Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

This really is a full service blog.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

No one could have predicted…

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Everybody saw this coming.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for the Future, On Multiple Fronts

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for the Future, On Multiple Fronts

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  2. 2.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Here’s something new. A university asks its faculty members to “volunteer” in the dining halls.

    MSU is asking staff and faculty to VOLUNTEER in dining services bc of a staff shortage.Tell the truth.Which of y'all would do that? And WHY? (honestly I do not understand y anyone would do this, pls explain)— Le 'Hey you, join a union, yes, I mean you' Cagle (@lecagle) October 21, 2021

  3. 3.

    Another Scott

    Biden-Harris are continuing to get the work done.

    It looks like it was MVP’s birthday yesterday – a belated HBD to her!

    In other news, …

     

    Germany’s Flixbus acquires US Greyhound bus company
    https://p.dw.com/p/41xTT

    Interesting.  Buses should have a bright future as we attack CO2 emissions, especially as they go hybrid and electric.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Solar storm confirms Vikings settled in North America exactly 1,000 years ago

    The new dating method relies on the fact that solar storms produce a distinctive radiocarbon signal in a tree’s annual growth rings. It was known there was a significant solar storm – a burst of high-energy cosmic rays from the sun – in AD992. In all three pieces of wood examined, from three different trees, 29 growth rings were formed after the one that bore evidence of the solar storm, meaning the wood was cut in 1021, said the University of Groningen archaeologist Margot Kuitems, the study’s first author. It was not local indigenous people who cut the wood because there is evidence of metal blades, which they did not possess, Dee said.

    The length of the occupation remains unclear, though it may have been a decade or less, and perhaps 100 Norse people were present at any given time, Dee said. Their structures resembled Norse buildings on Greenland and Iceland.

    Oral histories called the Icelandic sagas depict a Viking presence in the Americas. Written down centuries later, they describe a leader named Leif Erikson and a settlement called Vinland, as well as violent and peaceful interactions with the local peoples, including capturing enslaved people. The 1021 date roughly corresponds to the saga accounts, Dee said, adding: “Thus it begs the question, how much of the rest of the saga adventures are true?”

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Caution, possible time sink ahead.

    Found while noodling ’round the web.

    (Gotta be at least a little intrigued by an entry on page 231, which starts off with “2 pounds of butter.”)

  8. 8.

    Baud

    New guidelines meant to push federal workers to join unions coming, per White House. Govt will be required to tell new hires about unions; unions will be invited to new hire training sessions.

    “Push” seems like a loaded term here, at least based on the tweet.  I didn’t click on the story.

  9. 9.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: And as someone pointed out at the link, Michigan State has a $3.4 billion endowment, and their football coach makes $5.5 million a year.

    They can fucking pay dining hall workers enough to alleviate the staff shortage.

    I believe they teach about supply and demand in Econ 101. Maybe they need a refresher.

  11. 11.

    jonas

    (As a white person), there’s no shortage of racist shit in this country that just leaves your jaw on the ground when you hear about it, but the NFL’s race-based brain injury compensation scheme really takes it to a new level. Just…wow.

  12. 12.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly: The Vikings may have set up an encampment on the mainland to dry all the cod they were catching on the Grand Banks, and called it Lutefisk Town. The neighboring Natives probably said, “Ewww!”

    The Basque fisherman just shook their heads at the dumb Yankees.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    Whatever happened to robots taking everyone’s jobs?  They used to use that to scare people against raising the minimum wage.

  15. 15.

    jonas

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
      If MSU is like virtually every other college and university in the country, the dining services are contracted out to Sodexo or Aramark or some other soulless megacorp that’s finding it hard to hire workers for the menial wages they’re offering.

    Asking faculty to volunteer for dishwashing duty though, is just *chef’s kiss*. Not to mention probably a violation of the food service contract, any number of food safety and OSHA rules, etc.

  16. 16.

    PsiFighter37

    An interesting point I wanted to bring up, now that I am making more progress in Obama’s memoir. He noted that internal polling showed that he permanently lost a meaningful chunk of white support for his comments on the police acting stupidly in the Henry Gates incident in 2009, and that it also showed that focus groups highlighted that even whites who supported him  would drop support if they felt they were being lectured about race.

    I only mention this because it seems like most Democrats (especially those on Twitter) take the opposite tack and use every opportunity as a chance to lecture. If we have known this from a polling perspective for over a decade, how come our messaging around it has arguably gotten worse?

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @PsiFighter37:

    Interesting nugget. Thanks for sharing.  As far as messaging goes, I think our side often tends to focus on what we think should work, rather than on what does work.

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Remember when there were reports that someone in the administration said Dems would have to “out organize” Republicans to overcome the hundreds of new voter suppression and election subversion bills introduced at the state level? I think the admin called bullshit on that, and good for them.

    But I think we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that it may come down to that. At least two Dem senators (maybe more) appear to have decided that preserving the filibuster is more important than ensuring all eligible voters have access to ballots and that partisan state legislatures can’t meddle with local vote counts. I sure hope they change their minds, but given what they’ve repeatedly said, we have to face the fact that it’s unlikely.

    So what’s the solution? I don’t know, but maybe a coordinated, nationwide effort to make sure everyone understands what’s going on might help.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @PsiFighter37: I’m not a politician or a spokesperson or anything at all other than a complete asshole, but I for one am sick to death of Fragile White Syndrome and feel no need to pussyfoot around the feelings of those so afflicted.

  25. 25.

    rikyrah

    @jonas:

    but the NFL’s race-based brain injury compensation scheme really takes it to a new level. Just…wow.

     

    In a league over 60% Black.

     

    uh huh

    uh huh

  26. 26.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Betty Cracker: A friend was talking to someone else here about how worried she is over voter suppression. At first the other person said they didn’t know what she was talking about. My friend said they were making changes to laws to keep people from voting and not count their vote. And the neighbor said, “Yes, the Democrats are trying to keep people from voting.”

  28. 28.

    Steeplejack

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    LOL, I should send this to my Sparty alum RWNJ brother. As another tweet points out, “MSU has a $3.4 billion endowment and their football coach makes $5.5 million annually.” It might get a rise out of him, but I doubt it. All he cares about is the MSU sports franchise. Currently he’s in a froth about the big showdown with Michigan on the 30th.

  29. 29.

    Bupalos

    Following on cole’s furnace post, I’d love to see a post and thread on how we all can help take direct individual action to help address climate change. It’s true that it’s not a problem that can be solved without common society-wide action. But it’s also not a problem that can be solved without individual commitment. And frankly there are a lot of common-action victories that have been won that are laying fallow because of a lack of individual follow through. I’d love for this board to look at this.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    An unprecedented drone operation is being prepared to rescue four dogs stranded for weeks between rivers of red-hot lava streaming from an erupting volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma. The emaciated dogs are stranded in two empty water tanks in the town of Todoque, flanked by slow-moving lava flows from the Cumbre Vieja volcano that erupted on 19 September .

    The molten rock has so far covered over 760 hectares (1,885 acres) of land and destroyed about 2,000 buildings, although prompt evacuations have helped avoid fatalities on the island, part of the Canary Islands off northwest Africa. On its way to the Atlantic Ocean, the lava has spared a few areas by creating islands of terrain that remain relatively unharmed, such as the spot where the dogs are.
    ……………………………
    Reaching the animals on foot is impossible as this would require crossing scorching lava, and helicopters cannot fly in the area because the ash and hot gas from the volcano could damage their rotors, said Leales.org spokesperson Alejandro Molina. “This is the only way to do it,” he told AFP.
    ………………………
    The company’s CEO, Jaime Pereira, said the plan was to send a 50kg (110lb) drone equipped with a wide net to trap the dogs one by one and fly them to safety. “We don’t have experience transporting a live animal by drone. Nor does anyone,” he told private television Telecinco.

