I’m alive and still bunkered in Red COVID land, but I have a thought after last night’s extremely depressing election.
John doesn’t know what Manchin is up to, and I certainly can’t claim to know a lot, but here’s a guess: He was waiting for the election. He already saw that Biden’s polling didn’t look good, and now he has still more justification (in his mind) to do less, since he doesn’t want to be tied to the loser, Biden.
There is no more fair-weather friend of the Democratic party than a corporate-funded “centrist” like Manchin or Sinema.
Another data point: my little Rochester suburb is right on the knife edge between Democratic and Republican rule. In the last couple of elections, a hard-working group of (mostly female) Democrats were able to flip the town board. Last night, the town supervisor (R) won re-election (not a surprise) and the town board flipped back. The strategy they used was to run two good, young female candidates, and to remove any mention of party from their yard signs and other materials. Their yard signs were brown. It apparently worked. Not having Trump at the top of the ballot, and running away from the red brand, seems to be a winning strategy in this suburb, and I suppose it might have worked similarly in Virginia.
James E Powell
He wasn’t just waiting for the election, he was working hard against every Democrats in the election. He is an asshole.
Joe Falco
Why do pundits love the taste of Sinemanch Toast Crunch? It has the “centrism” only they can see.
The Dangerman
We just haven’t met the dynamite duo’s asking price yet; as the old joke goes, we’ve proven what they are, now it’s just haggling over the price.
Urza
The Normies are going to be Oblivious till the fascism hits them at home. Pretending to not be the party of Trump without actually not being that party shouldn’t work if people bothered to pay even the slightest amount of attention.
Central Planning
@mistermix: I think the “Keep Politics Out of Pittsford” messaging from the Rs worked, and the “your tax rate didn’t go up” (but the value of your house did so the amount of taxes you paid went up)
I am very disheartened by the amount of Rs that Monroe County voted for too.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Dangerman: I agree, but I think we are in the minority here.
ruemara
I dunno. Kinda seems like white people want to vote for Rs without admitting it openly. You’re an idiot if you vote republican because they’re not openly saying they’re republican, they just don’t really support anything too extremely left, like history.
Carol
Republicans retook the city council in my Colorado town yesterday. They had campaigned early and long with advertisements in our local 55+ community (3000 residents) news magazine. Not a peep from the Democrats during this whole time. I’m disgusted with the democrats, all of them, but especially the House progressive caucus and the two dinos. The progressives because of their delaying tactics and the dinos just because. Biden needed a win. The infrastructure bill should have been passed in the house as soon as it came from the Senate.
And they had to run McAuliffe _ again_ in Virginia who was past his use-by date during his last term. Where are the young Democratic Party candidates? Are there really no new people in the party ready and willing to run. If there are people willing, then I blame the lack of ready on the hoary- haired establishment for not promoting them. I’m not sad. I’m mad! We’re watching self-mutilation here.
swiftfox
In rural Virginia all of the R signs were red and the D signs were blue. The state House D rep won her district again. McAuliffe was a terrible candidate to rerun.
Omnes Omnibus
@Carol: Why don’t you get involved?
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree too, but I think we are very close. Biden’s return will tell.
Tony Gerace
@ruemara: Yup. I’m gonna guess that Stupid White Assholes is the major reason why that jackass Jack Ciattarelli is essentially tied with Phil Murphy in New Jersey. I really hate the majority of white people in New Jersey (though I’m classified as “white” myself) — although in a lot of other states the percentage of white people that I’d hate would get even higher. “New Jersey — The Lesser Among Evils” would be a good state motto.
Cameron
@The Dangerman: Sinema may have a price, but I’m not sure Manchin does. He’s going to drag this out until the end of the month, so it will get conflated with all the budget shit that has to get done in early December. Then he quits and joins the Republicans; Rand Paul has already said they’d be happy to have him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Kos staff is arguing that Virginia was the exception last night, that most of the elections last night were for school boards and CRT fear mongering only worked in bring out the vote, in deep red districts that were already going to vote Republican. Apparently some conservative PAC spent $250,000 to win a school board seat in a rural district in, Texas.
Me thinks what the CRT fear mongering is really good at is get crazy old billionaires to make donations to Republican grifters.
