Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

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

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

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

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

He really is that stupid.

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

People are complicated. Love is not.

We still have time to mess this up!

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Cleaning Up After the Looters

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Cleaning Up After the Looters

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President Biden said Wednesday that his focus remains on his administration’s expansive efforts to invest in programs that touch many facets of American life, not just the bipartisan infrastructure agreement that has spent weeks in the spotlight.

Biden toured McHenry County College, which has a workforce development plan and on-site child-care facility, two programs that exemplify cornerstones of his American Families Plan. Those initiatives are not part of the infrastructure framework agreement that Biden and a group of Republican and Democratic senators announced last month.

In the opening minutes of his remarks at the community college, which is a 90-minute drive northwest of Chicago, Biden lauded the work of the legislative group that had forged a framework for a compromise on infrastructure. But the president spent the bulk of the half-hour speech stressing that much more needs to be done…

During a meeting with reporters on the Air Force One ride to Illinois, press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s focus was on benefits that are on “generational investments in infrastructure … that aren’t included in the bipartisan framework.” And after touring the McHenry County College campus, Biden stressed that his sights are still set on the American Families Plan that his administration has proposed, which he said Wednesday would energize the economy, boost the middle class and make America more competitive on the world stage.

Biden in his speech highlighted a slate of liberal priorities: investments in child care and the workforce; universal prekindergarten and two years of free community college; investments in affordable housing and a “care economy” that would include caring for seniors; and a clean-energy standard that would require power companies to source more electricity from renewable and clean sources.

“It’s about time,” Biden said. “There’s a lot of work ahead of us to finish the job, but we’re going to get it done. We’re going to reimagine what our economy and our future could be, and show the world … that democracy can deliver for its people.”…

… Biden stressed that in his five months in the White House, he has still been able to get things done, including making strides on the pandemic and presiding over a rebounding economy — using an across-the-aisle reference to make his point.

“The last time [the] economy grew at this rate, Ronald Reagan was telling us there was an American morning,” Biden said. “This is going to be an American century.”

Reader Interactions

163Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Why won’t Democrats show more respect for working class Trump voters?” you ask, as Democrats beg them to be vaccinated against a deadly disease (for free), try to raise their wages, expand Medicaid, give them stimulus payments, increase their child tax credit…

    Commitment to civil rights trumps all that.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    As part of the normification process, I’m paying less attention to news.  How’s Jaime Harrison doing at the DNC? From what I can tell, he seems to be more into management and less into media than we’ve seen in the past.  I certainly haven’t heard anything bad recently, which is a good thing when it comes to the DNC.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @NotMax:

    Anything that’s top heavy is fundamentally unstable, whether you’re talking about physical structures or the economy.

  5. 5.

    Patricia Kayden

    Biden’s accelerated vaccine rollout has saved over 1 million people from being hospitalized & hundreds of thousands of lives based on a new Yale study.More work to do but vaccines save lives. https://t.co/0ff0Y0SwIS— Andy Slavitt ??? (@ASlavitt) July 7, 2021

  10. 10.

    debbie

    I’m watching a back-and-forth argument on FB between two of my brothers. One is appalled at anything Trump and 1/6, the other (the one born with an eternal sense of grievance and hair-trigger temper) thinks it’s all been overblown, is costing too much money, should be moved past. I think he thinks he’s cleverly couching his racism and resentment in reasoned words, but I remember listening to him rant for hours about the birth certificate, the speech mannerisms—anything but acknowledging his racist beliefs. He fools no one.

  14. 14.

    Geminid

    Andy Kim (D-NJ): another member of the talented Democratic House Class of 2018. Kim flipped a red suburban seat district, like the suburban districts  Democrats  won that year in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, Georgia, Kansas, and Texas. Some of these red suburban seats were left on the table in 2018, and these will be prime Democratic targets next year.

  16. 16.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Here’s a long tweet thread on the Trump suit (hence the Thread Reader App unroll), but it is a really amusing finale to the careers of ancient, mediocre PI lawyers. I know guys just like this – they came up in practice in a really forgiving time with a much smaller bar, and made the mistake of assuming that they were smart.

    You may as well name this suit “My Struggle”, because you know Trump personally read it and approved every grievance set forth in it.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1412848065841672198.html

  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    “Why won’t Democrats show more respect for working class Trump voters?”

