Well, here it is:
I edited out all the whiny lies. (You’re welcome.) But this is progress of a sort — the only concession this repulsive crybaby is ever likely to make. For the next 65 days, this egomaniacal wretch will do everything in his power to foment division and delegitimize the incoming administration.
There’s no way Trump sticks around the White House on January 20th to greet his successor and attend the inauguration as honor compels real presidents to do, no matter how hard fought the race. He’ll probably demand that all the toadies boycott the inauguration too.
In a way, good riddance — who wants those puling babies around stinking up the event with their loaded diapers? But Trump is playing a dangerous game with the country, and for no other reason than malice and spite. Fuck that guy.
Now, I’m off to continue binge-watching the latest season of The Crown.
Open thread!
Baud
Hahaha. Perfect.
germy
germy
His followers had a party in Washington yesterday:
Nicole
That was MY morning plan, too (the last trailer I saw looked so good!), except the spousal unit bought a Playstation VR and made the mistake of telling the child unit about it late last night and the first thing child unit said upon awakening today was, “VR?” and so I fear today will be the two of them passing the headset back and forth together, all day. Sigh. IN MY DAY IT WAS A TRIANGLE SHAPED LINK JABBING WITH A STICK SWORD AND THAT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR US.
Have a lovely binge-watch, Betty! I’m envious.
cope
Now why did you go an do that? The whiny lies feed my schadenfreude needs.
I am in complete agreement that he flees the coop early, never to return. Unfortunately, he will flee in our general direction bringing his band of toadies, bootlickers, acolytes, minions, flunkies, flatterers and lickspittles with him, thus further fouling the Sunshine State.
Oh well, I guess that’s an acceptable price to pay.
MattF
David Frum writes that there is no Trumpism without Trump, and I tend to agree.
germy
@MattF:
Trump is one of the symptoms, not the disease.
St. Reagan opened his campaign talking about “State’s Rights” a short distance where some civil rights workers were murdered. He was a nice polite racist.
The “just the tip” never trumpers want a return to politeness.
John S.
@germy: Oliver is 100% right. And it does not bode well for the next 4 years of a Biden administration. I mean we all know how bad the media sucks, and that they would do this — but it’s actually happening.
Out of the blue my wife says to me yesterday “Would your company still sponsor you relocating to Canada?” I had made some preliminary plans in the event Trump won re-election.
We’re both pragmatists, so this came as somewhat of a shock. But not really, because after being together for 25 years, I know exactly what’s going through her head.
Nicole
I went to look at the full tweet, because I’m a glutton for punishment, and the marvelous people on Twitter have already worked their magic in many hilarious ways. My favorite is the one that selectively erased words so that what remains reads:
“He won………. the election…….. by a lot!”
Frank Wilhoit
@germy: Reagan’s target wasn’t n….rs. It was n….r-loving whites. Nothing is about what it says it is about or what it appears to be about.
Suzanne
@MattF: I might agree with you. But there’s a lot of downwardly mobile assholes like this guy (I love how the writer is just stealthily seething with contempt for this idiot), and someone will want to reactivate them toward their own ends.
Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Kristi Noem, Nikki Haley…. I don’t see any of them as the avatar for the loser white dude demographic. Who might it be?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MattF: But as Frum demonstrates, even without Trump, we would still have the minority rule the Rs have been constructing for decades.
dmsilev
@cope: I read the full tweet; the context was basically ‘He won because of vote rigging and fraud’, Along with the now standard Twitter warning about false statements.
But anyway, it is progress of sorts. He’s moved from ‘I’ll win once all the legal votes are counted’ to ‘Sigh, Biden cheated and there’s notice can do about it’. Still not great for the health of the country, but better.
germy
@Suzanne:
The dude with the eyepatch? I can’t remember his name.
germy
@dmsilev:
Unfortunately, he doesn’t care about the health of the country.
Suzanne
@germy: Crenshaw? You think?
I know Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley think they can do it. I am skeptical.
MattF
@dmsilev: Except that the Twitter warning says ‘disputed’ not ‘false’. It’s still weaseling.
Brachiator
@MattF:
Sadly, I don’t think this is true. The anger and resentment of the people who became his base existed long before Trump came along. He fanned the flames and gave these people permission to fully express their bigotry. Fox News pundits and the GOP leadership poured fuel on the fire.
I expect that McConnell to use this irrational nonsense to justify a new round of obstruction.
But more than this, having roused the beast, right wing leaders do not know how to calm it again. A good chunk of the people have decided that they do not want a democracy if it includes non-white people as equals in society.
And Trump will still be around, stirring up trouble.
germy
@Suzanne:
Crenshaw has that macho thing down that they seem to crave.
Cotton and Hawley, they seem more like they’d be faithful minions to someone like him.
But who knows? I gave up trying to predict what republicans like.
I know what they hate, though.
Elizabelle
That Trump tweet is kind of a big deal. And I see nothing about it on WaPost or FTF NY Times.
WaPost has this up at top:
Reality lies in wait for Biden’s bold campaign promises
A lack of Election Day coattails forces a reevaluation of priorities, shrinking the president-elect’s options.
Oh yeah. Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
debbie
Yeah, just image, bitch.
germy
Suzanne
@Brachiator: I think there’s an important thing to remember, and that is that Trump did seem to specifically activate a relatively small but statistically significant amount of people who never participated in political life before. Their grievances will not go away, of course. But I’m not sure they will all remain participatory if there is not someone speaking to them directly.
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
Sort of a variation of Murc’s Law
debbie
@germy:
I know you’re talking about Crenshaw, but doesn’t the leader of Proud Boys also wear an eyepatch he earned by shooting it out in basic training?
debbie
@Suzanne:
Someone will need to be monitoring Parler very closely, I think.
germy
@debbie: I thought it was from eating oatmeal with a fork.
mrmoshpotato
Can’t really do that when trying to make a mad dash out of the country. ?
germy
@debbie:
Crenshaw seems to know how to play the media, which is an important skill for people like Trump.
He got the big apology from SNL. He was even invited to sit next to Davidson for it.
He presents himself as a logical, common-sense man, willing to cooperate with anyone sensible across the aisle. Which is, of course, BS.
SFAW
@germy:
Is his name Ruprecht?
kmeyerthelurker
Was kind of hoping he would keep arguing the election results, because now his focus can switch to doing as much damage and theft as possible before leaving.
germy
@Elizabelle:
And their other headline:
Harris’s allies wonder anxiously: Will she have real clout?
Biden/Harris haven’t even been sworn in yet, and WaPo is trying to stir shit. I assume NYT is doing the same thing.
mrmoshpotato
@cope:
You forgot the ass-suckers.
Punchy
@mrmoshpotato:
Mad dash out? Hell no. He’s going to hold rallies at least once a month for at least the next 2 years. He’s going to act as a shadow president via twitter and the idiot media.
germy
@SFAW: I think Ruprecht put a cork in it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I bet you he did it because his followers rioted in DC last night and if that keeps up that kills Trump’s narrative that REAL America was stabbed in the back by ruthless Libertard thugs that only Trump can stop.
Nicole
The other thing to remember, going forward and worrying about who follows Trump, is that while Trump’s history of being a game show host is often used as an insult, it’s actually an advantage for him, because he knows how to give good TV. The only other Republican leader I can remember to inspire anything approaching that kind of obsessive fandom was Reagan, who was… an actor. It’s a super valuable skill set for gaining followers, even as it offers no advantages to doing actual governing work, which is why we mock them for having been a game show host, or an actor. That said, I don’t think any of the current racists lobbying to step into Trump’s limelight have any sort of background in TV. They don’t understand how to play to a camera or an audience like Trump does.
I’ve often thought that acting workshops should be part of training for politicians because acting is, at its core, making everything you say sound honest and true and, even if you’ve said it 1000 times already, also sounding as though it’s the first time you’ve ever said it.
Sab
@Suzanne: I think you are right. Their grievances aren’t fixed. But now they have a pandemic and high unemployment. Things are not better.
The Sturgis crowds and the Trumpsters around me are not economically challenged or nervous. They are upper middle class privileged white guys ( and their wives) who are not very informed and miss their vacations. Lots of them weren’t engaged enough before to vote. “I don’t want to get called for jury duty” so I won’t register to vote( idiot, in my state they use your driver’s license.)
mrmoshpotato
@MattF: Oh these adorable assholes…
Don’t You Dare Call It ‘Trumpism’ (from the pre-2016 election days)
JMG
It is an axiom of elite national political reporting that a Democratic administration becomes an obvious failure in the period between Election Day and the inauguration. Happened to Clinton, happened to Obama, now happening to Biden. It doesn’t help that there are anonymous “important Democratic insiders” who are always, always willing to express their fears/complaints in any such story.
SFAW
@germy:
Well, I think it was actually Jamieson who put the cork on. After the unfortunate incident. But you get my drift.
cope
@mrmoshpotato: I believe the ass-suckers will be staying behind to change the keys on all the computer keyboards, Saran Wrap the toilets, put honey on all the doorknobs and spread Limburger cheese on the engine block of the presidential limos.
Aleta
I started watching Beforeigners yesterday. Thanks for the tip Betty.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Trump did not activate these people. He was their messiah, the answer to their prayers.
Someone made the point that this new round of unhinged bigotry arose again when Sarah Palin entered the national spotlight. I live in Southern California and I remember when she came here to speak. A diverse crowd came out to hear her, but she immediately began talking to white people and about white grievance.
Even after McCain and Palin were defeated, the anger and sour sense of dissatisfaction continued to fester. When Trump started testing the presidential waters and talking about immigration, many of these people immediately took notice and we’re with him all the way.
They will continue to look for an avatar.
The Fox News goons will continue to keep them riled up. And the GOP leadership has demonstrated that they are all about bad faith and duplicity, and have every intention of continuing their hate mongering.
SFAW
@cope:
You seem to have put some thought into this. I’m not sure if I should be impressed, or scared. Probably a bit of both.
raven
@Nicole:
Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes
artem1s
@Suzanne:
It will be another celebrity. My money is on a sportsball star or franchise owner. Regular GOP legislators don’t have straight ties to mob money or media exposure that gives them instant name recognition with this kind of base. Trump was the perfect combination between the two. The Bush Crime Family had national security secret and international banking power to get them into office. And they still had to rely on a celebrity to get them into the WH. Douglas Adams was Nostadomos, or more accurately Cassandra. It’s all Zaphod Beeblebrox for the GOP from here on out.
Brachiator
@Sab:
It’s not that they weren’t engaged enough to vote. They despised the Democrats and Republicans in office. No one promised to give them what they wanted until Trump came along.
debbie
@kmeyerthelurker:
Imagine, a president with a scorched earth policy…against his own country.
It appears the church next door is open again for the first time since this all started. The congregation is largely elderly, plus the church has a sizable day care center. I’m worried this will not end well.
oldgold
The tyrannical ignoramus is trying to walk the “ he won” tweet back.
debbie
@Punchy:
Not so often. He’ll be having to pay all the expenses. His base does not have bottomless pockets.
cope
@SFAW: I was a high school teacher for 28 years. My mind is perpetually primed to anticipate teenage hijinks. There might also be some residual Three Stooges horseplay bouncing around in my quarantined brain.
germy
“Macho macho man
He’s a macho macho man…”
Ohio Mom
I am thinking that the entire Inauguration will be scaled down tremendously because of Covid. The swearing in could even be immediate family only, in which case Trump couldn’t refuse an invitation he wasn’t given.
