Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

We still have time to mess this up!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

“woke” is the new caravan.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Don’t be a Chump

Don’t be a Chump

by | 94 Comments

This post is in: 

Steven Robinson has an interesting post at Wonkette saying that Democrats should act more like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, or Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. I know that dumb hero worship is not the Democrats’ style, but I think he makes a good point:

In North by Northwest, Thornhill commits several straight-up crimes: Stowing away on a train, evading the police, lying on the regular to obtain information, and at one point, stealing a stranger’s car. The audience loves him. And at no point do they have trouble distinguishing him from the villain, Phillip Vandamm (James Mason).

Republicans are the Vandamm/one-armed man party. Democrats can still be Cary Grant and Harrison Ford if they don’t act like chumps and realize that desperate times call for desperate measures. If you think nuking the filibuster to save voting rights would play with voters exactly the same as all the ways the GOP has abused the filibuster, then you must also think that audiences will boo Cary Grant when he steals some guy’s car. I’ve seen the film multiple times in theaters. It’s never happened yet.

It’s maddening that so many Democrats believe playing constitutional hardball will somehow turn them into Republicans. […]

I saw a concrete example of this last week on Twitter. One of our local county legislators, a Democrat who is a former TV news reporter, was upset over a proposed Democratic gerrymander of New York. In this scenario, we would go from 19D-8R to 23D-3R (after losing a seat). This legislator’s point was that gerrymandering is bad, no matter who does it. Well, OK, but how about not unilaterally disarming? Why do we need to be chumps and have a “fair” redistricting in New York when every red state is scheming to gerrymander, disenfranchise Democrats and steal the election if necessary?

Similarly, why do Democrats need to announce investigations into the Afghanistan withdrawal the day after Kabul fell? Why does Senator Bob Menendez immediately have to push a bullshit narrative about it? Could it be because he wants to reclaim his reputation by appearing on Sunday shows after his $5 million battle to fight corruption charges and his admonition from the Senate Ethics Committee? I guess his need to go on the TeeVee and take part in a disgusting media pile-on far outweighs our need to have Joe Biden remain effective and get the credit he deserves for doing the right thing. The fact that this asshole is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee makes Democrats look like chumps for supporting him.

Similarly, the filibuster, which I’ll let Robinson describe:

[..] This is the problem when Kyrsten Sinema passionately defends the filibuster and Mitch McConnell pats her on the head for it. Audiences (and voters) don’t like or respect chumps.

Maybe these guys could at least pretend something was at stake.

Reader Interactions

94Comments

  2. 2.

    Wag

    This. It is time for Dems to stop ceding power to the GQP. Fight fire with fire. Play dirty. No mercy.

    Otherwise the GQP will keep gerrymandering themselves into undeserved relevance.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    our need to have Joe Biden remain effective and get the credit he deserves for doing the right thing

    Maybe it’s just my info bubble, but I’ve seen precious little backing of Biden on Afghanistan across the Democratic ideological spectrum.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    Agree 100% on the New York gerrymandering. Most voters won’t know about it anyway because they aren’t paying attention to details, but for those who are, explain why you’re doing it! Say you still support a law for nonpartisan gerrymandering that would outlaw all partisan maps, including yours, but you’re not going to play by a different set of rules. It’s common sense.

    I’m wondering if my opinion about Menendez is inconsistent because there are so many corrupt AF Republicans tolerated by their party, but I don’t think it is. Dems should fire that sleazy fuck Menendez into the sun. NJ is a blue state. We don’t need that corrupt shit-stain giving fodder to a “both sides are crooks” narrative. In the meantime, he should lose his plum committee assignments.

  6. 6.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Kind of a dilemma when one demands their elected officials to all be the Second Coming of Buddha and ruthless throat cutters at the same time.

  7. 7.

    Dupe1970

    How do we convince the primary offenders like Sinema and Manchin that they are being chumps? That’s where I am stuck. But I agree that Dems should use every tool that is legal to leverage power away from Republicans.

  8. 8.

    J

    Agree, though I have trouble seeing the Republican party as James Mason, with the style and grace he brings to all his roles, even when playing a villain.