James E Powell
@swiftfox:
Everybody says this when we lose. Gore, Kerry, Clinton. All bad candidates. How could we be so stupid as to nominate them?
Similarly, every Democratic senate candidate who lost was a bad candidate. We should have nominated . . . the person who lost the primary by 10 points? A person we cannot name but who must surely exist?
We lost in Virginia because a slim majority of those who voted wanted an R, not a D.
Nelle
Urbandale, Iowa flipped our city council to Democratic. Took a ton of work for months from a lot of determined volunteers. Two out of the three elected to school board were sane Democrats. The other, part of the anti-masking brigade, I believe, had tremendous name recognition from previous television employment.
The next town to the west, Waukee, had a rabid bunch of anti-masker parents. They lost. Next town the other direction, Johnston, was getting dark money plus former (is there such a thing?) Trump staffers for right wing, anti-mask candidates. They won. That’s the school district my granddaughters will be in, when they are old enough for school. So far, they’ve had a great educational record but he was already thinking of transferring them as he was uneasy by the bland student population (he went to an elementary school with kids from 30 countries).
SiubhanDuinne
I very stupidly had the TV on when Chuck Todd was on the air this afternoon. I clicked him off, but unfortunately not in time to keep from hearing him proclaim that Virginia results were particularly disastrous and a total repudiation of Dems because “Virginia isn’t just a blue state — it’s a deep blue state.”
Idjit.
Betty Cracker
@Carol: It makes no sense to blame the Progressive Caucus for the impasse. The vast majority of the agenda Biden ran on is in the reconciliation bill, 96% of the party wants them both, and Biden has been publicly promoting a tandem strategy for months.
Hoodie
Makes you wonder about the long-term wisdom of trying to attract suburban white voters. The fuckers are fickle as hell and have the memory capacity of Dolly in Finding Nemo. It really isn’t surprising given past history. Fuckers’ whose families got uplifted by Social Security, Medicare, the GI Bill, VHA, etc., turn around and vote for Ronald Fucking Reagan because “black people want too many handouts.” Given the widening chasm between rich and poor and ongoing destruction of the middle class conducted by the GOP over the past 50 years, they’re marked for death anyway. Passing BBB and the BIF is probably irrelevant because they’re myopically fixated on shit like global commodity gas prices, toilet paper shortages, and keeping their little Connors and Maddies from being raped by marauding bands of cross dressers and made to feel guilty by Critical Race Theorists.
Eolirin
@Hoodie: We can’t win without them though. I don’t think we have much choice
Baud
@Hoodie:
How do you get to a majority without them?
I personally would love for the Ds to focus solely on my vote, but I can’t in good conscience say it’s a good strategy.
Xantar
Ever noticed how after the 2020 election the Republicans just regrouped and started attacking harder? They just never give up and neither can we. We’ve had a setback. This was always going to be a fight of decades. At age 37, I fully expect that this will be continuing on until I’m well past retirement. I’m really sorry to say that because I know many of you are much older than I am. We’re doing this for the kids (who mostly seem to be on the right side of things).
MattF
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think the CRT-mongering brought out the core Red vote— Republicans are dead in the water without that. The trick for Republicans is to excite the core without alienating independents, and Youngkin managed to do just that.
ETA: I don’t watch Fox, but I’ll wager that CRT is a very big deal there.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Justice Alito Asks Why Law-Abiding Citizens Can’t Be Armed on NYC Subways as SCOTUS Hears Major Second Amendment Case
“Hard-working white people.”
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, the Progressive Caucus is not exactly what I would call radical. The stuff they’re advocating is pretty popular across the board — it’s not mandating CRT in every kindergarten class. It’s actually kind of annoying that they call Manchin a “moderate.” He’s a conservative and, worse, a corrupt opportunist. He’s moderate only to the extent he’s not like foaming at the mouth Republicans.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: There was a really obvious theory ready to go about why Barack Obama was a ridiculously bad candidate to nominate. Several, in fact.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I agree with you completely. That said, I do question the viability going forward of promising to do big things and conditioning success and reelection on achieving all those things. It’s a strategy that seems to disappoint more than it inspires.
eversor
@Joe Falco:
Because money. The nasty issue is that all these well off suburbanites and urbanites, especially those in the media/consulting/services professions don’t want anyone in their wallets. So the moment any program is proposed that group throws a fit and there is nothing the right can do that will be as bad as taxing them.
