Earlier this week, before he bowled over shallow pundits by delivering a speech that would have been panned if delivered by literally any other president, Trump appeared on Fox & Friends to hold forth on a favorite topic:
Well, look, you know, it just seems the other side, whenever they are losing badly, they always pull out the race card. And I’ve watched it for years. I’ve watched it against Ronald Reagan. I’ve watched it against so many other people. And they always like pulling out the race card.
This was pure projection. Trump plays the race card constantly, and has all of his public life. He has fomented racial hatred and profited from racist business practices for decades. In the 1980s, Trump famously took out a full-page ad in the NYT to call for the execution of the innocent nonwhite teenagers in the “Central Park jogger” case — and doubled down on that during the campaign, even though the teenagers in question were exonerated years ago.
Trump began the current phase of his political career with the baldly racist “birther” crusade. And make no mistake about it: the race card was central to his 2016 win. I’m not saying it was the only thing going on; in many ways, the 2016 election was a black swan event, and anyone who attributes Trump’s win to a single cause is oversimplifying things, IMO.
But contra all the wanking about economic issues, the party that embraced identity politics won. Trump’s core supporters were ecstatic about the rejection of “political correctness,” the race-baiting lies about crime and the constant demonization of immigrants. And the ones who claim to have voted for Trump for other reasons saw the naked demagoguery as acceptable.
Last night’s speech was no exception, despite pundit squeeing about how “presidential” it was. Trump may have finally denounced the vandalism and threats aimed at Jewish organizations and symbols, but he didn’t say one word about the harassment and vandalism perpetrated against Muslims. Trump finally mentioned the hate-crime shootings in Olathe, KS, but he didn’t rescind his earlier order directing the DHS to focus exclusively on Islamist terrorism while right-wing terrorism is on the rise, inspired by Trump’s own rhetoric.
In fact, Trump doubled down on the bigotry that propelled his rise with the announcement about the VOICE program, which is a continuation of the immigrant scapegoating and demonization strategy he has relied on since the first day of his campaign. The fact that political commentators outside the Fox-Breitbart universe can proclaim a speech that contained that bigoted bullshit a success just shows how oblivious people are to the white nationalism at the heart of Trump’s appeal.
Anyway, I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I think we have to focus on this relentlessly. Trump’s campaign rhetoric was overtly racist, sexist and xenophobic. And the bigots, homophobes, abusers and incompetents Trump has installed in positions of great power are busily enacting a racist, sexist, xenophobic agenda.
That doesn’t go away if Trump manages to deliver a speech in modulated tones rather than braying like a tinpot authoritarian, as is his usual custom. As people who are in favor of equality, decency and baseline competence, our job remains clear: resist.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
these observations seem to fit here
Jim, Foolish Literalist
every time one of MSNBC’s fresh-faced young (and white) “road warriors” interviewed a Trump supporter, pre- and post-election, and said Trump supporter mentioned “political correctness”, I wanted to scream at the TV, “ASK THEM WHAT THAT MEANS!”
post election they interviewed a Wilmer supporting independent mayor of a smaller city near Detroit, and he mentioned PC as a ‘problem’ for Democrats in MI. That time I think I did scream at the TV
zzyzx
Even my blerping runner’s group has people who are dealing with bomb threats being called into their kids’ schools… It’s oh so great that Trump kinda denounced the attacks vaguely, but maybe he could ask Sessions to make it a higher priority than going after pot. I’m sure that’ll happen any second now.
Major Major Major Major
My biggest fear about a Trump presidency has been that he’d push his malignant agenda quietly and competently and that the media would play along. He’s so far been neither quiet nor competent, but the media reaction to this is an example of what would happen if he were non-loud and not as visibly incompetent. So I suppose we lucked out in a way.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well you can see the Wilmer effect after the DNC election. Go over to LGM there’s a post about the DNC election that had over 700 comments. I have never seen a post there or anywhere else I frequent that garners that many comments when Trump does something evil.
hovercraft
Tom “Greatest Generation” Brokaw was one of the only “bright” spots in MSNBC’s coverage of the speech, ( according to the internets, I did not watch the speech or it’s aftermath).
Tom Brokaw Practices Journalism: Trump’s Speech Is Words Not Optics
Brokaw said, “Well, we’ve been waiting for the pivot since August, remember? We’re gonna pivot to being presidential. Tonight, this is easily the most presidential that he’s been.”
“Fact checkers will be very busy for the next 24 hours or so, taking a look at some of the claims that he made.”
Brokaw said, “For example, the 20 million people on Obamacare are pretty happy with the health care they’re getting right now, that’s the focus of a lot of those protests. He talked about crime among immigrants. There’s a lot of other crime in America that doesn’t involve immigrants, including shooting crimes.”
“We have had mass murders that don’t involve immigrants and don’t involve Islamic terrorists,” he continued. “No one is condemning gun violence in the country, only when it involves an immigrant of some kind… So he’s saying I want to be inclusive, but he singles them out.”
He added, “And then when he talks about immigrants taking jobs away from Americans, the fact is, I’ve been out in those states. They’re taking jobs that Americans don’t want to do anymore. Food processing plants, dairy farms in northern Wisconsin, construction jobs. it doesn’t mean we don’t have an immigrant problem, we do, but at the same time, we can do it and still be accurate about it.”
_____________________________________________________________________________-
I’m not sure what came over him, but considering the rest of the villagers response, that was as sober a reaction to the speech from a non lefty that I’ve seen.
As I’ve said many, many times, we see him , we know what he’s doing, he doesn’t send out dog whistles, he uses a fog horn, and we’ve been hearing him loud and clear for a long time. The majority of us POC are not the “good ones”, who he parades as proof he’s not a racist, we are inferior and should be kept in our place.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I have told this story before, but I have friends who live in Michigan who told me post-election that all of the white voters they knew voted for Trump because they hate Black Lives Matter. And they were totally comfortable telling this to my friend’s brother, who is a white guy who is married to a black woman.
Trump openly appealed to white supremacism, and they voted for him in droves. Even the white people who claim not to be white supremacists voted for him for that reason.
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
I swear it’s in part Stockholm syndrome. The beatings applied to the press, infantile, ham-handed and silly as they may be, could in large part be having the desired effect. Gorka was allowed back on my radio this morning, combatively declaring Trump’s statesmanship and reasserting the only way to fight terrorism is to say the magic phrase and kill them all daid. He’s a peach.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: I just can’t figure out what benign spin people put on this phrase so that journalists are almost completely incurious about what people who use it mean. I like Jonathan Chait (when he’s not writing on this subject, or education, or foreign policy– which he rarely does anymore), but I think he and others who hype the the excesses of college students give a lot of cover to flat out racists when they dumb down (dumb up?) the phrase.
Chris
@trollhattan:
Stockholm Syndrome is one word for it. I think the MSM are basically like school kids who aren’t cool kids, who are treated horribly by the cool kids, but who tag along with them, compliment them, laugh at their jokes, and join in on their bullying of other uncool kids, all in order to be cool by association.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: Anecdotally among the Trump voters I know, BLM looms large. Had it gotten underway prior to the 2012 election, I’m not sure President Obama would have been reelected. I’m not sure why it was such a flash point, but it was.
MattF
Yeah, well. Racism just isn’t a part of the media narrative about Trump. And that’s despite Trump’s long history of open racism in NYC. It’s only those with unwhite skins who keep talking about it, anyhow. Maybe that’s just a coincidence… you think?
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: Well, one, they ‘have to’ give the administration a microphone; he’s the president, after all! And I’m sympathetic to that view. But what we’re seeing with this speech is the kind of bootlicking they gave to W and Reagan, and as a result I think the biggest danger to the country is if the Trump admin finds itself able to act vaguely presidential. Like it or not, people listen to what the village idiots say.
zhena gogolia
@hovercraft:
Wow, I’m surprised at Brokaw. Good for him.
Stan
While watching the speech highlights after (because I could not stomach watching the whole thing), when he got to the immigrant-criminal-hating bit (“VOICE”) my wife and I turned to each other and both said ‘some immigrant is going to die in the next couple days because of that’. I mean he just declared open season on all people of color, like we haven’t had enough of that shit already.
JMG
@Betty Cracker: Because BLM is an assault on the idea that armed whites can and should shoot black people whenever they feel threatened, and these whites ALWAYS feel threatened by them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: I think that certainly explains W’s appeal to most of the press corps
@Betty Cracker: I agree it was a big factor among white Trumpers, and yet I still believe Obama himself would’ve won last November
Villago Delenda Est
@zhena gogolia: Someone obviously bonked him on the head so some sense would come out of him. or he’s been kidnapped and replaced by a thinking person.