    I lived Rachel Bitecofer’s comments on this topic:
    “ Now, IDK if its just that I’m one of fewer academics that come from the real, unpolished, bottom 50% world, and not the romanticized bullshit painted by J.D. Vance of working-class America- the real one where people have 3 kids from 3 different women and get angry when 1 of them is reticent to let them visit their kid when they get out jail. AGAIN. In THAT working class, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry run rampant: and not only are these “isms” prevalent, there is a belief that they shouldn’t have had to be buried (see how that relates back to their culture war champion?) That the old days were far superior bc they could just call someone a f&g or slap their female co-worker in the ass is they were in the mood. There was a hierarchy, a caste @Isabelwilkerson notes, and they were at the top of it. Everything else might be a shit sandwich, their job, their house, their marriage, their debt, but that hierarchy & their place at the top of it- as Wilkerson notes in her book, that shit was SOLID. And now its gone. And do you know who took it? The Democrats.”

  21. 21.

    sab

    @debbie: Yikes. I only have one brother, and he is the aggrieved white privileged kind. Glad I never had to see him argue with a more sensible brother.

    My oldest sister thinks he is okay, and cannot understand why her own children find him appalling.

  23. 23.

    Suzanne

    Also…. can confirm that Bitecofer is 100% correct. There are plenty of white working class people — like my in-laws — who are solid Dems, and who aren’t afraid of black people, and who think college is a good thing, and who have lived in cities at one point, and who eagerly got their vaccines. But no one’s interviewing my in-laws at a diner.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thank you for the link. I will forward it to my Atlanta friend. Warren is a retired attorney who despises trump and his minions, and I think he will appreciate it.

    I’m curious though. How is your leg? I remember you hurt it badly a few months ago. Are you moving around OK now?

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Posted here the other day, we still get 40% of the white without college degree vote.  Wish it was more, but that’s still a lot of decent people who shouldn’t be treated as invisible.

  28. 28.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: Yeah, for sure.

    I really, really do not want to be in political coalition with those people. That’s not to say that I dont want to act in their interests. But I don’t want them to have influence.

    So much of this is about influence.

  29. 29.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    I’m sad for you that your family has this conflict.  I’m also intrigued about your TFG supporting brother.  Do you think his personality sort of predisposed him to be sympathetic to messaging that reinforced his existing sense of grievance?  Did he have some kind of formative experience that pushed him in that direction?

  31. 31.

    sab

    @Suzanne: That is my brother in SF to a T. My husband thinks he is gay because he is in SF and not married. I disagree. I know many happily married gay guys in SF. My brother is straight and not married because he is an a****** and a RWNJ in SF where no decent woman would have him however rich he is.

  32. 32.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Suzanne: My parents were solid white blue collar people who lived in Detroit. We always had enough money for food and utilities but I remember having fragments of two baby teeth pulled without novacaine because we didn’t have the extra $10 it would have cost. They voted Democratic.

    My DIL’s father worked in the steel mills around Gary. He was a union steward at one point. He says he eventually noticed that he did better when the Ds were in power, so that’s how he voted.

    Vance is full of romantic, nostalgic nonsense.

  35. 35.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Geminid:

    Hey, thanks!

    Leg is better than I ever expected. I’m still a little timid on descending steep inclines and stairs (I can tell it is weak), but I can mow grass, walk the dog and do a lot of normal stuff. We joined a local Planet Fitness so I can have access to weights, cardio, etc., and I can already tell an improvement on the elliptical cross trainer. I’m going to shoot for 45 minutes tonight (did 30 last night, didn’t feel it until the end). I think the trick is going to be to push it within limits, and I’m well aware of those.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: Diners are an expensive way to eat. Actual blue collar people cannot afford to eat there.

    Speaking as an actual blue collar guy who regularly ate at diners, Huh???

  37. 37.

    debbie

    @MomSense:

    I absolutely think he was predisposed for Trump. He’s always been so angry and resentful (once literally knocking me down and strangling me). He was hyperactive as a child and always felt he wasn’t getting enough attention. He used to pick on my youngest brother (he’s the middle of three) until he cried. He watched me watch him hurting him to see how I would react (he had that look Chauvin had). He was always complaining about every slight to him. He walks around calling himself “Mr. Nice Guy,” so I’m seeing a narcissistic similarity to you know who.

