The day after Valentine’s Day is a good one to reference the classic Liz Phair song, “Fuck and Run”, which is a song about fear as much as it is about a one night stand: “I can feel it in my bones, I’m going to spend my whole life alone.”
There’s a lot of fear out there. That’s my only explanation for the Bloomberg boom that we’re experiencing — those fearful of a Trump victory think Mike is the one who can win. He’s ahead by one point in this Florida poll [pdf] (by a pollster rated as C+ by 538, but still), and clearly surging in the state average. He’s also gaining in California as Biden drops like a stone, but a lot of Californians have already voted in their mail-in primary, so it might not matter as much as it does in other Super Tuesday states.
Speaking of the candidate who sparks some of the fear, it looks like the theory that Bernie’s mean supporters will hurt him is going to get a trial by fire in Nevada. The Culinary Workers’ Union, which is not endorsing a candidate, but has been critical of M4A, went public exposing some of the terrible online attacks, phone calls and emails launched by Sanders supporters (one of whom turned out to be a Trump supporter). Bernie tried to tamp it down during a Snooze Hour interview, but he sure didn’t tamp very hard:
[…] Sanders added: “Anybody making personal attacks against anybody else in my name is not part of our movement. We don’t want them. And I’m not so sure, to be honest with you, that they are necessarily part of our movement.”
Sanders is still ahead by a century in the Nevada polling average, but that caucus is still a week away, and his supporters still might be getting him down.
There’s another debate next Wednesday in Vegas, and Bloomberg might qualify if he has a few more good poll results. I hope he does — he needs to be seen by voters in something other than a TV ad. If he and the rest of the field hopes to beat Sanders, they’re going to need to hit Bernie on something, because so far he hasn’t experienced anything like Buttigieg, who got hit on the wine caves by Warren just before Christmas, and then got run over by the Klobucar at the New Hampshire debate.
That’s all I have on the race, but I’m sure you all will have some observations. I hope everyone’s Valentine’s Day was letters and sodas.
Chyron HR
Yeah, sure. They’re “mean”. That’s the issue people have with them.
Another Scott
I mentioned this yesterday, but it’s worth revisiting (or visiting if you haven’t seen it yet). Robyn Pennacchia at Wonkette:
Yup.
Read the whole thing.
We’ve got a lot of big jobs to do going forward. We know how to do them, we don’t have to invent new physics, we just need to get started and spend what it takes to get it done.
Cheers,
Scott.
Starfish
@Chyron HR: Fine. They are mean AND stupid.
Stevie
@Chyron HR: I have a friend who is a Sanders supporter. She posted something that complimented president Obama and another Sanders supporter threatened to block her on social media for it. I tried to say that is some middle school behavior and he attacked me. Twice this week people have posted asking others about their objections to Sanders and Sanders supporters invaded the comment thread and started basically screaming and throwing insults. Sanders most ardent supporters are a big problem for me. I have lots of friends who are Sanders supporters and are fine but it keeps running through my head that anyone who attracts that many terrible people can’t be that great. I, of course, intend to vote for him if he’s the nominee but I would hate for his worst supporters to feel empowered.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I notice Himself has learned to drop the “Democratic” from his rants about “the Establishment”, but I’m sure Tlaib or Sarandon or Emo Moore will get carried away on stage before the NV caucus
Starfish
@Stevie: But what are the Sanders supporters who are not the belligerent ones saying? To me, they are making excuses for the mean ones and not considering the company that they are keeping.
There was this young 20-something clown who knows nothing about nothing being a pro-Sanders jerk as usual, and someone else who is older and supports Sanders was defending him as being a nice young man. I argued that nice young men do not behave like this.
Jinchi
Bloomberg’s boom is entirely based on his airwave saturation campaign. I’ve seen ads for him on my kid’s YouTube programs. Here’s hoping it’s just the typical spike candidates get when they’re the shiny new thing and it will fade as quickly as the Gingrich and Santorum surges of 2012.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Stevie:
Here or some other site? If here, which thread? Did they violate the commenting rules?
germy
Starfish
@Jinchi: A lot of politically active Democrats in my state were getting texted by the Bloomberg campaign the other day. They said they were not going to the Bloomberg event, but I hear that Bloomberg has some well-catered events.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Repost from below:
Speaking of the CU’s “Cadillac” health insurance, I do wonder how many members actually receive that healthcare? I belong to a union, the UFCW and my local has 20-30k members. My contract honestly sucks, imo, healthcare wise.
In my experience, part-timers and new hires get absolutely fucked over for benefits in favor of full time and older members. They get full coverage while part-timers like me get dental and vision with a lot of limitations.
So, really, how many of CU’s 60,000 members actually enjoy that Cadillac health insurance?
Baud
@Starfish:
Bloomberg 2020: Bon appetit.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Jinchi:
I hope your kids weren’t scarred for life. (Joking, kinda.)
Your theory makes some sense, especially in a state like Florida with an older electorate that probably watches more commercial TV. Still, I think part of his appeal is his ability to bankroll a campaign, and his ability to get in Trump’s head, independent of his media saturation. People who (rightly) fear Trump’s fundraising and command of free media could be swayed by that.
Hunter Gathers
SPF Warren and the Klobucar (totally stealing that, BTW) need to start cutting nuts or we’re going to end up with either an incompetent socialist or a fascist as the nominee.
Starfish
@Baud: Catering AND a fancy phone and computer. BRB going to work on the Bloomberg campaign.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s like when he stopped talking about millionayes.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Talib was the one a few weeks ago that booed Hillary Clinton at a Sanders event, wasn’t it? Her, Omar and others of the Squad have disappointed me quite a bit over the last year
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I think he heard him on TV the other day criticizing billionayes. But yeah, Sanders is himself a multi-millionaire. Still hasn’t released his taxes, hasn’t he?
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): CU endorsed HRC in ’08 but BHO won* Nevada, so their influence on their membership, and the ability to get them to a caucus, is a legit question.
* He got one more delegate while Clinton got a larger percentage of the vote of caucus goers.
germy
@Stevie:
Try saying something mildly critical of Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton and watch what happens.
Once, another commenter made a silly joke about Pelosi. I followed up with a joke (something silly and not at all critical), and was told by another commenter “FUCK YOU”
People are riled up. Because of who is in the white house.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I thought he did release his taxes, but now he’s hiding his complete medical records.
It’s not like the media is going to hound him on it since he’s not Hillary Clinton.
Jinchi
They were completely oblivous. I noticed from the other room, which is probably Mike’s hope. My kids know not to say the ‘T’ word in our house, but Bloomberg is just background noise.
Starfish
@germy: People *are* touchy, but being touchy about people dismissing qualified women completely out of hand or turning them into villains is a completely legitimate reaction to all the nonsense going on lately. We have TWO people accused of sexual assault on the Supreme Court. “Let’s crap on powerful women because it is funny” is just not funny as some people seem to think it is right now.
germy
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2019/12/31/bernie-sanders-releases-medical-records-showing-good-health/2781926001/
germy
@Starfish: No, I was not unaware. I wanted Pelosi to stay right where she is. The men trying to replace her were mediocre.
Baud
@germy: More recent story.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Update:
Going based on their eligibility on their website, it does seem like a pretty good deal imo without seeing the contract that each bargaining unit has, much better than what I have
zhena gogolia
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
It was my impression that this commenter was talking about social media, not BJ. I haven’t seen this kind of thing on BJ, but twitter is horrific. The Russian bots swarm anyone who says anything about Sanders. Bloomberg’s tweets get flooded by hostile replies — so do Buttigieg’s.
germy
@Baud: I want Chuck Todd’s medical records.
Baud
@germy: The way things are going, Chuck Todd is likely to throw his hat into the ring, so you might get that chance.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
He released SOME of his taxes.
zhena gogolia
Meanwhile, in non-primary news (there is such a thing):
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
That is a good question. We’ll have to wait and see I guess. I can’t imagine the attacks on the union’s leadership by apparent unhinged Sanders supporters won’t help win hearts and minds
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Pretty much. When I start getting wound up, I redirect it to gathering more oppo notes on D.J. Trump and Republicans. That includes mapping fault lines in the Republican party voter base.
I encourage asking anyone who is attacking Democrats why they are not attacking Republicans.
Martin
Reposting from the previous thread:
Long rambling thoughts. I’m an inner monologue guy, so I need to dump them to output now and then.
I’ve been giving Bloomberg a defense of late. I don’t like him as a candidate, but I might need him as a candidate. He’s said bad things, had bad policies, it’s perfectly reasonable if he’s a bridge too far for folks. That’s fine. I need Trump out – like for my own mental health I need him out. Bloomberg won’t cause me to lose sleep, even if I don’t like him.
There’s another aspect of him that I like, that’s hard for me to explain. We have this really pervasive, very foundational white protestant myth of rugged individualism. Much of it stems from the Homestead act, where anyone could go pound 4 stakes in the ground, instantly be a property owner, grow some corn, and set one’s future. It’s a great mythology if you overlook the racism and genocide that made it possible, the cataclysmic environmental damage that resulted and was only attenuated due to massive government intervention, and the century of subsidies so it didn’t collapse on itself. But aside from that, it’s a great story of bootstraps and faith and Laura Ingalls Wilder. My first relatives that came to the US from Ireland, landed in South Carolina, marched west and did this very thing just like Tom Cruise in Far and Away (exactly like that – it’s stunning how much I look like him).
This isn’t just a Republican myth – it’s a Democratic one as well – which I hear in Mayor Pete’s heartland values, Amy’s Minnesota nice, Joe’s malarky, and even Warren’s Oklahoma origin story. They aren’t necessarily malicious, but they’re good safe hearty aw shucks masks that we wear.
But my direct relatives didn’t follow their predecessors. They tried to, but arrived in Savannah just in time for the Union to blockade the port, and were directed to New York, and settled in Brooklyn like a zillion other Irish at the time. And we stayed there. Our path wasn’t growing corn and milking pigs or whatever you do with pigs, but, well, initially fighting for the Union since that’s something the Irish could be paid to do, but later selling stuff off of a cart, then opening a store, then an import business in NYC. Some went to school and became doctors. Some were sand hogs, police, a lot became firemen. My family still more or less runs the FDNY union (they’re all racist assholes, btw).
Most people’s stories look a lot more like my immediate family than the romanticized Little House on the Prairie version. It’s living in cities and suburbs, not working the farm or the somewhat more modernized version of working in the factory. But a lot of US policy assumes we’re kind of still on farms and shit. You don’t need a structured safety net when you literally know everyone you might encounter on a daily basis. You can substitute the church or the general store or whatever for that. Bill doesn’t show up one day – you go check on him, help him out. I lived in a place like that in college. The town had 1400 people when school was in session. The town had a restaurant, a barber shop, and a general store. Like a proper one – wood floors and horse hitches out front that were used daily (by the Amish). There was a 7-11/gas station and a train station and a liquor store – oh and a community bank, and that’s about it. The college cafeteria had a side store that was a bakery/deli, that the whole town used. You at least recognized everyone if not know everyone. Need a cop – walk over to the 7/11. 80% of the time the one on duty will be there. Need some money, go into the bank. One semester the check from my dad to cover tuition was late – the bank manager just gave me a loan. No id needed. If the check comes in the next 2 weeks, just pay him back – no interest. It’s nice – not much need for government when shit works like that – it can mostly just sit back and wait for some shit to hit some fan. Gun control isn’t really needed because you know everyone. If someone has a gun, you know why they have a gun, because you know them.