Mike in DC
We can’t win over WWC voters who have racial grievances and a zero sum viewpoint. Nor should we bother trying. Identifying and targeting persuadable voters of all demographics is time better spent.
The Dangerman
@Betty Cracker:
Romney. Mormon. PBO would have been reelected.
Trump is a modern day Potemkin Village; there is so little there there. I’d call it a mile wide and an inch deep but it isn’t a mile wide. So sad. 3 years and 11 months to go unless the fucker gets impeached/jailed/etc.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
With all the Trumpers I know, it’s race and gender. It’s white males, of all ages, who hate and fear anyone who isn’t a white male. The level of vitriol isn’t even being hidden anymore. I can’t be around any of them and that’s quite a feat around here since they are everywhere.
ETA: I’m going to my 40th high school reunion this summer and I don’t know what I’m going to do about the Trumpers that I know will be there. Hopefully, they just steer clear of me. I can’t be nice to them for sure.
Percysowner
And today in making sure Brown, non-Christians don’t pollute our country Tibet Women’s Soccer Team Denied US Travel Visas
This ISN’T how MY country behaves.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What it means is that some white folks are taking a hit of white supremacy for the first time and finding out that they really really like it.
SatanicPanic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree, but then again Van Jones
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: Wasn’t just Trump voters. A fairly large percentage of Dems in my area were freaked about it as well. I agree that if it had happened prior to the 2012 elections Obama would have been a one-term president.
As to why, well…we’re just a nation of racists. Period. I don’t think you have to look any further than that.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Is the gushing response to this drab SOTU because of ignorance and stupidity, or perhaps an extraordinarily short collective attention span? (Probably both.)
Trump could poop on an infant’s head and a few hours later it would be forgotten as he exhorts Americans to be more respectful of infants.
Betty
What really has surprised me is what sore winners these people are. They can’t stop crying about those bad Democrats, Bill Clinton this Hillary that. Truly pathetic. They own the government, and they still aren’t happy because Democrats are criticizing their hero. Boo hoo.
Scratchie
Or he may not have:
Alexandra Erin (@alexandraerin) tweeted at 0:42 AM on Wed, Mar 01, 2017:
I’m looking at his actual words, and this is pretty artful, but… uh. He didn’t actually condemn them? Look at this. Look at what he does. https://t.co/9cZ03RSar1
(https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/836813962628984834?s=03)
JPL
@hovercraft: Thanks for the link.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Not for long I suspect, the one thing he’s god at is manipulation the media, he will see the glowing reviews he got last night, and he and Bannon will adjust accordingly. The message was the same, the lies were the same, but since he didn’t yell and shit himself, they gave him a thumbs up. Granted he still cannot take criticism, but if he’s like he was last night 70% of the time, he will be forgiven for falling off the “Presidential” wagon the rest of the time.
John
VOICE – Victims Of Incompetent Chief Executive
Alesis
@The Moar You Know:
Race is the central organizing factor of American social life. It is how we interpret the world. If we ignore that fact someone else will drive that interpretation quite likely somewhere the more egalitarian among us will not like. BLM was in fact broader popular particularly among younger American. There is an opening towards improving the quality of our public education on these issues so tht they may make better decisions that their ancestors.
James Powell
And that’s why his most ardent supporters love him and will never leave him.
Patricia Kayden
This is really all that needs to be said when it comes to Trump and what we can expect for the next 4 years. Once in a while, he’ll carefully read a speech from a teleprompter in a calm voice but that changes nothing about his overall demeanor, the bigotry he has condoned and encouraged or his dangerous, harmful policies.
Even White Canadians are getting caught up in his immigration nonsense.
Betty Cracker
@JMG: I’m old enough to remember protests and outbreaks of violence on a larger scale (Rodney King beating trial aftermath, etc.) that didn’t have the same effect, or at least, it didn’t seem to radicalize the white folks I know who are susceptible to that type of demagoguery to the same degree. Maybe it was a combination of BLM and having a black president who expressed sympathy for the cause, if not how it manifested itself everywhere?
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: That’s the paradox, isn’t it? If he were quiet about it, he never would have gotten anywhere. It was the volume that make people vote for him. Carnival barkers don’t get anyone in the tent using indoor voices.
PPCLI
Sort of. He didn’t even mention Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s name. The only thing he said about the shootings was that he uttered the words “shooting in Kansas city”. Then made some generic remarks about coming together to oppose evil. Professional speechwriter(s) wrote those words, and they were run by Bannon and Trump. The brevity and vagueness was by design.
Patricia Kayden
@John: Or Victims of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Either of these acronyms works.
Aleta
Sorry to report:
trollhattan
@Betty:
Sadly, their entire world view comprises an extended Festivus ritual and they’re damn sure not abandoning the pony that brought them here.
SegrResentment now, resentment tomorrow, resentment forever!different-church-lady
@Patricia Kayden:
It pays to remember that Hitler never actually said, “Hey, do a Holocaust.” All he has to do is set a tone where anyone trying to come through the border is an invader and the various agents there will do the rest.
PPCLI
@Patricia Kayden: People outside the US need to just stop coming to the US unless it is absolutely necessary. Stop taking flights that switch in the US. The only way to get Trump/GOP attention is if industries with lots of money to donate for arm-twisting (in this case the tourism and airline industries) start losing buckets of cash.
The Thin Black Duke
@hovercraft: Problem is, Donnie can pretend to act “presidential ” just as long as nothing goes wrong. So far, most of the Trump administration’s fuck-ups have been self-inflicted. What happens when a genuine crisis occurs and Donnie has to go off script?
goblue72
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: There are two kinds of voters in large parts of Michigan. Black voters in Detroit (and the smaller industrial cities) who vote Democrat – and white voters in the suburbs who fled cities in droves in the 60s, 70s and 80s and who vote right wing. Often Republican, sometimes for a conserva-Dem. (With the occasional enclave here and there of well educated whites who vote Democrat, mostly around Ann Arbor)
Below the level of Presidential & US Senate (and sometimes Gubernatorial), Michigan has been been trending Republican at the state government level for years, much like Wisconsin. The Michigan Supreme Court has long been a cesspool of Federalist Society types.
The Governor, Lt Governor, Sec of State and State AG of Michigan are all Republican. The Michigan State Senate is 27 GOP to 11 Dem. The Michigan State House is 63 GOP to 47 Dem.
That is your Upper MidWest trendline. Three Blue wall states that are going way the wrong direction (Wisconsin, Michigan, PA). Two swing states that are now even harder to swing back (Ohio, Iowa). And one Blue wall state that is extremely close to tipping the wrong way (Minnesota – both of houses of its state legislature are now GOP controlled, and Clinton barely won Minnesota).
That’s your ballgame right there. Democrats still haven’t figured out a strategy to solve for it. And “well, we can turn Georgia and Arizona blue” is not a strategy. And the idea we could tip Texas in a few election cycles is laughable on its face.
Its the same problem faced by the UK Labour Party – which has no idea how to culturally reconcile being the Party of London with being the Party of the Working Class.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Betty Cracker:
They’re afraid the Mau Mau are coming for them… back in the late 60’s when there were race riots in Rochester, NY amongst other places, my sister’s boyfriend came one night by all worked up and ready to fight… he had heard rumors about cars full of young black men careering around on country roads in the dark, shooting at people… and he and his buddies were coming to protect and defend…
Never mind that nothing even close to this ever happened… it COULD HAVE and they probably prevented it by standing firm, clutching their muskets and scatter guns, ready for ’em…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: We’re all just waiting for you to step up and show us the way, Dwight. Just waiting for you.
glory b
I just heard the tail end of an announcement that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the gerrymandering opponents in the Virginia case.
Clutch your pearls, but even UNCLE CLARENCE THOMAS said that it was unconstitutional racial gerrymandering!?!?!
Has anyone seen this?
Thru the Looking Glass...
@The Thin Black Duke:
Off script? Why, he’ll just flee to the Bat Cave and hit the Twitter Machine…
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
For a lot of economically anxious white voteres who voted for Obama, a big part of his appeal was that he never mentioned race unless forced to. Think about it, apart from the Philadelphia race speech he stayed away from race. To these people that made him the anti Jesse Jackson, the anti Al Sharpton, he gave hem an opportunity to prove they were not racists. A big reason for his drop off in 2012 with white voters was the GOP’s focusing their Obamacare opposition on him giving free stuff to black people, the focus on the Obamaphone was deliberate, to stoke racial resentment, ( even though they are technically Reagan phones), for those voters, they felt betrayed, he ran as a uniter and yet here he was giving stuff to them, castigating the police on their behalf, and saying Trayvon could have been his son. See they didn’t turn on him, he turned on them, all that talk about it being a time for a change in 2012, was really a call to a return to a white president who wouldn’t give the blacks preferential treatment. BLM to these people are a threat to law and order, they are demanding special treatment, they buy the FOP line hook line and sinker, the tapes only show part of the story, since they are afraid of black people, police killing them out of fear is totally acceptable. BLM needs to understand that shit happens, and get over it, or at the very least keep their mouths shut.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@goblue72: I think the problem is not solvable in the short term. I’ll be dead before we get past Trumpism. It could be that we are just a failed state, America gets no exemption from history.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@The Moar You Know:
A lot, LOT of white people didn’t understand from the beginning that Black Lives Matter (as a phrase) did not suggest “and other lives don’t.”. And Toronto BLM leader Yusra Khogali’s foolish words have been used to ramp up their fear.