  9. 9.

    eclare

    The electoral odds in the Senate and in the Presidency are so stacked against D’s that we must go to Def Con 1 when we can.  Those chances don’t come often and must be used to the fullest extent.

  10. 10.

    trnc

    @Betty Cracker: We don’t need that corrupt shit-stain giving fodder to a “both sides are crooks” narrative.

    True. OTOH, his “investigation” isn’t likely to reveal the Biden administration to be the total losers that he is currently claiming.

  11. 11.

    rp

    What do you mean “Democrats,” kemosabe? I think most Democrats are happy to nuke the filibuster. The fact that Sinema and Manchin won’t is a Sinema and Manchin problem, not a “Democrat” problem.

    Talking about the Democrats as a whole isn’t productive IMO.

  14. 14.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @trnc:

    OTOH, his “investigation” isn’t likely to reveal the Biden administration to be the total losers that he is currently claiming.

    Here’s the narrative that I hope finally comes out but probably won’t:

    1. Trump negotiated a surrender to the Taliban and simultaneously slowed down the visa process that would have gotten our allies out.
    2. The Potemkin regime in Afghanistan crumbled at first contact with the Taliban, faster than the military predicted.
    3. After the first shock of the quick fall of Kabul, Biden oversaw a pretty effective withdrawal of Americans and allies from Afghanistan.
  15. 15.

    MarkPainter

    I remember when California went from redistricting by a (Democratic-controlled) legislature to a nonpartisan commission. The result was an increase in the number of Democratic districts, because the Ds in the legislature were deliberately creating R districts out of a sense of comity.

    In other words, when you take redistricting out of the hands of the Rs, the result is more D districts. When you take redistricting out of the hands of the Ds, the result is more D districts.

    Tells you a lot about how we got into this mess.

  16. 16.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @rp:

    What do you mean “Democrats,” kemosabe? I think most Democrats are happy to nuke the filibuster. The fact that Sinema and Manchin won’t is a Sinema and Manchin problem, not a “Democrat” problem.

    I generally agree and in fairness I singled out examples.

    @Baud:

    But not as many as I would have anticipated given the longstanding effort to end the forever wars, and fewer when it comes to Dem officeholders.

    The progressive wing of the party has been good on this subject.  They shit on the forever war but not on Biden.  Bernie, AOC, Barbara Lee, Jamaal Bowman are some I’ve seen making it about the whole war, not the last week.

  17. 17.

    Brendan in NC

    @rp: While I agree with that on most things; this has become more akin to the “Bad apple” police analogy. You’ve got 2 who are loudly against changing the filibuster, 6 who have, and 40 who remain silent. In essence, you’ve got 42 Dems against updating the filibuster. The #s are probably off, but you get the idea…

  18. 18.

    Juju

    The media narrative is both sides do it, whether it’s true or not. In redistricting, Democrats should go ahead and gerrymander.  They will probably be accused of gerrymandering no matter what they end up doing, because Democrats are the only ones ever held accountable.

  20. 20.

    gene108

    I feel like older Democrats have some level of PTSD from the how liberalism was denigrated throughout the 1980’s till around 2015.

    They cannot admit they are right and Republicans are wrong, because we are a center-right nation or something.

    Also, I’ve thought about why Democratic Presidents seem to take so many hits from the media and Republican Presidents skate by with far more egregious fuck ups. My theory is 50% of the media content is purely right-wing partisan content, whether its Fox News, talk radio, OANN, NewsMax, shared Facebook links, and so on.

    The other 50% is the MSM, which does not understand or willingly ignores the true right-wing partisan nature of the other half of the media ecosystem. When both parts of the converge on a narrative like “Biden failed in Afghanistan” it’s like a wave that is totally in sync with other waves and builds and builds into a fast moving torrent of “Biden’s a failure”, with nothing really to slow it down.

    Republicans never go through this because the right-wing media always finds some way to polish the turd of Republican fuck ups, so you never have waves of negative press reinforcing themselves against a Republican President.

    ************************************

    Regarding NY state, I’m not sure what to do. NJ state legislature proposed to do away with the current nonpartisan redistricting commission, and have the legislature draw districts, but NJ Democrats let their legislators know they were against this. I was one of those.