    The success of the mission will depend largely on how the dogs respond to the drone, he added. “The dog could react by running away, moving, jumping,” Pereira said. “There are those who say the dogs could fracture a bone, have a heart attack. Of course there are all sorts of risks, but either we get them out or probably in a few days or weeks they will no longer exist.”

  33. 33.

    Kay

    This is what’s in the Freedom to Vote Act. 

    One of the things it does is require audits to meet federal standards for transparent process, chain of custody of ballots and records and professionalism- people who are properly trained, with background checks, etc. so it would replace the junk GOP audits with meaningful, reliable audits that are standardized and can be compared, year over year. If you’re genuinely interested in election validity you need a process that consistently flags something unusual, by comparing an election to past elections.

    That even moderate Republicans are opposing reliable, codified audits with chain of custody protections and transparency is revealing, I think.

  34. 34.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @OzarkHillbilly: Put it this way, Lief Eirkson got the nickname of “Leif the Lucky” because of on the return trip to Greenland he rescued the crew of another Viking ship that had been wrecked.

  36. 36.

    jonas

    @PsiFighter37: Yeah, unfortunately two things make the Democratic brand toxic for a lot of white voters: criticizing the sainted police, and appearing to advocate for (more or less) open borders. The Haitian migrant crisis a few weeks ago just killed Biden and Harris’s poll numbers. And as much as Biden has pushed back against the whole “defund the police” stuff, all most voters hear are clips on Fox (often taken out of context) of some member of The Squad or other progressive Dem talking about abolishing prisons or something. Is it mostly racist bullshit? Yup. Is it what keeps Dems from running up bigger wins in many parts of the country where our economic message is otherwise popular (and keeps Trumpist populism viable)? Yup. There is no good solution to this. We can’t simply keep turning a blind eye to bad policing, and we can’t turn ICE and CBP back into the raging human and civil-rights-violating machines they were under Trump. But unless Dems learn to somehow thread the needle on those two issues, Trumpism will continue its appeal to WWC voters.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I love the idea of standardized and transparent audits that can be compared year over year. It’s a wealth of information. Voting rights people could look for things like effeects of long lines. It’ll get cheaper and better every year, too, if it’s standardized. It’s not complicated- it’s just tedious.

  40. 40.

    brettvk

    @jonas: This was discussed on LG&M yesterday. Evidently they still have their own on-campus food service and normally employ a lot of students, but they haven’t raised wages enough to compete with McDonalds.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    There’s always going back to the old-style filibuster, where the bastards have to stand and talk without any breaks

    ETA: Or make it easier to get voter ID. I used to like to think about someone equipping an old school bus and traveling from town to town creating whatever kind of photo IDs were needed for that specific area.

  47. 47.

    Leto

    @Betty Cracker:

    But I think we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that it may come down to that.

    As Adam, and others, continually point out, you can’t out organize gerrymandering. Two of our most prominent black TX US House Members are being gerrymandered out of their districts and will be pitted against each other.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/redistricting-texas-african-american-democrats/2021/10/14/0d0d06d6-2cfd-11ec-985d-3150f7e106b2_story.html

    The new Texas congressional map shreds the Houston-based legislative district of Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, siphoning off thousands of her Black constituents and potentially forcing her into a primary election against her neighboring Black incumbent, Rep. Al Green (D).

    Critics of the new plan say it’s a racial gerrymander intended to weaken Black voices in Congress, even as it protects other incumbents.

    Jackson Lee, 71, is the second-longest-serving member from the Texas delegation, having represented the 18th District for nearly three decades. Since it was won by Barbara Jordan in 1972, the first Black woman to represent the state, the boundaries have largely remained the same.

    But now, Texas Republicans in charge of redistricting have advanced a map that would remove downtown Houston, with Jackson Lee’s main office, two universities and the predominantly Black Third Ward neighborhood, considered the center of Black life in Houston, from the 18th District.

    She’s been on MSNBC the past two days speaking about this, and her conclusion? You can’t out organize this. It’s not just going to be TX doing this. The rest of the shit states will be engaging in this too. Yes, it’ll probably come before the courts but it’ll be years and years and years before some type of resolution is had. In that time, Rethugs are going to continue to reek all out havoc. This is now in the hands of 1 person to fix and they won’t fucking do it.

    Time for coffee.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    Restrictions on the politicized removal of election officials: The bill would increase protections for local election administrators and help prevent them from being removed for partisan or political reasons. The bill allows officials administering federal elections to bring a lawsuit challenging their removal if they were replaced for reasons other than gross negligence, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. 

    Also important.

  49. 49.

    The Moar You Know

     If we have known this from a polling perspective for over a decade, how come our messaging around it has arguably gotten worse?

    @PsiFighter37: because Dems, as a group, would rather feel morally right than win.

    Which helps nobody, but we really are our own worst enemies.

    Also, FWIW, that polling (while it does not surprise me at all) has been swept under the rug but good, because this is the first I’ve heard of it.  I’ve always suspected it to be the case, but was not aware that actually polling and focus groups had been done on it, and I’m surprised because that’s an area of interest of mine; I majored in social psych and that’s essentially the science of polling.

  50. 50.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Geminid: The Basque fisherman just shook their heads at the dumb Yankees.

    It’s been pointed out that all threw the Medieval period the Basque were bring into Europe huge amounts of dried cod and the only place in the Atlantic to get that much cod is the Grand Banks.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly: I read that yesterday and didn’t know whether to be more amazed that Vikings were here that early, or that things can be dated based in part on the effects of tremendous solar storms.  (Or how we even figured out that things can be dated that way!)

    Humanity’s amazing when it isn’t busy protesting mask-wearing in a pandemic or supporting gelatinous orange blobs for president.

  52. 52.

    The Moar You Know

    We can’t simply keep turning a blind eye to bad policing, and we can’t turn ICE and CBP back into the raging human and civil-rights-violating machines they were under Trump. But unless Dems learn to somehow thread the needle on those two issues, Trumpism will continue its appeal to WWC voters.

    @jonas: we could do what the GOP has been doing about this for decades and simply lie.  But somehow that option doesn’t occur to anyone.

    Hell, the GOP has always made sure that the Chamber of Commerce types have enough illegal immigrants to work the restaurants and meatpacking plants, and has deliberately thwarted any and all enforcement against those who have knowingly been hiring those folks since I was a child.  Not one employer has ever been prosecuted for doing it.  NOT ONE.  Abd yet, somehow, WE are the party of open borders?

  53. 53.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @The Moar You Know: When you say “would rather feel morally right than win,” what does that entail?

    Specifically with regard to race, that is.

    I’d like to see some example of “messaging” about race in the United States that the majority of white people will not dismiss as “lecturing them.”

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @The Moar You Know:

    because Dems, as a group, would rather feel morally right than win.

    FWIW, I don’t think Dems consciously make that choice.  What I think happens is that every faction of the Dems thinks that the message that appeals to them is the winning message, and if only the national party would be stronger in asserting that message, Dems would win more.  The result is a more muddled message at the top, because of the need to hold all the factions together.  I actually think things have improved because we are a more unified party than before, but it’s still not ideal.

    The GOP, being more motivated solely by negative partisanship and a more compliant media, doesn’t have this problem to the same extent that we do.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    @PsiFighter37:internal polling showed that [Obama] permanently lost a meaningful chunk of white support for his comments on the police acting stupidly in the Henry Gates incident in 2009

    I kid you not, this was exactly the “issue” that turned my Obama-supporting dad back into the RWNJ he always was.  (Of course it wasn’t the real issue, but the reality of a Black president telling a cop he was wrong/what to do snapped him right out of whatever temporary moderate sensibilities he may have had at the time)

  58. 58.

    narya

    @Baud: Yeah, exactly. I’ve been explaining to a friend (who likes to style himself as an independent), for a long time now, that one of the challenges the Democratic party faces is that, as a matter of principle, the party wants to have a big tent and to have a broad, inclusive notion of “us” and “justice” and similar concepts. And it is just plain HARD to do that.  And I’ve made progress on that, for sure, with him. Of course, it also helps that the GQP is completely and totally insane at this point, but he also pushes back against family members and friends in ways he would not have previously. I think it does help to give “normies” some words to use, to find ways to find the nugget in a complex issue that frames things for them.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    I’d like to see some example of “messaging” about race in the United States that the majority of white people will not dismiss as “lecturing them.”

