bush civil rights division of justice, the Labor Dept), I always get the feeling that he thinks he’s running for a non-voting Senate seat and/or a Chief Party TeeVee Pundit (and he’s not very good at that last). There’s a lot I like about Ellison and if he would loudly tell his supporters to stop with the blackmail-ish concern-trolling, I think I could fall all the way in line behind him. Buttigieg might be a good step in moving beyond 2016.
Chris
@Goku:
What do you want to bet that if, somehow, Trump actually did bungle his way into a nuclear war, during the half hour or so that it takes the ICBMs to get from Russia to here, MSM talk show hosts would be going on the air to discuss how completely the Democrats failed us by nominating Hillary Clinton instead of a candidate who could’ve won and avoided all this?
(Mind you, if that ever happened, my last Facebook status would probably be “yeah, but her emails, brah,” so I suppose I can’t talk. I can be petty, too).
hovercraft
@Chris:
I’m not sure, but I do know that here in Jersey, the rule is that if you come into an inheritance or win the lotto, you are required to pay back any cash benefits. Which is stupid, unless they win millions, why not stop the payments . but allow them a fresh start, ever since welfare reform, it’s not actually enough for anyone to live on really, here in NJ I believe it’s roughly 140 dollars a month per person. Even with housing and food stamps, how the hell does anyone live on 140 a month, between cigarettes and coffee/ tea and lunches, that would barely last a week.
hovercraft
@Omnes Omnibus: @West of the Rockies (been a while):
Identifying,registering, and turning out new voters is the gist of the story of Harris County, Texas, in the link I posted @, #81. In spite of being in ruby red Texas, with focus and organization, the democrats swept the ballot in the county, they won everything, Hillary beat Twitler by I believe 160K vs Obama winning the county by 10K. So it can be done. As I said in the original comment it is a very long read, of you want a shorter read, Nancy LeTourneu has a post about the essay.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Correct.
cmorenc
@rikyrah:
I live in a sufficiently upscale neighborhood that many of my neighbors both: a) are Republicans; b) have yard services that mow and maintain their lawns and shrubbery, which are staffed at least 75% by men of obvious Hispanic ethnicity who speak Spanish among themselves and (very) broken, limited English to Anglo owners and passers-by. Query how these neighbors will cope when their yard-service crews get decimated by ICE deportations, and their yard services are forced to cope by vastly increasing the predominate source for the other 25% of their current crews – men on parole or with the sort of criminal records they can’t get hired for anything but that sort of job. Um…the problem with undocumented Hispanics living in this country They had too many criminals among them? In the case of their yard-service crews, TRUE, but not at all in the way these GOP neighbors were likely thinking….
Ruckus
@Fester Addams:
Hows about: he gets to choose not to buy health insurance but if he gets badly hurt or sick, when he runs out of money we get to chose to part him out.
FIXIT for you.
You turned it around on him but failed to be explicit enough for him to understand it. He gets a selfish choice up front, we get a group choice at the end.
The Moar You Know
They’re not lost. Or boys. They’re insanely angry white conservative gay men who will go through life ruining everyone’s life that they can, because it’s all they can do, and it’s all they know how to do. And they’ll make a lot of money along the way.
Don’t let them off the hook like this. I beg you. They know what they do to others very well.
Goku
@Chris: That scenario has an even better chance of happening with China. Imagine if Japan and S. Korea got nukes like Trump wants. Does China have long range ICBMs?
Ruckus
@MattF:
I think this is a big part of it. Some people never get over the whatever it was to the day they die. And as valid as their concerns might be, or at least might have been, the only way to move forward is to grow up and be a better adult. It is possible to learn what not to do and not just keep redoing it.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: As the Penny article makes clear, they are mostly straight not gay men. Milo Yiannopoulos is, of course, gay.
Weaselone
@Amaranthine RBG:
There is a big pool of people who just didn’t bother to vote at all. They’re probably a better and safer target for our efforts. The people who voted for Trump, perhaps they’ll vote with us next election, but if they haven’t actually learned a real lesson, they’ll be right back to voting for the next Trump that comes along. That makes their participation a very double-edged sword, because they’re primed to put the next authoritarian leader into power. I don’t want to see what the Democrats version of Trump happens to be.
Ruckus
@hovercraft:
During the recession I set a limit on my daily living amount. $10 per day for me and my dog. That didn’t include rent. I could live on less and more often than not did live on less, something like $8 per day. It was not easy nor fun, nor necessarily nutritious every day. And yes I did recognize the snark in your comment. But $140 per month is not enough.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have actually seen FB friends who I suspect may have voted for Jill Stein – or who sure acted like they were Stein-curious – bleating forlornly about how they can’t believe Trump is President! And this was after all the “Oh, HRC is awful” bs they were spouting – NOW they’re shocked, SHOCKED, that Trump is President?!