    In the short run, I think NY state would be better off gerrymandering the hell out of the state, to give us the best chance to keep the House in 2022. I do not think it’s good for the country in the long run, if partisan gerrymandering becomes entrenched by both Democrats and Republicans.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    @Brendan in NC: What’s in people’s hearts is irrelevant.  If Manchin and Sinema changed their tune, I’m skeptical that anyone else would step up to block filibuster reform.

  22. 22.

    gene108

    @Betty Cracker:

    Dems should fire that sleazy fuck Menendez into the sun. NJ is a blue state.

    Sleazy corrupt politicians were the norm in NJ for years. Mendez came up through that system. It started falling apart in the last 10 years or so from what I have seen.

  23. 23.

    Steeplejack

    Just tossed 20 bucks to Wonkette via PayPal. Quick and painless. Been trying to remember to support sites that I read a lot.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Juju:

    They will probably be accused of gerrymandering no matter what they end up doing

    I’ve come to dislike this line of argument.  It assumes that all accusations are automatically persuasive with voters outside the GOP base regardless of our actions.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    I saw a concrete example of this last week on Twitter. One of our local county legislators, a Democrat who is a former TV news reporter, was upset over a proposed Democratic gerrymander of New York. In this scenario, we would go from 19D-8R to 23D-3R (after losing a seat). This legislator’s point was that gerrymandering is bad, no matter who does it.

     

    Phuck that shyt. Ain’t no good Republicans.

  30. 30.

    Librarian

    Actually, Cary Grant doesn’t steal a car, he steals a pickup truck with a refrigerator in the back, which he drives to Chicago, where it is shown parked on the street outside of Eva Marie Saints’ hotel, with the cops puzzling over it.

  31. 31.

    Dennis

    Cheers for mistermix! It’s been a real facepalm watching lots of Dems jump on board the Trash Joe for the Withdrawal train. It just doesn’t happen on the other side. Hypothetical: their guy could keep going on air minimizing a pandemic and promoting crackpot cures while half a million Americans die, and they’d STILL…..oops, not a hypothetical.

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Still trying to tread the normie path, huh? Same here, though I’m still on Twitter. I feel much more serene not watching cable news. We tuned in for a while when the fall of Kabul was playing out in real time. What we saw quickly reinforced our decision to abstain.

  33. 33.

    MattF

    Maryland is aggressively gerrymandered, to put it mildly. The 3rd and 4th districts are classics of the genre. I’ll say, with a sigh, that I’m for it.

  34. 34.

    Brachiator

    Real life ain’t the movies. I keep hearing a few people say “let’s lie, cheat and steal for a little while.” Or they want a dirty tricks and propaganda network like Fox News.

    It is often easier to cover yourself in shit than to clean yourself off again.

    It is one thing to play hardball. I am all for that. But there ain’t no winning in becoming what you claim you hate.

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Aside from Rachel, who will still do original reporting on occasion, MSNBC is all commentary and perspective, not really news.  I was thinking about trying out CNN because they seemed to be on solid footing at the end of the Trump period, but from what I hear, their Afghanistan coverage has been atrocious.

    The fact is, the news media industry does not market their product to people like me.  I’ve come to accept that.

  37. 37.

    Dennis

    @gene108: The proposed NY gerrymander isn’t even that egregious; NY is blue enough that it just requires some massaging at the margins to make it mostly Dem reps.

    I would go ahead with it, while at the same time offering to participate in a 50-state compact that puts redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission–but it doesn’t take effect until all 50 sign it.

    In Pennsylvania, we have the opposite problem–we are a purple state, but gerrymandering has made it a strong Red state until the recent lawsuits. Those redrawn lines will have to be redrawn again now, which probably means another lawsuit to prevent the (gerrymandered) GOP state house majority from re-gerrymandering.

  38. 38.

    Another Scott

    Virginia just amended the constitution to have a nominal 50:50 split on the redistricting commission, some appointments by the parties, some nominally “citizens”, etc. After taking the legislature and having the 3 statewide offices for the first time in ages. Oh, and the final arbiter of any new map is the state supreme court which is GOP-leaning (18th most conservative according to Ballotopedia). In early procedural votes, the GQP has voted in lockstep while Team D has been less united. It doesn’t look good, as I expected, but we’ll see. (Redistricting should be nonpartisan, but I don’t know how one does that in the real world.)