    I don’t have an answer, but there are always a million ways to message any issue, and the goal isn’t to win over a majority of white people anytime soon, because that would be impossible, but to make a difference on the margins.  But I also think the messaging quandary is hard to solve because I doubt our side will ever cohere on a truly consistent message or this or any other issue.

  61. 61.

    Kattails

    Looks like 5 veterans quit Sinema’s advisory council out of disgust, calling her an obstacle to progress. Saw it on @Stonekettle, he retweeted from @gottalaff. I’m sitting in a waiting room getting the oil changed and a drive train recall done, don’t know how to link from the iPad. Sounds interesting though!

  63. 63.

    The Moar You Know

    When you say “would rather feel morally right than win,” what does that entail?

    Specifically with regard to race, that is.

    I’d like to see some example of “messaging” about race in the United States that the majority of white people will not dismiss as “lecturing them.”

    @Professor Bigfoot: Local example; a consortium of teachers, union officials and admin have been working in my local school district for the past two years to do a massive curriculum change, getting rid of the hundred-plus year old canon and bringing in modern, diverse literature.  This would have made some real, legit progress against the real, legit racist parents who comprise a large minority (if not bare majority) of our district.

    ONE small group of educators not even involved in the project decided that the racist parents needed to have their noses shoved in their own shit (an understandable urge) and went public with the project, which would have quietly taken effect next year, and told the parents they were all Nazis and their era was coming to an end (paraphrased but slightly)

    Result:  Curriculum committee dissolved, no changes to canon, upcoming board vote, which will pass, against CRT (the go-to education boogeyman) and progress on this has been set back at least twenty years.  And a whole lot of teachers and admin who were on said committee are now getting harassment and death threats, and most of them will be retiring early, making the problem even worse.

    Tell me who won here.

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I agree with that assessment, but I’m not sure what we can do about it except go all-in on negative partisanship ourselves. Lord knows the GOP is a target-rich environment for that strategy. But perhaps uniquely for Dems, negative partisanship is a minefield in its own right given our fractious coalition and the sensibilities of the unaffiliated, low-info slice we have to bring on board to win.

  65. 65.

    hueyplong

    It’s not my place to criticize the downer nature of this stage of coming to grips with half (or less of) a loaf on the proposed legislation, but we/Democrats are most definitly not “our own worst enemies.”

    Our worst enemies are the fascist death cult that calls itself the GOP.  Douchenozzle that he is, Manchin is not Trump.  Shitbag that she is, Cinema is not Trump, either.  And for what it’s worth, the other side is screaming like stuck pigs because: (a) they’re pigs; and (b) they’ve been stuck, because things are definitely much worse for them than they would have been had Trump actually stolen the election in 2020.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t see a magic bullet either.

     

    @hueyplong:

    Our worst enemies are the fascist death cult that calls itself the GOP.

    Agreed.  I hate when we get caught up in the internecine battle  of the day and lose sight of the bigger picture.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    @PsiFighter37: Could be true, yet Obama won re-election in 2012.

    I think we have to be careful about reading too much into isolated bits of information, even if true!

    Turnout wins elections, especially these days.  As Geminid reminds us, Bitecofer has a sensible thesis that turning out one’s base and recognizing “negative partisanship” is what seems to win elections these days.  Chasing after DougJ’s Reagan Democrat Unicorns who are Putin Curious cannot be a national strategy to win elections.

    Learning the wrong lesson can be just as deadly as not learning the lesson at all.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  72. 72.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @The Moar You Know: So the answer here would be make change quietly, and thus make sure white people are comfortable?

    Don’t actually talk about race and the effect of race on school curricula, because if you do, white people will be offended

    [ed to add: I don’t have an answer; because it seems to me that American white fragility is a very powerful force]

  73. 73.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Just think, if they’d gone to the effort to establish viable permanent settlements we might all be speaking Vike.

    Not to be That Pedant, but “Vike” is the currency. The language is “Vikish.”

    :-)

  74. 74.

    PsiFighter37

    @Another Scott: He did, but not by 2008-style margins. And he had to be very conscious / conspicuous about being laser-focused on economic issues.

    Theres a reason why Obama’s 2012 victory, by a similar percentage in popular vote, was much more secure than Biden’s 2020 victory, and not just because Trump nearly stole the election via insurrection.

  75. 75.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Steeplejack:

    All he cares about is the MSU sports franchise. Currently he’s in a froth about the big showdown with Michigan on the 30th. 

    Haha, why?  Go Blue!

  76. 76.

    Geminid

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Basques definitely fought as mercenaries with Carthaginians during their war with Rome. They probably served on Carthaginian ships too. Themselves a Phoenician outpost, the Carthaginians sailed the Atlantic, and Basques may have come along. We don’t know how far they went, because Carthage and it’s records were wiped out. But the Basques probably held on to Carthage’s maritime knowledge and skill and applied it to fishing the western Atlantic.

  77. 77.

    ian

    @The Moar You Know:

    I don’t know the details and context of your situation, however my two cents

     went public with the project, which would have quietly taken effect next year,

    Seems to be something of an issue.  Education is public policy, people have a right to know about it.  Curriculum changes, even good ones, need support from the community.  Sneaking in our policy goals under-the-radar is underhanded at best, and probably would have resulted in blowback once word had gotten out.

  79. 79.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: If they gave student workers free tuition, I bet they wouldn’t have a shortage. Shoot, if they gave them half off tuition plus minimum wage, their shortage would be solved quickly.

  80. 80.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    That even moderate Republicans are opposing reliable, codified audits with chain of custody protections and transparency is revealing, I think.

     

    Uh huh

    Uh huh

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    because Carthage and its records were wiped out

    Basques managed to sneak out the back because…

    …you never put all your Basques in one exit.

  85. 85.

    The Moar You Know

    @Professor Bigfoot: in an district that is overwhelmingly white like mine?   Hell yes!   Any other course of action is just going to get shot down.

    We fucking had this in the bag and some idiots who prioritized “being right over winning” fucked it for everyone.   For years.  And Dems do this all the goddamn time.  I was involved in this effort (obviously) and I’m super pissed.  A LOT of people gave their all to make this happen and now it’s not going to, and we’re in worse shape than when it started.

  87. 87.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: Negative partisanship is a strong dynamic among Republican and Democratic voters alike. But it is asymmetrical, in that Democrats are responding to a relatively clear eyed view of the Republican party, whereas conservatives and their media allies push a picture of the Democratic Party that is distorted, like a funhouse mirror.

    Ohio’s Senate race will be a good test of these dueling characterizations. Tim Ryan is hard to portray as a lefty. His Justice Democrats-backed primary challenger may even help in this regard, because Ryan will get to trounce a real lefty before the general election campaign.

    Florida will also be interesting in this respect. Republicans may have a hard time painting former police chief Val Demings as anti cop, although they will certainly try.

  89. 89.

    catothedog

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    @The Moar You Know: So the answer here would be make change quietly, and thus make sure white people are comfortable?

    The important thing is that change should happen at the benevolence of the powerful.  They get to decide,  they have the power. Not these uppity people off the boat or the plantation.

    It’s about power. Never in the history of the word have the powerful given up power willingly.  Change in power have always happened through compulsion or destruction.  MLK marched. Sherman  burned Atlanta.   FDR/democracy?  People had to starve, stand in food lines.

    I don’t know of any quiet changes of those holding power.