But I also lived in NYC. And it’s not like that. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad place, but heartland sensibility doesn’t scale well. You still know people, but they’re just blips in a sea of faces that you mentally blur out, like a red highlighted boss in a sea of videogame NPCs. These places need more order, more structure, to function. If you need a loan, you need id. If you need a cop, well, that can get complicated… You can’t aw shucks a place like NYC or LA or Chicago. You need a lot of rules. You need government to be active, not passive.
Now, I went pretty much straight from NYC to that little college town. I also went pretty much from being an atheist in a city that isn’t majority anything to a protestant founded college out in the middle of farmland. It was a bit of a culture shock. I touched a horse (that didn’t have a cop riding on it), and saw a cow. That was new. But I also came to appreciate how intertwined white protestantism was with that lifestyle and mythology. I honestly don’t believe you can be white and protestant and not nostalgic for that. I’ve certainly never seen it.
One of the things that I appreciated with Obama, which I never really saw with any previous political leader – R or D – is that he didn’t view cities as problems. They had problems, but they weren’t problems. He didn’t buy into that mythology that if we all had a horse and a pickup the world would be a better place. And you see that still with how he’s approaching his library, his official portrait, and so on. He’s embraced being urban and rejecting nostalgia as a default view.
Part of what I believe needs to be broken in this country is that white protestant mythology, because that mythos required racism and genocide to exist – so of course it’s found a certain kind of peace with those concepts. It is rooted in rugged individualism which creates a natural opposition to structured government, safety nets, and so on and replaces them with a hootenanny, hotdish, and a shotgun as needed. The one place where I have a bit of unease about Warren is how effortlessly she slips into and reinforces that mythology, albeit in a more progressive manner. Pete and Amy and Joe do it even more reflexively. Bernie and Bloomberg (NYC) don’t, though. Nor did Booker (Newark), or Harris (Oakland), or Yang (San Jose). But they aren’t with us any more. Harris was my #1.
I really do long for a break from that, as Obama provided. I would very much enjoy having a city raised, Jewish (or Catholic, atheist, Hindu, Muslim, black Baptist – just please not another fucking white protestant) president who doesn’t have that mythology, and doesn’t reflexively pander to it, and who can look at professional class workers, entrepreneurs, and the like as something other than a scourge on the UAW or the noble protestant profession of digging rocks out of a hole in the ground. Because the truth of the matter is that farming and factory work isn’t how the US functions any more. They’re important, but they aren’t the only thing worth protecting.
Maybe that gets the better of me in my thoughts on president.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
The dude is like 78-79 who had an MI recently. He absolutely should release his full medical records if he hasn’t already. After that heart attack, he shouldn’t be running
germy
Trump budget zeroes out funding for Stars and Stripes, the military’s newspaper
Starfish
@zhena gogolia: That’s what I took it as. The swarming on Twitter is awful, and the Sanders supporters on Facebook seem to be not smart.
I wanted to write the Sanders Guide for How to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory:
1) Make sure to campaign against really popular Democrats so you can gain support.
2) When someone asks you to explain a policy position, just yell at them for being corporate shills.
3) Ask people to provide evidence for anything they say because you are entitled.
Elizabelle
@Martin: Great essay, Martin. Thanks.
Will check back later. Out to canvass for Elizabeth Warren. We have a sunny and chilly day in RVA.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Happy canvassing.
PST
@Hunter Gathers:
That kind of comment gets a lot more difficult to defend if you replace the metaphor of “cutting nuts” with some concrete proposal for what it is they should do gather more supporters. Is that supposed to mean be tougher? What’s tougher? Shout louder? Insult opposing candidates more viciously? Be more like Trump? I like Warren and Klobuchar a great deal, but I like them least when they (more often Klobuchar) start nut cutting. If all it took to win was “start cutting nuts” someone would be doing it. I might as well say that Warren and Klobuchar need to start saturating the airwaves coast to coast with hundreds of millions of dollars of effective anti-Trump ads. That would be great, but they can’t. So what is it, in practical terms, that one or the other needs to do that she isn’t doing to emerge a winner and let us avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of an incompetent socialist or a fascist?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I tend to think the answer to “What happened to Lindsey Graham?” is exactly what he says: He’s desperate for relevance– not even power, just being close to it, and the attention that comes with it. This guy implies he has the dirt … I’ll believe it when I see it.
I see Graham and Collins as cut from the same cloth. Mediocrities who stumbled into prestigious offices and will do anything to hold on to them. That’s probably true of a dozen other Senators and a hundred congresscritteres, but those two seem to provoke more “what happened…?” stuff then others.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
From the link:
It’s 15.5 million dollars. The defense budget is 700 billion. What “higher-priority” could there be that needs such a comparatively small amount of money?
Ah. S&S had the temerity to criticize Dear Leader. That’s why
Adam L Silverman
@download my app in the app store mistermix: There were several interactions here. A lot of them were directed at me explaining how 1) Sanders is a negative advertising/oppo research dump the equivalent of mass drivers from orbit waiting to happen and 2) explaining the problem with calling for a revolution in the US. No one was over the line, though I think they are incorrect in their understanding of him, his campaign, and what is actually going on here.
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
But does this argue for Bloomberg really?
I think your other argument is stronger. We are in the fight of our lives and he has the ammunition we need (money).
My addendum: He isn’t a Russian asset.
Bill Arnold
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
IMO, if Sanders is nominated, the Republican line of attack will be (nutshell) “old CommunistSocialist with a serious heart condition” (with other oppo piled on as required), and his VP pick will be important. And he’ll only win against those attacks if the Democrats and their allies go aggressively grey area with anti-Republican influence ops.
(sci-fi ref)
germy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
yes, that’s my suspicion.
zhena gogolia
I really, really pray that somebody takes a decisive lead over Sanders. I don’t care who it is, really.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:
Reposting from the previous thread:
Okay, great. That really leaves you Sanders, Bloomberg, and Trump. Me, I would rather have a non-authoritarian, actual Democrat. As a result, I will choose Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What you’re saying is that you agree with Steve Schmidt’s take on Lindsey Graham…
snoey
@Bill Arnold: Don’t forget Rove 101 – attack the enemies perceived strength.
They dig up old immigration, gun control votes etc., throw in Burlington College and Jane’s kids nepotistic jobs and Bernie is just another corrupt flipflopping political hack.
Bill Arnold
@snoey:
Yes. And what will Democrats and their allies do?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya:
yes, that’s a devastating line
gene108
Fear of a Trump win is the only thing that is really on voters’ minds.
Period.
Not hope in having a woman President. Not hope in having another African American President or Latino President.
Just the fear on who can beat Trump.
MattF
The thing to bear in mind about Bloomberg is that he entered the race at the moment Warren was appearing most attractive. He is, at best, a status quo candidate, in particular status quo for financial instiutions. That’s his particular concern and his particular constituency.
Better than Trump? Yeah, obviously. Better than Warren? Nope, obviously.
MattF
@Anya: About Lindsey. I think he’s simply a submissive individual. Trump is now the dominant person in his life, so he does what comes naturally.
Anya
Where is Occupy Wall Street, BLM in the Trump era? Why do these big rallies and protests only happened when Obama was president? It’s not like things got better now. If we as a country are lucky and we defeat Trump you’ll see them start.
Another Scott
Bloomberg is not our friend. Support Democrats for President and down the ticket.
Cheers,
Scott.
kindness
Bloomberg has too many negatives. Stop & Frisk, his whole speech about how redlining should be legal, etc. He may make ads that portray him as Obama’s right hand but the man was a Republican 10 years ago. A moderate Republican, sure but he isn’t one of us. He doesn’t want what we want. That will overcome what ever budget he has for advertising.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I hadn’t seen anything over the line either but I don’t read every comment in every thread.
Omnes Omnibus
Better than any of the Democrats? No. Bloomberg has two things going for him, money and the willingness to spend it. I am not okay with letting someone step in and simply buy the nomination. *
AliceBlue
@zhena gogolia: Paraphrasing a Rachel Bitecofer tweet, it’s not that his ads are saturating the country, it’s what the ads are saying: We’re in an existential crisis and I can destroy Trump.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: +1
It’s early. There’s no need to think that only the plutocrat can win so we have to throw actual Democrats overboard.
Saying “I support Warren” but here’s 20,000 words on why Bloomberg is our savior isn’t helpful.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Stevie:
I just wonder if maybe his most ardent supporters are just a little pissed that they finally get some old white dude who wants what they want, and not to become just another wealthy old fart and yet has a very poor record of really making any advancements at all. And/or that he’s really not a member of the party that they think is all middle of the roaders and therefore is purer than any of the real democratic candidates. IOW if we were a parliamentary system, they’d be the far left party of 8% of the population.
Jinchi
There have been a lot of huge protest rallies during the Trump administration, starting nationwide the day after his inauguration. The organizational names change because the target changes, but alot of the people in the BLM and OWS rallies are still marching.
Also BLM and OWS weren’t specifically targeting Obama. Pretty much all of them are now targeting Trump.
Baud
@Another Scott:
I fear Democratic voters may have moved past that sort of partisanship.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@AliceBlue: and repeating myself, as is my wont: Bloomberg gets that Obama is actually popular with Dems and a whole lot of independents. A lot of our candidates (and/or their advisers) spend, or spent, waaaaay too much time reading twitter or watching tapes of Bernie rallies, or I don’t know what.
Adam L Silverman
@download my app in the app store mistermix: I had someone tell me I shouldn’t do certain things the other night. I replied that that person really shouldn’t tell me what I can or cannot do. That was pretty much the testiest exchange I’ve had.
I’m not even telling anyone who they should or shouldn’t support, nor am I telling anyone who I am supporting. I just keep telling everyone that the 2020 presidential election this isn’t a national election, it is an election in the Electoral College; as such it will be contested in between 5 and 15 states; that the presidential election is a referendum on the President, not about a thousand flowers blooming variations of how to further reform health insurance and the health care system, etc; what works in heavily Democratic districts such as AOCs doesn’t scale nationally; there has never been any form of revolution in the US, other than some of the slave revolts, that weren’t elite led and sought to coopt the masses; that revolutions, if you can actually start one, rarely stay non-violent; that the vast majority of Americans have never and will never engage in any form of revolutionary political activity unless they are led to do so by elites and notables who need them to mobilize on the elites and notables behalf; and young people don’t vote, so if you’re counting on them in a general election, you’re making a major strategic error.
Eljai
So Alex Witt on MSNBC is now reporting on a Drudge report that Bloomberg is considering Hillary for vice president. Zerlina Maxwell just told Alex that she’s “highly skeptical”. No shit! Even republican Rick Tyler says it’s bullshit. Hillary says she has no interest. What is wrong with Alex that she feels a need to promote a Drudge story in 2020? Oh, nevermind. What’s wrong with me that I’m watching? Back to the HGTV channel for me!
snoey
@Bill Arnold: In response? probably be as blindsided as Kerry was by the attacks on his war record.