    Otherwise, meh. The Democratic party is a big tent and we need to tailor the message to the local voters. If Sinema and Manchin win general elections, good. If we have 65 senators including them, then the problem takes care of itself…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    MattF

    @Betty Cracker: It’s been about a decade since I’ve watched cable news. I (finally) cut the cord a few weeks ago, actually less painful than I’d feared. The trick is to give monosyllabic answers (e.g., ‘NO’) to any questions.

  41. 41.

    Ken

    @Baud: The fact is, the news media industry does not market their product to people like me.

    I’m sure once you take office, that will change.

  42. 42.

    Benw

    New York stater here: gerrymander the hell out of NY and pick up the 4 seats and don’t think twice!

    My fav proposal is to combine Staten Island’s district with enough of Park Slope to turn it blue: have fun being ruled by Brooklyn hipsters you fuckers!

  44. 44.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    I have cut way back on my cable news consumption (which is usually an occasional check-in with Morning Joe and a sampling of the MSNBC evening shows), especially when they launch into the subject of Afghanistan. Been reading less, too, and getting my core samples from Twitter.

  45. 45.

    The Moar You Know

    The fact that Sinema and Manchin won’t is a Sinema and Manchin problem, not a “Democrat” problem.

    @rp: It IS a Democratic Party problem.  It’s actually no problem for either Manchin or Sinema at all.  Let me give you an example:

    I have 12 people in my office.  One refuses to get vaccinated for COVID.

    As a result, we all have to wear masks at all times when inside.  We have to disinfect everything that gets touched by this guy.  Since I’m IT, that job usually falls on me.  We have to ban employees from the employee room, which has the refrigerator and microwave.  And until the FDA gives full approval to one of the vaccines, we’ve been told by our lawyers to not fire the guy.

    This is far less of a problem for the employee that doesn’t want to get vaxxed, because he’s getting exactly what he wants with zero costs.  For the rest of us, this is a huge pain in the ass.

    Same deal with Manchin and Sinema.  This will cause them no problems with their voters at all.  The rest of us will pay a very high price for their unwillingness to play ball

    ETA:  Well, well, well, the vaccine has been approved.  Someone’s going to get a “two weeks to comply” lecture today.   Too bad we can’t do the same to Manchin and Sinema.

  46. 46.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: You are right; they don’t market their product to the likes of us, and we might as well accept that.

    Sort of related: was just reading about Maddow’s new deal with NBC. There are no details yet, but it sounds like she’s going to move away from a M-F nightly show and focus more on projects.

    That might be a good thing. I think her impulse to explain the shit out of everything might be better suited to other formats. I thought her Bag Man podcast on Spiro Agnew was awesome.

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    yesssssss

     

    Cook County Employees Will Have to be Vaccinated Against COVID-19 by Oct. 15, Preckwinkle Says Heather Cherone |

    August 20, 2021 5:25 pm

     

    Cook County employees who report to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle will have to be vaccinated by Oct. 15, officials announced Friday. “Given the current state of the pandemic, Cook County will implement a mandatory employee vaccination policy to ensure that members of the public who interact with county employees and our facilities are safe when doing so, as well as to ensure the safety and well-being of employees while at work,” Preckwinkle said in a statement Friday. The order covers all of the employees who work for the office of the president as well as those covered by Cook County Employment Plan, officials said.

     

    Employees have until Oct. 15 to comply with the policy “or provide a verifiable medical or religious exemption,” according to the statement. Preckwinkle said she would encourage “Cook County’s separately elected offices to follow suit.”

    Those officials include Sheriff Tom Dart, who operates Cook County Jail, and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

     

    https://news.wttw.com/2021/08/20/cook-county-employees-will-have-be-vaccinated-against-covid-19-oct-15-preckwinkle-says

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Moar You Know: The Pfizer vaccine was just approved, so fire that fucker! I suspect a lot of corporate legal teams were waiting for that to greenlight mandates. Good. It’s past time to shift the burden to the willfully unvaccinated.

  50. 50.

    Splitting Image

    As I understand it, Sinema made her start in the Getting Republicans Elected Every November party, and is representing her constituency to the best of her ability.