Biden will model appropriate behaviors: no balls because of the pandemic, maybe the parade could still happen because it’s outside. With souvenir masks distributed.
Whatever the Biden team decides to do, it will be very well-thought out. It will be Covid-safe and it will put Trump in his place (which is nowhere).
debbie
@Sab:
Did you see the Twitter thread in the COVID post from the South Dakota nurse (Jodi Doering). Patients scream bloody murder at the healthcare workers about not believing COVID is a thing and don’t shut up until they’re intubated. You simply cannot fight that kind of stupid.
Nicole
@raven: You know, I’ve never seen that film. I should.
I shared what I was writing with my husband and kid, and the kid was surprised to hear Reagan had been an actor (kid is 10). And then my husband and I said, “Well… less an actor, more a movie star…” and of course now all I can hear in my head is Peter O’Toole from My Favorite Year.
Brachiator
@JMG:
These dopes never learn. Trump treated them like crap and sometimes put their lives in danger and they are returning to form as if nothing happened.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
Donations that usually go to the celebrations could be instead used to reduce the country’s debt. That would shut up the GOP.
Steeplejack
I went to Trump’s Twitter feed to check the context, and I was struck by the sheer volume of unadulterated bullshit there: Trump’s all-caps ranting tweets, plus numerous retweets of Gregg Jarrett, Greg Gutfield, Jesse Watters, Jeanine Pirro, Lin Wood, Mark R. Levin, Dan Scavino, Laura Ingraham, etc., etc. Full-spectrum nuttiness. Even if Trump doesn’t really believe all this stuff, it’s got to affect his mind just being exposed to it all the time. And add in what he’s hearing “live” from his toadies and minions. Ugh.
I have no idea what my point is. Just ugh.
ETA: Here’s Trump’s full Tweet for context:
charluckles
@germy:
“see? this is what is possible when we, the white race, get together and unite.”
He has a point. POC doing the same thing would have elicited tear gas and beatings from the police.
germy
I live near a few of those. They’re comfortable financially. One guy inherited a dealership. He leaves for work every morning around 10, and he’s home by 4pm. Extremely outgoing and friendly to everyone who walks by, but shuts down and withdraws if he sees a person of color. If it’s a White person, he’ll talk and joke around; initiate conversations with strangers.
Once, he was walking his girlfriend’s dog (he’s divorced) and a Black woman who lives a few doors down happened to be walking by. He kept his head down and practically ran into his house, dragging the dog by the leash. And yet, if a White jogger passes by, he’ll actually talk and compel the jogger to stop and chat.
When he divorced, he and his wife sold a million dollar house and split the proceeds. He likes to boast.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ohio Mom: I agree. The House was planning to host new members for breakfast (I think) indoors, tables spread out. But publicity forced them to call it off. I think the Biden team has to keep demonstrating good behavior.
The holidays are going to stoke the pandemic fire. By Inauguration Day, the numbers will be beyond what we can contemplate now.
debbie
@Steeplejack:
He knows it isn’t true. His goal is to gin up anger to his benefit and to keep it at as high a level as possible. First, because he’s a vindictive fuck, and second, because he sees chaos as his best chance for a comeback.
Josie
@Steeplejack:
I had the same experience. I had never looked at his twitter feed before and was gobsmacked by the alternate universe there. I can see how an uninformed person could be swayed if that was all that they looked at. Scary stuff.
cmorenc
@Punchy:
Especially because being shadow president only requires putting on a show and not putting in any of the actual work of a real president.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack: Oh. So that’s what all this crap about “Dominion” was.
And of course it’s a “Radical Left” company. LOL.
Fuck this whiner. He is on his way out, and may the State of New York have serious and rapid plans for him.
p.a.
Unknown perpetrator vandalizes US Constitution with: * BACKSIES!*** written with a Sharpie.
Just Chuck
Hadn’t realized at first the tweet was edited, and thought for a moment T had a glimmer of sanity. Whatever, he may try to whip up insurrection, but by Jan 20, most of his cultists will tire of tiki-torchlight rallies in the cold, to say nothing of having to keep huffing his Loser Stink, and the circular firing squads will be unloading in earnest.
John S.
@cmorenc: So basically, “Shadow President” and “President” are the same thing for Trump.
oldgold
Meet the Press invited every Republican Senator to appear on today’s program. Not a single one accepted.
Four years of this extraordinary cowardice and these spineless Mountebanks have not paid any political price for it.
germy
@Elizabelle:
Not just New York:
debbie
Trump has since tweeted he’s conceded nothing. So, same-y same.
Kristine
@debbie: That was some thread. ?
Nicole
@germy:
The guy in that NYTimes article (about the Trump voter watching the election slip away) is, too. It devotes time to pointing out how “blue collar” he is, but halfway through the article, mentions that he bought a $1 million scratch-off ticket in 2018 and bought real estate with the winnings that he is confident will let him retire at 40.
Punchy
@debbie: He never pays, so he’ll get through at least a dozen arenas before event managers wise up and demand cash up-front. Even then, he’ll be paying in rubles and bitcoins….
Geoduck
@germy: Crenshaw’s already pissed off the QAnon crowd by tweeting that they need to shift in the general direction of reality.
Steeplejack
@Josie:
I look at Trump’s feed occasionally, and previously it used to have at least somewhat of a mix of “real” stuff. “Great meeting with the president of Freedonia today!,” etc. Now it’s just wall-to-wall “stolen election” bullshit.
Just Chuck
If he keeps ranting about Dominion, they should send the Jem Hadar after him.
debbie
@Punchy:
If they haven’t wised up, what with all the talk about his rallies not paying vendors, buses not showing up, etc., then they deserve everything they don’t get.
debbie
@Just Chuck:
I can think of a few DS9 episodes I’d like to see him Photoshopped into!
Tim C.
@Just Chuck: As long as they hand out the Tetracell White, I’m cool with that.
japa21
@cmorenc:
In other words, just like the last 4 years.
Nicole
@Elizabelle:
For sure. The continual baiting of Cuomo ain’t gonna help him, either, as Cuomo and AG James have a good working relatonship.
Shantanu Saha
Thank you for that. But did you have to leave his fucking face in there?
Woodrow/asim
The article’s title isn’t the best. Frum actually gives the right historical context for how we got to Trump — the decades of voter manipulation and anti-Democratic efforts. Then he closes with what I must say is some brutal honesty:
And he puts all that on the current GOP, no mealy-mouthed “but the Democrats” BS. Mind you, he’s still thinking there’s a “real” Conservative Party mired somewhere in there, yet at least he’s not trying to say that’s the “real” Grand Old Party.
This is a damned good article, and actually in full aligns more with what you’re saying in your post today, than the headline implies.
germy
@Geoduck:
I didn’t know that. I thought they liked him.
He’s finished!
Shantanu Saha
Also, infecting reasonable people with COVID-19
Suzanne
@Nicole: I love the part about how the dude defines himself as “street smart, not book smart”. Ten gets you twenty that he squanders that money somehow before he hits forty.
The other line about how “he talks the way Americans talk” just cracked me up. Dude, plenty of people talk like they went to school…. because they did, or because they read books written by those who did.
They’re so insecure. Like, I legitimately do not GAF if people like that dude want to live their lives in a way different from mine. It is no skin off my nose. And yet, that dude clearly longs for approval and wants to dominate his brother and feels bad that his brother is succeeding. It’s so weird. Like… stop. Stop worrying about other people.
NotMax
@Nicole
Your initial film assignment, should you choose to accept it.
A Face in the Crowd – Cathode ray demagoguery
Ace in the Hole – The MSM as a mechanism of exploitation
And for comedic relief, It Should Happen To You – the foibles of hollow celebrity
.
;)
germy
@Steeplejack:
Hail, hail Freedonia.
piratedan
i fully expect all of the Pre-45 societal norms to now be back in effect, as if out national flirtation with Fascism was just something that will not be brought up at the dinner table, sparing certain family members from any undue embarrassment, never mind that they nearly burned the house down, trashed the car and sold off the most profitable acres of the family farm in addition to making the family name a laughingstock throughout the county.
I fully expect the false equivalency to begin anew where the first perceived Hatch violation will bring down the “both sides” brigade to the forefront and that reporters who were repeatedly mocked and ignored and their very profession threatened will now take umbrage at any perceived sleight given to members of OANN in their pursuit of propaganda.
As we speak of lessons learned amongst our punditry, I certainly won’t expect anything much in the way of self-examination from the 4th estate as that would imply that they need to do so….
Ella in New Mexico
I don’t see him staying much beyond November, TBH. All the noise right now is to cover up the scramble inside the White House being perpetuated by Jared and Stephen and every other motherfucker in there to set-up the dominoes in which Trump pardons EVERYBODY-including Pence-for all crimes past and present, then resigns and Pence, performing his most seriously pious pastor act, returns the favor.
ArchTeryx
Awww, Betty, none of your usual graffiti of his ugly mug on the tweet? I always thought that was hilarious. Maybe it’s juvenile of me but you know what? So was that screaming toddler who called himself a man.
NotMax
@oldgold
re: the tweet.
“No, Trelane.”
Elizabelle
@germy: Yea Scotland! Take investigating, and if proven, prosecuting Trump international.
Watch up, The Hague. You better have some plans for Trump and his aiders and abetters too. They have got a massive and unnecessary body count. That should interest you. There is precedent.
Citizen Alan
@NotMax: At least Trelane had some degree of good taste.
Suzanne
@Ella in New Mexico: Agreed. He’ll be headed to Maralago for the holiday and then won’t come back. And we will have zero leadership during the worst part of the pandemic.
Aleta
The same day as his fake concession, I see that he has a website up. I used to, if I wanted to read a tweet, go to the site that archived them all so he didn’t get the view count. I thought the archive was provided by people unconnected to him. Today that site says the archive is now available at his new web site, and will soon be redirected there. I wonder if they bought the archive site or did they always own it.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Or more leadership, depending on how you look at it.
danielx
@cope:
Don’t forget mixing epoxy with rubbing alcohol to inject into all the locks.
JPL
@Ella in New Mexico: We already know how Melania feels about Christmas decorations, so they both might not return from Mar-a-Lago after Thanksgiving.
Baud
@JPL:
I very much doubt the two of them will be staying at the same place for much longer.
Aleta
@Steeplejack: And retweets of what look like colorized-doctoring of an aerial photo of the crowd yesterday. Did they use color to fill the spaces between people so the crowd looks tightly packed, denser?
Citizen Alan
@germy: He told the crazy Q-woman who got elected to Congress and has already started showing her ass to (in some many words) stop acting stupid. She responded exactly how you’d expected a Q-moron to act and all the other Q-morons took her side.
Suzanne
@Baud: I doubt that they’re staying at the same place now.
God, Melania has been a total zero. Nothing. Like a black hole where a person usually would be.
Being the First Lady is, like, the best job in the world. Nice clothes, fun tasks, agenda of whatever you want, lots of attention. And yet she managed to completely fuck it up.