  90. 90.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Professor Bigfoot: Bingo!  White People object to ANY discussion of race, and will throw a fit and get super-defensive no matter how much you try to sugar coat it.  But then they storm off, cry into their pillows, high five all their friends who assure them that they are the real victim etc., and eventually they get over it and even start to get it and start to agree with the truth that the “lecturer” tried to educate them about.  Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be An Anti-Racist was one of the best selling books of last year.  Anecdotally, I’ve seen friends who got really defensive when I tried to help educate them on race issues and stormed off, using the same terminology and narratives 6 months or a year later.  I’ve even had some who told me “you were right” and apologize for getting so defensive.  And less anecdotally, this is exactly how I processed too.  I was initially stand-offish, assumed I already knew everything, felt I was being attacked, threw my little bs tantrum, but eventually came around and realized that everything Black people were telling me about racism is absolutely true and easily observed once you open your eyes.  White People (and other non-Black groups too) are incredibly ignorant about racism, and we basically act like toddlers who don’t want to eat our vegetables anytime the adults in the room try to educate us.  But we cannot progress on dismantling White Supremacy without White People becoming much less clueless.  There is simply no alternative.  The alternative would be to just let White Supremacy continue to rule forever.  And that is unacceptable.  Learning on this stuff is going to be uncomfortable, but that’s just the way it is.

  91. 91.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Republicans may have a hardtime painting former police chief Val Demings as anti cop, although they will certainly try.

     

    I assume the GOP’s goal is not necessarily to persuade swing voters that she is anti-cop, but to make her “prove” that she’s not anti-cop by vocally criticizing “defund the police” and similar idea in the hopes of discouraging some of our voters.

  92. 92.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @The Moar You Know: well, there it is… from an admitted white person.

    You’re telling me that white people will ALWAYS fight against actual equality, or even the teaching of all of American history; and therefore it’s pretty impossible to get white people to support Black rights.

    And that is why the Republicans actually win: they are the party of the white man, while the Democrats are the party of Negroes.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    @catothedog:

    The important thing is that change should happen at the benevolence of the powerful. 

     
    Fixed. IMHO we don’t do ourselves any favors when we start taking avenues for progress off the table.

  94. 94.

    The Moar You Know

    Seems to be something of an issue.  Education is public policy, people have a right to know about it.  Curriculum changes, even good ones, need support from the community.  Sneaking in our policy goals under-the-radar is underhanded at best, and probably would have resulted in blowback once word had gotten out.

    @ian:  We were as public as was legally required.  When some people took it upon themselves to declare this as a “victory over racism and white privilege” in the media we were done.

    Thing is, it would have been that.  But you don’t need to go telling everyone that in a school district that’s over 80% white.  You just do the work quietly and next thing you know, the actual racists are obsolete.

  95. 95.

    Feathers

    I took an educational design class and the first thing we learned is that the worst way to teach someone something is to tell them what it is you think they should know. Think about that all the times in terms of politics. Also, if you lose an argument with someone, you’ve strengthened their original beliefs. Another thing from the class was a study that the standard corporate diversity training made people more racist. Talking about that with an activist, they said it didn’t matter, because those people were racist already. But having all of corporate America running programs, year after year, that end up encouraging people to turn to Trump isn’t helpful.

  96. 96.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @The Moar You Know: you know, you’re really saying that the vast majority of white people in this country are racist as shit.

    But then, most Black folks already knew that.

    [ed. to say, perhaps not “vast,” but for goddamn sure the majority.]

  97. 97.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    @Steeplejack: Currently in a froth about the Michigan game? Michigan State fans are always in a froth about the Michigan game.

    (Admittedly it peaks right before the game.)

    I’d love to know who approved the volunteer email. I kind of wonder if this isn’t malicious compliance (“What do you mean I don’t have the budget to hire people?”).

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Indeed, they will try that.  Their tactics often involve attacking our candidates’ strengths.  She has to know this is coming.

    “My opponent thinks he has a winning slogan, but I have a decades-long record of being a cop and leader of a large police department.  I know what works…”

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  102. 102.

    Feathers

    @Geminid: Also, most medieval ivory was walruses. Probably Canadian. Highly recommend Farley Mowat’s The Farfarers: Before the Norse, which is a speculative history about a European “people” who fled north and west from expanding neolithic populations, eventually intermarrying with the local populations and assimilating.

  104. 104.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @The Moar You Know: You presume that leaving well enough alone, the racist parents wouldn’t have been outraged.  I am extremely skeptical of that presumption.  See the excellent Southlake podcast about the Texas town.  School board had put together a sensible plan to address systemic racism and there was zero provocation aimed at the racist parents.  What happened?  Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson etc., started the CRT witch hunt after the George Floyd protests and the white citizens of Southlake angrily took the bait, grabbed their pitchforks and started screaming bloody murder.  Now all the good stuff is on hold.  A mass Whitelash against racial progress.  This had NOTHING to do with bad messaging or targeting racist people.  In fact the most vile targeting was aimed at one of the Black women (of course) who demanded change after her late, Black husband’s statue was defaced with KKK graffiti.

    This shit is happening EVERYWHERE because of a coordinated, well-funded, NATIONAL organizing effort by racists to protect White Supremacy.  And the White People who are taking the bait have been looking for reasons to do so since Trayvon Martin and the birth of Black Lives Matter.  The genie is out of the well, and it didn’t get out because social justice activists didn’t use the best wording.  Racists will take something that an activist on the other side of the country said and use it as justification.  Hell, they will even take things they DIDN’T say and use them.

  106. 106.

    The Moar You Know

    Another thing from the class was a study that the standard corporate diversity training made people more racist. Talking about that with an activist, they said it didn’t matter, because those people were racist already. 

    @Feathers: It matters a lot, because a measurable percentage of the recipients of this training turn from being passively racist – i.e. they just grumble, don’t act on it and won’t fight efforts like the one being made in my district, to actively racist.  And then sooner or later you have a major problem.

    We have a massive racism problem in this country and what we’ve been doing since 1964 is not making it better.  Maybe we should try some other course of action.

  107. 107.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    File under “they not getting it”

    Some woman confesses to a male coworker that he is her husband in her cuckold fantasy. Sounds like a clear case of someone need additional harassment training from HR if there ever is one, but all these woman with “I don’t see why he is upset”. It’s like something out of the bad old days of the 90s, just the genders reversed. And here I was thinking we all understand why harassment is a bad thing, regardless of what  the gender, sexuality or ethnicity of the aggressor. Maybe people forgot during the work at home about not creeping on their coworkers and other petty shit like professional conduct.

    But the reply is obvious “because anyone who is having sex fantasies about the other gender fighting over their attention, is by definition so personally disgusting the other gender won’t touch them”

  110. 110.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah: 

    @jonas:

    but the NFL’s race-based brain injury compensation scheme really takes it to a new level. Just…wow.

    In a league over 60% Black.

    uh huh

    If it wasn’t mostly Black, there wouldn’t be much profit in cheating the Black players… See how it works? Same as it ever was!

    I’m with Ozark, V tired of fragile white flowers regarding fixing racism to the maximum extent possible. Speaking as an old white guy from the WV hills…

  111. 111.

    Kay

    The voting rights bill is a hard pill for me to swallow because it’s a moderate bill. It’s about half of what progressives wanted and the conservative D’s added “election security” probably because of egomaniac Manchin’s delusional belief that Republicans senators respect him and would vote for his bill.

    As I said, I’m okay with the election security provisions. They’re just good government stuff, to modernize and standardize audits and election rights people will have real, actionable information to use when challenging voter supression efforts because they’ll be able to measure the effects.

    But this is not a Lefty bill. If they can’t get this one done we really have problems.