If Sanders is nominated its even money that Jane gets indicted.
Adam L Silverman
@AliceBlue: As I said yesterday, Bitecofer is smart. And her model is intriguing. But it has only been utilized and been correct once, in the 2018 midterms. The 2020 presidential election will be contested in the Electoral College and, as a result, in 5 to 20 states. There is no way of knowing if her model will adequately account for that or even be remotely effective, let alone accurate in a national election year, rather than a mid-term year.
JPL
Bloomberg will take votes from all the candidates except for Bernie, which leaves an opening for Bernie to win. His base is solid. Just the thought of it ties my stomach into knots.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Martin: Thank you, Martin. That was a thought-provoking comment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Eljai: I am considering Eva Green as my next wife.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I thought that Sanders had released 10 years of his tax returns in April, 2019. It’s how we know that he is a millionaire. Did you miss that?
MattF
@Eljai: Hillary is the voodoo doll that wingers need to keep pushing pins into. It’s a blind compulsion for them, and there’s no need for anyone else to pay attention.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
As you know, mm, it takes a lot more than “screaming and throwing insults” to violate the BJ commenting rules.
PST
@Martin: I enjoyed reading your thoughts; and by coincidence, I too look like Tom Cruise and had ancestors who came from Ireland to NC, traveled by covered wagon to the Northwest Territory, and put down roots as homesteaders. However, I don’t think most of us white protestants (by birth, anyway) are infected with that kind of nostalgia. I certainly don’t think the remaining candidates are. What psychic connection, for example, would you expect Pete Buttigieg have with Little House. He’s the gay son of an immigrant Marxist professor from the oddest of European countries — a spot in the ocean where they speak a form of Arabic filled mostly with vocabulary from Italian, English, and French. Maybe I’m an outlier, but I’m sometimes amazed by the diversity of the ordinary American’s connections. I spent my first 12 years in small town Indiana, yet I can think of relatives from a great variety of races, religions, and ethnicities — especially if I get to count in-laws, ex-wives, and machatunim. I suspect few of us feel nostalgia for anything older than our own childhoods, and those childhoods come in many shapes and forms.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Eljai: I watch more MSNBC than is healthy, and Alex Witt is up there with Tweety and Chuck Todd on my painful-to-watch list. Is she trotting out her “Doesn’t the President have a point…” grimace today?
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I’d bet all of them. That is a big union and they work in a relatively successful business atmosphere where they are visible and can make a huge difference in the profit of the people they work for. And those people are profitable, most of them. It is a relationship that works better than a lot of employee/employer relationships. MBA’s main goal is to control costs and employees are a major cost in most businesses so controlling employee costs are a major place to cut. And they can be/are ruthless about that, especially any business model that runs on smaller margins. But a lot of the NV businesses that the CU union is in are relatively large margin businesses that employee – customer relations are a major issue in profitability. Employers may not want to pay “too much” but they have a highly vested interest in their customers being very happy.
Martin
@zhena gogolia: It doesn’t argue for Bloomberg, but I think it speaks to why I’m personally not more reflexively opposed to him.
The US is one of the only countries, maybe the only one, that degrades its own cities. Every other nation invests in their cities, because cities are where your economy grows. They’re the gateways to the rest of the world. Cities are where tolerance is strongest, but also where opportunity is strongest.
I believe if you want to improve civil rights – invest in cities. If you want to address climate change, invest in cities. i think that support for cities is invariably support for those issues, even if the candidate doesn’t personally articulate it.
Chyron HR
@Brachiator:
I’m pretty sure “how we know that he is a millionaire” is that he stopped telling his supporters to kill all the millionaires in mid-2016.
Brachiator
@gene108:
Every Democratic Party candidate is better than Trump. Every Democratic Party candidate can beat Trump, as long as people come out and vote.
Baud
@JPL:
I see it working out the other way. Bernie does well in the first four contests and then everyone else flocks to Bloomberg.
Omnes Omnibus
@PST: I am pretty sure that Biden’s Irish-Catholic ancestors in Scranton didn’t cross the Northwest Territories in a prairie schooner either.
Mandalay
Just a general comment, but for every post from someone explaining why they like Democratic candidate X, there are fifty whining and screaming about how awful Sanders and Bloomberg are.
And attacks on them far outnumber all attacks on Republicans on this blog.
With a few admirable exceptions, there is barely a constructive or thoughtful comment in this thread. I certainly don’t subscribe the notion that “If you can’t say something nice…“, but FFS does anyone here even care any more about explaining why (say) Klobuchar or Buttigieg would make a great president?
rivers
@Martin: Thanks for this inner monologue. You have articulated a reasoned argument which explains my own vague gut level reaction to Bloomberg. It’s not that I want Bloomberg as the candidate, but what you’ve written explains the aspects of Bloomberg that attract me. I’m an immigrant , and even after 50 years here, much of America feels alien to me. But that’s undoubtedly because I’ve spent those 50 years in cities (and I feel at home in cities.) I’ve just become accustomed to the idea that politicians don’t care about cities, don’t value them or their residents and never feel the slightest urge to pander to them as they pander to the ‘heartland.’
Eljai
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I would not be surprised. I had to turn away because I just got out of bed and it’s too soon for me to start yelling at the TV. Gotta pace myself.
Baud
@Martin:
I’ve always thought that one of the real reasons Republicans loath the Clintons is because cities were revitalized during the 90s after decades of decay.
laura
California voter here with a pushback on the assertion that most Cali voters have already mailed in their primary ballots – assumes facts not in evidence. I do not know one single voter who’s returned a ballot as of yet because of the risk in candidate drop outs. Friends, family and coworkers are all talking about waiting until the last minute so as not to waste a vote.
Goku- about the UFCW negotiated health benefits- I was a 20 year Member and my meat cutter dad was one for over 40 years. I’m been a Union business Agent for the last 20 years and can hopefully shed a little light on why the issue of keeping “Cadillac plans” matters. Prior to the ACA, health care premiums would rise each year by double digits. Wages and benefits are part of an overall economic package and so it was common to have to decide what amount or percentage to put on wages and how much on health care benefits really painful decisions based upon the needs -divergent needs of the Membership. In many instances where a Member may have benefits through a spouse and received cash in lieu to waive benefit coverage added even more pressure as their interests were in direct opposition to Members who needed – sometimes desperately needed coverage for self or family who would otherwise be barred due to preexisting conditions. So you give up salary increases to try to keep the benefits affordable. If Medicare for All is adopted I can guarantee you that the employer would demand to keep the resulting savings and not want to negotiate dividing the savings with the workers to increase wages. If you think I’m wrong, I’d point out that the stock market cheers and surges whenever labor costs are reduced or prohibited from increasing. Any changes to the healthcare coverage Must Be negotiated to equitably address this and the Culinary Worker’s Union has every right to demand this even if it pisses off the berners.
Omnes Omnibus
Yeah, no one in Britain or France ever evinces any resentment about London or Paris.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@PST:
Cultural diversity truly is what makes America great.
James E Powell
This morning, after putting it off forever, I finally watched the Howard Stern interview of Hillary Clinton. Then I went in the shower and just stood there till the hot water ran out. Now I’m thinking I shouldn’t leave the house because if I see a car with a Trump bumper sticker I may ram into it.
I hate this country sometimes. What it’s always been and what it’s become. The hateful bigots who seem to dominate everything. The way the powerful crush the vulnerable just because they can or out of habit or because having 95% of the wealth and power isn’t enough to satisfy whatever sick craving drives them. Our politics are ridiculous. This stupid campaign circus soon to be known as Real Billionaires of New York. All this bullshit harms people who haven’t done anything to deserve it. I am just sick over it.
Fortunately it’s a three day weekend. I’ve got an extra day to let this mood pass.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Thank you for your positive and constructive comment.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Martin:
I don’t know about that. The rural-urban cultural divide thing is pretty universal, is it not?
Brachiator
@Martin:
This is certainly not entirely the case in the UK, where the formerly important cities in the North have been decaying for years.
I suspect that many more examples can be found as well.
I agree with your overall point, but we may also find that some cities may have outlived their economic usefulness, just as some rural communities have become economic backwaters.
Baud
@James E Powell: It was such a good interview. And I never listen to Stern.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Mandalay: There’s plenty of positive comments about Warren.
debbie
“Fuck and Run” is the best song on that excellent album/CD/whatever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Somewhere in the building, the fact that she didn’t at The Beast is being noted. Probably several somewheres.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More examples of Stupid Hitler doesn’t get it; he is deploying “elite border patrol units” to Sanctuary cities. Let’s consider how stupid this;
* The Sanctuary Cities aren’t resisting ICE, they are refusing to cooperate with it. More muscle doesn’t change that.
* These Elite teams were created for a reason, I assume dealing with violent human traffickers (you know, slavers) and so on, this means these same teams won’t be available for the legitimate problem they were created for. But doubtless Trump and his dumbasses in MAGA land think this is awesome because Danny Kurger effect and Micheal Bay tell them so.
* A major component of Trump’s own support is Conspiracy Theorists. These people are paranoid and “elite police forces deployed in cities” strokes their fears. Trump is not careful he will end up The Man, in their own eyes. So carry on with shooting yourself in your own foot, Dumb Ass Donny.
The real question that perplexes me; how does Trump brush his teeth in the morning and not end up drowning or putting out his own eye or setting a fire to the building? It doesn’t make sense it hasn’t happened yet. Do you think Trump has had staff to keep and eye on him like some disabled child all his life?
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
Didn’t he just release a summary?
My position on BS is that he’s sat in the corner his entire political career and thinks that makes him the perfect candidate and SHUT UP, vote for me. In a lot of ways his personality is similar to trump’s, everything is actually about him and how great he is. Both have a record of not much success and while I see BS as actually more successful at what he has done vs trump who has attempted a lot more and failed miserably at the vast majority of it.
JaySinWA
@Baud:
Eat the rich?
MattF
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: But they haven’t yet been issued brown shirts, so it’s all OK.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Another quid pro quo from the most overtly corrupt Presidential Administration in… well, the entire history of this greatish nation of ours?
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
I know what you mean. Trump encourages people to be the worst people they can be. A similar mood is beginning to infect the UK as Boris Johnson unleashes his baleful policies.
And yet… I continue to see people perform acts of kindness, small and great. This is also who we are. And we have an opportunity to change things, to make things better.
Hope you have a great weekend.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Actually that has been the weirdest bit of the Trump admin; why no infrastructure projects? The red states desperately need them, infrastructure has bipartisan support so that would be the easy way to bribe people. I guess Trump can only think in terms of abusing others.
laura
@James E Powell: say what you will about Howard Stern, but he is a deft and nimble interviewer different than, but right up there with Terry Gross. His interview with Hillary Clinton is a masterclass and if it doesn’t move you to tears over what could have been…..I cant think of any other setting in which she has shined as brightly, warmth, candor, humor, intellect, and the warning of our clear and present danger. The most qualified presidential candidate in our nation’s history. But no. Instead, the least qualified for any public office. An idiot, drug addled sex pest fueled by petty grievance and revenge fantasies.