    The truth is that blaming Manchin and Sinema for the current weakness of the Democrats is exactly the same as blaming Biden for the fall of Kabul. Every uphill struggle the Democrats are facing now is a result of factions of Democrats staying home in 2010 to teach the traitor Obama a lesson. The Republicans made big gains that year in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida. They did this just in time for redistricting and used their gains to lock the Democrats out of power in many of those states for ten years. They further entrenched their power with another big win in 2014. Again a result of Democrats staying home to teach the party a lesson.

    The GOP gains from 2010 are the main reason Trump was able to pull off a win in 2016, the main reason they control the Senate, and the main reason they are holding the House as close as they are. Not to mention the reason they control the Supreme Court.

    What’s missing from your plan to fight fire with fire is getting enough people to the polls to win big in the current battleground states and lock the GOP out of power anywhere besides New York and California. The Republicans control the state houses in far more states than the Democrats do, and until that changes, trying to match Republican gerrymandering blow for blow is a losing proposition.

  51. 51.

    ...now I try to be amused

    For some time I’ve thought that Biden will have to emulate Lincoln and bend a lot of rules to counter the blatant rule-breaking by Republicans if he wants to save the Republic.

  52. 52.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: Josh Marshall and Matt Yglesias are pushing back against the Blob narrative, and Yglesias at least is getting a lot of “I guess you don’t care if our Afghan friends are all murdered!” in return.  I was mostly dipping in and out of MSNBC while in the car last week, but I got the distinct impression that Nicolle Wallace and some of her guests were walking back the “How could Joe Biden do this…?” wailing in the face of polls. Barry McCaffrey (ret’d 4 star general) has been saying all along that trump told the Taliban, over a year ago, that we’d get out if they stopped shooting and if Biden tried anything else, they’d start shooting again.

  53. 53.

    Ksmiami

    @Wag: no more bipartisan crap, no more niceties. The GOP broke our Constitutional order and need to be punished for it into eternity.

  54. 54.

    Betty Cracker

    @Splitting Image: You’re right about the absolutely horrendous timing of Dem losses in 2010 and 2014 and the scale of the challenge going forward since so many statehouses are under Republican control. But the root cause of the problem is more complex than “Dems stayed home to teach Obama a lesson.” I think our underperformance in midterms is a chronic problem that predates Obama, and I suspect it has more to do with who our coalition is (typically younger, less secure financially, less discretionary time, less engaged civically, etc.) and where it’s concentrated.

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    @gene108: +1

    So many things to talk about in your comment.

    Too many in the MSM seem to think that their default corporate viewpoint is the obvious, fair, political-center and they refuse to examine the environment they’re in.  “On the Media” on the radio was about the only show I knew of that tried to examine how the media slants things.

    The famous reporters know other reporters.  They protect their own and are very aware of the corporate lines not to cross.  Remember the press’s near universal condemnation of MoveOn’s “General Betray Us” ad, while ignoring the substance of what he was being criticized for in that ad.

    I don’t know how we solve these problems.  It seems to take a generation or more of investment to move the needle on the way people think about politics.  It’s an uphill battle when the press is in the way.  But Abrams and others have shown that the way forward is to route around them.  Register voters and turn them out in elections.

    On gerrymandering, given the way things are now, and given the GQP’s history and present actions, we need to take every seat we can.  I don’t see Democrats advocating DeLay’s tactic of doing mid-decade redistricting – they’re talking about using the existing systems and (fairly) taking advantage.  Until we have non-partisan redistricting, I don’t see the alternative if we want a functioning democracy.  There’s no compromise between Italian and tire rims and anthrax…  (Remember that the Reconstruction amendments were passed when the traitors weren’t able to have seats in the Congress.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  56. 56.

    gene108

    So the anti-vaxxers have a new talking point

    Fox responded to FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine by asking if it was rushed

    “FDA just giving full approval to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, it’s the first vaccine to get that full approval and in record time too, that has critics asking if the process was rushed. Was it?”

    https://twitter.com/LisPower1/status/1429808635086057473

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: my recollection is that 2008 turn-out spiked, then 2010 was a normal mid-term turn-out, older, whiter, more rural, etc.