The Democratic party knows that as well. If they actually pass something truly transformational all those nice educated social liberals will freak the fuck out and say “oh hell yeah burn it the fuck down, I’m not paying for that” and thus it’s over. So the cost of having any sort of social liberalism is feeding the working class and poor into the wood chipper.
It’s the country we live in and it may suck but that is what it is. Semachin just took the heat for a lot of other Democrats who didn’t want to say that. And for that they are heroes of the party where it represents the upper middle class.
RaflW
I’m curious what, if anything, can be read of the tea leaves of Lisa Murkowski apparently saying she’s for a Voting Rights bill today.
Is she trying to out-maneuver Manchin somehow? She’s experienced enough to know that the Dem base is smarting coming off yesterday, and she can really burnish her moderate credentials with this (though she won’t be able to find nine GOP colleagues). Game-playing?
Carol
@omnes omnibus #10 I am old and not physically able to get involved any longer. At the risk of being repetitive, there are several generations younger than me that should be doing the work today. But where are they?
RaflW
@Carol: “Where are the young Democratic Party candidates?”
Mistermix may have better insight, but my armchair take is that the money machine is very much controlled by the old guard Dems. There are tales, some perhaps apocryphal, that potential campaign staff, ad buyers, consultants etc get black-balled by the big Democratic apparatuses if they go work for younger or ‘outsider’ challengers.
I mean, look at Buffalo and how that unfolded.
Here in Minneapolis, the moneyed-Dem old guard pulled out all the stops to keep the cop-favoring mayor and Council, and challenge first-term progressives who, it appears have at least partly been toppled.
Technocratic incrementalist Dems of the Clintonian school have a ton of power for now. And it’s gonna fry us to a crisp in ’22 and probably ’24. I am not encouraged. Downright pessimistic.
I think my strategy for the next three years is to significantly increase giving to grassroots orgs like Four Directions, Fair Vote, etc and stay the hell away from DNC, DCCC etc endorsees. Bah!
gene108
White people are the overwhelming majority in most parts of this country. Sure, your town or county in California maybe majority minority, but most of the country’s population distribution is split on racial lines.
For whatever reason, Republicans have found a winning formula for winning the majority of the white vote, especially the white male vote.
As long as Republicans have the backing of the majority of white people, and white people make up the majority in most places, Democrats will continue to struggle winning consistently.
I think Obama’s wins, in 2008 and 2012, showed a new coalition might be possible without needing to cater as much to white working class (male) votes, but without Obama to pull it together, it doesn’t seem at all durable.
I expect 2022 to make 2010 seem like a good year for Democrats.
Republicans have found something with “CRT” that energizes their voters, peels of independent voters who might vote Dem, and have been helped tremendously by Manchin and Sinema derailing Biden’s agenda.
brendancalling
As many of you know, I live in Vermont and generally dislike it. However, I am less than an hour from the Canadian border, and my son will be 18 in January. At that point, he can sponsor me in for citizenship.
This option looks more attractive every day.
gene108
@Tony Gerace:
That demographic got Christie elected twice, and kept him extremely popular until Bridgegate undid him.
Also, I think a lot of folks are tired of COVID restrictions, and don’t give a damn anymore about if they get sick or who they could infect.
Edit: Murphy pushed a lot of necessary restrictions, so gets to be the bad guy for doing what was necessary.
MomSense
@RaflW:
Nope. I’ll tell you what the problem is – Reagan. Gen X went gaga for him. It was a nightmare going to high school with a bunch of obnoxious Reagan loving Alex P Keaton wannabes and it’s been a nightmare for the country. Look at all the Gen X Republican members of Congress and how insufferable they are. My generation was lost to Reagan. Yes, there are some Gen X Democrats who are awesome, but enough of them.
guachi
@gene108: Agreed. Voting is what matters. If older White conservative turnout is high, then the concerns of older White conservative voters is what matters.
Butter Emails
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Anyone ask Alito why ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding people can’t be armed in the Supreme Court building?
Ben Cisco
@brendancalling: Congrats.