Aleta
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They managed to produce some eerie (chilling) scenes, using the lighting at the Washington monument. They scaled the fence to get right up against its base but didn’t get sprayed or arrested or shot or anything. No one in unmarked SUV’s picked them up.
eta I wouldn’t be surprised if someone with a mind like Bannon wanted to use not just the symbol but the lighting and background of the Wash Monument for photo staging.
SFAW
@Just Chuck:
Interesting, since they both need The White to function. [Well, I guess technically the JH can function without it, but they’d rather not.]
debbie
@Aleta:
Some real tough guys:
germy
@Aleta:
Just Chuck
@debbie: “Cheerios!” “Frosted Flakes!” “Cocoa Puffs!” … what?
I think we should just start chanting that at them.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
She’s just a better-looking, slightly-smarter, in-better-shape version of him.
germy
@Citizen Alan:
He’s telling people to stop acting stupid?
He has no future in the republican party.
Just Chuck
@Suzanne: Just occurred to me, we won’t have a First Lady, but we will have a Second Man.
White & Gold Purgatorian
@Suzanne: One could argue that zero leadership is a step up from actively bad leadership, like encouraging massless gatherings and promoting herd immunity nonsense.
Suzanne
@Just Chuck: Dr. Jill will be First Lady. Doug’s title is Second Gentleman.
sdhays
LOL. “Possibile” – Try “Gratuitous”.
What makes we suspect Dump may not slink away before January 20th is that that would allow things to no longer be about him. Shitting all over the Biden’s inauguration would be his last chance to really control the spotlight.
Ohio Mom
Suzanne @105:
It’s been widely rumored for years that Melania and Barron live with her parents in a DC suburb. Melania is in and out; Barron is being raised by his grandparents.
This explains why we see so little of Barron. It probably affords him the stability and familial attention he wouldn’t get living with his father in the White House, so it is a plus for him.
Since they live near his school, I think it is likely he stays there until his graduation. Melania can continue to come and go as she pleases, and Trump will continue to ignore him.
I assume this arrangement isn’t reported on because minor First Children are supposed to be given a certain level of privacy.
I find it amusing that involving grandparents in the care of their children may be the only thing the Trump and Obama presidential families have in common.
The Golux
@John S.:
After 51 years with my high school sweetheart/wife, many is the time I have no idea whatsoever.
jimmiraybob
I’ve been thinking that he’ll take the “righteous leader in exile” route that toppled authoritarians seem to prefer: retreat to the insurgency headquarters, perhaps Mar-a-Lago (what? it’ll be a luxury insurgency), and do exactly what you said, twitter-rage as the leader of the rightful, god-anointed government in exile.
Of course insurgencies aren’t cheap and the sucking sound that we will hear for the next 4-years is the giant grift vacuum (the Paula White Ministries model) removing sweet, sweet mammon from the faithful.
scav
This dance of the seven stages of refusal is really working at keeping him hogging the news cycle. He might actually not mind that, especially as it requires still less effort on his part.
germy
@Suzanne:
I read some wingnut complaining that Doug will have a job in the new administration.
Proof of corruption, is the claim.
I don’t know if it’s true.
Luciamia
No acceptance level yet. Still a nauseating gruel of Denial, Anger and Bargaining.
Eunicecycle
@jimmiraybob: Twitter has already said he won’t be afforded the leniency he is given now once he is no longer POTUS. I hope they stick to it.
Frankensteinbeck
This was a gaffe, not a concession. Trump knows he lost, which is why it has been all golf the last few days. He has no reason to President anymore. He did not mean to admit he knows he lost, it just came out in the framing of a rant. He does not actually concede. But I mean, it is nice to hear from the lion’s asshole that he knows he lost.
Also, I don’t see more rallies happening, at least not ongoing. You can get away with not paying when you’re president, and you can get someone else to pay what is paid. Trump will not fund the rallies on his own dime. He doesn’t have enough dimes.
Ella in New Mexico
Well, she certainly lived up to her “Be Best” campaign: Being the most soulless, vapid, narcissistic materialistic twat of a First Lady ever in American history.
Shakti
@Suzanne: How is this guy downwardly mobile? He won a million dollars in the lottery ($650,000 lump sum.)
I’m noticing a lot of…logical holes lately. Not only coming from the mouths of Trumpers but in the reportage of Trumpers.
Example:
But later:
Maybe it’s too much editorializing to point it out in an article, but it’s like a brain black hole exists when this article/subject of the article talks about “anyone.” Like if you know someone ID’ed as a Democrat, you could pretty much guess with a near certainty who they supported in the general election.
I feel like this should be pointed out and not left for the reader to infer.
trollhattan
@debbie:
“One of us, one of us.”
Freaks, to be sure.
debbie
@Ella in New Mexico:
Who could have thought there would be a First Lady Campaign worse than Just Say No???
trollhattan
@Ella in New Mexico:
“I vant to end internet bullyink. Specifically, bullyink of me.”
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: So, Trump left off the air quotes. In fact, he’s doing exactly what would be expected. And the R politicians who are lapping up his precious bodily fluids are doing exactly what would be expected.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ella in New Mexico: I have to admit I’m increasingly annoyed by the whole First Lady/Second Gentleman stuff. I think it’s a hold over from the days when the wife (until now always) was not expected to have a career of her own. The spouses weren’t elected. IMHO, they’re entitled to have a life of their own.
WaterGirl
@germy: And the cops laughed it off. Awesome.
West of the Rockies
@Nicole:
I checked in on his feed and found only blathering idiocy about cheating and fraud and how he will still pull a not-gay unicorn out of his butt and win this thing.
Nothing to me looked like progress.
Suzanne
@Shakti: I have no doubt that the dude will squander the money he won. Not to mention, lottery winnings are the very definition of “money you didn’t earn”, so I don’t consider having it to be any sign of hard work or value added to society.
This is also how I feel about Trump fucking up his inheritance. Downwardly mobile.
Frankensteinbeck
There is something I have seen no one mention in all this coverage of Trump and his followers’ reactions: There are three major events in the president-elect process, and we have only passed one of them. First is when the vote numbers become so clear that the media announces a winner. We’ve had that. The second is when the electoral college votes. Right now, Biden is not actually president-elect. It’s inevitable that he will be, but it isn’t official. It becomes official when the electoral college votes. The third, of course, is when Biden actually takes office on Jan 20th. All three events were emotional moments in 2016 for liberals. We still have two more, and the most important two, in terms of Republicans accepting the results of this election. It has been one week (and one day) since the media made their call. I know it feels like a year, but the emotional processing of defeat process has barely started on the Republican side. One week! I’m impressed Trump knows he’s lost.
Ohio Mom
germy@121:
Emhoff is leaving his high-powered law job (he has been on a leave of absence during the campaign) because of potentially awkward situations as Second Gentleman — for one, his clients probably would not appreciate the extra publicity brought by being represented by him. He’d be a drag on the law firm.
And his “work in the new administration” will undoubtably be a typical spousal anodyne good-will project, something along the lines of childhood well-being, supporting military families, literacy, tree-planting, etc. He’s not going to be practicing law from the Naval Observatory.
Yet another example of how gullible right-wing news consumers are.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Scott Baio, this is your moment!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
Agreed. I wonder if the betting markets– whatever teh hell those are: Ladbroke’s? Vegas? The back room of a pork butcher in a middle class north Jersey suburb?– have odds on whether he’ll see in the inside of the White House after Thanksgiving vs after Xmas.
I’ve got Jonathan Capeheart on in the background and he’s asking Adam Schiff about cabinet appointments and the Senate seat. This summer I hated all the cutesy, smirking “have you talked to Vice President Biden about being his running mate?” shit, Lawrence O’Donnell was especially cloying. Now I’m gonna hate “Is it true your being vetted for….”
MattF
@Ohio Mom: Emhoff has been willing to play second fiddle to his wife, which I suspect drives the MAGAts nuts. I suggest redesigning the Rose Garden as a good Emhoff project.
hueyplong
Reactions:
1. Agree that “he won” was a gaffe and not a concession, though it’s nice to have the “he won” in hand for trolling/humiliaton purposes. We’ll collect a few more before it’s over.
2. Do not agree that Reagan was only aiming at liberal whites. Pretty sure they weren’t the young bucks supposedly buying cars and T-bone steaks with welfare checks. And I’m not on board for thinking that Philadelphia MS triggered white liberals more than POCs. Reagan’s crowd was capable of targeting more than one demographic for demonization.
3. The incels will keep doing protests until they get themselves a Horst Wessel martyr. Then FoxNews will play it up to show itself to be a worthy arbiter of which aggressively assholey GOPer male among Crenshaw, Cotton, Cruz, Rubio and Graham can be designated the Internet Troll GOP Leader In Opposition. You can pretty much write off the last three just seeing their names, can’t you? [Left Pompeo off the list because, well, he’s Pompeo. Weasely enabler but no leader.]
4. Go Scotland. Make us proud.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
That’s a very good article, although the title is a slight misnomer. It has a lot of good information about how the Republicans are trying to structure minority rule in a way very similar to that of the racist Southern Democrats before the civil rights era.
germy
Indeed.
Suzanne
@MattF: Ali Wong had a great comment on this in one of her comedy specials. “You know what kind of man doesn’t like if his wife earns more money? A man who doesn’t like FREE MONEY”.
zhena gogolia
@Frankensteinbeck:
I keep reminding myself that Bush-Gore dragged on for many days.
Ohio Mom
MattF @139: Yes, someone has to be assigned the Rose Garden!
Not right away, because Covid and the economy have to come first. It would be bad PR to do the Garden this coming spring, it would look frivolous. We can hope for Spring 2022.
It will be interesting to see what the of theme Emhoff’s advocacy project will be.
SFAW
@Shakti:
Listening to NPR yesterday (I think it was “This American Life,’ but not sure), they talked to a Trumpette moron (or should it be “moron Trumpette”?) Who said it was absolutely impossible (or similar words) that President Biden got more votes than the Traitor-in-Chief. Not “I don’t believe it” — it was impossible.
That moron also talked about the “fraud” where Biden was given 132,000 votes in some MI county, to Zero for Shitgibbon, which was proved to be false. [It was a typo that was corrected within 30 minutes, and the tweet the moronette saw had apparently been tampered to make it appear that Biden had those votes added, instead of subtracted once the error was uncovered.] After being told the REAL story, she still maintained that the (Republican) county elections person was wrong in her story, and that it was actually due to Dominion software or some such.
These people are too fucking stupid to be allowed in civilization.
germy
@WaterGirl:
tweet deleted.
Shakti
@Suzanne:
It takes a special dunce to fuck up being a landlord, but I’m sure he can do it, just like his hero and idol, DJT!
SFAW
@Shakti:
So what’s the “Cletus”-equivalent descriptor for Massholes?
Suzanne
@SFAW: It’s “impossible” because these people literally never leave their social milieu, not even via media. I mean, I have cut many Trump supporters out of my life, and goodness it has been AWESOME, but I am still aware they exist.
The status anxiety is so fucking palpable.
Suzanne
@Shakti: I have no doubt that he will become over leveraged at some point.
evodevo
@Sab: Yes. That jury-duty thingy I have heard from countless MAGAt types, both low and high income…sovereign-citizen lite so to speak…
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I have no problem with him working on his superspreader events. No such thing as too many.
schrodingers_cat
The next candidate for R president will be a RWNJ TV personality like Tucker Carlson. We will have Ro Khanna and BS from Vt telling us how he is more left than Biden when the 2024 season is here.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
The Purity Left have the same problem. They knew for a fact that Hillary and Biden were uninspiring, because they and their friends weren’t inspired. They know for a fact that a ‘progressive policy’ platform would be a huge winner and Democrats are screwing up by not front-paging it, because it’s what works for them.