    In other words, an all-around piece of work. We were all raised better than this. My parents were Rockefeller Republicans and they had hearts and principles. My youngest brother voted for Trump for the tax cut; this brother was all about the permission it gave him to show his inner monsters.

    /rant

  40. 40.

    germy

    Trump’s social media lawsuits, if they’re somehow allowed to proceed, could end up forcing him to testify under oath about Jan. 6.

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 8, 2021

    Somehow I don’t think they’ll proceed, then.

  41. 41.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @MomSense:

    I think somebody posted a clip of him also saying that Marine Le Pen runs to the left of Macron as well as the French Soc!alist party.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    With you all the way on the “Huh?” Especially as regards truck stop diners.

    Rule of thumb #1: If the menu doesn’t spill over at least a minimum of six pages it’s not a real diner.

    Rule of thumb #2: If there’s no meatloaf offered, it’s not a diner. Corollary: Also too, hash browns.

    ;)

  44. 44.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: My mother once said that the best thing she ever gave her 6 children was each other. Every now and again I am reminded of how very fortunate I am that she was right. My siblings are a blessing.

  45. 45.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    It’s interesting because I have observed many TFG supporters express a feeling of validation and belonging from being part of that group.  I heard some 8th cousins discussing him in 2016 and one of them said that he says the things we are thinking but can’t say out loud.  They are all rural farmers and ranchers.  They’ve never been out of Waldo County except on rare occasions.  They are probably on the racist but not violent side of the spectrum but they also haven’t had much opportunity. Then there are people who have had violent tendencies and knew they were different who found it so liberating to find their people.

  46. 46.

    A Ghost to Most

    That hideous neon blue suit color is another shitty artifact of the Putin Regency.

  47. 47.

    Suzanne

    @sab: My in-laws are working-class white people who own a farm and never finished college, and they shop at Whole Foods.

  50. 50.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Until Trump came along, I would have said the same thing about two of the three, especially the youngest one. We haven’t spoken since 2016, and I miss him like the dickens.

  53. 53.

    Suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Vance is full of romantic, nostalgic nonsense. 

    Yes.
    I read Joan Williams’ book White Working Class a couple of years ago, and it crystallized some things for me. One is that the people she interviewed had this very strong through-line of pride about “hard work”. But that wasn’t drilled into enough for my liking. What does it mean to work hard? Because, I have to say, from my vantage point, I see a lot of not-very-hard work from the Trump cohort. Like, all those people on January 6 were not working. Williams writes about how that class hates doctors, lawyers, teachers, and considers nursing to be “women’s work”. I’m sure they consider anyone with an office job to be “an elite”. I work (and worked, in school) harder than most, and I resent the consideration that because I don’t physically hang the drywall that I’m not working hard.
    Especially from anyone who has ever done the punch-and-dump.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: I can’t say about menus as I never look at them. My order is almost always, “Slinger, with cheese and onions, whole wheat toast.”

  58. 58.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: Of course they do, how is this any different that what the GOP has done since GW Bush? Remember Bush was the one who started with the executive orders because he couldn’t get congress to enact laws when his own party was in control of it.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: I don’t worry too much about the influence of more white working class people joining the Democratic party. This is a shrinking demographic, and working class economic interests are already represented by organized labor. New infrastructure spending should make for a more prosperous working class; if some undecided white working class people can’t get past their culture war hang ups, that’s their problem. They’ll have take the Democratic Party as they find it.

    Latino working class people may be more open minded, and this is a relatively fast growing group. And while much was made of Latino trump voters last year, I’ve read studies showing that nationwide Latinos voted Democratic 2-1, even in Florida outside of the Miami/Dade County area (which voted 2-1 Republican). Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock carried the Georgia Latino vote, and this one reason they are now U.S. Senators.

    But why the fascination with white working class people? When in doubt, I blame the media. Reporters could find plenty of trump voters in any suburban Starbucks. But they’d rather focus on the people in diners than tell on their own social peers.

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Politically, we are a rainbow of leftists united by common feminist leanings. I blame my never a shrinking violet mother.

  64. 64.

    Suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh, absolutely 100%. “Hard work” is something only men do.

    I just read one of those listicles about things people say that are red flags. I have to say that the term “hard work” or “hardworking” has become a bit of a red flag for me in political discourse. Because they never mean a student who worked hard to get into college or graduate school. They don’t mean a nurse on a 12-hour shift. They don’t mean an office worker doing a 60-hour week. Or a teacher dealing with little kids all day. They certainly do not mean creative labor like mine. It’s an appeal to another kind of bigotry, the kind that only sees some people as important or praiseworthy.