Humans have a remarkable capacity for fear and anger. A lot of white people (I’m one) can’t fathom the fact of privilege and institutional racism. And of course bigotry can be found in all groups.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agree, he would have gotten higher turnout among millennials and black voters, which would have been enough in in the three states, and I think he would’ve won NC.
glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I never understood why Wilmer simultaneously thought that we need reach out to the WWC, but an African American Muslim was the one who could do it.
Mind you, I have no problem with Ellison, but how could Wilmer think he was the one?
Then again, he backs Islamophobe, war hawk Tulsi Gabbard.
Alesis
@hovercraft:
As you note most of the key turning points happened before BLM was even a thing. I’d take this back to Skip Gate but Trayvon Martin was pre BLM. The fact is the racial resentment of many white Americans are on a hair trigger. It may not be realistic to assume anyone can avoid setting them off.
sigaba
@Percysowner: Is this a new Trumpy thing or is this just a One China/Tibet doesn’t exist thing?
trollhattan
BTW, recall the moron-in-chief name-checking two California officers slain by one of his illegals? The trial is on-going and this was his lawyers last week, prior to yesterday’s festivities.
Can’t wait for their next statement, which may be a demand to relocate to the moon. .
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: A fair number of white friends/relatives (mostly older relatives) were quite anti-BLM during the campaign…I’m sure it affected at least some of their views/votes. Which is sad because typically in a 5 minute conversation, I could get most of them to understand why it’s “BLACK” and not “ALL”…to see why we don’t water every house in the development when one is on fire.
(A few suggested “BLACK LIVES ENDANGERED” next time around…ok, points for trying, there…)
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Remember, if racist white flighters are voting Republican because they hate black and brown people, all we have to do is promise that we’ll regulate Wall Street and they’ll totally come flocking back to us!
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I didn’t watch the speech or almost any commentary about it. I did see a good Guardian piece that detailed Trump’s lies.
Looking for and finding a pivot is essential for those who want to normalize Trump’s presidency, to see him as ultimately another political leader who is going to be as stable as his predecessors. No one wants to believe that Trump could be as bad as he appears. Wrong!
So ,
I agree that you need to focus on this and also all of Trump’s bad qualities, his corruption and conflicts of interest, and his dangerous incompetence, which ultimately puts us all in harm’s way.
goblue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: OK cupcake.
James Powell
@Betty Cracker:
There was a feeling among nearly all of the RWers of my acquaintance that once Obama was elected, the whole race thing was done, all debts were paid, and every black person was now expected to be quiet and have no grievances.
hovercraft
@The Thin Black Duke:
Then all bets are off, at that point he’ll have to shit or get off the toilet. I believe the press will still do everything in their power to make him look good, if/when he fucks it up they will have to report that.
Tripod
@Mnemosyne:
Add some vauge promises about industrial age jobs that no longer exist, and I’m in!
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Jeffro: Dave Chapelle: “You deserve a break today” was already taken.
Spanky
@The Thin Black Duke:
I think we can visualize that all too well. And yet, not if but when that happens I’m confident we’ll all still be appalled.
goblue72
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: If you prefer to cry in your tea, that’s your call. I’d rather be serious about actually figuring this out.
Alesis
@James Powell:
Which, spoilers, is how such people have always felt since 1954 at the latest.
Tripod
Trump’s speech ratings and approval down from Obama.
Sad!
Johnnybuck
@Betty Cracker: Most white people don’t think they have privilege. BLM held a mirror up to white people, and they didn’t like what they saw. Rather than accepting the concept of institutionalized systemic racism as a fact, they chose to ignore it, and indeed be offended at the very assertion. It’s the silent majority all over again. The kicker is most of them don’t think they’re racist at all.
Betty Cracker
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I’m not so pessimistic. A lot of shit had to come together to push Trump over the top — and he still lost the popular vote by millions. The Republicans are the plutocrat party, so they aren’t going to go along with measures that would actually help working people, such as a huge increase in the minimum wage and shoring up social programs instead of slashing them. Trump isn’t going to be able to wave a magic wand and bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to the US. All he’s really got is social issues, and I don’t think that’ll be enough to hold a coalition together.
ArchTeryx
@The Thin Black Duke: Then lots and LOTS of people are going to die. If Trump gets his way, most of those people will be black or brown, ala Katrina. Maybe that will, as Katrina did, remove the scales from some of the media’s eyes – even Fox news was reporting Katrina accurately for a bit! – but I’m not betting on it this time around.
Just like 9/11. Waving the bloody shirt will be the new normal and the press will follow it like the mythical bull follows the red cape.
The Moar You Know
@goblue72: Good call. It is indeed that exact situation. I might add that Labour will probably not win another national election in my lifetime, because of this exact problem. They cannot reconcile what they have become with the people that have historically voted for them.
I am very much afraid Dems are in the same boat, and have a far harder hill to climb because of our two-party system. At least Labour retains quite a bit of power, even if they’re not driving the bus. Not the situation here at all, sadly.
dedc79
@Aleta: More:
Brachiator
@geg6:
So, what excuse are the Trumper white women giving for their racism?
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Betty Cracker: I agree, I’m just all over the map with this shit right now.
goblue72
@Brachiator: On the one hand, yes, we have to be clear and consistent that racism/sexism/xenophobia has no place in American society in the 21st century.
However, the more we make this about Trump’s personality and character, the more we just keep repeating the same stupid mistakes the Clinton campaign made. Focusing on the issues is going to be important. Means ignoring the tweeting and blathering and drilling down to the actual concrete policies being proposed. That VOICE nonsense is an example. The policy being proposed is wrong, BECAUSE the policy is racist, not because Trump is an asshole.
Alesis
@The Moar You Know:
It funny you mentions the bus because I think we can pinpoint the precise issue that gave birth to the “limousine liberal” perception. Busing. That was the moment when the WWC resented the educated and well to do liberal do gooders making rules for them and theirs. I happen to think the left folded on that issue too soon but it is instructive. The was long before NAFTA and free trade. It was inisting on racial equlity in the north that started the trouble.
hovercraft
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I think this is a cop out. It’s the same bullshit people peddle when they bitch about the lack of a white history month, our entire culture revolves around all things white, these people have had this explained to them, the GOP has for decades tried to wipe out any references in our history curriculum about slavery, the evils of the confederacy, the bs about America being the most perfect country evah, that has never done anything wrong is all of a part. When you hold a fundraiser or throw a party for a cause, when you march for breast cancer, you do not have to issue a disclaimer saying that other diseases or other causes matter, so why the hell should black people have to tack on that other lives matter, that’s a given, the issues they are rallying around is black lives. Fuck these people.
gvg
Obama also had a built up credit and gratitude that Clinton didn’t. It eroded over 4 and 8 years but never went away. Fact is he was steady after boy blunder and the bloated capital risk takers. He also wasn’t too fond of wars. he got slightly into one but was clearly reluctant and didn’t throw away a bunch of American soldiers lives. So he had credit with some people that was not transferable to any one else. So we didn’t go around saying that very loudly but it was there.
Trump is going to get a bunch of soldiers killed for his stupidity. Some cops too I think. Stupid and belligerent and thinks he is smart.
Percysowner
@sigaba: From the article
And
It could be a one China thing, but it seems more like a Trump thing, especially since they said the players had “no good reason to come to the country”, because playing in an important tournament isn’t a good reason. I suppose this could be for decent reasons, but the way this Administration is handling everything, I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt.
Mnemosyne
@Alesis:
I think Trayvon Martin was the precursor to BLM, though, because it was so divided along racial lines. Black people (and, frankly, non-idiot white people) saw it as an innocent teenager being murdered; white people saw it as a white man being demonized for defending himself against a black thug who attacked him. That whole narrative played out in the BLM arguments again and again and again.
Alesis
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed. I think Martin was the first crack in the calm of black Americans about whether Obama alone “had this” and Brown was what broke it completely.
kindness
Good analysis. So I would think that progressives would take a page from the Tea Party (morons that they are) and start commenting on every article written where the bar is so lowered. Start actually calling out bullshit on the pages where it is spread. Can’t on CNN. So we have our work cut out for us.