John S.
@germy: Of the many, many priorities for the incoming administration one of the first and foremost is shutting this rightwing bullshit down.
AWOL
@Nicole: Excellent point. People forget that Jesse Helms began his political career by first purchasing a low-rent radio station and transforming it into a conservative/religious station. It’s main star was Jesse Helms.
debbie
@SFAW:
I heard that broadcast. She was topped by some female clown in Syracuse on NPR’s Morning Edition Sunday. They aren’t going away anytime soon. that’s for sure.
germy
@John S.:
I don’t see how anyone can do that
debbie
@germy:
What does it say about this country when a person’s first reaction is a death threat? This didn’t start with Trump, and I think it’s a bigger problem than Trumpism.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Fuck their feelings!
Seriously, I’m not interested in the GOP or their voters at this point. We won, and nothing Trump or anyone else can do can “delegitimize” that, and we should stop pretending they have that power. Be aware of random acts of terrorism, and tell the media to stop printing their bullshit, but otherwise they are not our responsibility.
MomSense
@mrmoshpotato:
Thank you.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
A valid viewpoint and probably more wise than any of ours.
John S.
@SFAW: My best friend’s brother was a Masshole for a while and came away with a special song from a place called Lynn:
So perhaps that qualifies?
debbie
@Frankensteinbeck:
A big problem in our country is more people care about their personal interests than in the common good. The founders in the 18th century had a better grasp of shared goals than these so-called patriots do.
John S.
@germy: Why not? The FBI has had many of these groups on domestic terrorism watch lists for years. It’s only under the Trump administration that they do fuck all about it.
Josie
@hueyplong:
My guess is that Crenshaw will lead the pack. He is my representative in congress and is a pretty good politician. He projects masculinity but with a dose of reality and logic. He might need to run for senator first, since it is hard to run for president as a mere representative. I wonder if he might be tempted to primary Cruz in the next go round.
SFAW
@Baud:
Can we at least go in for some “crushing them and hearing the lamentation of their women”?
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: They have a lot in common with the red hats including a delusional approach to politics which denies reality.
I read a tweet liked and retweeted by many, that Ds should just lie like the Rs and enact policies that the Roses want (m4A, green new deal etc), just call them centrist. They think that sloganeering trumps everything but won’t accept that “Defund the police” was an anchor that sunk many D senators in purple and red states.
SFAW
@John S.:
Lynn is/was well known for that.
A friend ran a sheet metal shop in Lynn. The block was bookended by two bars, and we used to joke about the drunks getting kicked out of one and strolling down the block to the other. In both directions.
But calling someone a “Lynn” doesn’t carry quite the same impact (for me, at least) as “Cletus.”
Chyron HR
@Ohio Mom:
Well, I hope Baron Prince enjoys his life in Georgetown before we ship him and his “real” family back to Slobvania or whatever shithole they illegally immigrated from.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: This times 100.
Citizen Alan
@debbie: I’m honestly surprised there was no spanking. Perhaps that comes later. Also, I would dearly love to ask any of these cretins: What specific role did you or any of your ancestors play in the “creation of Western Civilization”?
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
They are actively angry about the common good, because the common good includes the Other and they are fucking livid that society has forced them more and more to treat the Other as humans deserving of respect. It has turned them against the entire concept of a common good.
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh yes, this is absolutely true. It’s a common fallacy: everyone thinks that most people think the way that they and their social cohort thinks.
Sure Lurkalot
@MattF: Just a suggestion…listen to this week’s Professional Left podcast…where we learn there is no such thing as Trumpism. It is the Republican Party.
trollhattan
Lovely people on both sides. From yesterday’s whatever that was in DC.
Sad that we’ve lost our WWII vets who fought against the OG nazis in Europe. They would not stand by and let these asshats resurrect nazism as some kind of good thing.
scav
Jim, Foolish Literalist
would it be ungracious to say that this guy’s twitter game is stronger than his songwriting?
Does “I wear my sunglasses at night” mean anything to the under-fifties?
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat:
Sen. Mark Warner (VA, not a lefty) had some comments recently:
I suspect that 95% of us agree with that. Messaging matters, and it’s important in election campaigns, but actually doing the work is more important. The slogan loses its power once the actions are taken.
Drawing sensible districts will help Spanberger and others more than trying to make people not say “defund” or “socialism”, also too…
Cheers,
Scott.
NotoriousJRT
@MattF: I do not, and David Frum needs that to be true for his personal exoneration.
dnfree
@Citizen Alan: well, my Greek son-in-law would tell you about his ancestors. Did you see “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”?
(edited to add that he’s not a cretin or a Trump supporter, but he has relatives who are.)
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: I too support police reform. Defunding the police slogan was political poison. Drawing sensible congressional districts will help. But the leftwing branding did hurt us in senate races too.
They are neither the silent majority nor are they the base of the Democratic party like they proudly like to proclaim.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Don’t mean nothing.
Yarrow
@Josie: That’s four years away, which is a long time in politics. He might decide to challenge Dan Patrick for Lt. Gov.
Baud
@Another Scott:
One thing we can hopefully all agree on is that whoever leaked the Spanberger audio is a rat fink bastard who should be hung upside down by his toenails.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Another Scott: It’s not messaging, it’s Marketing Matters in America, AKA The Revenge of the No True Scotsman.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Allegedly that photo was from two months ago, not yesterday.
Of course, whether September or yesterday, they still love them some Nazis.
WaterGirl
@germy: This is me, banging my head against the back of my (thankfully) padded chair. Now smacking my forehead with my hand.
This is me working very hard not to shout a phrase whose initials are JFC, because I grew up catholic and I can’t seem to allow myself to say them, but if I could, I would be shouting that over and over.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I haven’t seen that much of Crenshaw– I gather between the military and running for office he ran some kind of website where white supremacists were quite comfortable?– but he does have less of a “crawlspace full of squirrel skeletons and Barbie doll heads” vibe than Tom Cotton, and less of a “TV preacher/lawyer who advertises on daytime TV” vibe than Josh Hawley.
FTR: I think Cotton flames out early, Hawley has more staying power in a GOP primary
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Nor are they the enemy.
trollhattan
Happy birthday to Wayne Thiebaud, who turns 100 today! Maybe the best-known Sacramentan and a treasured educator who launched many art careers, teaching at City College.
patrick II
You might think he would have a moment to take note of the pandemic that is ravaging the country he is the president of. But he is locked in to his lies by his vanity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@patrick II: twitter says he’s at his golf course
Gravenstone
@germy: My IQ went down after clicking on that link. Fuck you very much!
debbie
@Baud:
His? ?
Kay
Christ. This is the top tier on the Right. She’s a raving, lying lunatic. I suppose we should be thankful they didn’t give her a lifetime seat on a federal court, although of course they could do that in the future.
It’s a quality collapse. No one would have hired this nutjob 10 years ago and now she’s a standard bearer on the Right. Still hurtling to the bottom with no end in sight. Low quality hires as far as the eye can see.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Crenshaw was an “administrator of a Facebook group“, whatever the hell that means, that spread a lot of Islamaphobe propaganda. Pamela Geller (remember her?) and Tom Tancredo (a Louie Goehmert, Steve King type, ex-MoC) were administrators on the same group.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Love his paintings!
trollhattan
Superspreader event and a fatal police shooting–multasking in the new decade.
What in the actual fuck are they thinking?
Kay
It doesn’t end here either. If they lose one or both of those senate races the country can expect a 4 week trantrum and the entire Republican Party denyng they lost.
It will be every election they lose now. The whole GOP has now endorsed this. Imagine if they get another President in- it will be next to impossible to dislodge him.
germy
@Gravenstone:
A few more balloon-juice threads and it’ll go right back up again.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Mr DAW was just reading me some report from Aberdeen. Trump’s golf club there has been instructed to make all rooms available from late January on for an extended stay by the Trump family.
Also, I have a question about continued Secret Service protection. I know Trump still gets it. Do the kids? Does the number of agents decrease even on Trump’s detail?
patrick II
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is probably the most productive thing he has done this since the election.
Joe Falco
@schrodingers_cat: I can’t think of a single Democrat running for office this year that ran on “Defund the Police” yet Trump and the right still said Democrats were running on that message. It didn’t matter if they were or not. Democrats will always be accused by the right of being anti-American. Pointing the finger at a small but vocal group of people for poisoning the well is ridiculous compared to what the right with its entire media machinery pumping out poison every day and night.
Patricia Kayden
debbie
@Kay:
What would Lincoln say?
Baud
@debbie:
Generic.
debbie
@Baud:
Whoever he/she is and whichever squad he/she came from, there needs to be whatever the equivalent of censure the Democratic party practices.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: It sounds like you may have an opinion as to the source of the leak.
Kay
@debbie:
We need to put more guardrails in to prevent the next Republican President from attempting to overturn an election. They cannot police themselves and we can’t rely on “norms” because they don’t observe norms. We’re going to have to regulate them within an inch of their lives because they have no internal checks or controls on their behavior.
t
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That’s gonna get pretty awkward of Scotland does go after that property as a means of money laundering.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@Gravenstone: there’s a reporter for a local outlet in Scotland who digs deep on the trump beat, he was all over the story about the military personnel driving (IIRC) over a hundred miles to stay at Turnberry, but I’m drawing a blank on the name and the outfit he writes for
MattF
@Gravenstone: British law now has a thing called called an ‘unexplained wealth order’.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
And I’m happy to be proven wrong, but there has to be consequences for undermining the party you “allege” to be a part of.
I have ruled out Susan Sarandon, however.
debbie
@Kay:
Totally agree, and I think it needs to be included in voting rights legislation.
PsiFighter37
Apparently every single Republican senator declined an invitation from Chuckles to Press the Meat. Who knew a hard-hitting question like “Who won the presidential election?” would be the one to make chickens out of all of them?
brantl
@Elizabelle: Did you know that the Diebold company, famous for ATMs, made faulty voting machines that were very prevalent for the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and that they were extremely conservative, and promised Bush he would win? They did.
This is projection by the conservatives, based on their own seedy history.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
[Shrugs] Who? Is she related to Megan McArgleBargle?
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
That photo has been “decertified.” It was taken at a flea market in Pennsylvania in September.
Calouste
@Gravenstone: I’m not sure they’re at money laundering yet. I think they noticed that the valuation of the properties as reported to the Scottish tax authorities was different than the valuation of said properties as reported to certain lenders, which information became public recently. So we’re at least on tax evasion.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Is there a link for this claim? Also, who the hell goes to Scotland in January for an extended stay? And there’s an extradition treaty with the UK. So…
As for Secret Service: Former Presidents, their spouses and their minor children under the age of 16 get protection. The protection is lifetime. However, if the former president were to go into exile in, say, Russia, who knows how that might work.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think I’m thinking of Martyn McLaughlin at the Scotsman, but I don’t see anything there about this
SFBayAreaGal
@Just Chuck: Add to the mix the Cardassians and you have a winner.