  66. 66.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Suzanne: Going by the kids I grew up with and my own family, any education post high school is elitist, being in a skilled trade is elitist, not being stoned or drunk all day is elitist.   A lot of the contempt they are getting is in their own families.

  68. 68.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Geminid: But why the fascination with white working class people? When in doubt, I blame the media.

    I think it’s just a default cultural hangover, that and the fact that WWCP are the ones currently whining the loudest.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    The part that’s even more ironic is that it often doesn’t even apply to physical labor done by minority men.

  70. 70.

    Suzanne

    @Geminid:

    Reporters could find plenty of trump voters in any suburban Starbucks. But they’d rather focus on the people in diners than tell on their own social peers. 

    “Trump voters” and “Trump diehards” aren’t the same people, though. That’s why part of the story of the last election was the shift away from Trump in the suburbs.

  71. 71.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: That the old days were far superior bc they could just call someone a f&g or slap their female co-worker in the ass is they were in the mood. There was a hierarchy, a caste @Isabelwilkerson notes, and they were at the top of it. Everything else might be a shit sandwich, their job, their house, their marriage, their debt, but that hierarchy & their place at the top of it- as Wilkerson notes in her book, that shit was SOLID. And now its gone. And do you know who took it? The Democrats.”

    This, 1,000%. This is a lot of their grievance against Democrats. It’s why they love the “culture war” stuff so much. They think it’s ridiculous that they can’t say slurs whenever they want (it’s not a slur if it’s true, they’ll say), and why is it so wrong to show a woman you think she looks good by slapping or pinching her butt? And now we’re saying they can’t even make fun of trans people (can’t you see how dumb what they want to be is, why it’s against nature why can’t I say that without getting in trouble? It’s just the truth!)  They “don’t mean anything by it”, is what they’ll say. They resent the hell out of not being able to do or say these things without paying a price anymore, and they know it’s liberals who took this away from them.

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @raven

    Heck, have been in places below the Mason-Dixon line where the grits come with a side of grits.

    ;)

  75. 75.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Geminid:

    You’ll never see NYT deep dives with the following phrases:

    ”In this Brooklyn kombucha cafe…”

    ”In this Chicago bodega…”

    ”In this Louisville pho restaurant…”

  77. 77.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @NotMax:

    Grits are at their best when paired with protein and fat. Cheesy sausage grits, shrimp and bacon grits, etc.

    Make any of those and chop some cilantro or parsley over them, and you’ve got an $8 side in any restaurant.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    Why won’t Democrats show more respect for working class Trump voters?”

    Biden peeled away a significant number of previous Trump voters in 2020. And according to a recent Brookings analysis, Trump’s base is more stubborn grievance class than working class.

    The core coalition. Trump’s consistent appeals to his base bore fruit. His campaign for reelection was supported by 94% of Republicans, up from 92% in 2016; by 84% of White evangelical Protestants, up from 77%; and by 65% of rural voters, up from 59%. At the same time, he held the support of about two-thirds of whites without college degrees, and his support among white women rose from 47 to 53%.

    BTW, Biden’s proposals for free college, especially expansion of community college access, may be a good investment in future Democratic Party voters.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Every now and again I’ll get a waffle or maybe a chicken fried steak with biscuits and gravy. Hardly ever a burger, mostly because I’m just a breakfast kind of guy. Our local diner here (the DuKumInn) had a killer western omelet that I always ordered with biscuits and gravy. Unfortunately, the long time owners sold it a couple years ago and the new owners… Well, they just fucked it all up. I don’t know how they are still in business.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Grits are at their best when paired with protein and fat. Cheesy sausage grits, shrimp and bacon grits, etc.

    The Platonic ideal is bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs, with a biscuit and a side of grits. The only thing you add to the grits would be butter and black pepper.

    Cheesy sausage grits is an abomination.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    @Brachiator:

    and his support among white women rose from 47 to 53%.

    I don’t understand this.  I remember it was a big story when Trump won white women in 2016.

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SiubhanDuinne: 2 fried eggs (over easy for me), hashbrowns, and a hamburger patty drowned in chili w/ toast on the side. Most get it with shredded cheddar and onions on top, some don’t. Somethin’ wrong with those that don’t.