  114. 114.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @The Moar You Know:

    Yeah, but he gave you an example of where trying to be quiet didn’t actually matter and that apparently there’s a nationally coordinated effort to stop diversity from being in school curriculum. There likely would’ve been a backlash anyway after the fact and the progress that was made could’ve been undone

  115. 115.

    catothedog

     

    @Baud:

     

    @catothedog:

    The important thing is that change should happen at the benevolence of the powerful. 

    Oh, I’m all for taking whatever loose change we can get, wherever we can get it. I’ll gladly take the infra bill with a regular recon bill, after we do all the negotiations and sausage-making and blow all the plans up. There are people who need whatever they can get,  today.

    I’m just questioning the assumption that meaningful change will happen without upsetting powerful interests.

  116. 116.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    But this is not a Lefty bill. If they can’t get this one done we really have problems.

    Somebody should ask Manchin when no Republicans vote for this bill if he still thinks “bipartisanship” will win the day or if the filibuster needs to be modified

  117. 117.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It begins to feel like Manchin is negotiating for the Republicans; kind of like a proxy.

    Because this would be the normal give and take if the rest of the GOP hadn’t gone off its collective rocker.

    It’s strange because all the negotiating is going on among Democrats.

  118. 118.

    Baud

    @catothedog:

    I’m just questioning the assumption that meaningful change will happen without upsetting powerful interests.

    Sure. That should be obvious, since something must oppose the change for it not to happen. I think the debate here is best approach/messaging to take to overcome powerful interests in the most expeditious way possible. I’m not sure there’s a one size fits all answer to that question, which leads to different people doing different things, which, unfortunately, sometimes cancel each other out.

  119. 119.

    Kay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    They never ask him what I want to know. You know that thing people say where they don’t ask a question because someone else will always ask it? That’s never true for me and reporters. It’s true everywhere else, but not there.

    It’s his bill! Why can’t he get it passed?

  120. 120.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Last I heard, Schumer was putting the John Lewis bill up next week, which will also be filibustered.  I assume after that road show, it’ll be put up or shut up time for Manchin.

  121. 121.

    Baud

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    It’s strange because all the negotiating is going on among Democrats.

    Not strange. The GOP believes, with some foundation, that voters will be frustrated by the negotiations and imperfect outcomes and reward the GOP, either through votes or by staying home.

  122. 122.

    banditqueen

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    with Greyhound that still doesn’t solve the problem of the riddership being mostly druggies and the occasional cannibal.

    a) It’s just not true that only ‘druggies’ etc take the bus–it’s not like the cream of society flies, takes trains, drives;

    b) the goal is greening transportation. As a NYCer, comments like yours are … frustrating.

  124. 124.

    The Moar You Know

    you know, you’re really saying that the vast majority of white people in this country are racist as shit.

    @Professor Bigfoot: I think all you need to do is to look at who voted for Trump in 2016.  That will give you exact numbers, and yeah, that’s a majority of whites.  I never doubted it, then or now.

    There likely would’ve been a backlash anyway after the fact and the progress that was made could’ve been undone

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Actually, it’s a lot harder to undo something than to prevent it.  A LOT harder.  Republicans understand this which is why their legislation “overreaches” by design; sure, some of it gets rolled back.  But never all of it.

    By your own argument you advocate doing nothing because doing anything is pointless.  I will never accept that.

    Take a lesson from your enemies.  Take a lesson from the ACA.  Once something is done, it’s very hard to undo it completely.  This is the only way progress gets made.  Incrementally, with a lot of steps backwards.

  125. 125.

    lowtechcyclist

    @The Moar You Know:We have a massive racism problem in this country and what we’ve been doing since 1964 is not making it better.  Maybe we should try some other course of action.

    I’ve been following politics since 1964, and the Dems have tried a variety of things since then.  What’s mostly worked is either just sweeping our national race problem under the rug, or being visibly against helping or even listening to Those People, but I’m a hard NO to both of those.

    What hasn’t seemed to work is any suggestion that our past has been less than ideal with respect to race, let alone our present.

    Ideas are welcome, but speaking for myself, I’m not gonna yell at racists, but I’m not going to walk on eggshells around them either.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The senate majority pac has an analysis out where they’re afraid they were too busy dancing around with the idiots Manchin and Sinema so did not engage in enough negative partisanship. I just want to bash my head against my desk when I read them. They are TOO SLOW. Not just in legislation- they THINK slowly, their “realizations” are like …glacial. Why can’t they do two things at once? We have great individual actors in the Democratic Party and then we have this dull, stupid operations apparatus that drags the whole enterprise down. There are too many dumb ones. They have to get rid of some.

  127. 127.

    Ksmiami

    @debbie: thank you. I’m really upset with the weak ass messaging esp from Schumer. Bring some fighting words for Democracy please…

  128. 128.

    Baud

    @Kay: I’m with you. I hate delay.  I hate to say it, but maybe we would have been better off accepting Manchin’s low ball offer in the summer.   Who knows?

    All that said, I’m always skeptical of opinions that say Dems should focus on X instead of Y.  It seems like the type of thing we’re discussing in this thread — everyone has their own views on what will work, and whatever balance we strike is the wrong one in someone’s opinion.

  129. 129.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @The Moar You Know:

    By your own argument you advocate doing nothing because doing anything is pointless.  I will never accept that.

    That’s not what I actually advocate. I’m just saying it’s possible it might not have mattered because word might have gotten out anyway. And you say that once something is implemented it’s hard to reverse I agree when it comes to something like the ACA, but at the local schoolboard level, I’m not so sure

    Right now, where I live, the county GOP is pushing at least one nut job to run for a seat on my district’s school board who is anti-vaccine and anti-mask. In the news articles I’ve read, he tries to come across as “reasonable”, that wearing a mask or getting vaccinated is a “personal choice”, that he’s not anti-science, he just doesn’t think it’s right for government to mandate mask-wearing, because in his words, where would it end? Mandating COVID vaccinations for kids?!

    So, they’ve been using anti-masking to try to gain a foothold in local politics and boot out some of the “boring” people Kay often talks about who are on schoolboards. And I’m worried they’ll succeed. A group of anti-mask parents are even trying to sue the district in local court.

    All of this is to say, I don’t think anything is necessarily a sure thing, especially at the local level where change can happen more rapidly.

    Doesn’t mean I think people shouldn’t try to change things for the better to be clear

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Schumer always worried me. He got essentially unearned praise for ’06 but ’06 was a wave year. It wasn’t his savvy management and political skill. People hated Republicans that year. Eevn our local Republicans all became “conservatives” or “independents”. The same is true of Howard Dean. I saw Howard Dean’s incredibly over-rated “50 state strategy”. It was a bunch of people with powerpoints assigning locals duties and then never coming back. My organizer was actually creepy. I wouldn’t let him past the mud room in my house. I got a creep vibe. Didn’t want him near my kids.

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    Clinton’s”deplorables” comment was true, just better employed by an op-ed writer than a candidate for President. Clinton made it to a fundraiser audience, but Barak Obama and Mitt Romney both learned that what is said to donors will become public.

    There is a reluctance to criticize Clintons campaign, and I share it. After all, Hilary Clinton got a raw deal from the press, and others including Comey and Russia. And many people thought she had the election in the bag and stayed home or voted third party. But I have wondered how it would have gone if, instead of playing to her wealthy audience’s disdain for trump and his supporters, Clinton had pitched a robust infrastructure program to them. Those people probably don’t think much about infrastructure, except maybe when they have to use the Range Rover because the Mercedes hit a bad pothole and is in the shop. But wealthy liberals are in a coalition that also includes middle class, working class people and unions, and they could use reminding of this.

    Three weeks before that election, I saw Tim Kaine on a Sunday show. Asked for a reason for voters to choose his side, Kaine pointed to the part of their platform calling for the largest investment in infrastucture in decades. I hadn’t heard that, and I’m not sure I heard it again.