It’s like anti-vaxxers (did I mention that at least one of them is an anti-vaxxer?) who blithely depend on herd immunity to keep their precious snowflakes safe, without feeling the need to contribute to herd immunity themselves. And these are people I love dearly, but I just wanted to thump their heads on something.
sharl
Haven’t read comments here yet, so maybe this has already been addressed, but the divide over this article between “traditionalists” and leftie Millennials is like the contrast between day and night. Traditional conservative Tom Nichols – a curmudgeon-y “Never Trump” guy – seemed to love it, which makes sense coming from a long time proponent of the “Lost Boys” explanation for many of these types who find Milo attractive. Young lefties I see on twitter hate-hate-HATE this piece, though there is some slight variation in intensity of their dislike. I’ll note that young lefties have hated Milo for a long time, for outing trans students at his university talks, and setting up online “dogpilings” by his fans that have sometimes resulting in doxxed women – it’s almost always women – fleeing their homes in fear.
There seems to be consensus among the Youngs that it is poorly written (i.e., bad English), but even ignoring that, a whole lot of contempt for what they view as an undeserved sympathetic look at Milo and his followers. And even on the bad English criticism, Nichols called it “great writing” in that tweet I linked above.
Contrasts this stark over single relatively well defined social phenomena fascinate me. I hope to dive into this further.
different-church-lady
@bupalos: If I have to sing that damn song, count me out.
hovercraft
@Ruckus:
I know this was my point.
NJ is an expensive state, the welfare benefits are woefully inadequate, we help people trying to get back on their feet, mostly single adults recovering from dependency who have been out of work for a while.
Housing is it’s own issue, dealt with by another department.
Food stamp allocation $194
Cash assistance $140
As I stated, above this is not a living subsidy, if you wok and make more than $200, the cash benefit is cut off, the FS are not as harsh, but the republicans keep trying. So who can survive on lets say $201 a month, even if you aren’t wasting your money on cigarettes, if you are working, the bus to travel locally is minimum $3.20 round trip, the train if you work close by is a minimum $6 a day, probably more for both, that’s before any bare essentials like toiletries to keep yourself presentable to maintain your job. How many of us run into the grocery store to pick up bread and milk and a couple of other essentials without thinking about it, and somehow it’s a $100, on nothing. How does one live on $140? The system is designed for people to fail or to cheat, to accept off the books work, which benefits business, and screws the worker by denying them benefits and more importantly, the opportunity to pay FICA and increase your eventual SS benefit.
tarragon
@Ruckus:
Good and Cheap a cookbook targeted at $4 a day per person. I’m not sure it’s actually possibly, but there are resources.
This is a really good cookbook, I actually recommend it for everyone.
Boatboy_srq
@Betty Cracker: The 2010 GOTea message was more like “stop that uppity niCLANG”. That seemed to work well enough for them.
Mnemosyne
I can’t find the comments I meant to reply to, but when I was a kid, I loved Disney’s Peter Pan. LOVED. IT. Made my dad read the storybook of the movie so many times that he made a recording of himself reading it and said he would read me any other book I wanted, just not that one again.
And then I re-watched the movie as an adult and thought, “Holy shit, how did I miss all of the racism and sexism?!?”
(In retrospect, I think I loved the escapism of it since my mom was seriously ill most of my childhood and died of cancer when I was seven.)
Boatboy_srq
@hovercraft: GOTea logic is that New Yorkers should be able to live on a Mississippi budget, and if they can’t then shut up because fiscal responsibility / young bucks with T-bones / welfare moms in Cadillacs.
Weaselone
@bupalos:
I never said I prefer, I said respect. I have respect for rabid dogs and old dynamite. It’s not an indicator of who I would rather have to tea or trust to watch my daughter.
Whatever damage Trump does, whatever suffering he inflicts, the shades of gray voted for it every bit as much as the stone cold racists. I admit to there being shades of grey, so lets take a look at them.
1. We’ve got the racists and others who voted for Trump because they knew and wanted the damage and suffering he would cause.
2. We’ve got the group who knew he would cause damage and suffering, but were willing for others to make that sacrifice in exchange for lower taxes, fetal personhood laws and imaginary coal mining jobs.
3. We’ve got the group knew he would cause damage and suffering, and voted for him for the Lulz.
4. And finally, we have the people who apparently remove their heads from their hind ends just long enough to flip a coin and vote on election day.
Those top three general categories are pretty dark shades of grey. We’ve got the truly evil, people who like to watch evil, and the people who are OK with evil, as long as it’s someone else and they get their 20 pieces of silver. And here’s the thing, Trump’s debacles since the election have cost him support among Democrats and Independents, but among his actual voters, he’s barely budged so there seems to be a really big chunk of Trump voters who fall into those 3 groups and not into the completely clueless category.
EriktheRed
I read the essay and then read the numerous critiques of it by wingnuts who spout the usual “leftists are the real fascists” crap while totally missing the overall point of the article.
Fuck ’em.
Montysano
One of the threads that runs through the Milo article is also a thought that I’ve often had since 11/8: they never planned on actually winning this thing.