    But there was a huge push in “our” media, such as it was then, that Obama had failed. I remember Joan Walsh seemed to make it her mission to devote a column to every disappointed first-time Obama voter she could find. And the whole Rally About Nothing, when Jon Stewart– who always had a chip on his shoulder about Obama that I could never quite figure out– gave a “Medal Or Reasonableness” to an idiot who said she was exhausted from defending Obama.

  62. 62.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Betty Cracker: if they can make time to wait in line for a new arcade fire album or tickets to pitchfork fest, they can make time to vote

    especially given arcade fire & ryan schreiber are tremendously worse than barryobummer

  63. 63.

    gene108

    @Splitting Image:

    The truth is that blaming Manchin and Sinema for the current weakness of the Democrats is exactly the same as blaming Biden for the fall of Kabul.

    With the billions Republicans have spent since Nixon resigned to maintain control of government, from think tanks, to PAC’s, to the Moral Majority, to groups like Americans for Prosperity, I am shocked the Democratic Party is still able to survive.

    Every uphill struggle the Democrats are facing now is a result of factions of Democrats staying home in 2010 to teach the traitor Obama a lesson.

    Part of the problem in 2010 was the 2009 Citizens United SCOTUS ruling. Republican operatives (I think led by Ed Gallespie) launched Operation Red State to take over state houses and Congress. Since unlimited funds could be used for third party advertising, they courted wealthy conservatives with an axe to grind.

    There are no wealthy liberals to counter balance things.

    All of a sudden, conservative Democratic legislators, in several states, who only had to do a few mailers to remind people they exist right before the election, were seeing their districts flooded with negative T.V. ads from a bunch of groups they’ve never heard of and they did not have the money to counter it.

  65. 65.

    cain

    @Another Scott:

    I’m good with taking redistricting out of GOP hands. As long as the end state is that it goes to a non-partisan group in the end after we’ve destroyed this viral nazi version of the GOP.

  66. 66.

    Anonymous At Work

    @The Moar You Know: Aren’t they recruiting a primary candidate for Sinema?  She’ll need massive crossover support from Republicans (who, with an open primary and a ton of other statewide offices on the ballot, will be busy with their internal civil war).

  68. 68.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose:

    lected fauxgressives’s allies in the lamestream media like glemm greenwald, michael moore, & cenk uygur,

    This critique is far, far behind the times and unfair.

  69. 69.

    stinger

    @Betty Cracker: Read somewhere once a (speculative) explanation of Rachel Maddow’s format that made sense to me — that her target audience is stay-at-home moms, women getting their hair done, women doing the hairstyling, desk clerk at the tire shop, etc. People with possibly limited political backgrounds and likely frequent interruptions. Take advantage of a commercial to put another load of laundry in, and not get back to see/hear Rachel until she’s already re-explained — or miss the first explanation because the baby’s crying or the phone rang, but luckily Rachel explains again later. Lots of repetitious detail ensures that RM’s points get across.

  73. 73.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: Yup, I’ve always said that even more than the permanent rage of his howler monkeys, trump’s real secret weapon was the apathy of the lumpenmittel.

    @stinger: I gather her show and a lot MSNBC shows are big as podcasts. I know I’ve done more listening than watching of late.

  76. 76.

    Geminid

    Virginia, Colorado, and Ohio have novel redistrictung commissions. It will be interesting to see the outcome in each of these states. Colorado’s commission will be working in a new Congressional district, while Ohio’s will work with one less.

    I was with the majority of voters who voted 2-1 for the new commission, so I guess support independent redistricting in general. But I am all for Demicrats in states like New York wiping out Republican seats, on the principle that sometimes one has to fight fire with fire. Next year’s Congressional elections will be critical.

    In the medium and  long runs, though, I don’t fear independent redistricting. I think that demographic change and Republican radicalism are working to insure a solid Democratic Congressional majority. This dynamic has already  delivered seats in Virginia, Texas, Georgia and others states with Republican-drawn maps.