I doubt that your current mood will or should pass, I’m right there with you brother.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
Sanders and Bloomberg are awful. What’s your point?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Gee I might have to see about a subscription to Stars and Stripes now
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He has no business interests in ordinary infrastructure construction. How would he profit?
Kathleen
@Baud: I guess this means company which employ’s Chuck’s wife isn’t working on the Sanders campaign this time.
Brachiator
Just noticed that today’s Google Doodle is in honor of the 200th anniversary of Susan B Anthony’s birthday.
Mnemosyne
@laura:
My husband may be sending in his CA ballot soon because he’s voting for Warren come hell or high water.
I’m waiting to see how South Carolina goes.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: because his staff keeps cycling through administration jobs but never long enough to get anything done. Many of them are incompetent or only interested in shanking their enemies. None of them know how to build networks and compromise to get something good accomplished. And some of his Cabinet appointees are actively trying to destroy the departments they head.
Nelle
@zhena gogolia: I’m sort of amazed that this little meeting off the record has slid by without much comment. Once again, the America press are excluded (and mum about it, possibly because they would get kicked off the plane and have to find their own way home from Munich?) while the Russian press is included and spills the beans. Another dominance play by Putin?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
California wealthy person/bundler (and former Harris supporter) quoted in a LA Times article on Pete B. campaigning in Cali.
GBVA
There’s some very odd cognitive dissonance in the discourse re: Bernie Bros around here, which near as I can tell basically boils down to:
Now the thing is, there are probably times at which both or either of these statements are true! Bernie has millions upon millions of supporters, and some of them well and truly suck and say terrible things. Moreover I have no doubt that much of what we see on social media and in comment sections online is part of real disinformation campaigns organized by foreign governments and business interests. But the eagerness with which people on this site leap at the opportunity to ascribe every bilious anonymous e-mail as the work of Sanders’ supporters, while twisting themselves in knots trying to deny the diversity, fervidness, and strength of his movement is genuinely infuriating. This story is the perfect example. I get that it has since been corrected (as MM mentioned in the post), but the oversight of the reporter, who merely needed to click on the user in question’s handle on her own newspaper’s website to pull up his posting history and see that he was an open and avowed Trump supporter, is absolute journalistic malpractice. The fact that it happened at a paper which has accepted thousands of dollars in donations from the leadership of Culinary 226, and is led by EIC John Ralston, whose unabashed public contempt for the Sanders campaign dates back to 2015, and I don’t really see how it’s excusable to republish the article as an authoritative source on anything! But hey, it fits the narrative, so fuck it who cares! And the best part about it is, while CNN and MSNBC and the people here are gleefully crowing away about toxic Bernie Bros undermining their candidate, Mike Bloomberg, a serial sex pest, undisguised racist, and shameless authoritarian plutocrat is surging in the polls. In the Democratic primary, for Chrissakes! Just look at all the people in this comment section talking themselves into voting for this fucking monster. Truly we are through the looking glass. Just amazing stuff.
Brachiator
@laura:
I have never much liked Stern as an interviewer or media personality, but the positive comments about this recent interview are very interesting.
Is there a best place to see the interview with Clinton? This is the first that I have heard anything about it.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Different life paths completely but very similar views. Immigrant background of course, I started small town in LA county, at a time when it wasn’t more populated than most states in the midwest, OH by 20% or more for example. It wasn’t all white protestant BTW but it was close. What changed that was WWII and industrialization of 100 yrs ago, while that midwest life mostly didn’t change. Grew a bit but didn’t change dramatically like LA (and most major urban areas) did. Well that’s not all true of course some of that industrialization did take place, steel mills built, etc. But they were run like farms, you keep doing the same thing over and over. And that killed a lot of the industrialization because in that you have to change to keep up. Or get left behind. Build a plant that does one thing very well but costs more to change than just starting over and sooner or later it will fail.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree with you.
Baud
@Brachiator:
part 1 of 5 here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kHUA-Zma1U
Martin
@PST: Pete very reflexively goes to the homeland values vs city values trope. Maybe it’s just for show, but his bio is steeped in it, with the usual ‘if we just fight hard enough we can reopen the plant’ attitude. Well, shit, the whole point of the homesteader mythos is that you take a risk and relocate to create better opportunities. Mobility has always been the key to US economic strength, and it’s key to diversifying the nation. Heading off to the city is not some kind of surrender. Sometimes the plant deserves to close, and the town deserves to revert to grassland. The largest state in the nation is defined by immigration – whether from the 49ers coming here for gold, or the Chinese immigrants that settled here building the railroads, or the oakies fleeing the dustbowl (who says we have no experience with climate refugees) or the people from all over that come to LA or silicon valley, etc. And we have our ghost towns too – ideas that came and went. We moved on.
Pete’s not anti-immigrant, but at the same time he works to preserve the anti-mobility, let’s all be like South Bend attitude. It’s disconcerting, and unhelpful, in my view. I like Pete – he’s a good guy, but he still runs home to nostalgia, which I still see as a big part of why we as a nation have so much difficulty moving forward on a host of issues like guns and race and climate.
Maybe I’m just a bit oversensitive after the endless pandering by literally everyone to Iowas historic first in the nation status and the charm of congregating everyone in the barn to caucus, when it’s just a shitty, shitty fucking system that is terrible in almost every way and nobody has the guts to call it out as such, not even those that are getting fucked over by it, because god forbid anyone in the US suggest that one of our traditions might be hot garbage.
We need to move forward, so I’m quite sensitive right now to those that keep trying to root us in place. I do like that side of Bernie, he just has a bit too much of a just burn it down and we’ll figure it out later attitude. There is a practical middle ground which he misses.
There’s also the possibility this is me reacting to my new meds.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Pete Buttigieg endorsed by Obama’s anger translator
[CNN link]
germy
•
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Martin: One of Pete’s best talents is pandering (it’s a turn off, I agree, but it can get the job done)
Remember Paul Tsongas’ nickname for Bill Clinton in 1992? We could use another “pander-bear”.
BroD
@Martin: Nice riff!
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
If you truly didn’t understand the point I can’t help you any further.
trollhattan
@germy:
“Sadly, born without a chin.”
Baud
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I hope he acts as Pete’s anger translator.
dnfree
@Martin: I appreciate your thoughts.
Starfish
@Anya: Black Lives Matter is still around and still doing relevant things. There is a local chapter that did Black Lives Matter in schools week the other week, and they are trying to make it so school resource officers are not contributing to school to prison pipeline.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Baud: He could probably use one…
patroclus
@Mandalay: Well, I’m for Amy because I think she would make the best President. She’s a mainstream liberal Democrat who agrees with me on most issues (health care; trade. guns, women’s liberty, gay rights, climate change, social justice, civil rights, impeaching Trump etc…) and she’s also the most effective Senator with a good track record as a national politician. I also think she’s the most electable and would win the states we need to win against Trump. In my view, no other candidate is even close. She’s also smart as a whip and good on her feet and a great debater.
Ivan X
@Martin: I really enjoyed reading this. It’s typical of why you’re one of my favorite (actually the favorite) commenters here. I’m disappointed that others haven’t responded with at least respect for your wanting to take the time to explore your instinctive positions and alliances thoughtfully through the lens of your personal and family experience mixed with your societal outlook, and instead some seem to reduce something that obviously took time to process to are you on my team or not. I thought what you wrote is interesting, and offered me some perspective I hadn’t thought about, and I sympathize with it. (But what do I know, I’m just another NYC small business owner.)
ETA: a bunch of comments went up as I was writing this, apparently. When I started all were negative. Glad to see a more balanced response.
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
I agree. It’s probably why I’m not as anti-Bloomberg as some here, although I AM NO FAN OF HIS IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. If he can beat Hitler, I’m on his side. And I think maybe he can.
zhena gogolia
@Mandalay:
I sort of agree (although I’m one of the sinners), but I think it’s conditioned by the type of original posts that are put up. Anne Laurie is the only one who does positive posts. The problem is, they’re all about Warren.
L85NJGT
“Cadillac plans” is doing the Big Money’s work with garbage framing. Unions fought long and hard for the right to collectively bargain healthcare.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
I am a firm believer that adults can do whatever they want, just don’t do it in the street, and don’t scare the livestock! Hope that doesn’t limit you too much!!
Betty Cracker
@Martin: President Obama campaigned explicitly on so-called heartland values in both the 2008 and 2012 races. If he defines himself as urban now, that’s very much a post-presidency thing.
Remember the 2004 convention speech that made Obama a star in the party? That was all about denying there was any meaningful schism between urban and rural, red and blue American values. (Seems naive as fuck in retrospect.)
When introducing himself to the country in 2008, Obama referred frequently to his Kansas-born grandparents — here, for example: “We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up.”
The heartland bullshit makes me want to puke too, but there’s a simple explanation for it: swing state Electoral College votes are inconveniently concentrated there. So we’re stuck with it.
As a minority candidate, Obama had an additional hurdle, and no doubt some of the heartland BS was to reassure white people. But literally every candidate has to do that dance — even Trump.
J R in WV
@snoey:
Not even money, a sure thing!! The only question is how long it would take for the indictment to be handed up, or even what the R’s preferred timing for the indictment would be.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@L85NJGT: Are Cadillacs even still desirable cars?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Betty Cracker:
Or aspirational and visionary. YMMV
West of the Rockies
@Martin:
Can I sit by you?
Mnemosyne
@GBVA:
As someone who had her own personal (though very mild) Twitter run-in with asshole Bernie campaign staffer David Sirota, I invite you to get the hell out of here with that bullshit. Bernie can’t hire toxic assholes like Turner, Joy, and Sirota to run his campaign and then act like it’s a mystery why his internet followers are also abusive assholes, just like Turner, Joy, and Sirota.
Brachiator
@Martin:
The progressive mythology of the all embracing safety net transposes individualist mythology for a collectivist mythology. All good will come from the grassroots, and everyone theoretically knows one another because we are all working class comrades, coming to one another’s aid. Racism doesn’t exist because it has been erased by class consciousness. It’s unclear, however, whether Native Americans automatically belong to the proletariat.
I don’t disagree with you, but just suggest another way of looking at it.
schrodingers_cat
I am going to the state Democratic convention this May, was elected as a delegate this morning.
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
FWIW, it’s in the best interests of the MSM to pretend that BLM went away after Trump was elected. It makes white people subconsciously assume that Trump “fixed the problem” of all of those mean Black people protesting since they don’t see them in the media anymore.
Mandalay
That was me. You chose to repost your earlier comments that Sanders was going to defect and run as an independent despite subsequently admitting that you don’t even believe that. You were called for posting false irresponsible shit.
No. You acted the internet tough guy and issued veiled threats. Wanker.
Baud
Baud! 2020!: Less heartland. More bosom.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
I always hate it when people who fail to make a point blame others for not understanding the point that they failed to make.