    Some folks look at it a go, “Ewwww…” but nothing satisfies a 2 AM after the bars are closed craving quite like a Slinger.

  89. 89.

    RSA

    News reports of demographic voter breakdowns rarely talk about the relative sizes of the different groups, which is often important. For example, it was a surprise to me (long ago) when I found out how many adult Americans have a four-year degree (here by race):

    White 33.5%
    Non-Hispanic White 35.8%
    Black 21.6%
    Hispanic/Latino 16.4%
    American Indian/Alaska Native 15.0%
    Asian 54.3%
    Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander 17.8%
    Other race 12.0%
    Two or more races 31.9%

    So it’s a good thing to appeal to White people without a bachelor’s degree—there are twice as many as those who have one.

  91. 91.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Heck, have been in places below the Mason-Dixon line where the grits come with a side of grits.

    That sounds about right.

    In some ways, grits are to Southern cooking what escargots are to French cuisine.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne:Williams writes about how that class hates doctors, lawyers, teachers, and considers nursing to be “women’s work”. I’m sure they consider anyone with an office job to be “an elite”. I work (and worked, in school) harder than most, and I resent the consideration that because I don’t physically hang the drywall that I’m not working hard. Especially from anyone who has ever done the punch-and-dump.

    This kind of thing has existed at every job I’ve ever had. Plant vs. office; Office vs. field workers; front of the house vs. back of the house. Each side believes they work harder than the other side, and knows more than the other side, and is more essential than the other side, and that the other side is lazy/dumb/mostly unnecessary. I think this is part of our natural tribal instinct. Thing is, one side can’t exist without the other one. What good is the stuff the factory workers are making if there is no one in the office to sell their products? How will the field workers know what to do if the office workers don’t do their jobs right? In a restaurant, who will eat the food the back of the house cooks if there isn’t a front of the house to serve it? And so on. It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen, and it exists EVERYWHERE. We all want to believe we’re the most important, most essential workers, when the truth is that we’re all interconnected.

  94. 94.

    Baud

    @RSA:

    So it’s a good thing to appeal to White people without a bachelor’s degree

     
    Well, yeah. It’s quite literally (hi, Steve!) the Dems’ white whale. But no one knows how to improve our numbers without sacrificing our values or our loyal voters.

  97. 97.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid:But why the fascination with white working class people? When in doubt, I blame the media. Reporters could find plenty of trump voters in any suburban Starbucks. But they’d rather focus on the people in diners than tell on their own social peers.

    *le sigh* It’s because the white voter is seen as the “real, legitimate, normal and ordinary voter”, especially the white male voter. Whatever the white, male voter wants is seen as “normal” and “centrist”. Every other voter is seen as a “special interest voter”, even if they don’t say it like that. The white man is the “baseline person” in this country still, and all the press coverage promotes that, even if it does it unconsciously.

  98. 98.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    The Countess is a monster and prefers ruined hockey puck eggs. I’m a “turn the burner off when the top is mostly done, give it one flip” guy.

  100. 100.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: This kind of thing has existed at every job I’ve ever had. Plant vs. office; Office vs. field workers; front of the house vs. back of the house. Each side believes they work harder than the other side, and knows more than the other side, and is more essential than the other side, and that the other side is lazy/dumb/mostly unnecessary. I think this is part of our natural tribal instinct.

    It is, but one thing I have noticed over the years is that in a lot of businesses that natural tribal instinct is exacerbated by management in an attempt to divide and conquer.

  101. 101.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Soprano2: 

    We all want to believe we’re the most important, most essential workers

    I don’t. I’m quite happy being retired.

  102. 102.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne:“Hard work” is something only men do.

    It’s the worship of “dirty jobs”, like that show on TV, by a lot of people who don’t actually want to get their hands dirty. I work with a lot of people who do those kind of jobs every day, and I have nothing but respect for most of them.

    The karaoke DJ at the bar plays videos between singers, so I hear a lot of country music that I normally never would listen to. It’s revealing to me how many of the songs are about how butthurt these people are that “those elites” look down on their lifestyle, which is honest and hardworking. In some of the videos, how much they look down on “those elites” is made explicit. I think it’s revealing that they think it’s totally OK for them to sneer at white collar workers, but horrible if white collar workers sneer at them.

  103. 103.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SiubhanDuinne: It’s universal diner fare in STL, and I have eaten them in other locales but I don’t know that you could find one in Rochester NY or Taos NM.