FlipYrWhig
@glory b:
Because it’s all a ball of confusion. For example, they want to reconnect with the white working class. They also want to stop fracking and no longer build pipelines, both of which the white working class and labor unions support, and they fault Hillary Clinton for her rhetorical involvement in mass incarceration, which the white working class also supports. But they expect that it will all work out because in theory everyone who isn’t a millionaire or billionaire is a nonracist populist who hates war and banks and loves Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison for what they stand for, like that thing, you know the one, the good one. The rest is just details.
hovercraft
@James Powell:
A dept can only be paid in full if you acknowledge it, and actually pay it, and don’t keep running up the tab. Not only did they not pay the beginning balance, but they kept running the tab up. Calling him a liar in the well of the house, nitpicking his expenses and time off as never seen before, treating him as if he was not legitimate, questioning his credentials and birth place, and that’s just to Obama himself. What happened in the country to black people out there was even worse, but because of the ubiquity of camera phones we were all able to see what black people have always know, you can get killed for no reason at all just because you are black and that scares people. This dept is not paid, and at the rate we’re going it won’t be for a long time.
sloan
From the post-speech coverage the big themes seem to be:
1. Donald put on his big boy pants and stuck to the script for an hour without throwing a tantrum or getting distracted.
2. He acknowledged a widow. He still refuses to accept responsibility for the mission he ordered that killed her husband in the first place, but everyone clapped, so it’s a big win for Donald. So awesome!
3. This speech was The Making Of A President! So PRESIDENTIAL. Suck on that, snowflakes!
So while Obama was mocked for using a teleprompter to deliver lengthy speeches, Donald is praised for merely being literate and able to read from one just like the grown-ups do.
This is what George W. Bush referred to as “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.
schrodingers_cat
Highlighting T’s racist behavior is not going to lose him support among the TV bobbleheads and his base, that’s the tack HRC took and it was not enough to defeat him. When his policies start and incompetence starts hurting them and their loved ones directly that’s when he will lose support.
glory b
@goblue72: I’m sorry, but I have to disagree about your theory when it comes to PA.
The vote for Trump was an anomaly. In the last three elections, the only votes that went R were for Trump and Toomey (vs. Katie McGinty for senate). EVERY OTHER state wide race went to a Dem, including one that gave us a lock on the state Supreme Court, which, under PA law, has the last word on redistricting. Both times Toomey won, it was by single digits.
In fact. the Dems over performed in those races. However, PA is probably the most gerrymandered state in the country. Typically, thousands more voters here vote Dem, but you couldn’t tell from our state and federal reps.
Rachel Maddow said that in most of the rust belt states, newly registered white voters entered the electorate in larger than expected numbers and almost all of them voted for Trump. Many didn’t even vote down ballot.
So, it’s still a question about whether or not they will bother to show up if he’s not running. We got the same effect with Obama, unfortunately.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t work hard, just that it may well not be as dire as you’re making out.
Chyron HR
Who the fuck is “Wilmer”?
goblue72
@The Moar You Know: It IS an extremely sticky wicket. And part of it is Labour’s own fault – and the Democrats own fault. Part of “what they have become” is a party of privilege. Not the kind of “inherited wealth” privilege of the Tories or the “inherited wealth + corporate executives” privilege of the GOP or something.
But of the upper-middle class “meritocratic elite” – which in reality is not very meritocratic in terms of true equity of opportunity – the bright & shiny professional classes in tech, finance, media, etc. We have our own “Party of London” problem, except its a “Party of NYC / DC / San Francisco / Boston / etc” problem.
Davis X. Machina
I’ve been harping on this since November: “He hates the same people I hate. Hand me the goddam ballot.” is the only election post-mortem you need.
The rest, as Rabbi Hillel said, is commentary.
hovercraft
@Chyron HR:
A certain independent senator from Vermont, if you use his name, trolls will descend on us.
Weaselone
@The Moar You Know:
So people don’t work in London? Or is this just an example of where we pretend all the people in London are stock brokers and university professors? To win in a city, you have to appeal to working class people, because most people in cities are in fact working class. If Labour can represent those working class people, what’s the source of the disconnect with the working class in the rest of the country? Also, I’m an American so I don’t know any geography, but I wasn’t aware that Scotland was a London neighborhood, or of that fact that their were no working people there.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@hovercraft:
Spot on. We don’t need a White Studies Major or White History Month because contributions of white people aren’t institutionally ignored and diminished.
The whole black Hermione thing was ridiculous. Racists are crazy fearful of anything that doesn’t prioritize their own wants and values.
Brachiator
@goblue72:
I wrote that Trump’s corruption, conflicts of interest, incompetence, and other issues need to be emphasized as well as the issues that Betty Cracker noted.
I don’t see any point in trying to disparage Clinton’s campaign, which was “stupid” enough to win more popular votes than Trump. But clearly, she must have been doing something right to have got as far as she did.
I don’t know what the VOICE nonsense is.
Again, this only says that Trump has to be attacked from multiple positions.
goblue72
@glory b: Yes, I over-simplified a bit. I grew up in PA (eastern part). I acknowledge lumping in a “Upper Midwest” was a bit of an oversimplification, since PA is really a straddle between the Northeast / Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest – politically, socially, culturally, etc. All the big statewide office (Gov. Lt Gov, AG, etc) are Democrat. BUT, the General Assembly AND Senate are both GOP controlled.
I do think its possible Toomey could have been defeated, but McGinty was WAY not the right candidate for the job. At the same time, if Bob Casey Jr ever retires, I don’t have the utmost confidence that Dems could hold his seat.
So yeah, the trendlines in PA aren’t as bad as say Wisconsin or Michigan (at not nearly as bas as say Ohio), but they aren’t great either. And when you look at the Rust Belt region as whole, its kind of big fat “GULP!” for Dems.
goblue72
@Weaselone: Labour doesn’t exist in Scotland anymore.
Mike in DC
A significant portion of the WWC/White Midwest electorate demands “respect”. Unfortunately this means that you disrespect the same groups of people who they disrespect.
Like I said, zero sum. Better to target the persuadables and motivate the complacent, the disappointed and the jaded.
hovercraft
@Weaselone:
This is one of my pet peeves, just because we live and or work in the cities does not mean we’re rich, when I commuted to NYC, the people on my bus were from all walks of life, there were construction workers, doctors, lawyers, brokers and everything in between, the reason we are able to support the rest of the state or in the case of NY, three states is because cities have big robust diverse economies, yes we have rich people, but those rich people need stuff to do, and buy, and eat. These assholes who hate cities should cut themselves off from us, create a bunch of Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s, and see how long they last without us.
schrodingers_cat
Also the doom and gloom analysis reads too much into one election result. T won in November in 3 states (that had voted for O and other Dem nominees by a hair.) That does not mean that every white person has become a full on Nazi.
Our challenges are many but behaving like all is lost before the fight has barely begun and T got some tepid reviews from TV pundits for a speech that relatively few people watched is idiocy.
goblue72
@Chyron HR: Its what the sophomoric peanut gallery refers to Bernie Sanders I think.
The Moar You Know
@goblue72: Yep. As far as your average non-London-residing British person is concerned, London is on another continent, and not one they like very much. Exact parallel to our coasts. I damn sure look at Red America and feel like they might as well be (and I would surely prefer them to be) in a different universe entirely, preferably one made entirely of fire.
goblue72
@schrodingers_cat: Certainly, but this is more than about Trump, as much as Democrats love to focus on the White House. Its about a larger field, that includes House districts and state legislatures. A playing field where the losses precede Trump by a lot. A playing field where Democrats in the Rust Belt have been hemorrhaging support for multiple election cycles. And where “double down, shout louder” is not an answer.
But far too many want to stick their fingers in their ears and shriek that being bloody minded about winning back voters automatically means kowtowing to racism.
hovercraft
Oh look some good news if it holds.
Trump’s Proposal To Gut The State Department Runs Into GOP Buzzsaw
The question is will these assholes take a stand or just cave as they’ve been doing. I’m not optimistic, but at least we are getting them on record, maybe democrats can use that next year.
Weaselone
@goblue72:
Crap. I forgot the dominant party is the Scottish National Party.
Chris
@Alesis:
Before Obama, they thought desegregation paid the debt. Before desegregation, they thought abolition paid the debt. Before abolition, they thought bringing the poor savages out of Africa to a Christian civilization that would teach them how to live properly paid the debt. (In fact, many of them still believe that).