Bernie is awful. Not much more to be said for him.
I have no idea why anyone is giving Bloomberg the time of day, apart from the influence of his omnipresent ads. It is strange to see folks who claim to distrust plutocrats positively swoon over Bloomberg.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: congrats!
i am inspired.
Percysowner
@schrodingers_cat: Great! Keep us up to date on the details, or the ones that you can share!
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
If Bloomberg is the nominee, I’ll support and vote for him over Trump, but he’s near the bottom of my list of people to vote for in the primary.
germy
I dislike Bernie; prefer Warren, but let’s not let
ratfuckersrepublican operatives like Toensing frame our talking points.L85NJGT
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
The SUV Escalade is the choice for households carrying too much debt. Sedan sales are dying across the board, what’s left of the executive market has gone to Audi.
trollhattan
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I remember in The Wire, when Snoop related the salesguy’s pitch for her selected nail gun as “the Cadillac” she noted “He meant Lexus.”
Adam L Silverman
@Mandalay: I made no threats at all. That was a commenter who decided to make a threat on my behalf after I went to bed.
I’m not an Internet tough guy. I’m an asshole. There’s a difference.
rikyrah
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Congratulations! I hope that seeing the sausage-making process up close won’t turn you off politics. ?
Adam L Silverman
@GBVA: Could be because the campaign has actively recruited and trained foreign nationals to promote Senator Sanders and his campaign.
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/young-australians-are-texting-americans-to-vote-bernie/11915404
Omnes Omnibus
@Ivan X: I am sorry that I disappointed you by apparently not taking Martin’s comment as seriously as you think I should have. Let me assure you that I read his comment thoroughly and contemplated it deeply before concluding that I, nevertheless, was not persuaded to change any of my views regarding the advisability of supporting an authoritarian (no matter how urban he may be in outlook) at this point in the primary process. I will endeavor to be more prolix in the future.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not about the media. White people consciously assume that Trump fixed the problem by backing the police and angry white folks who are increasingly given the OK sign to put nonwhite people “in their place.”
Adam L Silverman
@germy: Toensing is now the Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. His parents are Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.
And that’s aside from why Jane Sanders gave her daughter a $500,000 contract to teach art while the college was in serious financial jeopardy.
Chyron HR
@GBVA:
May I suggest that you consider the possibility that Bernie isn’t messiah? Just food for thought.
germy
@Adam L Silverman: Why did the U.S. Attorney in Vermont close the investigation?
Should there have been a hiring freeze at the college? Was Jane grifting? I’m willing to believe it’s possible. I just distrust scandals when they’re promoted by trump’s friends and supporters.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Really hope it doesn’t come down to that.
trollhattan
@Chyron HR:
“He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”
–Brian’s mom, and possibly Wilmer’s
rikyrah
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah ????
Adam L Silverman
@germy: My understanding from the reporting is that they bounced the accusation off of the IRS, which didn’t find anything, so the USAO’s office in Vermont closed the inquiry.
This is a separate issue from whether Jane Sanders did something unethical or potentially illegal in hiring her daughter’s company. But even that doesn’t matter. I don’t follow Jane Sanders’ news and I had read about this. And my guess is that it was vetted by the lawyers as she’s not stupid. But none of that is going to matter once it is weaponized in an attack ad. Almost all of the oppo that exists for Senator Sanders has never been used. HRC didn’t use it because she didn’t think she needed to. The President will have no such qualms.
Baud
@germy: Hunter Biden wishes everyone had that attitude.
GBVA
@Adam L Silverman:
Lmao man this is the most unbelievably weak sauce. This is your foreign election interference? This is the true challenge to the integrity of our democracy? Australian teenagers whose back yards are on fucking fire and who feel some measure of solidarity with one of the two democratic campaigns that actually seems to take climate change seriously texting voters in Nevada? Get a grip. Bloomberg is literally out here purchasing the absolute complicity of TV media with hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spending and this is what keeps our NatSec folks up at night. Unbelievable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: and besides his hires, his volunteer surrogates: Shrieky emo clown Michael Moore, preening asshole Susan Sarandon, preening asshole Cornel “Inauguration tickets” West and the halfwit Roseann “trump will give us single payer” DeMoro.
Anya
@Betty Cracker: I think there is a difference between the way Obama used the annoying “heartland” trope. Obama’s message was more about “we are all the same”. But there was also some form of “I am not a scary blackity black who’ll robe you and steal your daughters,” while Pete’s heartland stuff is an affirmation of the divid. His message is faulty and the fact that he keeps repeating the same thing is annoying. I really like the guy and I am so glad there is a viable openly gay candidate but he needs to knock that shit out. It’s not helping.
Cckids
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m struck by (if you’re not paying close attention) how many Bloomberg ads are structured to look as though Obama is endorsing/campaigning for him. It’s disturbing. And those damn ads are impossible to avoid.
PJ
@Mandalay: If you have positive things to say about Sanders, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar, you are free to do it. You can’t make other people write those comments for you.
Starfish
@Mnemosyne: Right? If he is going to use his bully pulpit to get Medicare for All passed, he can start right now and tell his assholes representing his campaign to quit being assholes. But he doesn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@GBVA: One can reasonably object to both.
Chyron HR
@germy:
Fun fact: One of Bernie’s justifications for continuing to campaign in the 2016 Democratic primary after the primary had literally ended was that Hillary was probably going to be indicted for her e-mails.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GBVA:
Hard to argue with any of that. But he’s less of a monster than trump and far more electable than Bernie Sanders. And a lot of the circumstances that made Bloomberg think he was viable lead right back to Bernie Sanders, so…. whattaya gonna do?
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Hillary Clinton on the Howard Stern Show Pt. 1
Hillary Clinton on the Howard Stern Show Pt. 2
Hillary Clinton on the Howard Stern Show Pt. 3
(Dec 6, 2019)
Bex
@patroclus: Smart as a whip? She didn’t even know the name of the president of Mexico when asked by Telemundo at LULAC yesterday. Steyer didn’t either. Pete did. Amy and Tommy failed their job interviews.
Anya
@Mnemosyne: I get that but they are not as visibly active as they used to be under Obama. I mean, to some extend I get that. Trump is a lawless president and no telling what his justice department would do to the leaders and their loved ones so the low-key activism might be self preservation. But there is not reason for Occupy Wall Street to be silent at a time when income inequality and corporate greed is at its peak.
GBVA
@Chyron HR:
Wow! You managed to assemble a complete sentence without dropping an a-bomb! Maybe people really can change!
And Jesus Christ, man. I don’t think Bernie is the fucking messiah. I’ve voted down the line for and given my money and time to Democrats my entire life and will continue to do so. But this is madness and hysteria.
Steeplejack (phone)
@schrodingers_cat:
Congratulations! Make sure you vote for the right person. ?
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
@MattF: i really don’t want to have to vote for: Bernie and Bloomberg. I would vote for them of course but I don’t want to. Literally anyone else with a real shot I would happily canvass and vote for. I won’t go into my reasons for not liking Bernie except shouting about a revolution will get bupkis done. He’ll be a total failure at governing and give us another Republican horror show in 4 years. That’s my fear anyway.
Bloomberg – he’ll be OK on health care and maybe better than that on gun violence. After that, what do we know about the guy? He’s rich…but I don’t want the POTUS race every four years to be a contest over which party can cough up the most charismatic billionaire (and yeah I know Trump isn’t really one but still he’s rich enough).
I don’t get the sense that he’ll do anything to stem the tide on white collar crime/Wall Street malfeasance/income inequality. Maybe nobody can with the Republicans clinging to some vestiges of power but I doubt he’d even try. Next up…the rule of law? Does he believe in it? Or is he another rich dude who gets his way all the time and will use the Justice Department as his personal enforcement squad so he keeps getting his way? I really don’t know the answer to that. I’m worried he’ll be a more competent authoritarian than Trump because he has impulse control.
Also I have no idea what kind of person he’d nominate for an open supreme court pick – I’d trust anyone, including Bernie, with a pick but not him until he throws out some potential names that are commonly accepted good picks. He used to be a Republican (and not super long ago like Warren) so I’m not sure he’s trustworthy on that and some other issues.
germy
@Adam L Silverman: There’ll be oppo against any Democrat who wins the nomination. If they can’t find anything, they’ll make stuff up. And the major networks will play along, followed by local news media. Emailz!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bex:
that’s a very specific litmus test
Eljai
@Starfish: Not only could he tell his paid staff and surrogates to lay off, he could actually hire better people. He must approve of their bullying, antagonistic approach or he would fire them and surround himself with different people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us:
I’d like to think a Bloomberg candidacy is a longshot, but my hope would be that Warren and Brown and Harris and Whitehouse a few others can put together enough of a block to make Bloomberg understand that in return for buying his way into history books there are certain things from the Wall St Wishlist he can’t have, and other things he’s going to have to give on.
GBVA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: but that’s just it! Bloomberg isn’t electable! One of the central theses of the Bernie campaign, whether you agree or not, is that billionaires shouldn’t even exist, and that their continued existence poisons our politics and tears at the very fabric of our social existence. By hammering that message home, he’s claimed a vice grip on ~25% of the party. If even 30% of those people truly have drunk the Kool-Aid and refuse to show up to vote for another racist, misogynist billionaire, even in the face of Trump, we’re done. That’s it. Game over.
Adam L Silverman
@GBVA: Any foreign interference in US elections are acts of war. Should be recognized as such. Those involved should be identified as targets. And those targets should be prosecuted using all legal and military conceptualizations of target and prosecuted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GBVA: it is indeed entirely possible that Bernie Sanders and his merry band of deluded, self-serving, self-regarding nitwits have so poisoned the water that we are fucked no matter who we nominate
daryljfontaine
I’m sure Sirota will be resigning from the campaign in protest any minute now.
D
Steeplejack (phone)
@germy:
Brady Toensing, you say? Hmm, rings a bell. Oh, yes, the same Brady Toensing who subsequently landed a job in Trump’s Justice Department, and the same Brady Toensing whose parents are noted hack Trump lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova.
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
Thanks for the Howard Stern links.
Three parts to the interview. Very interesting.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If conjugating Norwegian verbs is required for the nom, then the fix is in, maaaan.
I wonder how Wilmer did in organic chemistry and physics?
Adam L Silverman
@germy: If only someone would write a linked set of front page posts about this, I might know what it is going on.
Nelle
@Betty Cracker: In 2008, my then neighbor was a union guy who had retired from an auto plant. He was a solid Democrat. But he said, I just don’t think I can vote for a black man.” I was quiet for a minute. This man was kind as could be to us. He was also originally from southern Missouri. I wanted that vote. So, rather than argue with him, I asked him if he could vote for the white half that came from Kansas background. He looked at me funny but didn’t say anything. After the election, he came to me and said, “I voted for the white half. A better choice than voting for a Republican.” (I moved out of the country shortly after that for a good five years and came back just in time for Trump. What a country.
lurker3000
My support for Warren basically boils down to this: she and Bernie have pretty much similar to the left policies but she has better details and is a MUCH better person IMO. the rest of the Bernie followers’ “he’s the best” is just blah blah blah blah in my ears. Any Democrat is better than Trump and I will vote blue no matter what. In that vein, both Bernie and Bloomberg are barely Dems by any definition of party loyalty. That said, boiled down, I’d take Bloomberg over Bernie in a heartbeat because he’s not a demagogue/ideologue and he does have some experience in governing and his money will finance some defense against GOP oppo on him. Just hope to God I don’t have to make that choice as it’s a bad set of options.