  104. 104.

    Ohio Mom

    Now I want to go to our neighborhood diner for fried eggs, rye toast and hash browns with onions and smothered in cheddar cheese. Not a possibility, any time now the heat pump guy is due.

    On the subject of Republican relatives, mine are all men and most of them were fussy babies and cranky kids. Fortunately they are outnumbered by the rest of us.

  106. 106.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: These are the women who get their status through their husbands, and who are afraid that a woman is going to wrongly accuse their sons of rape, stuff like that. Plus, they’re bigoted in their own right.

  108. 108.

    Baud

    @Soprano2: 

    . I think it’s revealing that they think it’s totally OK for them to sneer at white collar workers, but horrible if white collar workers sneer at them.

    Also, that the Republicans they vote for are extremely white collar.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: Yes, trump die hards are a subset of trump voters. I’ll be interested to see what these two types of Republican voters do next year.

    The trend in the suburbs nationally is, as you say, away from Republicans. This is one reason Democrats flipped 40 House seats in 2018. Republicans essentially have swapped suburban voters for exurban and rural voters, a losing strategy.

    In Virginia, this has led to the beginnings of a demographic death spiral for Republicans. They are trying to reverse that spiral in this fall’s state elections, but I don’t think they can. The facts that most of Virginia is prospering and that the state government is in good fiscal shape will not help them. Republicans have a slim chance of picking up enough seats to regain control of the House of Delegates, but that’s only because they are fighting on a map they drew in 2011.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: It is, but one thing I have noticed over the years is that in a lot of businesses that natural tribal instinct is exacerbated by management in an attempt to divide and conquer.

    Those are stupid managers, because it just makes everything worse. It’s so dumb anyway, everyone is necessary in the role they have. We as humans seem to have an irresistible instinct to find someone, anyone to look down on as being worse than we are.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Ohio Mom

    Toasting rye is a rarefied skill. Cherish those establishments which have mastered it. One second too much and it may as well be a buttered floor tile.

  114. 114.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: I’ll be honest, it stunned me that so many of these people loved TFG so much. In many ways he’s the opposite of what they say they admire – he has never dirtied his hands in his life, he wears suits all the time, and he spends more time on his appearance than most women do. If he were their boss, they’d sneer and look down on him as an effete. Of the many things I find hard to understand about TFG’s appeal to them, this is the strangest.

  115. 115.

    Betty Cracker

    One of the most interesting things I’ve seen from the recent deep dives into 2020 voter data is that Trump lost a lot of married men. He still won a majority of that group, but his margin declined by something like 20 points, which more than made up for Trump’s gains among Latino Americans. The latter gets a lot more attention.

  119. 119.

    Helen

    @Suzanne: I think there is too much focus on white working class. Do you really think that the white managerial class are really so different? I look at my managers, I believe most of them are straight ticket Republicans. And have most of the same cultural beliefs, just don’t say it out loud. From what I heard personally, a lot of suburban Republicans didn’t vote for Democrats, they just didn’t vote for Trump.

  120. 120.

    Brachiator

     

    @Baud:

    and his support among white women rose from 47 to 53%.

    I don’t understand this.  I remember it was a big story when Trump won white women in 2016.

    This was a misleading statistic that a lot of people clung to even after it was refuted. Even in threads here. NPR and others have recently been reporting on the Pew 2020 Validated Voter research analysis.

    The idea that a majority of white women voted for Trump quickly became one of the 2016 election’s most-cited statistics, as many Hillary Clinton supporters — particularly women — were outraged to see other women support Trump.

    While that statistic was repeated over and over, Pew’s data ultimately said this wasn’t true — they found that in 2016, white women were split 47% to 45%, slightly in Trump’s favor but not a majority.

    This year, however, it appears that Trump did win a majority of white women. Pew found that 53% of white women chose Trump this year, up by 6 points from 2016

    The 2020 election white woman vote may have varied because of the higher turnout of all voters, which included a resurgence of conservative voters.

    Also, married white women tend to lean more Republican than Democrat.

  121. 121.

    NotMax

    Just taste tested the sausage, beef and black bean stew – faux feijoada – whipped up in the Instant Pot at midnight, for consumption tomorrow and beyond (waiting for it to cool down some more before refrigerating).