Betty Cracker
@Weaselone: Great point about large populations of working class folks in most cities. The Democrats actually do win working class voters handily — if you count nonwhites and expand the definition of “working class” beyond white people who are paid well for work that doesn’t require extensive education. That’s another sticking point for Trumpism: the Republican Party is virulently anti-union, and the only reason the white folks who enjoy/once enjoyed good pay for jobs with low educational requirements ever attained that status was by unionizing.
rikyrah
Extended Senate Delays Leave a Rural State Voiceless
by Peregrine Frissell
February 28, 2017 6:30 PM
Obstructionism is the norm in Congress, and one minor ripple of continued deadlock is disproportionately being felt in Montana. As Senate Democrats do everything in their power to delay confirmation of Trump’s Cabinet picks, a fraught political debate is surfacing in the Big Sky State: Should sitting members of Congress awaiting approval for Cabinet roles still cast their votes?
Congressman Ryan Zinke, Montana’s lone representative and Trump’s pick for interior secretary, missed 87 percent of his votes between his re-election in November and mid-February, according to a report by Montana Public Radio. (Trump chose him for the position in early December.) Last year, Zinke missed just 2.7 percent of his votes, just barely above the median for members of the House.
An absence like Zinke’s may garner less vitriol in some states, but rural states with miniscule populations — Montana has just over a million residents — face to lose their entire voice in the House of Representatives as long, drawn-out political fights delay key confirmation hearings. Zinke hasn’t indicated why he has shirked his congressional duties, though Reps. Mike Pompeo, Tom Price, and Mick Mulvaney also were nominated for Trump’s Cabinet and have similarly abstained from voting. Zinke’s office did not return a request for comment from the Monthly.
goblue72
@The Moar You Know: In a better world, I agree – we could send drones to firebomb them. Alas, it is not to be in this world. So we are stuck with the bloody mess of figuring out an actual winning strategy and winning electoral coalition.
And not getting our panties in a twist over the hard work of untangling the mess the party has gotten itself in. Winning white votes doesn’t mean running as “The Other Racist Party”. But it does mean having to win white votes. Because they are still the single largest voter bloc, and will be for quite some time. Obama knew that. And he worked hard at it. And won in part because of it.
glory b
@goblue72: But PA has always trended Dem, with a few exceptions. Most of the statewide Republicans we’ve elected have been on the moderate/liberal side, Heinz, Scranton, etc. Toomey and Trump are the exceptions. And Katie McGinty was just like Clinton, she was always ahead until the last week. She dropped a few points along with Hillary (a bit of misogyny maybe?).
Like I said, in the same election that gave us Trump, we won every other statewide race. Unfortunately, 2010 gave us the wave republican election, and we got the gerrymander of a few lifetimes.
I hope we can reverse that in 2020, because we have 5 of 7 Supreme court seats, and one ancient republican justice.
rikyrah
Trump Won’t Be Filling Hundreds of Agency Jobs
by Nancy LeTourneau
February 28, 2017 2:24 PM
A lot of publications have been reporting that, while Trump complains about the Democrats delaying confirmation of his cabinet picks, there are hundreds of positions where the administration hasn’t even offered a nominee. In this interview, the president admitted that he’s not planning to do so.
That is an important admission as it reflects on both Trump and his so-called “shadow president,” Steve Bannon. As we’ve already noted, in his speech at CPAC, Bannon suggested that one of his main goals was the deconstruction of the administrative state. Leaving important policy positions open is step one in that process. Of course, that also leads to the kind of incompetence and chaos that we’ve already witnessed from this White House. But for Bannon, that is more likely a feature than a bug.
When it comes to the president himself, this move reflects on what others have described as his management style (or lack of one). Drawing from those who either worked for Trump or wrote about his business dealings, Michael Kruse says:
Trump biographer Tim O’Brien summed it all up by saying, ““He’s not a great manager. He’s a performance artist pretending to be a great manager.”
goblue72
@Weaselone: To a certain degree, you could say the SNP wiped out Labour in Scotland by being more Labour than Labour. Though that would only be true in part, given the issue of devolution and how that issue IS an issue with respect to Scotland specifically in a way that doesn’t extend really past Scotland.
rikyrah
Morale at State Department at Rock Bottom
by Martin Longman
March 1, 2017 2:33 PM
Here’s how things look from inside the State Department:
Do you want another perspective?
Those quotes come from an excellent piece Julia Ioffe just had published at The Atlantic.
rikyrah
There’s no reason for style to triumph over substance
03/01/17 02:43 PM
By Steve Benen
NBC News’ Chuck Todd recently gave Politico an interesting tidbit about Donald Trump. During the campaign, after his “Meet the Press” appearances, the Republican would request that the control room replay the interview for him – on mute.
“Then there’s the amount of time he spends after the interview is over, with the sound off,” Todd said of Trump. “He wants to see what it all looked like.”
The insight tells us something important about the president’s priorities: as far as Trump is concerned, what he says is less important than how he looked while saying it. Substance is fine, as far as it goes, but style is the real priority.
As coverage of the president’s address to Congress continues, it’s hard not to wonder just how many pundits feel the exact same way.
The Washington Post’s Robert Costa noted this morning that White House officials were “frankly surprised” this morning at pundits’ praise for Trump’s speech. The reporter’s sources said the president’s agenda “has not changed,” and there’s “no big shift in policy coming.”
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
I was thinking about this very thing, reading about Van Jones’ craven … toadying (had to -work- to come up with a different word than bootlicking *grin*). I remember learning in civics and american history, that a free press was integral to the functioning of a democracy. Obviously they meant a healthy free press (which ours is not). And then I thought about how I’ve spent money on press organs this past year, but none of them have been the mainstream media. And given the way the MSM has been so …. feckless, I have no desire to underwrite them.
I was thinking that I’d like to underwrite Rachel Maddow’s show. But FFS, I’d underwrite the wrecking ball that took out Meat & The Sock Puppet and Tweety’s studios, I sure would. Sure would. So no way I’m giving money to NBC. No way.
It’s bad enough for them already, this Internet thing, combined with their executives’ rapine of their news businesses. But this fecklessness is teaching an entire generation of potential consumers to regard them with disdain and active contempt.
And for sure, to not pay them a red cent.
Alesis
@goblue72:
But under him the Democratic party saw substantial losses down ballot. I don’t think we should undersell Obama’s singular talents however the “shellacking” of 2010 preceded BLM and other factors we often like to ascribe the decline of the Dem party in the Midwest to. Obama lost a record percentage of white voters in 2012 (for a winning candidate)
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
And a justice system that couldn’t be bothered to follow-up the way it’s supposed to when that happens.
That was the aspect of the whole thing that media and critics ignored: it’s not just the fact that a kid was murdered, but that the guy who shot him was released with basically no investigation, and that the only reason the system changed its mind and brought him to trial was that so many people turned it into a nationwide campaign. Over and over and over, in the months after Trayyvon, people on Facebook would be posting about cases where a white person was killed by a black person and whining “why don’t people care about this murder” – and over and over and over I’d click on the link and find that the black killer in question had, in fact, either been arrested already and awaiting trial, or in a few rare cases that there was a warrant out for that. In other words, proving BLM’s point exactly – the system doesn’t treat members of both groups equally.
goblue72
@glory b: If you want, put PA in same category as Minnesota then. But that ain’t nothing to trumpet over. In Congress, PA has 18 districts. 13 are GOP and only 5 Dem.
I’m not saying its hopeless. But it ain’t good.
Brachiator
@goblue72:
Not an issue. Labour values have been incorporated into the Scottish National Party. The SNP is not constrained by the narrow concerns of Labour, which has lousy leaders and no sense of direction.
geg6
@Brachiator:
Oh, please. That’s easy. It’s race and internalized misogyny. Women can be misogynists, too. It’s an equal opportunity type of bigotry.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Trump’s campaign rhetoric was overtly racist, sexist and xenophobic. And the bigots, homophobes, abusers and incompetents Trump has installed in positions of great power are busily enacting a racist, sexist, xenophobic agenda. ”
Or is just a flash back to the 80’s? I mean almost to a man the Trump Admin, the GOP and the MSM are stupid and arrogant old white men.
schrodingers_cat
T’s administration is going to collapse under the weight of its contradictions and its going to happen faster than it did with W. The collateral damage is going to be immense.
They want to relieve the 1920s with restrictive immigration policies and trade wars. That too was a Republican administration with R majority Congress and Senate. The Republicans weren’t wonderful in the past, they have always been pro-oligarchy and anti-labor and xenophobic.
Lillian Barron
@hovercraft: Tom Brokaw knows he will be judged by a tougher test than you and I can administer. And the judgement is likely closer for him than the Younguns! Getting into heaven is a thing.
Millard Filmore
@Johnnybuck:
Maybe its a half empty or half full thing. If White Privilege does not exist, then it must be Black Man’s Burden.
glory b
@Betty Cracker: Yep, it’s such a mystery why working class people of color are so amenable to the Dems message, but the WWC, presumably with the same economic anxieties, aren’t.