J R in WV
@germy:
Because they want and need to control the timing of the indictment and arrest in order to control the election results. If Bernie isn’t the nominee, no point in wasting time arresting and jailing Jane Sanders for trivial financial crimes…
Nelle
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Excellent!!
Cheers,
Scott.
PJ
@GBVA:
@Mnemosyne:
Sanders has an army of supporters who don’t seem particularly invested in advancing policy, but rather in dominating and punishing their perceived enemies, who are Democrats who don’t “bend the knee” for Bernie (Republicans apparently aren’t worth their ire.) Whenever someone posts something on Twitter even mildly critical of Sanders or his policies, some of them will show up to vilify the poster and/or threaten them. No other Democratic candidates’ supporters do this. You know whose supporters do, though? Trump’s.
The vitriol doesn’t seem to be centered around policy but rather on trying to enforce acquiescence to Bernie through insults and threats. For over a year, anyone who was for universal coverage, but not “Medicare for All” RIGHT NOW, (i.e., advocating for a public option, gradual phasing in of single payer, allowing employer insurance, or allowing private insurance to supplement government-provided health care) was accused of wanting poor people to die. Then, just this week, as a result of the Culinary Union blow-up, top surrogates for Sanders (Ryan Grim of the Intercept, and AOC, to name two) have made statements saying, “Oh, come on, we all know M4All isn’t going to get through Congress, we’ll probably wind up with a public option and work from there, so your employer or union insurance is safe, no worries.” This is basically the position that every other Democratic candidate than Bernie has taken, and been vilified for, but there is not a peep from the Bernie Bros about it, not directed against the surrogates and not directed against Sanders.
The reason their behavior persists is because Sanders likes it. He hires these people to be his campaign staff (Nina Turner, Briannah (sp?) Joy, David Sirota), and they engage in this behavior themselves. Sanders’ response to the attacks on the Culinary Union leaders was totally disingenuous – “No one should be attacked, but we don’t know who was behind these attacks.” Wink wink – carry on, Bernie Bros! So it’s completely appropriate to blame Bernie for his supporters about this.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Adam L Silverman:
“A senior counsel for the Office of Legal Policy,” according to reports I read.
Ruckus
@Anya:
Myself and others called Lindsey a remora fish. Sucks onto the bigger fish, to collect the detritus that floats around the bigger fish and to have the bigger fish do the swimming for it. But the concept is the same, small fish, mostly useless to the overall, who has a life because of the bigger fish.
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
As I said, I think the reason why BLM is not visibly active is because they’re not being given any visibility through media coverage. Most groups are still active in their respective cities, but they’re not getting nationwide media coverage because we have a white supremacist in charge and it’s in his best interest for it to look as though all of those protests magically stopped once Big Daddy was elected.
OWS has no excuse, so I have no idea what’s going on there.
GBVA
@Adam L Silverman: Psychosis. Just pure derangement. Anyone cosigning the idea that the US military should treat these children, who are citizens of a United States ally, as “targets” for advocating on behalf of a foreign candidate they support has completely lost the plot.
JR
@Another Scott: That guy can earn $130K working two jobs? He must be in IT or the like.
At that income he can afford to stretch payments on his loans. That is far from a representative example of the kind of crippling debt some folks face.
Martin
@Baud: I hadn’t considered that. Though, I don’t really credit Clinton for that. I think it was just that economically things were so good all over that the cities could thrive even while subsidizing the rest of the country.
I’ll gladly credit Clinton with the good economy, but I don’t really recall any particular effort to boost cities specifically. We were still pretty war on drugs. And I don’t see how to look at the war on drugs was because the victims were black and the opioid epidemic (not a war, please have sympathy) victims are white and not also equate that to the war on drugs being an urban problem and the opioid epidemic being a rural one. It’s not a problem when some lawyer dies from cocaine but it’s a tragedy when rural business owner that the town relies on dies from meth.
Another Scott
@GBVA:
ThinkProgress:
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh they do, but they also fund London and Paris. Paris to to the degree that the rural areas subsidize the city.
trollhattan
@PJ:
Just want to add that “No other Democratic candidates’” is technically all Democratic candidates because Wilmer refuses to declare himself to be a Democrat.
I have never heard an acceptable explanation as to why. Vermont serially elects a Democrat to the senate, so it’s not that.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Brachiator:
The interview has five parts.
Bex
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for missing my point. Here’s a cookie.
Matt
Welcome to moderate centrism, where “he has mean supporters” is more disqualifying than “he directly implemented racist policies that resulted in the police murdering dozens of people, then rolled out bare-knuckle white-supremacy to defend it when called out”
jeffreyw
@Martin:
You get all the updings??
Behold my field of updings, it is barren. now.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: I think I must have picked up on it a bit later, then. I always remember him being comfortably of the city, and seeming a little out of place doing the heartland shit. Maybe it was his mannerisms and not his message that I picked up on there.
Chyron HR
@Matt:
Welcome to Bernieism, where threatening to rape and kill women of color is just “being mean” and you snowflakes need to get over it.
Martin
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Probably win the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year. Does that count?
Martin
@West of the Rockies: Of course.
janesays
Here’s a nightmare scenario that is entirely possible… Bernie Sanders emerges with the most delegates, but nowhere near a majority, and not radically far ahead of the second place finisher. His delegate total exceeds any other individual candidate, but is only half the number of delegates that Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg have combined.
Brokered convention. Then what? Pick Sanders, and you alienate the 60% of voters who voted for moderate candidates in the primaries, and they either sit the election out or go to Trump. Don’t nominate Sanders, and you enrage his supporters, and they either sit the election out or go to Trump out of spite. Either way, Trump probably gets re-elected.
I hope to FSM that doesn’t happen, because if it does, we are fucked. I don’t believe Sanders can win the nomination outright. But I do believe it’s possible he could wind up with a plurality of delegates, which is just not a good situation at all. It would honestly be better if he won outright than if he just finished ahead of everyone else but well below 50%
We really need either Buttigieg or Klobuchar to drop out soon. It absolutely should be Buttigieg, because Klobuchar is clearly far more experienced and prepared for the job. But there’s no chance Buttigieg will leave anytime soon, because why would he? He’s got the most delegates right now. Nobody would quit in that spot. Hopefully Klobuchar can surge way ahead of him between now and Super Tuesday, because we need to get this down to a two horse race between Bernie and a consensus not-Bernie candidate quickly, or this could drag on forever.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack (phone):
Got ’em. Thanks
Didn’t realize that this was a long, wide ranging interview. Look forward to making some time for this.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: Wow, congratulations! Sounds exciting, please report back.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack (phone): Fine, we’ll do it your way.
Kent
Thanks for the long essay Martin. I come from the opposite roots. My Swiss-German Mennonite ancestors fled the religious wars in the Palatinate in the late 1600s and early 1700s and settled in eastern PA at the invitation of William Penn. The younger sons pushed west into Ohio by the early 1800s and then all the way west to Oregon by 1900. But the white rural protestant ethic of which you write is absolutely steeped in my family and it has become utterly toxic. I still have cousins dairy farming in Central PA on farms that have been in the family since before the Civil War. The arrogance I see on a daily basis in their sense of superiority of rural life is just breathtaking. There must be whole factories in China manufacturing pablum on facebook about wholesome rural values dripped in bible verses with farm scenes in the background. Because I get new ones every day. And they are all 100% in for Trump
As a teacher here in the Pacific Northwest I see the same thing in my suburban/exurban district. The sense of entitlement and dismissive attitudes towards education. It is partly what is fueling the meth and prescription drug crisis. People expect to just continually recycle the lives their parents and grandparents had when the world and economy has changed. And when they can’t they just spiral.
I have two students in the same class who’s mothers work at the same strip mall. One is the Vietnamese-American daughter of a single mom who works at the nail salon. She wants her daughter to go to Stanford and become a surgeon. And saves up spare change to send her to SAT prep. Next door at the hair salon is the white mom of another girl. She basically wants to get her daughter through HS without getting pregnant or on drugs and into cosmetology school so she can take over one of the chairs in the salon and not have to work at Wal-Mart. Expectations.
Nick Kristof did a long story about this part of the country when he went back to his old home town of Yamill Oregon and tracked how many of his old classmates descended into drug addiction, despair, and died. It’s like 1/4 of his old school bus or something. Thing to understand about Yamhill Oregon is that it isn’t deepest darkest Appalachia. But within easy commuting distance of the Portland metro area and even easier commuting distance to Portland’s western suburbs which has been the second biggest economic job engine in the entire Pacific Northwest after Seattle. Think Nike, Intel, several big hospitals, and endless other smaller tech type companies. All within a 30 minute commute of this community where apparently white working folk are dying of despair because the logging and farming jobs are drying up. For fuck’s sake. My commute is longer than that. White working class privilege is the disease that brought us Trump: Read this article and understand that every single one of these people live within easy commuting distance of what has been one of the hottest economic growth engines in the Pacific Northwest in the past 2 decades. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/sunday/deaths-despair-poverty.html
But they don’t want to drive to the city for work. Because the cities are a “cesspool” full of ANTFA folks and brown immigrant people or something. They want Trump to bring back their logging and lumber mill jobs that mostly vanished in the 1980s due to mechanization.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@janesays: That outcome is no where near inevitable at this point. Two States in and St. Bernard of the revolution is behind in the delegate race to the mayor of a mid sized city who has never run a Presidential campaign before. Let’s not panic yet about possible future outcomes. That still seem pretty unlikely.
pamelabrown53
@Martin:
Here’s where I think you may be right: while there is a rural/city divide as OO suggested in countries like France and the U.K, I’ve never read that their politicians weaponized that divide to the degree it’s done here.
BTW, thanks for your original comment: you wrote with clarity and heart and I’m so delighted to have something worthwhile to digest and analyze.
Adam L Silverman
@GBVA: We are at war. We have been at war for at least four years. It is an unrecognized war by US leadership, but not of our adversaries. I have explained the dynamics and parameters of this war here repeatedly, or really set of semi-linked wars as China’s war against the US isn’t the same as Russia’s, which isn’t the same as the DPRK’s or Iran’s or Saudi’s or Israel’s. These wars are largely non-kinetic and non-lethal. But they are wars nonetheless. We can either get our heads out of our tuchases, recognize the reality we are in, and begin to respond accordingly or we can surrender, without even realizing we have, to an international order were Putin and Xi are making the rules.
Brachiator
@janesays:
I go for option number 2. I am more than willing to risk the anger of disappointed Sanders’ supporters.
Trump is not a theoretical “lesser of two evils” as he was for some in 2016. Everyone sees what he is. I simply don’t see large numbers of Sanders’ supporters either sitting out the election or voting for Trump.