Kathleen
@NotMax: I’ve seen the first two and they are brilliant. Has Trump had his Lonesome Rhodes meltdown moment when he’s standing on the balcony screaming at Marsha to come back to the accompaniment of the fake applause machine?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yarrow: It’s at electoral-vote.com, near the end of today’s long post, just before the heading “looking ahead” in red
Here’s the quote
Kay
@PsiFighter37:
Republicans are attacking the integrity of every voter in their state or district who didn’t vote for Donald Trump. They better hope there are enough Trump voters in their state or district to get them over the line next time- they’re attacking their own constituents.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I knew the Trump family would go hide somewhere but I assumed it would be Florida. I suppose they also need to hide from US media, so Scotland is better.
MisterForkbeard
@germy: Jesus, the comments on that blog are fucking insane.
Immanentize
@debbie: @Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not joking. CW whispers in DC say the Spanberger leaked the conversation which, to her, was a big plus all around including financial support. It was after all, a widely reported and supported attack on the progressives. But these folks saying this are cynical Dem fundraisers, so who really knows?
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The most ominous part of this is no one in the Trump family or Trump Administration made any plans for if they lost. The entire low quality workforce in that White House fully intended to remain in power, regardless of election results. No one objected to this assumption. They all would have gone along with anything.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks! That’s wild. They are reviled in Scotland. I don’t think it’ll go very well for them there.
debbie
@Immanentize:
I wasn’t joking either.
Yarrow
@Kay: I hope the immigration and customs authorities have a good look through Donald Jr.’s luggage. I think they might find some interesting items.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: my skepticism comes from the fact that he hates the cold– remember all the whining at his last rallies? It occurs to me I’ve never heard of a trump property in the Caribbean. Kind of surprising.
West of the Rockies
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think some of the youngs romanticize the 80s sort of like we did in the 70s in regards to the 50s (Happy Days, American Graffiti, Grease). My 19-year-old daughter knows Cory Hart.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I think moderates occasionally need to look at the moderate side as to losing. I’m really, really suspicious of people who never look at their own shortcomings. Every single time we lose they punch Left. They take credit for wins and blame others for losses. What exactly is the moderate message? Does anyone know? Maybe they should spend less time blaming Lefties for every loss and start to cobble together some coherent economic message. It has to be better than “learn to code” and “the skills gap”.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Could be misdirection. Wikiville says he owns at least one course in Dubai, UAE, which has no extradition treaty with the USA.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Kay:
I think there’s also the possibility that it was released to show how much the moderates appear to be conservatives in sheep’s clothing.
Just Chuck
@Suzanne: Huh, why the hell did I think Biden wasn’t married. Guess it’s because she wasn’t trotted out on every occasion.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
That guys shirt says it all.
The last line is “Deal with it.”
He knows what he’s asking for, he knows it isn’t what the majority wants, he knows it’s wrong. But he’s demanding it anyway, and that’s white superiority, that he’s better because of the color of his skin and the hate in his mind.
Yarrow
@Kay: Agreed. Katie Porter is a good example of someone running in a typically Republicans district, so usually she would be considered a “moderate.” She’s not exactly a lefty person but she supports clear progressive policies and she won re-election handily. So called moderates would do well to have a look at what she does and take notes.
Immanentize
@Yarrow:
My guess is that this coming January, Scottish guests will include people from all over! Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, maybe even Poland (which should not be forgotten). ?
Just Chuck
@Kay: Republicans have never seen anyone who didn’t vote for them as their constituents. Now they don’t even see them as legitimate.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t care where they go and between the ongoing covid catastrophe and the grim “holiday season” coming up “normies” won’t be paying any attention at all to them in another couple of weeks.
My daughter and her husband in NY, both absolutely essential health care workers, were notified Friday that the “baby room” at their daycare will be shut for 2 weeks due to an infant who tested positive. They were very involved in this election but are essentially “normies”- they pay attention in the run up to an election and then turn it off. They no longer mention it at all. Understandably.
Immanentize
@debbie: neither were you saying anything.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It doesn’t identify which family members though.
debbie
Well, he’s at the stage of biting the had that feeds him. The headline alone says it all:
Villago Delenda Est
Honor is a concept totally alien to the likes of Donald Trump.
PIGL
@debbie: Well you could kick it in the junk and throw it out the door to let it die gasping and freezing in the street.
All the nurses I know are much better human beings than I am.
Kay
@debbie:
There’s already 600-some k absentee ballot requests in GA. Republicans don’t accept results from absentee ballots. They’re not going to accept the results of that election either.
Immanentize
@Kay: I think moderates could have excellent messaging that doesn’t compete really with any lefties -+ dignity and anti corruption. Dignity for workers (Covid aid and labor protections), dignity for the olds (which in so many moderate white Dem. Districts is a significant population — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which many older folks receive) plus dignity for our future (education). That is solid, moderate and not radical.
Sebastian
@Nicole:
That’s why I keep warning you folks to take Tucker Carlson serious!!
debbie
@Kay:
It needs to be pointed out to those assholes that they never had a problem with absentee ballots before and that they often depended on them to be counted (ie, military).
germy
@debbie:
Let them fight.
Yarrow
@Immanentize: Agreed it could go that direction. Scotland doesn’t have to let them in. Boris Johnson, if he’s still PM at that time, will have a lot on his hands with a spike in Covid after the holidays and Brexit. Hosting a cauldron of evil people may not be their preferred position.
Yarrow
@debbie: Narcissists always attack and blame those closest to them. He’s playing to form. Republicans will get destroyed by him because they let him down. It’s their fault he lost.
Immanentize
@Yarrow: Well, K. Porter is also whip smart and works really hard both in and for her district. See the problem? I mean, Porter is the ideal target for anti-left propoganda as she boasts about how much she respect and emulates E. Warren (aka “Pocahontas” to the right). But she took an R+3, gave them a fighter, and turned it into a D+9!
Suzanne
@Ruckus: It’s not just white supremacy. It’s supremacy of a very specific subculture of white dude, the kind who sucked at school but thinks he’s entitled to riches anyway, the kind who wants a dependent wife who is beautiful but still feels a vague sense of threat because if she’s beautiful then she might leave, the kind who (want to) date strippers.
I have to confess, I have found the description of Trumpism as a white supremacist movement slightly inadequate. Not because it’s inaccurate, but because it isn’t specific enough. I guarantee you that the white supremacists that associate themselves with Trump-the-brand do not think of white people like, say, Ken Jennings or Tina Fey as aspirational.
Yarrow
@Immanentize: Yeah, I understand the issue. Porter is a star and not everyone can or will be. But there are still things to learn and emulate.
Immanentize
@Kay: I am amazed more people were not mobilized against Republicans on just such facts.
And, the Republicans are simply laying down Hoover’s depression game plan (austerity and pain as it will pass quickly) hoping this time it works.
Immanentize
@debbie: That is the funniest delusion ever! Kemp? Who stole Georgia from Democrats for himself? Stealing votes for Biden?
Trump should have tweeted — “Kemp did not steal enough votes for me to win Georgia.”
Elizabelle
@brantl: Every accusation a confession.
Yarrow
@Immanentize:
It’s just narcissism 101. It was completely predictable Trump would turn on Republicans because it’s what narcissists do.
It’s pretty easy to predict his behavior once you understand his narcissism. They’re very predictable, narcissists. It’s just that they’re so far outside our cultural behavioral norms that most people don’t see their behavior coming and spend way too much energy trying to understand them or get them to change.
Immanentize
@Yarrow: PS. I love Scotland, although I only have the vaguest ancestral connections. I wish I had the resources to move to Inverness — it is so lovely, quiet, beautiful and is becoming a Euro tech hub. At least it was, pre-Covid.
JPL
@Kay: trump should be impeached again, for refusing to deal with the pandemic in a meaningful way.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: I’ve been saying for awhile now that enterprising reporters should just make lists of everything Trump/Republicans accuse Democrats of. Then go looking for those things being done by Republicans. They tell you what they’ve done or are going to do. It’s terrible stuff. Would maybe get some of them Pulitzers if they investigated it.
JPL
@Immanentize: That appears to be right. Selling state secrets for cash.
Immanentize
@JPL: I know it will never happen, but again impeaching Trump might freeze things and prevent him from doing really whack shit. It also would prevent a self-pardon as it is specifically excluded in the Constitution in matters of impeachment. Also, impeach Barr for the same reasons.
Yarrow
@Immanentize: Once Brexit is done they won’t be able to be a Euro tech hub. All that is moving to the continent or Ireland. Scotland is very angry they’re being pushed out of the EU when being in the EU was an argument used to get them to vote to stay in the UK during that referendum.
Another Scott
ICYMI, it looks like Louie still takes the prize, even with the recent competition from Tommy Taterville.
It’s good to remember that Teh Stupid will still infect the GOP long after Donnie is gone.
Cheers,
Scott.
Yarrow
@JPL: We have no way to stop former presidents–or any former official–from doing this do we? Is it against the law? Can a former president be prosecuted for selling state secrets?
JPL
@Yarrow: Some might call it treason. The good news is that trump doesn’t listen to the intelligence reports and he certainly doesn’t read them.
Immanentize
@Yarrow: Well, cheaper property in Inverness upside?
Yarrow
@JPL: Jared might, though. I’d guess Biden would revoke Trump’s security clearance pretty quickly.
debbie
@Yarrow:
The answer to your question better be “Yes!”
trollhattan
@debbie:
“Lion angry at hyenas for ‘getting all the good bits.'”
JPL
@Yarrow: Jared was able to bail out his company pretty quickly, so he probably has already.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: What you say is a pretty good description of the ones I know .
Immanentize
@Yarrow: Yes. See, Benedict Arnold.
Presidents have complete power over the classification systems (one thing that should be corrected before 2024), but no power any more than you or me to release anything classified after they stop being President.
As people say, people do not leave the Presidency, it leaves them.
Also, considering how much Trump treats people around him like servants, and they are thus invisible to him, it would not be hard to place an also-intelligence officer into his SS detail.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
We’ll always have Gohmert. Dude’s invincible.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: In short, a rather inferior and unaccomplished subset of the master race?
Sab
@debbie: Sorry hours late back to thread. Yes, I saw that. Nurses amaze me the way they can withhold judgment and just do their job. I do that, but I work with tax returns.They are handling these people and comforting them and cleaning them. They put their lives and their families lives at risk. I just type away and then grumble.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I believe that there is a good level of truth in what you say here. I’m also not sure that it will go as smoothly as it sounds. I think that a lot of work is going to be required to maintain a running, realistic government. And country. trump woke a lot of people up. They are absolutely on the wrong side of history and I think that a lot of them may know this, which is why they yell so much. But they have also turned off a segment of the conservative side of the aisle who want a different government that we on the left side do, but who realize that no one gets everything they want in a democracy. Those people may in fact be somewhat reachable, if they haven’t already been reached. But the hard core right, the absolute racists, they are not reachable. Because what they want is to live in a time that never existed, in a manner that is wrong and run by racist idiots, like themselves. And those who are reachable on the right, they have realized that, at least to some degree, that life is not the idealized, little white box that holds absolutely no reality whatsoever and that life is not one Man’s version that has never existed..
oldgold
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
January in Aberdeen is less than ideal. Temp averages: high – 44/ low – 34
Also, Aberdeen averages 12 days of rain in January.
oatler.