But I will temper that with a poll/chart I saw somewhere a while back that showed that the lower white people’s incomes are, the more likely they are to vote Dem (just unlikely to vote at all).
Yarrow
@PPCLI:
It’s starting. Trips to the US down 6.8 percent since the inauguration. Searches for flights to the US down 17%.
I’ve said before that we need to look for Q1 earnings reports from travel and tourism companies. They’ll be down. Projections will be down for summer, which should be a peak time for them. A lot of people work in the travel and tourism industry. A downturn there will affect a lot of people’s expendable income. It will then affect the market.
It hasn’t fully hit yet but it’s happening. The Trump economy is not the sky how Dow right now. It’s a recession.
jl
@rikyrah: Thanks. Interesting insights into the walking disaster waiting to happen that is Trump. In the long run it will be the divergence between Trump/Bannon rhetoric and reality, and divergence between grandiose and impossible Trump promises and the substantive lack of results that will make the difference in 2018 and 2020.
There is no wave of criminal immigrants, there is no drug cartel takeover of the US, there is no immigrant violent crime wave. The GOP has no popular and sustainable PPACA care replacement. We will not put all of Iraq’s oil into a big thermos and cart to the US to make us all rich. Trump’s secret plan to wipe out ISIS in 30 days was a lie or a delusion, probably both. The trillion dollar infrastructure initiative will be cut way down by the GOP Congress, and what is left will be a corporate tax give-away.
All that is more important than people feeling relieved that Trump can give a speech for an hour and not go full bore batshit insane.
Mary G
ETA: Whoops, format got lost
A populist racist in power
Whose attitude’s typically dour
Won praise from the press
Across the US
By toning it down for an hour
@Limericking
goblue72
@Alesis: True enough. Obama for all his successes, was really good at electing Obama. Not so much for getting anyone else elected. But the foundational problems proceeded him and go back to 1994. Dems really haven’t figured out how to recover from Gingrich. They lucked into a majority in 2006 as a consequence of one of the worst Presidents ever combined with two wars that had become hugely unpopular, a Do-Nothing Congress, a blundered attack on Social Security, and a housing market that was just beginning to topple – and lucked into expanding it when that topple became a full blown Great Recession by 2008.
And since they lucked into it in the 1st place, they just as easily lucked out of it to return to the ex ante status quo.
glory b
@goblue72: And like I said, gerrymandered to hell. Dems typically get even tens of thousands more votes, but no representation.
Pennsyltuckey isn’t voting Dem, and they aren’t going to. Undoing the gerrymander, which gives them outsize representation and influence, relative to their smaller numbers is what will help.
Yarrow
@Tripod:
Oh, good! I was hoping ratings would be down. That’s really the only thing that matters to Trump in the end.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
Among other things, this election pretty much finished off any use of the term “working class” as having any actual meaning. Literally all you have to do to claim the mantle is fulfill a few tribal markers that have little or nothing to do with class – mostly, being heartlandese and white. See also Trump, “working class billionnaire.” Meanwhile, the fact that those of us earning less than $50,000 broke for Hillary even when we’re white is… shut up. Don’t bother the narrative.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker
Oh it did in California. I have realtives from LA who literally ran to the hills and to this day are hidding from the Black Apocoylpse (presumably like Revulations, but with a better sound tract) and got Pete Wilson elected governor.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
It does here. I’ve been threatened with physical harm, more than once. Just for speaking up against the Trumpers in public.
You obviously don’t live in an area where they are the majority and feeling more than a little empowered by it.
schrodingers_cat
National Anthem needs a change.
Home of the cowardly and the land of the easily frightened
* Can be applied across the political spectrum.
Millard Filmore
@Chyron HR:
This question is asked many times. Maybe there should be a mini FAQ at the top of these comment sections. “Wilmer” is the dude that garnered the most Democratic delegates against Hillary Clinton.
geg6
@goblue72:
Because here it does. The Ragey Circus Peanut has let that genie out of the bottle and you aren’t getting it back in any time soon. I hate to tell Wilmerbros like you, but their economic anxiety is light years down the list of their concerns and at the top, going as high as the highest Himalayas, is all the hate and fear of women and people of color they have. It’s all they talk about, how now they can get revenge on them all and show them who’s boss.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Mary G
A comic and effective summary!
jl
And I just checked FRED dollar exchange rate. No sign at all that much higher dollar exchange rate (that suddenly appeared the day Trump was elected) shows any sign of reversing, particularly among ‘other important trading partners’, which account for largest part of loss of US jobs since 2000. Trump can talk all he wants about improving US competitiveness, I think the reality of his policies will have something different to say.
Trump won’t produce results because he and his people have no clue what they are doing. It’s incompetence and ignorance all the way down.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
W crashed the economy, but he lasted two full terms, even though his popularity plummeted.
Predicting Trump’s decline is probably just as tough as predicting his rise. And nearly everybody was wrong about his rise.
You may be right, but a collapse of his administration might also cause other damage to the country as well. And of course, leave us with Mike Pence as president.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: I have been the only woman/immigrant among white men working with them in labs , taking classes with them, teaching them. You have no idea what I have had to face. Don’t presume. Thanks.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker:
IMHO what has happened, and it’s all over everything Trump says and does, is that “black people running wild” merged with “too many Mexicans around” and “Arab Muslims and other brown folks started coming out of the woodwork to kill white people.”
Chyron HR
@Millard Filmore:
Of course he did.
Chet Murthy
@Betty Cracker: I read someplace that the ubiquity of cellphone video cameras has changed the game when it comes to police brutality. Basically, unless it’s behind closed doors, it can’t be kept secret — it WILL be videotaped, and those tapes WILL be broadcast. [CCTV/bodycam can be kept secret, doctored, etc, as we’ve found.] I believe part of the stronger backlash is simply due to the massive number of incidents coming to light.
I suspect that there’s a kind of motivated reasoning that, in the face of -more- contrary evidence, clings even MORE tightly (and eventually, violently) to the counterfactual thesis.
gene108
@Betty Cracker: @Mnemosyne:
The more conservative white people I know put a disproportionate amount of deference to appeasing authority in public.
They think kids should always address adults as “yes, sir” or “yes, ma’am”, for boys have short hair, with shirt-tails tucked in, etc and if some skate-rat gets hassled by the cops, he had it coming because he was not dressed in a neat and trim manner and did not automatically become super polite to the adult officer.
That attitude is magnified, when projected onto blacks. If blacks behaved properly and respectfully to police officers, for example, they would not have problems.
The system of authority is just, therefore only the criminals and bad hombres run afoul of it.
glory b
@geg6: Yep. I live in Pittsburgh but lately I’ve had to travel north of here (Butler, Mercer & Lawrence counties) for work.
As an African American female, I travel with my head down, following the speed limit and look blandly at guys who come to hearings with Trump t shirts on.
Trust me goblue, these folks aren’t voting for “Obama’s Party” anytime soon.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: I am not going to imagine the worst possible scenario and behave like that’s already happened. You are free to do that if you want.
FlipYrWhig
@goblue72: As you well know, Republicans have been inveighing against pointy-headed bureaucrats and spoiled fruity college kids, on behalf of Real Men, since when Spiro Agnew and Ronald Reagan were governors. The white working class is the Republican base. There is not some secret sauce that gets them to flip to the Democratic Party. They like it there. They like what they say and do. If they want populist whatever, they should demand it through the Republican Party. They don’t. They vote for bankers and businesspeople and weird dead-eyed churchies. Because they hate liberals, and they hate the people liberals like, and this is _what animates them politically_.
geg6
@glory b:
This. People outside of the commonwealth have no idea how bad the last gerrymander was.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Still ignoring the work of the Brennan Center, are we?
Yes, it’s such a mystery why Wisconsin went to Trump. No need to look into it, let’s just blame the Democrats and ignore the massive voter suppression that Wisconsin Republicans said publicly back in April was specifically designed to flip the state to the Republican candidate. Nothing to see here, keep moving, comrade.
Barbara
@jl: It really is. The most obvious point is, you can deport whoever you want to and refuse to let others in, but employers want people with certain skills and those skills will not be magically imparted to those who don’t currently have them and seem incapable of and/or uninterested in acquiring them (caveating very real abuses in the H-1B visa program). I read that some of Trump’s team are studying Germany to see how it manages to maintain a high level of manufacturing employment. I actually think this is probably a good thing to do — but I doubt they are going to like the answer. Because it relies on making both public and private investment in vocational training. It’s just so much easier to blame immigrants and outsourcing than to look inward and admit that we have not helped bring people along to be where they need to be. This pining for what are effectively highly paid low skill jobs can’t be requited. And for all that, there really still is a lot of manufacturing in the U.S. It’s just not as common, well paid or as secure as it once was.