    Eat yer heart out, Michelin guide.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @WereBear: Rachel Bitecofer has a lively and interesting Twitter feed. She had published book analysing the 2016 election, which got little attention at the time because she was an unkown. But she put out an incisive tweet last fall: “2016 was a story of late breakers and third party defection. 2020 will be a story of whose ballot gets counted.”

    Bitecofer is still somewhat of an outsider in her professional world. This may give her analysis a good edge.

  124. 124.

    Brachiator

    @Betty Cracker:

    Anything I write about food comes with a dash of snark. Whatever people like to eat or drink is fine with me.

    But I’m still right about grits. ;)

  125. 125.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Helen: I can assure you that the majority of management ( from middle on up ) of my company are straight up big R. Trump supporters without all the external swag.

  128. 128.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @sab: I agree with you. When I lived in Silicon Valley, I saw that there were trips from San Francisco to Santa Cruz for single women to meet single men. I would also see ads in the women’s locker rooms looking for women to take dance classes at the gym. So there was strong geographical skew in terms of the location of single women and single men.

  129. 129.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Brachiator:

    The only thing you add to the grits would be butter and black pepper.

    Damned straight.  Have whatever you want to with the grits, but butter and black pepper are all that go in the grits.  So saith my Southern wife, and I concur.

  130. 130.

    Betty Cracker

    @Brachiator: My husband is from Western New York and doesn’t understand grits. He claims they have no flavor, and that’s more or less true unless you add things to them, which is the same with potatoes. Some people like potatoes with just butter and salt and/or pepper, and that’s okay! More gravy, cheese, etc., for me!

  131. 131.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    So it’s a good thing to appeal to White people without a bachelor’s degree

    Well, yeah. It’s quite literally (hi, Steve!) the Dems’ white whale. But no one knows how to improve our numbers without sacrificing our values or our loyal voters.

    But isn’t this exactly what Biden did in 2020? Improved his numbers without sacrificing his values, or the values of Democratic Party voters?

    The GOP keeps trying to paint Democrats as being outside the mainstream. And most recently they have been pushing the strange lie that giving more breaks to corporations during the pandemic was good and right and natural, but stimulus payments and enhanced unemployment payments to individuals is wasteful, unpatriotic, un-American.

    This is almost too easy. The GOP is more nakedly declaring that they have no values at all, apart from loyalty to plutocrats. The Democrats just have to keep pointing this out, and asking Trumpers, “is this really what you want?”

    Those who want to continue down that path are free to do so.

  132. 132.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    Possibly he’s more familiar with johnny cakes. Grits are (more or less) johnny cakes, without the cake.

    Found it hilarious when chi-chi upscale eateries latched onto polenta as a fad. Grits by any other name….

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: And then there are enhanced grits like scrapple and ponhous. I’ve had ponhous cooked after a hog was slaughtered. I’m not sure what was in it besides grits, but it sure was good

    Now I find myself craving scrapple. Maybe I’ll get some this weekend.

  134. 134.

    kmax

    Open thread, so.. for Richmond VA juicers.. my daughter-in-law is an organic gardener in Richmond and sells at various markets.  Due to encroaching storm things are being cancelled.  She has an outstanding deal today on veggies delivered anywhere in Richmond.  see @jaymeadowco on Instagram

  135. 135.

    Suzanne

    @Helen:

    Do you really think that the white managerial class are really so different? 

    Anecdotally, I would estimate that 90% of the white “creative class” people I know hate Trump and are pretty left. I have seen multiple surveys and polls that reflect that. So, yeah, I think college-educated white people, who are much more urban, are different from the “working class” and “managerial class”. Williams calls it “professional-managerial class”, which I think erases an important distinction.

  136. 136.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @NotMax: I hated that song from the time it came out (“if her daddy’s poor, you can do what you feel”). The debasing of women trumped any happy feels from the bouncy rhythm. YMMV.

  139. 139.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: Do they have Spam scrapple in Hawaii? My friend Joan spent eight days on the Big Island in April. She had some kind of spam sushi, said Spam was much used there.

  141. 141.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2:

    I think it’s revealing that they think it’s totally OK for them to sneer at white collar workers, but horrible if white collar workers sneer at them. 