Chuck is feeling blue
crooksandliars.com/2020/11/chuck-todd-every-single-republican-senator
Kent
Absolutely he can. The ability to declassify intelligence and share it out attaches to the OFFICE of the president. Ex-presidents have no such power. They have no power at all. If Trump spills any secret information post-presidency he can most certainly be prosecuted just like he was any other ordinary citizen.
bluefish
In Brasil, back in the old days, we had a superstition-tradition. If one had a guest in the house who didn’t know it was time to leave, a broom was placed upside down behind a door. Hidden by the fully open door. It was pretty effective — as in within half an hour off the person would go, and life could resume. I have my broom going–for days on end, there it will remain.
Plus, I love me some Betty Cracker. Thanks as ever for what you do.
Suzanne
@Immanentize: Exactly. I had the unfortunate experience of attending high school with a significant quantity of skinheads. Every one of them was unattractive, unintelligent, involved in some form of delinquency, and, shall we say, not on a path to success.
They hate the Obamas not just because they’re black, but because they are also better than they are in every way…. and it wasn’t supposed to be like that.
Kay
@Immanentize:
Moderates need to be BIGGER. It can be the same policy but it has to add up to some coherent whole. I don’t know how they managed this but the sum of their policy agenda is somehow less than the whole of the component parts. They need to expand their view. So, when Schumer says “we’ll forgive the first 50k of undergrad student debt” take that and describe it as “Democrats make college affordable and Republicans don’t”. If Lefty ideas are the only thing people hear is that that fault of AOC or the fault of the person promoting the more moderate idea?
Kay
@Immanentize:
If you’re a politician and you’re directing people to your website so they can figure out what you’re “for” you have a problem and it is not AOC.
Kent
I’m beginning to think that the GOP has made a MASSIVE strategic error by coddling Trump’s delusions about the election.
What they SHOULD have done now is just rip the band-aid off so they can move on with new candidates in 2022 and 2024. What they have actually done by coddling Trump’s delusions that the election was stolen and he is still the rightful leader is freeze everything in place for 2022 and 2024. Trump and his people are actively taking over the RNC and every fundraising vehicle that the GOP has. They are doing this through their current fundraising to challenge the election and worming their way into every GOP fundraising platform.
What will happen in 2022 is that they are going to be stuck with Trump as the kingmaker for every damn Senate, House, and Governor’s race. They will all have to go kiss his ring to get his endorsement to run. And we all know damn well that Trump is 100% transactional. What transaction will he demand? Support for his 2024 candidacy of course!
They are so fucked. They are just sitting there and watching Trump cement his role as the future GOP Fuhrer and kingmaker. Which is just going to put off for 4 more years any chance for any change of direction or reset for the party into something less racist and more mainstream
It’s going to be an ugly 4 years. But it was going to be ugly regardless. The GOP was ugly during the pre-Trump Obama years as well. And they were ugly during the Bill Clinton years. They’ve been ugly since at least Eisenhower.
Suzanne
@Ruckus:
There are many conservatives who find the Trumpy deplorables just super-embarrassing. The human equivalent of TP on one’s shoe. But they don’t have a big enough coalition without them.
Ruckus
@Punchy:
If he had money he would be able to do this.
But he doesn’t.
He’s used the office to get the facilities for his rallies, he’s bullied his way to use airport facilities so he can land, be racist and leave. Leaving means leaving everyone else holding the bag. At 12:00pm on Jan 20, 2021, he loses that buffer of non accountability, acknowledge it or not.
That cloak of presidential invincibility is gone at that moment. And he has no credit, with anyone. His bank, DB, they are trying to, if not collect, to at least find the money they are owned, totally on his signature, which is an ink blot that has zero payment abilities or desires. I say it won’t go well for them.
Immanentize
@Kay: is FDR really too lefty for moderates?
That’s pretty big isn’t it?
raven
Juggling clown and flamingo headed horn player in Athens!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
Not specific enough, and too specific at the same time. The cultural resentment that trump speaks to isn’t purely racist, but race is a huge part of it, and it’s hard to quantify. With all the talk about Obama’s book coming out, somebody brought up the Republican complaint from back in the day that Obama “lectured them”. It reminded me of all the “schoolmarm” attacks on Elizabeth Warren. The derisive way they talk about teachers (“must be nice to have summers off”) and college professors (“so you just read all the time, eh?”) is a big tell. Tom Nichols often talks about his old acquaintances who never went to college, but make more money than he does all his fancy degrees; they still think The Man is keeping them down. Education/intellect are big triggers in the trumpist world.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: I think at some point everyone but the 27% will be laughing at them. And they will lose elections.
Kay
@Kent:
I don’t know how it plays out but either do they and I’m not convinced this is great for them. They took the fact that they didn’t lose seats in the House as an endorsement to double down on insanity and I’m not sure voters agree with that. Their senators can’t hide forever. He fully intends to drag this out at least another month. Opinions can change pretty fast and it’s not like HE’S hiding. He and the rest of the low quality hires will be screeching every day for the next month.
debbie
@JPL:
I wonder if selling state secrets to bad actors would change the base’s opinion of Trump.
Sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Isn’t Scotland kind of in a Covid lockdown? Do they have to let those Americsn virus vectors in?
Immanentize
@Kay: She doesn’t need to direct Anyone to her website. Which is part of the careful moderate critique. I’ve said it before, but Connor Lamb was singled out for his poor underspending presence on social media. People scoffed — who cares about Facebook! You know who is on facebook? All the center right conservative olds in his district. Not hard to figure out targeted efforts there would be productive.
ETA But as you point out — he spent tens of thousands on image consultants.
The Lodger
@Just Chuck: are they wannabe cereal killers?
Suzanne
@Kent: YES THIS.
There are also loads of ambitious Republicans who he is now delaying any potential advance, but who are now super-resentful. They may get themselves the same scenario we had in 2016 with a very small primary field because no one wants to run against him. And all of those other Republicans could actually put together a winning coalition and create broader appeal…. but they’re stuck with damaged goods.
debbie
@Sab:
It used to be that after non-believers caught the virus, they would tearfully beg others to take it seriously. I guess only the hardcore deniers are left now.
Immanentize
@debbie: Russia, to them, is not a bad actor.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
True, but they are seeing that life on the other side isn’t as bad as they thought it would be, as they were lied to, as they once believed. And I think some of them have seen that it is actually a lot better than what they had. The stark, drooling mad racists will never see that, but not everyone on the right is stark, drooling mad. OK maybe to some degree but I’d bet that there is a sizable segment that really is close to the squishy middle and can actually read the writing on the wall, and would rather have a voice than nothing at all.
Kent
If I was some moderate GOP candidate or politician in a purple or blue state, I’d be watching current developments with rage and horror. Honestly, the last thing the GOP needs to do right now is double-down on Trumpism.
Actions have consequences. And while coddling Trump’s delusions have the unfortunate negative effect of undermining our democratic institutions, they also have the very real effect of continuing to prop up Trump as the leader of the party post 2020.
But fuck them, in 65 or so days he will be THEIR problem and no longer OURS.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yep. And it makes no sense. If you didn’t go to college and you make more money than someone who did, why worry about it?
Immanentize
@raven: nice!
Tiger gets a 10 on 12? Makes me think there is hope for mere mortals.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I would think it would be even harder to quantify the African Americans who support Trump.
Wyatt Salamanca
For the umpteenth time, Trump has outdouched himself.
I’ll be thrilled when January 20th finally arrives and all of these moronic tweets from Trump’s never ending butthurt tour will no longer dominate every goddamn news cycle.
Kay
@Immanentize:
They could actually take a page from Biden. Biden’s education agenda is “support public schools, make college affordable”. I mean, if he actually DOES that no one will ever delve in to the details of whether he’s a “neoliberal” or not because no one actually gives a shit about that. They’ll call him “a Democrat”.
Simplify. “Simple” doesn’t mean “stupid”, it means simple. Edit. Get the same idea across with less explanation and fewer words. Every instance of sending someone to a website should be considered a failure to get the essential points across.
The Lodger
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Scott Baio? Nope. Kanye West, however, will have had four years to grow into the job.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They also hate teachers because they hate women being in authority positions, and teaching is still majority women.
Kent
I don’t know how it’s all going to play out either. But I’m convinced that here is no master plan at work here.
Trump is just doing his usual thing of winging it and going with his gut. Which is almost certainly what is best for TRUMP as he has a feral ability to maximize circumstances to HIS advantage.
However HIS advantage and the GOP’s advantage only really align when he is actually president. The don’t necessarily align at all if he is ex-president. That is their conundrum.
debbie
@Immanentize:
You’re right, but it’s unimaginable that this is where the Republican Party has come to. I can’t imagine what my parents’ generation of Republicans would think of this.
raven
@Immanentize: Yea, I hung until then but I didn’t want to see him crumble (which it looks like he didn’t)
Cheryl Rofer
@debbie: no
ETA: It seems like nothing will shake the base’s faith in Trump. Perhaps his eventual recognition that he’s lost will.
There’s a thread being shared widely on Twitter supposedly from a nurse in South Dakota, saying that some of the patients demand a magic cure and refuse loudly to believe that what they have is covid.
I am a little suspicious of the thread – how loud could someone shout if they were hospitalized with covid? But I wonder if becoming sick themselves or losing a loved one might shake their faith in the Great Orange God.
JPL
@debbie: trump’s fans love Putin, so no.
Ruckus
@oldgold:
I wonder if he, shitforbrains, actually tweeted the original “He Won.”
Immanentize
@raven: I know, that’s golf. Birds galore for him after that.
JPL
Perdue has turned down the Atlanta Press Clubs invitation to debate Ossoff, and I assume that Loeffler will turn down the invitation to debate Warnock.
Kay
@Kent:
I think the “legal”strategy is hysterical in some ways. Example- Wisconsin. Wisconsin is much closer than Michigan or Pennsylvania. Why is Wisconsin valid and Michigan not? I know they’re targeting cities (AA voters) so Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta but Wisconsin has Milwaukee.
Sab
Weird weather today in NE Ohio. Thunder, lightning, howling winds and sleet!
Kent
Yes. They HATE anyone who has the intelligence and education to contradict their deeply-held delusions.
Teacher’s of course. But also scientists. All the hatred for Fauci is part of the same phenomenon. They hate on him for swatting away their delusions about mask wearing and social distancing.
Being anti-intellectual is a very old and powerful thread running through the GOP going back generations. Adali Stevenson was mocked for this. But the modern GOP has put it on steroids with the climate change denial, modern medicine denial, economics denial (tax cuts bring in more revenue, etc.). They have systematically attempted to demolish every American institution that seeks truth over ideology from universities to the Congressional Budget Office.
Immanentize
@Kay: That is why Biden’s plan for health care resonates too, I suppose. “No to M4A, yes to affordable (or free) health care for every American.”
The Lodger
@John S.: Should they be called Marbleheads? Beverly Hillbillies? Lowell Prats? Fall River Guys?
H-Bob
@Kay: Hippie punching never goes out of style!
Chris Johnson
@Kay: Yes, all of my THIS.
Especially as an entrepreneurial, open source, crowdfunded CODER. I know the landscape of ‘learn to code and sell an app and make money’ intimately, way the hell more than any of the people suggesting it as a path out of Appalachia etc.