And I see Sanders working hard to support the Democratic Party nominee.
What the Democratic candidates need to do is make the best case for their candidacy and kick Sanders’ ass.
Mnemosyne
@PJ:
A vocal but probably small percentage of Bernie’s online fans are former Ron Paul acolytes who finally realized that their hero is never going to be the Republican nominee for president and fixated on the next most likely Great White Hope who hates the Democratic Party almost as much as they do. It’s an attempted hostile takeover.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bex: I certainly do feel dumb for responding to exactly what you wrote.
Oh, wait, no I don’t.
Mnemosyne
@GBVA:
You realize that foreign interference in an election is a federal crime, right? Our friend Amir was not even able to purchase a Hillary t-shirt in 2016 because that would have been considered a donation from a foreign citizen.
Why is it A-OK for Bernie to accept foreign contributions when it’s illegal for everyone else?
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: (For all)
I didn’t take OOs comments critically. I wasn’t looking to sway him or anyone else on this. I was a bit surprised by my own interest in Bloomberg. There are things there I admire, and some I find generally unacceptable.
I tend to not worry too much about narrow policy differences or even past positions that appear to have changed. People change. I do like to see evidence of that, though. I do believe more in systems, and tend to see people in terms of how they might affect a system. Mostly I was just trying to unwind why I took that interest, why I had a resistance (not opposition) to Pete and Amy, and to give it some thought.
Like I said, it was my inner monologue, and that doesn’t mean it’s not sometimes dumb or wrong. I enjoy the perspective others bring to it – both supportive and critical.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: OWS was, deliberately, not an organization (which is one reason why it was politically doomed.) There was no membership, no official leadership, etc., and no explicit political agenda. What did you expect from it? Aside from debt purchasing and cancellation, which I hear about occasionally, the whole thing just seemed to dissolve after 2012. Which seems appropriate, since the whole thing mushroomed out of a one day protest sponsored by Adbusters.
trollhattan
@Kent:
To be fair, they will drive to the scary city to march with other nazis.
Kent
Brokered convention? You have to come out the other end with some kid of unity ticket. Put someone mainstream like a Klobuchar or Biden or Bloomberg on the top. Paired with a really progressive young VP at the bottom of the ticket that will make a lot of young progressive legs twitch. Or at least not flee in mass. Maybe a Stacey Abrams. Or someone not Sanders who is clearly in the Sanders camp. Not sure who that would be.
If Bloomberg wants to win the nomination he needs to take down Bernie. Then a lot of Dems will not only be happy about it, but people will start saying “wow, if he can do that to Bernie in the debate, imagine what he will do to Trump”
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@janesays: At least Pete knows the name of the President of Mexico.
debbie
@laura:
Yes, he is an excellent interviewer. Once I realized his schtick was schtick, I found it much easier to listen to him. But he also changed. He raged against pedophiles and I cheered him for having grown up. Even so, I was very impressed by that interview. Despite his occasional silliness, he got Hillary to share observations I’d bet she wouldn’t dare to in other, more standard interviews.
Martin
@germy: I don’t believe there needs to be a scandal for DOJ to open an investigation in October. They just need the public to be receptive to the idea there is a scandal.
“New Emails Jolt Clinton Campaign in Race’s Final Days”
Kent
It’s because in France or Germany they are all the same exact people, rural and urban, from the same exact religious and ethnic backgrounds.
Here in the US the urban and rural populations living in the same state or region are often from utterly different ethnic/religious/racial backgrounds due to settlement patterns and immigration.
Another Scott
@JR: Yes, he’s not representative. And he’s broken and she should run away.
But the larger point that Robyn is making stands, I think. When my folks were starting out, they didn’t have any money, but they didn’t have any debt either. Having young people start out with so much debt is bad and damaging to society. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it wasn’t this way not that long ago.
We can make different choices and have a better economy, and country, as a result.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Very cool!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Martin: I’m genuinely not a car guy, so I have no clue. I usually just go for gently-used Toyotas.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I think that part of that youth not voting is that in my lifetime, my voting lifetime, one had to be 21 to vote. I think that one has, at that 3 yr transition point a rather large change in life. We go from a HS student to a work life. Most do anyway, there is college, and/or military, or just starting out at the bottom of a career, possibly a life partner happening or wanting to happen. Your future is right now for most people that age. And then the voting age lowered. Now it is right after HS that you can participate in the process. But it will take a generation or 3 before that concept takes hold. I see it happening with the school shootings, there is now a greater than zero risk that one may not enter that advanced school, working part of life. And a way to participate in what goes on with the future. That will and does change the concept of what needs to happen. That and that there is a pretty big concept out there that we on the ground floor don’t have a lot to say about the next 60-70 yrs of our lives because government is “owned” by the wealthy.
debbie
@Brachiator:
No, five. Don’t miss any of them.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Congratulations! I am looking forward to many guest posts!
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like this.
Primarily because my father did cross the US in a horse drawn wagon. He was one yr old but still, that’s how he came west. In 1918.
Kent
@Ruckus: Really? Horse-drawn wagon in 1918? They did have railroads then. That’s how most people did it. 1908 was the year when cars surpassed horse-drawn carriages in the US. By 1920 horses were mostly gone from American streets and highways.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Bill and Hillary Clinton were two of the VICTIMS of the Whitewater scam, but Republicans turned it around on them and insisted (with the help of the con man trying to reduce his sentence) that they were actually the perpetrators.
Even if Jane is as pure as the driven snow, she and Bernie are still going to be tarred with the college scandal. Guaranteed.
Ruckus
@rivers:
They pander to the heartland because there are far fewer of them to convince and because it is a long heard story about the hard working sort that till the land by shovel and hoe. Which of course is not how the majority of farming is done now. Sure the heartland folks own and use shovels and hoes but so do millions of people in the suburbs of those urban cities, as do many people on this blog. Living in the middle of urban life one might need a trowel for the potted plants but that’s about the extent of it. And one can purchase plastic potted plants at Ikea that are rather realistic these days, if you don’t care for real oxygen.
Miss Bianca
@Kent: I think what you identify as white working class privilege filters into other white economic classes as well. My younger brother, for example, is a lawyer. Expensively educated, just like me. Both of us really ought to be at the top or at least the middle of our particular economic food chain, upper-middle-class. Instead, I’m scraping by in rural CO (by choice, I hasten to add – I’d rather be living in “poverty with a view” than better-off in the big city). Meanwhile, Bro-Man is barely scraping by in some moderately shit-hole town in Michigan, and he’s bitter about it. I suspected he was a Trumpie, but would have felt happier not knowing (and of course, I had to make sure I found out by some reference to why I no longer speak to our *other* surviving brother, because Trump.) We cannot discuss politics at all, apparently, without flying into each other’s faces screaming like scalded weasels after less than five minutes’ time, so we’ve agreed that we will simply have to avoid the subject altogether (I suspect that would also go for religion and sexuality).
He’s not a dumb guy, and he doesn’t watch Fox News (because he can’t afford the cable, he tells me), so where the hell is he getting that Hillary is All Evil and it’s actually *Obama* who put the kids in cages at the border? Where the hell does he get this stuff and how can he believe it? He views me as equally deluded for maintaining that Hillary was not, in fact, evil, unlike Trump, who fucking well IS responsible for kids in cages at the border.
Remember when Romney spouted some bullshit at Obama during one of the debates, and O refuted it, which led Romney to sputter, “you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts” – when it was R who was touting alternative facts? How the fuck does this shit happen, and how do you come back from it to an actual fact-based reality?
Mnemosyne
@Kent:
I’m guessing that Ruckus’s family was too poor to afford a railroad ticket. ?♀️
tam1MI
Bingo. Meanwhile the Six Dwarfs (used to be seven, then Yang dropped out) squabble like toddlers over what Pete Buttigieg likes to watch on TV.
BLOOMBERG IS SURGING BECAUSE HE GETS IT. PERIOD.
(It’s worth noting that Biden was pulling down his best numbers when he was running ads going after Trump. They only started sinking when he got into the debates and got sucked into the petty bullshit).
Brachiator
@Kent:
This is not entirely true, or there are other differences that lead to similar problems. I already noted that there are significant differences in the UK between the more prosperous southern sections of the country and the rust belt of northern England. Smoldering resentments fueled BREXIT big time.
In Germany, there are still problems absorbing the former East Germany.
In many European countries, religious wars may have been settled in the past, but class conflicts are still very strong. Look at the recent street demonstrations in France, or Hong Kong, for example.
And this is before you get to immigrant bashing.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Oh, man – I tried to make that argument to my brother and he absolutely melted down and started screaming at me about people losing their money because of missing one payment on something or other and apparently the Clintons were 100% responsible for that somehow, I don’t know, I couldn’t follow it.
“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain” – and yet, he’s *not* stupid. I still cannot figure out how the Clintons manage to threaten fragile white man/womanhood the way they seem to, but they absolutely fucking do.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Ask yourself one question.
Has trump ever done one thing, even one small thing for anyone else in the world besides himself? The answer is simple, no, he has not. For trump, every single thing in the world is asked one question, is this good for trump or not. And the answer doesn’t have to make one iota of sense to you, only to trump. Narcissism is his disease and it’s his picture(or should be) in the DSM entry because he’s the classic example of the extreme narcissist, which means that every thing and person in his world is about him and is either good for or against him. His gold toilet isn’t about how wealthy he is, it’s about his worth, that his ass should only touch gold. Your’s doesn’t. His does.
Brachiator
@Kent:
And yet, you still had this after 1908:
Not used in US streets, but still essential to transport.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Another Scott:
Yes, the takeaway from that Wonkette piece is:
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Trump takes credit for low unemployment. More complicated than this, but the sitting president always gets blame or credit. He lowered taxes, even though he gave his plutocrat buddies a larger share.
His supporters believe that his tariffs are making China bend. Again, more complicated than the simple story, but Trump is also shoveling billions in subsidies to farmers.
Fucking over immigrants makes his base feel good. I saw a recent interview where some farmers complained that they could not get labor anymore, and one of them insisted that undocumented workers must be kept out of the country, even if it hurt farmers. Because this guy felt that Trump would look out for him in the end.
It’s a con. But with the best cons, you always give the suckers a little something.
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
Yeah, I thought there were three, need to watch the other two.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Miss Bianca:
If your brother doesn’t watch Fox News, my guess is he’s getting the right-wing propaganda from talk radio. The whole genre is infested with Limbaugh wannabes.