    A lot of the messaging I heard was about what an asshole trump was. But a lot of people think, they’re all assholes, so what? A better theme than “forward together” might have been, “rebuilding our nations roads, bridges, and rail lines with American engineering and American workers, the best in the world!” I think that might have attracted voters in Pennsylvania and similar states.

  135. 135.

    Leto

    @Kay:

    It’s his bill! Why can’t he get it passed?

    I’ll always refer back to his Sandy Hook bill as reference when these questions are asked. He’s not a serious negotiator, he doesn’t have the ability to influence a wet fart, and everyone knows it. He’s the kid who can’t hit a t-ball, but he’s on the team so he gets to have an at bat. He’s literally every dipshit character in the horror movie who thinks they can negotiate with the psycho killer. Everyone knows what’s coming, but we still have to sit through it and watch to get to the next part of the movie.

  137. 137.

    Baud

    @Ksmiami:

    I remember when the blogs hated Harry Reid because he couldn’t round up Senate Dems to support the public option.  But he does seem more likeable and interesting than Schumer.

  138. 138.

    Leto

    @Kay: Schumer hand picked Sinema. You’d think he’d be able to flex a bit of muscle there to get her on the same page, but here we are. “Maverick!”

  139. 139.

    Burnspbesq

    @Baud:

    I never saw a reason to join NTEU when I worked at IRS Chief Counsel, and unless there have been major changes in the applicable law since I left, I probably still wouldn’t. Federal employee unions have no real power.

  141. 141.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    Right. The senator who couldn’t get a weak-ass gun reg passed after a horrifying slaughter of 1st graders is probably not a gifted legislator.

    I don’t believe in a lot of things, but I do believe “neccesity is the mother of invention”. Manchin may in fact be an example of an opportunity cost for Democrats- no Manchin, they work harder in another more fruitful direction. We have other red state senators to use as models- Tester, Brown-  and they’re not corrupt egomaniacs.

  142. 142.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @lowtechcyclist: it seems to come down to one thing: whether or not Black people should be able to vote.

    I sincerely believe that is the core of everything we see— the existential terror of white people at the idea that Black and brown people having political power in their country.

  143. 143.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Baud: I’m always sympathetic to Senate Dem leaders. It’s worse than herding cats.

    Same here. I’m old enough to remember all the crap heaped on Reid by drive-by commentors, here and elsewhere.

  145. 145.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    But I also think the messaging quandary is hard to solve because I doubt our side will ever cohere on a truly consistent message or this or any other issue.

    How can we get a coherent message when we are always in disarray?

    But seriously, I do think we could put together a police reform message that would only provoke hysterics among the already hysterical. The key would be to make police officers the messengers.

  146. 146.

    Feathers

    @The Moar You Know: This. White fragility sucks and I too am over it. However, if we want to deal with the problem, we have to accept that we need to go with what works, rather than what feels good. The childlike belief that racists just don’t understand that racism is bad is a major obstacle. But so is the lack of understanding that racism is like a remora that attaches itself to societal weaknesses in order to feed. Tools of analysis are not revealers of truth. Just because you can look at a situation and find racism there, doesn’t mean that racism is how or why the problem originated or that fixing racism will solve it.

  147. 147.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    I don’t blame anyone for her. She’s not a serious, adult person. That she thought she could sort of adopt the persona of McCain is just bizarre. I mean, whatever else he was he was a complex, unique individual with a very particular history. You can’t just be other people! That’s nutty! Also- how did she get to the age she is and not know who and what she is? “I’ll be….a 75 year old male POW” What?  Because they ….come from the same state? I’m Mike DeWine now.

  148. 148.

    Leto

    @Kay: I think Tester is a great example of that. Nobody is going to paint him as an AOC, he speaks rural as fluently as anyone, and he’s able to effectively communicate why Dem policies are needed for the current/future problems we face. Brown def has all those attributes as well. Part of the issue, as always, is being able to identify those people early enough so we can get them the exposure they need. That also goes back to having reliably funded local/state level D entities, but that’s for a different thread.

  149. 149.

    Burnspbesq

    @Leto:

    There is already litigation against the new Texas Congressional map. MALDEF and some individuals are the plaintiffs. Hopefully DOJ will intervene.

  150. 150.

    zhena gogolia

    @hueyplong:

    Our worst enemies are the fascist death cult that calls itself the GOP. Douchenozzle that he is, Manchin is not Trump. Shitbag that she is, Cinema is not Trump, either. And for what it’s worth, the other side is screaming like stuck pigs because: (a) they’re pigs; and (b) they’ve been stuck, because things are definitely much worse for them than they would have been had Trump actually stolen the election in 2020.

    Thank you for this comment.

  151. 151.

    Shakti

    @PsiFighter37

    Speaking for myself:

    Since when has a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of the white vote, regardless of their “tone”?

    Being conciliatory, fact-driven and ego protective has just resulted in worse and worse behavior. It has made no political difference.

  153. 153.

    Leto

    @Burnspbesq: I know. I think one of the issues working against them now is the previous SC ruling that said political gerrymandering a-ok. On top of that, as you, Omnes, Kay, and our other prestigious lawyers like to remind us: the courts move slow. I don’t think the courts will move fast enough to undo the maps in time for 2022. Maybe for 2024? We’ll find out. I mean, this could be put to rest with a filibuster reform but we’re working with the system we have.

  154. 154.

    Woodrow/asim

    In this debate, I’m reminded of something Dr. King spoke and wrote, a few months before his passing:

    […]when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, “Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You’re just as poor as Negroes.” And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.”

    Now that’s a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, (Make it plain) he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can’t hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out. (Amen)

    (This is his “The Drum Major Instinct” speech; the site I pulled it from is now behind a paywall, and I cannot easily find another online source. Apologies)

    Those of you struggling to understand how to overcome racial prejudice? Dr. King laid it out. But it ain’t pretty, and it ain’t fun, and it’s disruptive and in-your-face, and honest.

    But it also works because , to quote King again, it “seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

    Communities can and will resist dealing with the actual roots of racial tension. They will layer on damn near anything to avoid it, including giving in to the siren song of Conservatism eating away at their souls, to avoid the issue. And you cannot break that with half-measures, no moreso than with raw anger.

    I submit this is why even hardcore activists shy away from such actions; it’s hard, as a Black person, to add this kind of engagement on top of a lifetime of lived experience with prejudge. When White “allies” demand you frame your work in certain ways, avoid pushing any real boundaries in order to allow White people to feel safe…well, that’s a great recipe for exhaustion, I suspect.

    You do the fight no favors  — you do ME no favors — trying to play into avoiding that. We have to be honest and even aggressive — but never blinding angry and unwilling to listen — with engaging it, because that is the only way true, lasting change has ever occurred on this continent.

  155. 155.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    It’s trust, IMO. I can’t speak for Tester but Brown doesn’t apologize for being liberal. He just takes it head on. “Yes, but here’s what I got for you”. He’s almost impatient with ideological discussions, like “yes, yes, whatever, here’s the new drug rehab I got with Obamacare”. People trust him because he’s not a secret liberal, plotting behind their backs while pretending to be a moderate. He’s just what he is. I sort of blame Lefties for the lack of trust of Lefties. There’s a real nasty strain among Lefties that it’s okay and even desirable to hide the ball from the proles. There’s this awful “we’re wise like VIPERS” among them that always makes it impossible for me to actually become one. Yuck.

  158. 158.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Geminid: Clinton’s Deplorable comment was about how, despite appearances, they were only a SMALL PART of GOP voters.  She was defending the majority of GOP voters as mostly-good and saying we shouldn’t assume all of them are Nazis.  That’s about as nice of a comment about Republicans you can make.  She couldn’t simply ignore the rise of Nazis who all for some strange reason supported Trump.  Her multi-racial coalition of supporters would never have been cool with that.  There is literally no better, kinder way she could have threaded that needle that MAGAts wouldn’t find a way to weaponize.