Millard Filmore
@Brachiator:
Trump’s departure will have side effects. Bannon will be gone, and the legislative agenda will be changed. The agenda could be faster, or slower, or simply different. Maybe Pence will replace some of the more odious cabinet positions.
FlipYrWhig
@glory b: You mean you DON’T think the problem is that Democrats haven’t done enough to disavow the contemptible conservatism of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the obvious key to harvesting the votes of the people who have been happily voting for Scott Walker and Rick Scott? o_O
Chet Murthy
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Ehh …. I think they “didn’t WANT to understand”. If it were merely that they didn’t understand, then the murders of Tamir, Sandra, and Philando (amongst others) should have convinced them. B/c there was no -possible- narrative that ended with their deaths, that didn’t include murder. And yet … and yet ….
ETA: I mention those three names specifically b/c unlike some of the other murders, it’s impossible to argue that these weren’t murder.
geg6
schrodingers_cat:
I certainly can’t say that I have any idea what you have to put up with on a daily basis. And I don’t mean to minimize it in any way. All I am saying is that I, a lily white woman who has known most of these people my whole life, am being physically threatened if I dare to open my mouth. I’m talking about my experience, one that has shocked and frightened me enough that I no longer socialize. And that’s because I have know these people all my life and know exactly what they are capable of.
Millard Filmore
@Chyron HR:
I’m not sure how to take that comment. Hillary first, Wilmer second, and everyone else was noise.
Dave
@The Moar You Know: Right and it’s slowly agonizingly slowly losing just a bit of power every 5-10 years. I think people are correct when they say this was a Black Swan election but it was also a backlash election and if you want to be depressed well that backlash gave us what we currently have. If you want the positive side for the first time it was barely enough to get it over the electoral goal line. Since we are finally really seeing white dominance lose some of it’s steam I fully expect the next 10-20 years to be ugly as that shakes out but I’m cautiously optimistic it shakes out for the better.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
One of those odd race stories.
So I am at the break truck getting lunch, this big, young black guy pulls up, I think “great, here we go”. The guy comes up to me and say, in this alarmed voice “I didn’t cut in front of you?”. In other words he was as scared of me as I was scared of him. ROFL
Anyway,I think BLM has that shock effect on a lot of white people for the same reason I was stunned by the fear of the for mentioned young buck, seeking tasty tax payer subsided steak at the Break Truck – it means they have to set aside the white myth that ALL blacks are some kind of group of super human hedonists who take amazing amount of drugs, party 24/7, have endless sex and instead see them as just another group of people just getting by, preferably without some big white guy with a beard punching them in the face because they are between him and a burrito.
Chris
@Chet Murthy:
I believe this is basically what the backlash against the media and academia was after the sixties and seventies – whether it was cops siccing dogs on civil rights marchers, war crimes committed in Vietnam, or the misbehavior of those in power from the Tonkin Gulf to Watergate to COINTELPRO, all the ugly things that had been under the carpet and that lots of people knew about but one didn’t talk about in public were aired for all to see.
Naturally, the reaction was to blame the people reporting or analyzing it (i.e. media and academia) rather than the people actually doing it.
Same again here.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Sans 9/11 W may well have echoed dad as a one-term president, but that’s like saying sans pork, bacon would not be nearly so delicious.
Post-2006 W’s power was held well in check and we’d best get on that right now for ’18. Trump can obviously fumble his merry way through two years and stay right where he is, no lightning bolt is happening in the meantime.
Chris
@gene108:
Yep. I’ve had this explained to me practically verbatim by fascist relatives. “I believe our police is over-militarized, but the real problem is a culture that’s lost all respect for authority.”
Miss Bianca
@geg6: @goblue72: The problem, as I see it, is this –
For a Republican “Contract on America”, pretty much all the GOP has to do is mouth a few empty slogans about jobs and then spend most of their time appealing to the racist/sexist/otherist id of the average white heart-of-the-heartland voter. Doesn’t matter what they actually deliver, or how hard they stick it to the average white voter as long as this voter is convinced that Those People are being stuck worse.
The Democratic Party can’t do that. It is, at this point, morally as well as politically incumbent on the Dems to be the Big Tent party – welcoming to women’s interests, to racial, ethnic and religious minorities – Those People, in other words.
Problem is, as we’ve seen, there are a lot of white voters who lose their shit when they’re asked to associate themselves and their interests with Those People and Their interests. They don’t have enough empathy or imagination to game out the notion that a living wage, Social Security, access to health care, a just and human immigration and refugee policy, ought to apply for ALL people, regardless of color, race, creed, sex, or sexuality.
It’s like those folks in that heart-of-the-heartland mining town that got featured in the FNYT last week – the ones that got so upset over the fact that good old Carlos was rounded up by ICE. “But he’s one of the GOOD Mexicans – that’s not fair!!” Well, fair or not, that’s what you voted for, folks – terror applied to black and brown people, because for the average white voter, race always, always, seems to trump class and economic issues. And if, as certain folks keep asserting, we actually NEED a significant portion of those white voters to win elections, well…WilmerBros…what’s YOUR plan? You keep saying “The Democrats need a plan” and then condemning them for not having one. What’s YOUR plan?
geg6
@glory b:
If you’re ever in the Beaver County area, let me know and maybe we can have our own little BJ meetup.
Chet Murthy
@Jeffro: In my more naive moments, I thought they should have gone with “BLMT” (Black Lives Matter Too) but I don’t think it would have changed anything. There would have been a line of reasoning that ended in the same place.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
If the lying media would only report what I actually said instead of leaving the cameras running the whole time. SAD!
glory b
@geg6: I know, right?
There was no sea change in the voters here, a few more republicans, sure, but they haven’t been in the majority.
And I did read in Washington Monthly, I think. that we had the most significant gerrymander of 2010.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Trayvon Martin was stalked..
Hunted..
Murdered…
for the crime of Walking While Black.
Peale
@Barbara: Yep. What they want to do is reimpose the imagined 1960s economic order. But the economy has really evolved away from that. I know people like to decry the low ends of the services industry and the low pay, but we really have a much more diverse economy than we did in 1949. The idea that we’re going to pull people out of services in massive numbers and that success is going to be indicated by the number of coal burning factory smokestacks doesn’t really account for what happens when those services jobs aren’t filled.
trollhattan
Perez is charging into the new job with the proper enthusiasm. I never paid any attention to DNC chair unless they were doing something dumb, so it’s nice to have somebody in the job I actually want to follow. More please, this will get under Trump’s skin sooner or later, and I’m betting sooner.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: Helluva comeback, Dwight.
geg6
@Miss Bianca:
Oh, I agree. How are we supposed to attract these trogolodytes without throwing women, LGBTQs and people of color under the bus? They don’t give a damn about economics, really. Just how can economics be used to keep white men on top and everyone else scrabbling around for whatever scraps are left. If any.
geg6
@glory b:
Yes, I read that, too.
I have a friend who is an attorney for the PA Dem caucus. When it was happening, he was just crazed with anger.
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Understood. I have had mostly good experiences with actual working class guys, they treated me with respect because I treated them with respect. The broken equipment in my labs would be replaced quickly etc.
chopper
@FlipYrWhig:
when it comes to understanding the working class, wilmer is basically barton fink.
Chet Murthy
@Chyron HR: And I think the reason people here don’t use is name, is to avoid drawing the attention of (uh) his somewhat unhinged supporters, who might hijack any thread, etc, etc, etc. I can’t blame them (the people here who don’t use the name).
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: Perfect.
Also apropos: Barton Fink! Barton Fink!
Patricia Kayden
@PPCLI: My Canadian parents want to visit me this Summer but my husband suggested that they go elsewhere (Jamaica or England) to avoid any immigration hiccups. I can meet up with them overseas. Perhaps losing $$$ when tourists refuse to subject themselves to border Nazis will send a clear message to Trump and his sycophants.
jl
@Barbara:
” Trump’s team are studying Germany to see how it manages to maintain a high level of manufacturing employment. ”
Also requires strong labor unions with a formal seat at the corporate decision-making table, and much stronger checks against limited liability enterprises putting short run profits over everything else. I really doubt that the Trumpsters will like what they hear, assuming they have ears to hear, and on the off chance they do listen, zero chance GOP Congress would go along.
Mike in DC
Our ceiling for national share of the white vote is around 44-45%. Obama got that in 2008, running as a near perfect model minority, during a massive economic recession, with an opponent who picked a complete idiot to be his running mate.
We should treat that as the target, not 50+%. The things we’d have to do to get to a majority of the white vote would betray the rest of our base. Just keeping it 100.