Geminid
@janesays: I think a lot of Bernie voters will vote for the Democratic nominee, even if it’s Bloomberg. The hard core won’t, and because they are so mouthy they get the most attention. A large portion of his delegates will be true believers and will be angry and may walk out at the convention. And, I am promised by commenters on a site I call Common Screams, there will be “massive forces” in the streets of Milwaukee (I’m shaking). But I think, that although a lot of his voters think differently than me, they will still see the necessity of beating Trump, and will come around.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I’m not on new meds and my reaction is very similar to yours. This country is young on the whole of it, and it’s been somewhat successful for a number of reasons which had to do with geography as much as anything else. We don’t have a lot of traditions actually, because we are rather young as these things go and because we are a lot of immigrants from other nations, many of whom are much older and have traditions of their own. The “heartland” is one of those things that is tradition and is abused by republicans for any number of reasons. One of which is that republicans do not seem to like change very much. They seem to want the country as it was 300 yrs ago, and want it to never change, ever again, but with the code words so that it sounds like it’s current.
scav
@Brachiator: Well, apparently Chicago’s last horse-drawn fire engine was retired on Feb 5, 1923, so transitions can be complicated and longer than expected.
link
Martin
@Kent: Yeah. I watched American Factory a week ago or so, and thought it was good. The Chinese attitude was very appropriately Chinese. Not necessarily compatible with how we agree we should do things here.
Part of what stuck with me was the attitude of the American workers. I don’t expect they should be as ‘I will die for the company’ as the Chinese were, but the workers when presented with the plant reopening seemed to show no enthusiasm for that. Yes, they were clearly thankful for the job, but they knew it was a shitty job going in, and they couldn’t seem to get past that. If the job really is that bad, why are we fighting so hard for it? Why don’t we just let the Chinese do it? There are really strong undertones of that here in CA with farmwork. It’s important, we support the immigrants who come here to do it, but its beneath us to do ourselves. We deserve better than that, even when we haven’t actually bothered to learn a trade or gone to college to deserve better.
I think the post-WWII era did some really long term damage, because it took a situation that was an absolute outlier and turned it in to a national expectation. As more or less the only nation left standing, the US economy soared above all others because it had no real competition. In that moment we fixed the new American ideal. It shifted from land of opportunity where if you hustle and work hard enough you’ll pay off to land where everyone could have a big house with a yard, two cars, steak every sunday and do it on a janitors paycheck.
And a lot of things conspired to make that real. And it marked the near-term decline of the cities in favor of the suburbs, who also justified their moves to live more of that heartland life (which is why Biden, despite not crossing the plains, still buys into part of that narrative – which is clear if you’ve ever spent any time in Delaware) while not having to go too far from the airport. And that triggered a massive shift of wealth out of cities to pay for all of that new infrastructure. The suburbs were literally paid for by urban minorities left behind by white flight. But to the whites, they homesteaded. That 12 mile drive out to the burbs was just like the Conestoga wagon to Oklahoma. They got their plot of land, and they were gonna nimby the fuck out of it.
So for a while, it held up. But more importantly, the suburban dream survived. That was part of Dubya’s platform as well to boost home ownership which ultimately collapsed in on itself. But that vision required the US to be impossibly dominant economically. But you had a whole generation who bought into this dream that you could hit a pipe with a wrench, earn $26/hr and live like a relative king. Unions preserved that as well as they could, but in the end it just wasn’t sustainable. At the very least you had to be an educated guy hitting a pipe with a wrench. More likely for $2/hr you could run a robot to hit the pipe with the wrench instead and you had to know how to program the robot to keep a job. You had another generation that thought they should have it even better than their parents, when what their parents had was unsustainable.
Black communities of course never bought into this shit, because they were never invited in to begin with. But white urban communities didn’t buy in either, which is probably why urban whites (like my family) are generally pretty liberal. I need to note that I’m writing this from what is arguably one of the most catalogue textbook suburbs in America, but it endures mostly because it moved from working class to $150K median salary. People here have money. Still nimby as fuck, though.
So yeah, the modern economy is bullshit to them. Someone promised them the American dream and now all they can get is $13/hr moving automotive glass from one pile to another pile, while a bunch of Chinese guys tries to train them how to make glass, because nobody here took the time to learn how. And they’re not exactly excited about that. I get it. And they’re not going to move back to the city, even if that’s where the jobs are because they’re pioneers. They own that land. They earned that lifestyle, and someone took it from them.
Martin
@Kent: Oakies came to California in wagons in the 30s. Shit was rough.
Mnemosyne
@Geminid:
I’m actually a little nervous about that because there are Black Bloc assholes in the Midwest — they made things much, much more difficult during the protests in Ferguson because they were doing shit like throwing bottles at the cops and then running away to leave the mostly-Black crowd to be beaten for it.
So, yeah, odds are high that those anarchist fucks will show up to make trouble and get media attention in Milwaukee.
Geminid
@Brachiator: one thing I keep in mind about the 20+ billions in payments the Trump administration has made to soybean and other farmers is that almost all are going not to farmers but to absentee owners of large holdings and investors. Doug Stefan on his America’s Family Farm show has reported on this and it is outrageous.
Ksmiami
@Jinchi: sorry- Bloomberg’s record is way more impressive than Sanders the self-interested egomaniac
Kent
The only saving grace is that most (not all but most) of the most extreme Bernie supporters live nowhere near a swing state. They live in Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, Berkeley, Boston, New York etc.
I expect there are a few around Madison. Fewer still in MI and PA as a percentage of the population. And I expect most of them will still hold their noses and vote Dem. But they are going to do one hell of a lot of shrieking first.
Ruckus
@Bex:
I agree that knowledge, of the head of the government of a neighboring country should be known to a presidential candidate, I wonder how many citizens would know if they guessed and got it wrong? I live within a couple hrs driving time of Mexico, and I don’t know. I’ve watched the last guy do commercials against trump and I don’t remember his name either and I follow the news reasonably well. Who is the leader of Panama? The canal is a rather important bit of infrastructure in this part of the world, who runs that? I know the prime minister of the UK and of Germany but not of France or Belgium. You?
Ksmiami
@Miss Bianca: nationalize Public schools, tax all religious institutions and penalize those that become political and make fast wifi available to all while regulating the Big tech/media platforms
Kent
@Martin: Really? I thought it was a lot more like this with whole extended families piling into ramshackle cars and trucks: https://www.travelok.com/article_page/dust-bowl-days-the-oklahoma-california-genealogy-connection
How do you even cross the southern plains and deserts with a horse in the 1930s when the entire infrastructure of horse services (feed, water, etc.) was gone by then? The original wagon roads followed water and springs and pastures so you could leap frog across the desolate zones. The modern highways like route 66 were just pushed straight through on the most direct routes with no regard for where you were going to water or feed your horse.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Growing up the elderly couple next door (lovely folks who became de facto grandparents to my siblings and me) came west from St Jo, Missouri to Washington state by a mule-drawn wagon, around the turn of the century. Folks did things by the resources they had, not wished they had. Plus, it must have been hard to move a household by rail.
Ruckus
@GBVA:
No, it really isn’t.
There are candidates and then there are “candidates.” In the opinion of many here BS and MB are not good candidates, for any number of reasons, some of them extremely legitimate reasons. They may be the last person standing and all of the democratic candidates are better than trump (but one) but to say that they are all equal and that discussing this is wrong is just ludicrous. This exactly what the process is about, otherwise we’d just have an election of everyone and the one with the most votes would win even if they got only 8% of the vote. And we don’t do it that way.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Do you think he can even spell organic chemistry and physics?
Martin
@Kent: Yeah, the ramshackle cars and trucks were more common, but there were definitely folks hauling their lives in a wagon. Possibly because the horse or ox was the most valuable thing they had left and nobody in the dust bowl had any use for one, so they couldn’t even sell it.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
He can by gawd shout it in monotone.
Bill Arnold
@GBVA:
I’d take you much more seriously if you even once said something genuinely negative[1] about f-in POTUS D.J. Trump. Until then you’re a possible pro-Republican operative.
[1] I scanned a crawl of the site.
Geminid
@Martin: In the 1870s a lot of Mormons, some from England, were dirt poor and walked across the plains and Rockies with two wheeled hand carts. The “Push Cart Mormons.”
J R in WV
@GBVA:
Geminid
In the latter half of the 19th century a lot of Mormons, including English immigrants, were dirt poor and walked across the plains and Rockies pushing two wheeled carts. The “Push Cart Mormons.”
Geminid
But I repeat myself. Call me, “Fatfinger.”
Jay
@Anya:
Occupy got arrested for exercising their First Amendment Rights. Convicted felons have a hard time in “freedom loving America” of even managing to make their daily bread, so a bunch have refocused their life efforts into survival.
Post violent, illegal attacks by the State, there was a loss of movement unity, over strategy, tactics and some in “leadership” positions, who were self promoting. This quickly lead to the end of Occupy as a movement.
Many of the Occupy people have moved on to “other things”, having learned the hard way that you can’t beat Wall Street ever.
A bunch of the former Occupy people crowdfund programs that then buy peoples mortgage debt at pennies on the dollar, ( it’s called junk debt and in America, there is tons of it, bought and sold every day). Most people who buy junk debt, simply harass and threaten the debtors until they cough up another payment. A $50 payment on a $30,000 debt you bought for $0.25 is a pretty good profit. The former Occupy people just burn the debt documents and retire it.
Other former Occupy people do the same thing with Student debt, medical debt, and Payday loans. Welcome to America.
Other Occupy people have moved on to other causes, the Unhoused, the Precariate, Indigenous Rights, anti-facism, Marginalized Peoples Rights, Close Rikers and other anti-For Profit Prison Programs, Never Again is Now, places where local and community changes, even small ones can make a difference with out the Owners of America sending out the tanks.
PST
@Kent:
There is an large literature that takes a somewhat different view, of which the best known is Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen. The thesis is that nationalism in the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century was a phenomenon of the big cities and an educated elite. Rural life labored on thinking (and speaking) in purely local terms. Only around the 1880s did most of the population of even the more advanced European nation come to think of themselves as part of a nation. It is helpful to remember that Germany wasn’t even united until the year of the Chicago fire.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Yes, really. You wanted to move everything a train was expensive. Roads were crap and gasoline was not available anywhere near like today. Most people didn’t even own a car. And my grandfather was a Packard factory technician. And yes there were cars and they were used in cities. Cannonball Baker made his cross country motorcycle ride in 1914 on almost all dirt roads and horse trails. A horse was a lot more reliable than vehicles of the time. And a 2500 mile trip didn’t take a lot longer by horse than by cars of the time. An acquaintance of mine did the same trip as Cannonball 100 yrs later in 2014 and wrote a book about it.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
The very first Model T was made in Sept 1908. It cost $850. Most people lived in houses that cost less. Other cars cost a lot more. Chevy started making cars to compete with the Model T in 1919.
@Brachiator:
Looks to me that all trump has given anyone is bull and shit, all in one pile.
emjayay
@Martin: This blog should have up and down votes. ^^^^^
emjayay
@Kent: THIS BLOG NEEDS A DECENT REPLY FUNCTION AND UP AND DOWN VOTES.
Having said that, ^^^^^. Thanks.
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
This times 1000. In my mind, the typical WWC voter is someone who doesn’t think the government should do anything to help anyone else in any way, shape, or form. But where they are concerned, Congress should pass laws to force multinational corporations to build factories in their shitty little hick-towns so that people who were lucky to get a high school diploma can make $90k a year doing work that could be done cheaper and more efficiently by robots.
Morzer
@emjayay: Why do you hate sideways votes?
low-tech cyclist
Nevada hasn’t been polled since January 11. Hope someone’s already mentioned that upthread.