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @Burnspbesq: Texas is still covered by portions of the Voting Rights Act.  Federal VRA lawsuits in Virginia resulted in another Democratic  Representative elected in 2016 (Dan McEachin VA-4) and two more Democrats in North Carolina last year. These were on maps created in 2011, and I don’t know why it took so long for relief.

  163. 163.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Woodrow/asim: Thank you for this.

    I would only add that I’ve watched first-hand, Black activists and organizers try for the last 4 years to reach across the aisle, try to use soft language etc., when they have conversations about race with white people and even police.  The assholes STILL act as if they screamed “Abolish the police” and “you should hate yourself for being White” etc. no matter what they actually said.  Watering down the language makes no difference in winning white people over, and has the added effect of pissing off all the non-White people.

  165. 165.

    rikyrah

    @Leto:

    I’ll always refer back to his Sandy Hook bill as reference when these questions are asked. He’s not a serious negotiator, he doesn’t have the ability to influence a wet fart, and everyone knows it

    I don’t feel the same way about gun control as I do voting rights.

    Voting rights is to gutterally personal to me.

    Nobody has time for his performative cosplay bullshyt, and it will be completely unacceptable.

    He will get no brownie points from Democrats if he thinks we’re going to slink away with just some sadness about not getting voting rights passed.

    He is completely misreading the room.

    Nobody is playing with him.

  166. 166.

    rikyrah

    @Leto:

     Schumer hand picked Sinema.

     

    Sinema was the best that we could do with the state of Arizona – AT THAT TIME.

     

    Since then, things have changed, and Democrats in Arizona can do better.

    They don’t have to get a lefty, but, they can get an actual Democrat who will support the President of their party.

  167. 167.

    gwangung

    @James E Powell:

    But seriously, I do think we could put together a police reform message that would only provoke hysterics among the already hysterical. The key would be to make police officers the messengers.

    Similarly, you probably need to have the face of anti-racism be a while face, because you’ll peel off more white people that way.

  168. 168.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Clinton was dead wrong about two things in 2016: 1) the entire GOP base is deplorable, and 2) Trump’s adult children are as horrible as their father.

  170. 170.

    rikyrah

    @Woodrow/asim:

    I submit this is why even hardcore activists shy away from such actions; it’s hard, as a Black person, to add this kind of engagement on top of a lifetime of lived experience with prejudge. When White “allies” demand you frame your work in certain ways, avoid pushing any real boundaries in order to allow White people to feel safe…well, that’s a great recipe for exhaustion, I suspect.

     

    I don’t know who you are talking to with this.

    These young Black folks aren’t hearing that bullshyt.

    And, Black folks over 40 don’t wanna hear it either.

    Phuck White feelings.

    6 year old Jamal can be subjected to and experience racism..

    but, I’m supposed to care that 40 year old Susie might get her ‘ feelings’ hurt if we talk about racism honestly?

     

    If Jamal has to feel the repercussions of racism at 6…

     

    then Susie’s children in the same class as Jamal can be taught about it.

  171. 171.

    Geminid

    @UncleEbeneezer: Clinton did not have to characterize her opponent’s supporters at all. That’s for pundits. She would not have made the comment in a public appearance, and I think if she had to do it over again she wouldn’t have said it in a “private” fundraiser.

    I thought  Barak Obama was perceptive when he told attendees at a San Francisco fundraiser that white working class people did not necessarily vote their economic interests because they were “clinging to their bibles and their guns.” He wouldn’t have said it publically, though, because he knows that a statement can be true and still be impolitic.

  172. 172.

    Ruckus

    @Another Scott:

    Mercedes has a new electric bus out, built on the same platform as the diesel model, solid state batteries that don’t care if charged to 100% or run down to zero, but do charge at a slower rate. A passenger would never know, other than the noise.

    Hybrid seems to me to be a waste of a lot of things at this point. Electric works, hell the buses in LA used to be electric. Sure they used overhead wires and all but LA has an entire train system that uses overhead wires and we now know how to make batteries that actually do the job and don’t weigh more than the entire rest of the bus. Likely don’t weigh as much as the diesel engine, transmission, drive axles and fuel.

  173. 173.

    Woodrow/asim

    @rikyrah: These young Black folks aren’t hearing that bullshyt.

    If you took me to say “all”, then allow me to clarify — SOME activists shy away from such actions. I know them, I’ve talked to them. Hell, I used to be one of them! And I’m also an older person, so I’ve seen this come in waves, too.

    Man, they are worn out. And although I might not have spoken as clearly as I wish, they do exist. They are trying the carrot more than the stick, and it’s important to acknowledge them, and why they might do so, given the tone and tenor of my statements.

    What I don’t want is a bunch of people trying to throw anecdotal evidence that activists are being “nice” without me speaking to that, and reasons why.

    Make sense?

  176. 176.

    Bill Arnold

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I’ve been following politics since 1964, and the Dems have tried a variety of things since then.

    What works is slow – make racism socially unacceptable for young people during their formative years, up to maybe age 18-20, and this is easier if there is mixing. This is writing as a white (USA) male person. If the overall community (where kids grow up) socially allows(or encourages) explicit and obvious racism, it becomes much more difficult.
    (My parents never told me this, but it was obvious in retrospect that one big reason they moved to a particular northern NYC suburb was because the racial/ethnic percentages at the time matched those of the entire US.)

  177. 177.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    Harder to fire the robot if they don’t do the job as desired. You’ve paid all that money for the robot and find out that you have to hire someone to train them, which costs more and often takes longer than teaching someone to sling hash or put trays and silverware in the baskets to run them through the washer. Also they cost somewhere in the range of a 4th rate crappy college coach…..

  179. 179.

    Soprano2

    @The Moar You Know:  Hell, the GOP has always made sure that the Chamber of Commerce types have enough illegal immigrants to work the restaurants and meatpacking plants, and has deliberately thwarted any and all enforcement against those who have knowingly been hiring those folks since I was a child.

    And yet somehow when we talk about the current shortage of workers this part is rarely addressed. Wonder why? /s/s/s/s/s

  180. 180.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: You are probably right. I just remember seeing a lot of advertising about how bad trump was. And that was not as effective as it should have been. I was cursed with cable tv service then, and I kept seeing the ad showing trump waving his hands around, parodying the reporter with a physical disability. It demonstrated trump’s cruel and nasty character all right- if the viewer knew the back story, and many did not. I wondered, where are the small business owners talking about how trump screwed them on contracts? Where are the teen beauty pageant contestants talking about trump creeping around the dressing room? Those stories needed no background.

    I do not debit this inefficiency to the candidate but to a staff that might have been complacent.

  181. 181.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Leto: Sinema is an aspiring plutocrat. She objects to tax reform and tax increases on the wealthy. She’s been negotiating behind the scenes because her view is not popular.

  183. 183.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Woodrow/asim: It feels like I’ve spent my entire adult life offering carrots to white people and getting sticks in return.

    At this point, really, “my field of fucks is barren.”

  184. 184.

    Soprano2

    @Professor Bigfoot: So the answer here would be make change quietly, and thus make sure white people are comfortable?

    Unfortunately yes, that is usually the answer. Shoving people’s faces in their racism is usually not the answer if you really want things to change for the better. I’ve found over my lifetime that slow, gradual changes almost always stick better than dramatic ones. You have to get people to buy in to what you’re doing. What’s better, making change quietly or not making it at all and even going backwards?

  186. 186.

    Geminid

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: For some reason, Sinema reminds me of a verse in Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher.”

             “She had a dream about the King of Sweden, He was giving her things she was needin’,

    A house made gold and steel, And a diamond automobile with platinum wheels!”

  187. 187.

    Soprano2

    @Professor Bigfoot: you know, you’re really saying that the vast majority of white people in this country are racist as shit.

    No, I think what he/she is saying is that most people don’t like having their nose rubbed in it when they are wrong, so that’s not a good way to change things for the better. That sometimes you have to decide whether you want to feel righteous about something, or actually make things change for the better. But you do you.