Brachiator
@Millard Filmore:
I think that Pence would be as bad as Trump, just in a different way.
Chet Murthy
@goblue72:
Nopes, sorry
Yeah, it ain’t as much as you want. Gosh, American Jobs Act.
Look: I agree that Dems are also somewhat beholden to richies (under the guise of “meritocracy”). But I was in my 20s in the late 80s and early 90s, and I remember the deep soul-searching the Dems went thru, as they resigned themselves to moving right, in order to get back in power. [And anyone who thinks that being in power isn’t the -first- job of a pol, is a fool. No, it isn’t the only job, but it’s the first, b/c if you can’t do that, you can’t do ANYTHING.] But EVERY TIME the Dems try to give poor Americans (of all colors) nice things, the Rs kneecap ’em. Really, it shouldn’t be difficult to see this.
trollhattan
@jl:
Yup, strong unions and strong technische Schulen feeding them generations of young skilled workers. Remember when they tried and failed to unionize the Chattanooga VW plant? Management wanted a union and they still turned it down.
Don’t be surprised to see a national “right-to-work” bill.
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara:
I think that’s what they say when they’re caught looking at old pictures of Heidi Klum.
trollhattan
@FlipYrWhig:
My guess is further back, say, the 1930s.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Barbara:
Also, Germany manufactures high end items for export (think industrial automation, maritime controls, etc.). Their consumer goods come from China just like here…
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Chet Murthy:
You say those were indefensible murders… to rational, compassionate people, yes. But I recall troglodytes saying that Tamir was “a really big 12-year old!” The idea that there may be actual twelve year olds who are gang members and carry guns is evidence enough to those who have zero sympathy for a dead child who’d been playing with a toy gun. They’re damaged, broken people. They can’t conceive that a police officer was wrong.
Nothing is indefensible to some people. Trump could dragon kick a baby, and some would insist the baby had it coming.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
The message will be “winning”.
Unless tourists go to National Parks, they are spending their tourist dollars in big cities, like Los Angeles or New York City.
They aren’t going to bumfuck Kentucky or Eerie, PA.
Seems to be the attitude of right-wingers is urban* America can go pound sand, if they are feeling generous.
* As well as cities are doing now, they were in deep shit in the 1970’s and 1980’s and into the early 1990’s. Small(er) town America was doing better, and was not exactly willing to bail out the big cities back then.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
Not necessarily. I was surprised to find out that Ft. Myers, Florida, is so popular with German tourists that there’s a daily nonstop between them and Munich. I can’t get a nonstop there from Los Angeles. There are a lot of places that depend heavily on tourism and are outside of major urban areas.
ETA: Of course, as with so many of Trump’s supporters, the people in Florida who voted for him didn’t think his policies would affect them, only other people.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
There is serious investment in education from PreSchool through High School.
PUBLIC EDUCATION INVESTMENT
Davis X. Machina
@Certified Mutant Enemy: And what doesn’t come from China comes from their own private Mexico — the former east bloc countries, esp. Poland and Romania. Check out where the low end of the various lines of ‘German’ cars are actually made.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: In other words, prime fodder for the Leopards Eating Faces Party.
cmorenc
@Alesis:
Most white people could at least understand that George Zimmerman was a self-appointed vigilante jerk who recklessly provoked a needless confrontation with an unarmed black teenager because he falsely presumed all blacks in a white neighborhood at night must be thugs. It was the Michael Brown incident that unfortunately set everything back, because fair or not, Michael Brown *did* fit the stereotype of a young black thug to white sensibilities – shortly before the police stop that ended in the shooting of Brown, Brown had unquestionably committed brazen shoplifting from a nearby convenience store and then assaulted the store clerk who tried to stop him. And while Brown was unarmed, the circumstances of the encounter that led to his getting shot were murky enough that it was far easier for many whites to identify with the police officer than the thug in that situation, and to imagine (rightly or wrongly) that Brown had aggressively physically threatened the officer at close range. That the BLM movement seemed to take up Brown’s case as one of their poster-incidents definitely hurt their image and case they were trying to make with much of the broader white public, and helped poison the well when other far more sympathetic-to-the-victim cases came along (NYPD choking a man to death for selling untaxed cigarettes on the street, lady arrested by campus cop for failing to signal a lane turn then dies while in custody, etc, unarmed man with warrants outstanding for relatively minor offenses shot in back by Charleston police officer).
Not blaming the many black victims of police violence in other cases here, but it’s fair to criticize the BLM movement for choosing by far the least sympathetic black victim / least unsympathetic white police officer as their first poster-cause after Trayvon Martin. Many whites would have been racist assholes anyway, but many who aren’t so much were put off by Ferguson – Ferguson wasn’t the wisest choice of battles for the BLM to put front-and-center.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: I would’ve guessed that FLA was a close second as the preferred destination of European tourists, after NYC: Beaches, Disney, the Harry Potter park… especially Northern European sunbirds
Alesis
@cmorenc:
The racial divide was already wide open before Brown
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/07/22/204595068/polls-show-wide-racial-gap-on-trayvon-martin-case
There really wasn’t this “wait and see” approach from white Americans. They picked a side.
Barbara
@Mnemosyne: Florida is the obvious loser, also Nevada. When I drove around the country to see national parks, among the other destinations I went to were Arches, Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. I heard a lot of people speaking languages other than English, most notably French. I assume that the Grand Canyon is another place that draws visitors from far and wide. Of course many people will still go, but a drop off in 10% can be the difference between being profitable and not in a given year.
Barbara
@FlipYrWhig: But Heidi Klum isn’t a “10” any more!
bupalos
Here’s the danger with “focussing on this (Trump’s race cards) relentlessly.”
People like the racism. They like it.
More people like it a whole lot than hate it a whole lot, and more people are kinda-ok with it than are not kinda-ok with it. And that’s because a pretty decent majority of white people are either ignorant or selfish enough to land somewhere on the negative end of the spectrum.
So it’s a minefield. It takes just the right handling, the message always has to be “you are using this issue for personal political aggrandizement and power at the expense of everyone else.” Every time it boils down in any way to “Trump unfairly favors white people,” a Bannon gets it’s wings. White people on the whole have no problem being unfairly favored. Like…duh. And any time anyone opens their mouth about race without specifically thinking about the direction that needs to be steered, it’s a political loss.
Tenar Arha
Look I’ve spent the day headdesking into bloody stumps (there’s a gif for that) but these two gallows humor jokes pretty much capture how I feel about major media right now:
bluefoot
@hovercraft: This is it exactly. For many white people I know (not just the open Trump voters), they saw Obama showing empathy for Trayvon Martin’s family as an actual betrayal – they used that word ‘ “He betrayed us” or “He betrayed his office” or “He betrayed America.” Basically, he was no longer a “good Negro.” F*cked up, but that’s the view. And not cracking down on protests with the National Guard a la Kent State only deepened the feeling of betrayal.
smintheus
The worst authoritarians typically do give reasonably normal speeches from time to time, as part of their public manipulation. The idea is to suggest that this is the real person, and all the braying and threats and ugliness is either put on for show, or an anomaly.
The latter is right out of the wife-abuser’s bag of tricks – he’s not mean at all except when he’s having a bad day.
I’m amazed the pundits still have not noticed, after months of talking about Trump’s pivots and supposedly presidential moments, that during the ’30s Hitler was known to give sane, reasonable, ‘normal’ speeches on occasion too…when he wasn’t identifying enemies of the people, denouncing all manner of foreign vermin, spinning conspiracy theories, playing the victim, and bullying. Hitler gave sane speeches for the same reason Trump gave one – to paint himself as someone you really could work with.
J R in WV
@Chyron HR:
Wilmer is a nym used to ID the previous primary contestant running against Hillary for the Dem nomination. If we use his real name, one of the more obnoxious “progressive” trolls has an alert set up and will show to ruin the threads for the day.
But if we talk about Wilmer, the troll won’t have a clue. He can’t install an infinite number of google alerts, after all. Someone has probably answered this… but here it is again.
J R in WV
@geg6:
I recommend that you get trained in self defense, specifically hand guns, and acquire a license to carry a weapon in your state. You will need to keep your weapon concealed unless you believe you are being attacked. But you won’t have to fear some bigot physically attacking you constantly.
Take your time about getting trained up, acquiring an appropriate pistol, your trainer can help you with that a good one can watch you shoot with a number of types of pistols and see which you will be best with.
I was a pacifist for many years, and I am still a peaceful person, but I won’t bow down to a violent SOB and let them take me down. That’s a favorite sport of fascists and bullies everywhere forever, and I’m not going to play that game with them. If they want to stomp me, they can try, but I will have my say first.
Don’t allow the local bullies take your safety and freedom away!