It is outright bullshit. Yeah, write an app (or an audio plugin like mine), even take advantage of stuff like the open source I myself propagate on very favorable terms. Do you know why I can do that? Because you are up against ME with over a decade of experience and EXPOSURE in that field, me who’s living in a section 8 house and living frugally and willing to take an absolute beating profit-wise in order to stay in that commanding position.
It’s the Amazon strategy, and it absolutely works, and newcomers are just not going to supplant the market leaders while that sort of thing is going on. You are NOT going to learn to code, make an app, and pay your rent.
Just jumping on that point as it is one that I am peculiarly qualified to speak to. Be careful of moderates’ plans or lack thereof. It’s really dangerous to be out of touch with conditions on the ground. Trump was more than happy to promise endless free stuff to his followers that didn’t require ‘learn to code’. He literally promised that their old job wasn’t really gone. It was a lie.
It matters if you see the lying and your response is to put up an ‘aspirational’ eat-your-spinach-you-slacker response that’s supposed to be a pathway to survival… and is ALSO a lie. People will pick the free-pony lie over the eat-your-spinach lie and they are RIGHT to do so, when both are lies.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
I read that thread. They wouldn’t shut up until being intubated shut them up. I believe it. Think of those clowns who modified their engines to “roll coal” just to piss off libtards and were in turn pissed off to find that doing that had voided the engine’s warranty.
These people aren’t thinkers, deep or otherwise.
Kay
This person is taken seriously as a financial analyst. This is what I mean by a “quality collapse”. The thing itself will never be better than its parts and the parts that make up the Right are cheap junk.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sab: True. I believe Americans are barred from travel to the UK. Diplomats still seem to go but they must get waivers. If the Trumps go while he’s still in office, Scotland would have a hard time barring the president of the US. I guess.
Kent
Not really. There are lots who live in live in small towns, running businesses or holding down jobs in which they work with and serve mainly white clientele and have basically internalized a lot of the small town suburban conservatism with which they are surrounded (low taxes, low regulation, etc.). It’s the Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Canace Owens phenomenon where you can get ahead by telling white folks what they want to hear. And small town GOP types love them some Black folks who tell them what they want to hear.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize:
wasn’t that, if you eliminate the “or free”, the message of pretty much every one of those dread “moderates”? build on the ACA with, among other things, a public option ?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: I usually try to avoid comments about people’s appearance, but in Bartiromo’s case I’ll make an exception since she did it to herself. Every time I see her, I think she looks like someone punched her in the mouth.
Cheryl Rofer
@debbie: It’s totally believable. I am careful about what I retweet.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
Who’s “they”? which candidates were just telling people to go look at their websites?
You criticize moderates for not having a zingier message, then say they emulate moderate Joe Biden– who won the primary, the electoral college, and flipped AZ and GA– in his vagueness.
Fair Economist
@Sab: Weathernerds on weather sites get very excited by thundersnow. Used to be super rare; less so now.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: It’s some sort of inferiority complex I cant quite wrap my head around. It isnt even really about the money. Education or intellect is threatening to them. Some sort of ” You think your’e smarter than me” issue
Eta: or, What Kent said @ comment 326
Kent
I think the strategy was always PA because pre-election polls had it closer than WI and they had all sorts of voter suppression and ballot invalidation strategies teed up for PA with SCOTUS. Then WI was called earlier on election night while Trump was still ahead in PA so they shifted all their efforts to PA with the famous Four Seasons fiasco. But the count just relentlessly kept shifting in Biden’s favor after it was too late to change strategy.
This is what happens when you try to plan voter suppression. You have to pick your targets in advance and don’t always know which ones you are going to need. I think they ramped up the voter suppression and legal strategies most heavily in PA and FL thinking those were going to be the two states that decided the election. When the critical states turned out to be AZ and GA to everyone’s surprise (except Stacy Abrams).
PaulWartenberg
Twitter is flashing a “I CONCEDE NOTHING” trend so I assume trump is screaming this now.
Suzanne
@Chris Johnson: The only thing that is not a lie is that there is now less of a defined path to success for white dudes. The fact that there ever was a defined path to success for white dudes is an accident of circumstance (winning the war) and codified white supremacy and patriarchy. Success was always reserved for a few, but the more time passes, the more competitive it becomes.
The real answer would be to use public policy to make a middle-class lifestyle accessible to everyone, regardless of race, gender or sex, class you were born into, educational attainment, etc. But that’s not going to restore white supremacist patriarchy. We’re not going back to the way it was. So lots of people don’t want it.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie:
Insert Nelson Muntz “Ha! Ha!”
Warranty voiding never occurred to me when I saw those videos, but, yeah. I just saw a bunch of trash polluting the air to “own the libs.”
Geoduck
I’ll believe that when I see it. If/when the Shiatgibbon does announce he’s running again in 2024, the media will carry right on reporting on his every utterance.
debbie
Don’t forget: PBO on 60 Minutes tonight!
Suzanne
@Kent: The African Americans who support Trump also have a gender divide. Male privilege is also a thing.
Gravenstone
@Kent:
They’re acting on the assumption that he’ll still have relevance with their base in 2022 and 2024. Not the worst assumption from their point of view. But reality is about to come crashing down on Donnie good and hard. Starting with state investigations and ultimately indictments. We’ll see if any foreign governments want to join the party. But he’s going to forced into a defensive crouch very quickly after inauguration. How he juggles that with his clear desires to become a “king maker” remains to be seen.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s pretty warm in Guantanamo year-round. Just a thought.
Kent
They desperately WANT to believe a lot of shit that deep down they know just aren’t true. And they passionately despise anyone with the chops to destroy their delusions.
Fossil fuels, big cars, and suburban car-centric lifestyle ISN’T destroying the planet.
Endless tax cuts can be had for “free” because they will stimulate the economy and end up raising more money than they lose
Vaccines are a George Soros and Bill Gates plot to institute one-world government
But you can also lead a sedentary lifestyle, overeat starchy junk food to the point of obesity, and modern medicine can save you without any effort or change on YOUR part (my wife, a physician, gets this every single damn day). No one wants to eat better and exercise more, but that’s all that 95% of her patients actually need.
College is unnecessary and you can get just as far ahead in life without it (because Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs dropped out of college).
etc. etc. It is an endless list of delusions. And they resent anyone and everyone who questions them and knows better.
mrmoshpotato
@Cheryl Rofer:
I can’t see that recognition ever coming.
Dump would have to accept that he’s a LOSER then. And not just in one category but two – the electoral college and the tremendous bigly caving in of his Soviet shitpile mobster conman face by the popular vote.
Kent
Yes, of course. Very much true. Also very much true in the Latino community.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: also, “toughness”. Trump in 2016 was gonna get tough, very tough. On Wall Street (Ha!) On Isis. On MS13. On China. On trade…I remember an interview with a farmer in Ohio who had lost two sons to opioid addiction. He was going to vote for trump because we need to get tough on drugs.
It’s something probably appeals mostly to men, but probably a lot of women. And it fits in with a larger question. People really, really want politics to be simple. That was Ross Perot’s appeal, “we’ll just get under the hood and fix it.
Baud
@Gravenstone:
I have to assume that there are a number of GOP 2024 wannabees that want Trump out of the picture.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
These people aren’t in civilization. They are in the right wing noise machine. There isn’t any civilization in that creation at all. Just bullshit and hate.
trollhattan
@Kent:
TBF Bill Gates dropped out of a really good college.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Curious whether there’s any chance Trump doesn’t launch his Trump 2024 campaign come January. He needs the money and the attention. Plus, no more pesky “Executive Time.”
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron:
So is the surface of the Sun.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There’s a long history of people believing that when bad things happens, there has to be someone who did something wrong who is to blame. And if no one else is found, the person to blame is the victim of the bad thing that happened. Thus, the powerful incentive to find someone else to balme.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I would be shocked if he didn’t.
Chris Johnson
Only if you don’t understand what’s being done and why.
I think you’ll find those African Americans are law-n-order voters. It’s why Biden’s notorious crime bill was actually supported by a lot of black voters: there’s no requirement for people to believe their own race are violent thugs, just that ‘violent thugs’ EXIST at all. And that is 9/10ths of Trump’s marketing, and has been for many years now.
It’s down to a science, and it’s heavily racialized but the point is to split off groups of voters from the specter of the violent, lawless, antifa thug. People are perfectly allowed to think it’s white college kids if they like, it doesn’t have to be ‘all black people’ (there’s kind of a split between looters/antifa where black people are expected to be the former and white people the latter) but the common ground is that they’re all violent lawless thugs.
And so, the Trump people do things like go to a demonstration (this is just recently, see the Andy Ngo topic on twitter) and violently attack people, including female protestors and nonviolent innocents, specifically for the purpose of goading a mob of retaliators and then (very important) walking calmly away while filmed by cameras. Because they’ve GOTTA produce ‘video footage’ of a calm, normal, preferably old white guy seemingly assaulted out of nowhere. So you beat up a crowd and then walk off, followed by cameras, depending on the payback you yourself have provoked.
And if a law-abiding conservative black family sees the edited footage on TV, and they only see that sort of thing, and the media tells them Trump stands against the lawlessness and antifa thugs, they are absolutely capable of voting for Trump. They don’t have to be absolute fools, they only have to fall for a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign. Being against random thug violence is not wrong. Thinking that voting for Trump will help this, when it’s his people manufacturing it, is wrong (and a horrible mistake).
Geminid
@Immanentize: I am glad to see trump is attacking Georgia governor Brian Kemp. Kemp got on trump’s bad side when Kemp appointed Loeffler to Johny Issacson’s senate seat, when trump wanted Congressman Doug Collins (Idiot-Habersham). Collins fought hard for trump at the impeachment hearings. Loeffler and Collins called each other liars dozens of times during the jungle primary. So trump’s grudge may end up hurting Loeffler in what will be a close runoff. This is the last thing Republican leaders want. But I think they already know that trump has no loyalty to the party, or to anybody other than himself.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I like to think Dump was told “We don’t want your trash buildings, your trash family or your mobster trash friends on our island paradise. Also, you’re trash.”
JPL
FYI President Obama was on CBS Sunday Morning. His interview is up first.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: this group put together an ad of trump’s favorite TeeVee people going after Loeffler before
trumpKemp gave her his thumbs-up over Collins.mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Baud, do you have a soft spot for JEB! “Please clap.” Bush?
Awww.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, I absolutely agree. The thing I’m telling you (as a GenXer who saw it happening from back when it started, when I was a teenager) is that this is not about white dudes.
The ‘more competitive’ started in the eighties. It’s very long standing, was fully underway in the Clinton years. We talk about neoliberal and that’s shorthand for this ‘competitive’ and what it means is, there IS NO PATH to success. For most people. Period. Everybody panicking and freaking out and voting for Trump to bring back the coal jobs etc. are simply a phenomenon: that phenomenon is ‘the world shrank, and no matter what you do, it’s more competitive to get somebody in China or India to do it instead’.
Period.
You can’t put this down to lack of motivation, aspirationalism. One Elon Musk, one Jeff Bezos, does not make a middle class. There is NO SOLUTION as things currently stand, and it’s fall for Trump’s lies (or the next populist demagogue’s lies) or figure out something to do that’ll bring a reasonable amount of ‘success’ to the populace. They also have to buy into it, or accept their own irrelevance.