  189. 189.

    Soprano2

    @Feathers:But so is the lack of understanding that racism is like a remora that attaches itself to societal weaknesses in order to feed.

    They tell themselves and each other that their beliefs aren’t racism, they’re “just the truth”. Black people commit more crime, they say, you can see that for yourself on the TV every week, how can you deny it? And so on, about everything. They are convinced that the playing field is level now, so any difference isn’t about racism but is “Just the truth”. I’ve heard this many times over my lifetime of living among them.

  190. 190.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Soprano2: you know, it really sucks to have one’s citizenship and ones fundamental rights are at the whim of whiteness.

    Once again— the issue here, fundamentally, is this: are Black people FULL citizens under the law in this country?

    White people say “no.”

  191. 191.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Soprano2: Ask those people if Black people voting is fundamentally *legitimate.*

    I do not know how the fuck you get around that.

  192. 192.

    Soprano2

    @Professor Bigfoot: Well, I don’t say “no”, and I’m a white person. I’m speaking from my experience just as you speak from yours. As a woman I’ve had to put up with patronizing bullshit my whole life.

  193. 193.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Ruckus: UPS is planning a future fleet of delivery vehicles that will be mostly electric, but with some hybrids for longer runs. Similarly  hybrid school buses might make sense for rural districts with long routes. For most districts, though electric buses will work.

    The physical infrastructure bill has funding to convert 20% of the nation’s school bus fleet to electric in this decade. When the bill was passed, Vice President Harris promoted it at an electric bus factory in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

    This is one of the best parts of that bill. Once parents see the cleaner air kids breath, every district will want electric school buses. And while they cost more up front, their life cycle costs are lower.

  194. 194.

    Ruckus

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    It is a powerful force. Because it is a big force and it’s change. Change is hard, if only because it’s change. People get in a rut because it’s easy to do and hard to get out of. And you have to know you are in a rut and decide to climb out of that rut. That takes effort and desire. A lot of people will continue to travel the old, known road because changing takes, what? Effort. They have to often be convinced that effort is worth it.

    I’m not saying it’s right not to change, in this case it isn’t right, only that it is hard and takes effort. Someone has to show them the effort is worth it.

  195. 195.

    Geminid

    @trollhattan: “Folks, here’s a story ’bout Kyrsten the moocher, She was the roughest, toughest frail,

    She was a lowdown hoochie coocher, And Kyrsten had a heart that was as hard as a nail!”

  196. 196.

    Ruckus

    @Geminid:

    One of the reasons they cost more is that the technology used (not the electricity or the motors, the battery designs and mfg) is relatively new and expensive. How the entire vehicle is built can be better for the vehicle and the passengers. But it’s a different process than the big companies are used to. The change over is expensive. The process at the end of the day isn’t as much as people think.

  197. 197.

    Geminid

    @Ruckus: The transition to electric buses is now a matter of financing. That’s where the federal government has a role. This is also true generally about the clean energy transition. Even a decade ago, there was still an economic tradeoff in moving to clean energy for electrical generation. But now solar and wind generation costs have reached parity with that of natural gas, and the transition will produce three jobs for every fossil fuel job lost.*

    * From University  of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin’s, “We Need a Better Green New Deal,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 2019. An excellent article.

  198. 198.

    Geminid

    @Ruckus: Also, Cummings Engines now produces an electric power package that can be retrofitted to buses and medium weight trucks.

  199. 199.

    dnfree

    @Kay: exactly right!  Next summer, coming up on the election when nothing can get done, they’ll be saying “Maybe we should have….”  YA THINK?

    The House passed legislation months ago.  The Senate is broken and has been for years. They still think they’re a deliberative body.

  200. 200.

    Ruckus

    @banditqueen:

    I live in LA county. I take the train and buses often because it’s easier and often faster than driving across town. I don’t drink and haven’t used any kind of what is known as drugs for about twice as long as I haven’t been drinking. I was neither a drunk nor a druggie but my life just seemed like it would be better, and it has been.

    Now while I’m not going to say that I haven’t seen some on the bus and commuter train that would qualify as druggies, the numbers are actually rather small. Most people are just trying to get somewhere.

  201. 201.

    Ruckus

    @Geminid:

    They have been at the forefront of a lot of things over the years. My dad’s and then it was my business was in one location for 28 yrs, next door to a Cummings factory distributor. I grew up around Cummings. Our lunch truck stopped in their service yard. I’ve called the cops on a Sunday when I saw a guy jump their fence, which had razor wire at the top on both sides of the chain link. In bare feet. He didn’t get cut or snag his clothes. I was impressed.

  202. 202.

    Professor Bigfoot

    The company’s name is “Cummins,” not “Cummings.”

    —someone who worked for them for a few years many years ago in Columbus, Indiana

  204. 204.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: It’s like converting to LED lights. When we did our remodel at the pub in February 2020, we put all LED bulbs in our recessed lights. Where before we had to change them at least every 6 months, we have not changed one bulb since the remodel! We just put LED panel lights in our kitchen, replacing the fluorescents that kept going out. It’s an upfront cost that pays dividends down the road.

  205. 205.

    S. Cerevisiae

    I love the conversion to electric buses and such but I worry how well they will work up here north of the 45th parallel. I honestly don’t know if the lithium-ion technology is better in cold weather but every driver in Minnesota has a set of jumper cables for when the battery dies at 20 below in the Super One parking lot. I think we will need to keep a lot of internal combustion engines in the high latitudes but fortunately the vast majority of people live south of here.

  206. 206.

    Geminid

    @S. Cerevisiae: If a vehicle can plug into a battery charger, it can plug into a battery warmer. But you are right that weather conditions are an important factor with electric vehicles. A knowledgable mechanic who hosts a radio car repair show pointed out one potential adverse scenario: a traffic jam of electric cars at or in the Holland tunnel, running air conditioning on a sweltering July day.

    And I’ve heard that traffic lights up north that use LED lights need independent warming systems, because the bulbs don’t melt snow like incandescents do.

  207. 207.

    Matt McIrvin

    @PsiFighter37: Partly it’s that, as both Adam Serwer and Jamelle Bouie immediately pointed out the last time this came up, we don’t have complete control over the salience of race. The other side gets to bring it up by noxiously trolling on the subject, and by, well, killing black people. And we end up having to react. We can’t turn the heat down when they’re constantly turning it up.

  208. 208.

    Matt McIrvin

    @jonas:

    The Haitian migrant crisis a few weeks ago just killed Biden and Harris’s poll numbers.

    And that whole panic was garbage ginned up by the right. No Democratic messaging angle was going to keep them from doing it.

    To get the median white voter we wouldn’t be able to just magically make this stuff go away, we’d have to out-racist them. Which is unacceptable.

  209. 209.

    Matt McIrvin

    @S. Cerevisiae: One detail is that electric vehicles actually need heat pumps to heat their interiors in cold weather. We’re not used to this because an internal combustion engine spews so much waste heat that we can just divert some of it to the passenger compartment–it’s like the car carries its own furnace, and an electric vehicle doesn’t because that’s waste. But doing it with what amounts to A/C run in reverse is actually much more efficient.

  210. 210.

    Another Scott

    @Ruckus: Dayton, OH still has overhead wires for their electric buses.  It’s great that (IIRC) the EPA made them keep them (they couldn’t meet air quality standards in the ’70s otherwise).

    But we’re a long way from intercity travel on such things.  ;-)

    Hybrids are more complicated than straight diesels or straight electrics, but they help reduce emissions during the transition.  It looks like the typical life of a city bus is 12 years, 250,000 miles at which point federal funding kicks in to help buy replacements.  Having hybrid buses during that time would help (while overhead wires, charging infrastructure, whatever, is built out).  WMATA won’t be fully electric until 2045 under the current plan.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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