  78. 78.

    geg6

    @Baud: ​
     
    I’ve quit every national news program, with the sole exception of Lawrence O’Donnell. He’s been the only one keeping his head and doing actual reporting along with his usual commentary. All of it non-hysterical and fact-based. The rest of MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and (especially atrocious, mainly due to Richard Engel’s absolute mental breakdown) NBC have no reporting actually happening. It’s all access journalism, gossip provided by anonymous sources and personal opinion. The American media have just shown their asses about as completely as anyone possibly could and I will trust absolutely none of them ever again. Lawrence O’Donnell and Josh Marshall are the only ones worth listening to/reading.
    I saw someone celebrating Maddow’s signing a new contract with MSNBC and I thought why, after the last two weeks, would anyone celebrate that?

  79. 79.

    cleek

    Why do we need to be chumps and have a “fair” redistricting in New York when every red state is scheming to gerrymander, disenfranchise Democrats and steal the election if necessary?

    either you think gerrymandering is a crappy anti-democratic hack or you don’t.

  81. 81.

    gvg

    Disagree with the idea Dems should cheat because GOP does. They need stronger sounding statements and other improvements but gerrymandering to that extent could drive me away. It’s wrong. I understood that in elementary school. You can turn off more voters that you have than you realize if you screw up your brand as the honest party.

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @gvg: I think you are right in the long run. In the medium term, I expect that by the next census there will be even more states moving to independent commissions. But in the meantime, I don’t think hardball redistricting in New York state will hurt the Democratic brand nationally. The brand may not be hurt even in New York so long as Democrats elect capable Representatives with broad appeal in the new districts.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The biggest problem in 2010, IMHO, was that the recovery was too slow.  That gave space for all of the toxic attacks on Obama and Team D and drove disillusionment among Democrats.  (It’s hard to argue that the country is on the wrong track with 5+% annual GDP growth.)  And that’s why Moscow Mitch and all the rest fought the recovery efforts so ferociously – they knew that Obama would break the trends if he had a rapidly recovering economy.

    When people are suffering economically, bad things happen for political progress.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    Geminid

    @Betty: Congressman Jake Auchingloss (MA-4) has also forthrightly defended President Biden on this matter.  Auchingloss served a combat tour in Helmand Province in 2014, as a Marine Corps captain. That  presumably is why MSNBC and CNN gave him airtime.

  86. 86.

    david

    either you think gerrymandering is a crappy anti-democratic hack or you don’t.

    there’s a reason the House has 56 AA members, but the Senate only has 3.

  89. 89.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @stinger:

    Lots of repetitious detail ensures that RM’s points get across.

    Another possible explanation for repetition on cable shows: channel surfing. They expect viewers to drop in (and drop out) throughout the show.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @cleek: Redistricting must be done, under the rules as they exist now.  One man’s gerrymandering is another man’s sensible district.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @Splitting Image: Maybe Democrats can’t match Republicans blow for blow in redistricting. But if Democrats in New York don’t get their licks in,  we may be down seven seats instead of three. Democrats in Illinois could make a Republican Representative lose the seat that the state gives up through apportionment. But they have to protect the seats that Cherie Bustos and Lauren Underwood won narrowly last year.

    Republicans in Texas will have tough choices to make when when they redistrict. Democrats Libby Fletcher and Colin Allred picked up suburban seats in 2018, on a map Republicans drew only seven years before. Several Republicans won seats last year by less than 5%. Texas Republicans were ascendent in 2010, but they are losing ground now. They may have maxxed out their gerrymandering advantage the last time, and incumbent Republicans may want protection instead of potential new seats.

  92. 92.

    tam1MI

    <

    a href=”#comment-8265336″>@cleek: 
    either you think gerrymandering is a crappy anti-democratic hack or you don’t.

    ​

    “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

  93. 93.

    prostratedragon

    @Geminid:  When last heard from before the recess, Illinois Dems sounded like they were eager to make good use of this opportunity. Hope they do, and also in NY.

  94. 94.

    Hob

    I don’t have much to add on the merits of Democratic strategy in Congress, so I’lll just say that that movie analogy is a really awful analogy and doesn’t make a good lead-in to that argument. We cheer for unscrupulous heroes in action movies because the whole movie is geared toward making us want to cheer for them, and that is the only movie we’re watching at the time – it’s not as if Hitchcock takes turns with some other director who gets to depict Cary Grant as an evil asshole.

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