My take on this is not as bleak. I’ve studied AI and genetic algorithms and I see this ‘populace’ as the vital source of randomness that feeds the capitalist system the stuff it needs to thrive. You don’t need every random bozo with an idea to experience huge success, but there will be the one in a million who does. Your job is to put systems in place that allow the other million-minus-one to survive and keep functioning, and the rewards are great: you just don’t know which rewards will be the big winners, but they’ll be amazing.
This is how we got Silicon Valley in the first place.
It’s just that you absolutely cannot view ‘capitalist path to success’ as a means to conduct a society. It is a means to SERVE a society, conveniently, with new fresh stuff without that much oversight. You have to till the soil from which the new stuff springs or you’ve got nothing. And that’s what the Republicans call ‘socialism’ and want to destroy… and the more they destroy it, the more they hurt their own voters even while their own voters buy into the lies that they have to be one of the few successful ones to be worthy of survival.
Post-WWII American boomed so hard that it simply wasn’t as competitive as we see these days. If we want to be a world power going forward, we have no choice but to be LESS competitive in terms of how hard individual Americans have to strive in order to survive.
Because it’s a numbers game. It’s not about making every worker fight harder than slave labor in another country. It’s about making conditions where the occasional worker hits on something so great that it sets the world on fire.
Another Scott
@Kent: Yeahbut, … Palin was going to be the future, until she wasn’t.
The GOP shriveled in 2008 – early 2009, until Rick Santelli ‘created’ the TeaParty.
Too much money and power is at stake for the MOTUs and the bazillionaires not to gin up some reason for people to reject Democrats and vote for the GOP. They’ll come up with something and lie and cheat and do everything they can think of (simultaneously) to fight to increase their power.
We have to fight them every single day.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: Thanks for posting Obama’s interview.
rikyrah
@MattF:
I completely disagree.
The GOP. IS TRUMPISM
TOP TO BOTTOM???
Geminid
@Geminid: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp also will have a very tough reelection race in 2022. His likely opponent is Stacey Abrams. Trump may carry his grudge against Kemp a while, and could even encourage a primary challenge. It will be a long time, if ever, before the damage trump did to this country is repaired, and he’s not done doing damage. But after Biden is inaugurated, I think trump will be a republican problem, and a big one.
scav
Boris is back in the box!
Platonicspoof
@Elizabelle:
Nominated for rotating tagline for next four years.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
They may not be part of civilization, but they walk among us. Maybe a variant Rowdy Roddy’s sunglasses can be mass-produced so that we don’t need these mofos to carry a Trump sign or a swastika to be identified/recognized.
trollhattan
@scav:
So much for immunity.
Sab
@Chris Johnson: Good points. I am a generation older than you, and I saw our chances of a future wilt. It would help a lot if we voted that way, but we don’t. We all vote hoping to be rich. Very weird.
scav
@trollhattan: Just exposed to a positive, he’s not necessarily sick again. The timing is shit though — assuming the process is made better by his actual participation.
Another Scott
@Chris Johnson:
OTOH, one can easily argue that silicon integrated circuits took off because the DoD needed small, reliable electronics for ICBMs. And AT&T (a regulated monopoly) needed small, reliable electronics for telephone switching.
“Behind every great fortune lies
a great crimegovernment-supported monopoly.”We have the economy we do because of the choices we (as a government) make. We can make different and better choices.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
The stupid is their trademark. Along with Anti Realism. They like to make up their own facts as your post shows. It is easier to keep followers if they “know” that everything they see and hear outside of the barely controlled loud speakers is bullshit, no matter the reality. Their problem is that the gullible are many of the people in some level of power. When the most gullible mis-believer became president it sort of overwhelmed the least gullible of their followers, who recognized that it’s all bullshit. They may have lost a lot of those on the right side but close to the political line, and may never get them back. The spell of the con may have been broken by the person who misunderstand the con the most, it’s most idiotic follower, one djtshitforbrains.
dww44
@Gravenstone: I certainly hope you and those who agree with you will be proven correct in your belief that there will be accountability for Trump and some level of justice for our democratic institutions after he leaves office. I am skeptical though.
Matt
Watching the video from DC demonstrates one thing to me: “defund the police” is actually the _moderate_ position, since just laying off these clowns would mean turning out a bunch of raring-to-party fascist bully-boys.
The radical position is “indefinitely detain and investigate the police” – if we can’t turn up any evidence of an officer being a fascist or breaking the law, they get to go. Denazification is going to be a long process.
Ruckus
@Immanentize:
Also things that might hamper shitforbrains, his understanding, his memory, his delusions, his dementia, and his narcissism. I doubt he has read hardly any real secret briefings, understands them or remembers them. He might remember the title of the paper but he’d very, very likely get every detail completely wrong and so simplify everything that the info would be worthless.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Geoduck:
My fervent hope is that the NY Atty General or Manhattan DA will succeed in getting Trump behind bars rendering his 2024 candidacy a moot point.
He’s an insurrectionist who’ll do everything in his power to undermine Biden, so the sooner he’s in a prison cell and deprived of a social media platform to spew his nonsense the better off we’ll be.
Searcher
@Immanentize:
So the way I model political parties in my head is that you have some fraction of people (call it 50%) who are simply “party men” who identify as a Democrat and favor whatever policies are the policies of the Democratic party, and then you have a bunch of coalitions who have “one big issue” that basically determines how they vote and who they support. Reproductive rights, the environment, etc — you may have other concerns and issues, but one is really the dealbreaker issue that determines whether you’re for, against or tepid on a candidate.
The last group is more interesting than the first group because they really represent the coalitions that you can try to reach out to — you have competing political identities, sure, but while the Democratic party identity shifts over time, you can’t just restructure it to please another group’s whims without alienating your party people, and the new group isn’t going to trust you anyway. If enough people have the same one big issue, on the other hand, you can add it to the party platform and — once you’ve shown the good faith of your effort — draw in a new block of voters.
So anyway: Medicare For All.
Do you think Medicare For All represents a One Big Issue for some fraction of the electorate, or do you think it is more a facet of an alternate Democratic(-ish) political identity, and the people who are chanting for M4A won’t be won over by the Democratic Party’s embrace of the idea?
Ruckus
@Kent:
Conservatives have been ugly for ever, long before Eisenhower. Their entire political concept is that they are great and everything else is death on a cracker. It leaves no room for others and it has reached the same level as it always does throughout history, no matter the country. It’s just that it is more visible and audible to everyone else now, and we all have a way to talk about it amongst ourselves. Like this blog. At some point the conservative political side will overplay it’s hand, as it always has, and the situation will become untenable. It was easier when there wasn’t such a big group of conservatives, like maybe the royal family and their few supporters, but the concept is always the same. History is filled with this same kind of activity, the French had their cake to eat, we have a communications system to overcome. IOW it was French royalty that was the problem, ours is the way over paid(stolen, whatever) monetary class who have turned a somewhat of a democracy into a grifting paradise by way over greasing their own palms.
Ruckus
@Sab:
Maybe the Scots will quarantine the entire lot of them for a month in a back room of the airport, or just lock the plane and post guards, with no stairway. IOW force them to stay in a small metal tube with limited facilities for 2-4 weeks. If they are all alive and disease free at the end, then have customs interrogate them for a few hours, offer them the fuel to refill the plane and a pilot to fly back to the US. An extradition request from the US would simplify the entire process
ETA – Oh and a bill for the landing fees, plane storage, food/water, guards. Which has to be paid before they can leave the country or get off the plane.
Ruckus
@Cameron:
Been to Gitmo. It really, really isn’t up to his tacky standards in the least. Also in the summer it is not exactly the opposite of winter in Gitmo, it’s freaking hot and humid. I think it’s the perfect place for him to spend his remaining days.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That Meidas Touch ad against Loeffler could be effective. Using Judge Janine Pirro’s anti-Loefler comments taps into the animus tea-party types have towards the republican establishment, as do the insider trading details. Loeffler’s defenders have pointed out how small her purchases were relative to her total holdings. But $1.1 million for this stock, $3.3 million for that one sounds like real money to most people. And the punchline was good: “Fire Looting Loeffler.”
Ruckus
@Chris Johnson:
It’s quality over quantity.
But quantity makes rich people richer, quality makes everyone richer. It our current climate quality over quantity may be a loser, unless we can get back in control.
bluefish
@Baud: So very true.
J R in WV
@Just Chuck:
So what/who do you think Dr Jill Biden will be? So wrong!!!
artem1s
@Searcher:
Medicare for all is as inaccurate a framing as unfund the police. Medicare as it stands is pretty bad coverage as it has no cap on the co-pay. 20% of the bill for heart surgery or leukemia and follow up care is going to break any family in the long run. It doesn’t solve absence of mandated sick leave, basic mental health or dental coverage, or the issue of Hyde Amendment. Ask anyone who is 60-65 and has good coverage with their employer if they are looking forward to retiring and signing up for Medicare. Our healthcare problem is too damn complicated to be saved by a three letter solution. Having the stans vilifying anyone who dares talk about the complications of coverage for an aging population is a big problem and is keeping us from having a real conversation about the whole medical system.
Ruckus
@artem1s:
Probably no one will see this but I agree. As a geezer medicare is far better than nothing. But to make it work you have to do medicare advantage, which costs enough that between the normal medicare copay per month and medicare advantage I’d either have to forgo rent or food, or continue working. And as I’ve been working anyway, way past when I wanted to retire, to afford to just do that…….
I think a lot of the very lefties who want M4A have no idea what medicare really is/how it barely works and how having any normal senior health issues can break you financially. Fuck their pompous asses for jumping on a bandwagon that they have zero idea about. And if they actually want to change to HEALTHCARE FOR ALL, why don’t they say that? Is their problem honesty or stupidity?
J R in WV
The question of Medicare is that you need a good supplemental insurance policy to cover the parts Medicare won’t cover. Wife was total permanent disability and so retired early with Medicare and supplemental. Then we went on a driving trip to Baltimore Inner Harbor and Rehobeth Beach over in Delaware. She got to feeling down, so we left for home early. That weekend she was downhill, and Sunday evening I took her to the ER. Diagnosed with pneumonia…
She was taken to ICU and on a vent for nearly a month, then had lung surgery to remove the third lobe of her left lung, which was necrotic aka rotten. Surgeon thought he was going to patch a leak in her lung, was shocked to find the necrotic situation… expected a 30 minute surgery, took 4 hours!
Anyway, our portion of her nearly 2 month hospital bill was in the $2-4K range, which we both thought was very reasonable. So Medicare works well, but you DO NEED a good supplemental policy.
ballerat
@Wyatt Salamanca: Alas, Trump will still be with us, still spreading his poison.
The media won’t quit him. They won’t want to. He’s a 3 alarm fire, car wreck, WWF heel and Nat’l Inquirer Bat Boy from Mars all rolled into one. They love the stink of his shit. It smells like money to them.
The media created Trump, and Trump was the perfect tool to create the reality TV politics they love to cover. These dogs will circle back to their own vomit.
ExpatDanBKK
@Another Scott: Hey now Scott, you’re casting aspersions on Screwy Louie’s asparagus! LOL