    I do think there is a pretty widespread cultural rejection that stings — and andrew Breitbart was right when he said that politics is downstream of culture. Everyone wants to see themselves as aspirational, to use marketing language. And increasingly, no one of cultural influence aspires to that life or even presents it positively in popular culture. I long said that one of the things about Obama that made him so hated is that he is cool and stylish and urbane. The whole dustup over the Vogue cover for Dr. Jill is that no one of taste gave a shit about Melania, and for people who think she’s pretty as opposed to trashy, that feels insulting. We don’t like their cars, their beer, their towns. Nike doesn’t want their money and they don’t want the Nike swoosh to be associated with those people. But, you know, marketers want my money. In a capitalist society, that’s a compliment. I have more influence.

  143. 143.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    Spam musubi.

    Or, if you have a coronary specialist on speed dial, the spam, egg and Portuguese manapua at 7-11.

    Spam, along with the vile canned corned beef, is majorly adored in Hawaii. Can’t abide it myself, find it to be basically a salt lick with a vaguely meaty coating.

  146. 146.

    Geminid

    @kmax: I hope your daughter-in-law makes it through the storm OK. It’s supposed to blow through and be gone by tomorrow morning. Things should open back up by the weekend, unless tornadoes are a problem.

    I live about 60 miles west of Richmond. Right now it’s very still under grey skies, but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms and flash floods later. We need the rain, but not the floods. There will be good kayaking next week, though.

  147. 147.

    bluefoot

    @OzarkHillbilly:  I miss honest-to-god diners. There are some posh diners in my area, and formerly-old school diners which have transformed into posh diners. But I miss regular diners where you get no-fuss food. My favorite one near me closed shortly before the pandemic, and that was one of the last.

  149. 149.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: So you can’t abide spam! I noticed that it was not included in various dishes you prepare and talk about. But I figured you were just holding out on us.

  152. 152.

    nclurker

    @Brachiator: 
    the only thing that goes with grits ;country ham and red eye gravy.
    melt a tablespoon of brown sugar with a tablespoon of butter.
    cook the ham in the sauce until done.remove and add black coffee.reduce by a third.
    spoon red eye over the grits.
    generally served with over-easy eggs and the ham.

  153. 153.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MomSense: I thought of you yesterday when I checked Twitter and found out that Cenk and Glenn were in a spat.  It was glorious.  Glenn even went after whoever leaked about Flynn’s Russian contacts.  A lot of roses lost their petals.  Heh.

    Oh the hilarious stupidity that must’ve ensued!

  154. 154.

    Mary Ellen Sandahl

    Gotta rise in defense of the noble potato. A freshly boiled new potato has plenty of delicious, delicately earthy flavor. A tiny bit of butter is lovely, but could be considered gilding the lily.
    All the diner-fave descriptions startle me. I guess my sister and I (both retirement age smallish females) eat atypically for middle class suburbanites; no way do we have that amount of animal protein on our plates, ever, except at family holiday feasts. Probably just as well, it’s be a challenge budgeting for it.

  155. 155.

    SFAW

    @Geminid: @NotMax:

    Scrapple: used to have it as a kid. Not sure if my father was big on it (he grew up during the Depression, so maybe), or my mother. Either way, I liked having it. Wandered in the wilderness for many years, then started buying it a few years ago. I love it, but it’s not exactly “heart healthy,” so I don’t cook it as often as I’d like.

    My wife likes Spam, it reminds her of her childhood, although she grew up fairly poor. I never touch the stuff, because oy vey, but I sometimes buy it for her.

  156. 156.

    SFAW

    @NotMax:

    Still haven’t figured out that linky thing, I see. [I know, I know — it’s still pre-dawn in the 50th State, so things look different.]

  157. 157.

    NotMax

    @SFAW

    Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. Other than the nym attribution there was no link, so didn’t bother with a correction (no edit function here).

    :)

  159. 159.

    Amir Khalid

    @eclare:
    It’s not a terribly original name, is it? I remember that in The Waltons one of the sons (Jason?) was a musician, and he often played at a local establishment named the Dewdrop Inn.

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @SFAW: Now I remember the other dish prepared alongside ponhous: souse. I sometimes see souse in stores. It’s somewhat gelatinous. In terms of heart health, souse makes a nice piece of scrapple look like a bran muffin.

  163. 163.

    dnfree

    @Suzanne: the people I know who talk about “I worked hard for what I have” are college graduates and beyond with management jobs, or who inherited a family business. I’m sure Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, plus Jared, all would tell you how hard they worked.  They’re trying to justify why they “deserve” to be so much better off than the working class

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