I’m black and have seen much of the rest of this planet. ain’t nowhere for me to run to, so I’m going to sack up and keep fighting like I have a bullseye on my back (which I have since birth).
Your mileage may vary.
Madeleine
@RaflW:
“I think my strategy for the next three years is to significantly increase giving to grassroots orgs like Four Directions, Fair Vote, etc and stay the hell away from DNC, DCCC etc endorsees.”
That’s certainly my plan.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ben Cisco: I call it a “grim determination to take as many of the bastards to Hell with me as I can.
(of course, I’d prefer to win some fucking elections; but we have the history of Reconstruction to show us what we’re up against.)
Mike in NC
It’s beyond tiresome to keep hearing from reporters that Manchin and Sinema are “moderates”. They are DINOs well paid by their corporate donors.
JPL
@Mike in NC: They are now huddling with McConnell and Thune on the floor of the Senate.
Woodrow/asim
Most of my “younger” friends in Colorado are literally fighting daily, just to survive. They are sharp — one of them is a person I’d love to co-write a book with on business for creative folx, esp. dancers! But: she has a lot of life situations on top of running her jobs, and I lack time, myself.
So there should be boots on the ground orgs trying to connect CO people into working coalitions. I’d assume that’s where the people who have time/capacity to work, as doing so; here’s one list I find, but it does seem…sparse.
And that might be the key issue — there might not be a good, ongoing, ground game in CO connecting people. So there may be energy, esp. around campuses, but not the right level of engagement and management to be as visible as needed.
Omnes Omnibus
@eversor: Sorry, I am just not willing to accept that we can only have equal rights for all people at the expense of economic justice.
JPL
At this point, I wish the house would just pass an extension on child care credits, pre K, and child care assistance and call it a win. We are not going to get Manchin to more. At least that way we have the transportation bill, and part of BBB. He can run on the rest during the mid term.
Sure Lurkalot
@Xantar:
It would be infinitely easier to do it for the kids if they would vote. They didn’t vote in my state (Colorado), the 18-24 year olds cast about 3% of the total votes.
I know this is a perennial problem not just with youth but with Democrats as a whole in off year and midterm elections. I’ve grappled with it my whole life, trying to get friends and family to vote every election and they just don’t do it, no matter how easy it is (and my god, is it easy here).
Ben Cisco
@Professor Bigfoot:
Aborted in order to appease those who wouldn’t accept us as full citizens of the United States – then OR now.
Lincoln had one thing right – “rule or ruin” indeed. And we have allies ready to run for the border, figuratively or literally.
In the end, feels like we’re all we got.
gene108
@Baud:
I think that’s a big problem, between expectations and delivering on them that dooms Democrats.
But I think promising big things is needed to get people fired up enough to want to turnout, otherwise too many possible Dem voters will decide there’s no difference between the parties and stay at home. An alarmingly high number of people already think there’s no difference between the parties.
I really don’t know what to do.
Matt McIrvin
@Sure Lurkalot: It seems to me as if in local elections, the people who are MOST informed often become the most reluctant to vote, because they know how much they don’t know and get afraid of getting it wrong somehow. The superficial coverage of local politics in what little local media exists doesn’t help. You get a bunch of candidates without explicit party affiliation who all affirm their support of goodness and opposition to bad things, and that’s all you know.
Old School
@Sure Lurkalot:
What percentage of the voting age population are they?
waspuppet
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I always find it a shock (though not a surprise) when conservatives reveal that, like six-year-olds, they think there are Good Guys and Bad Guys (or for that matter Sick People and Well People) and that no one ever crosses that line, or goes back and forth, in the course of a lifetime of a moment.
They really don’t know the first thing about the real world. And I keep being told I can call them all sorts of things but I “can’t call them stupid.” Yes I can. I just did and I’ll do it again. It doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. In fact it makes them more dangerous.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Cisco: I am not leaving. For authenticity, assume that was a whole big speech in authentic frontier gibberish a la Gabby Johnson.
Mike in NC
In this area, virtually all of the candidates for office this election were over the age of 70. (They had profiles in the local newspapers.) It’s depressing that young people won’t get involved.
taumaturgo
@Eolirin: I beg to disagree. Close to 50% of eligible voters don’t bother to show up. It would be a formidable counterweight to the fickle suburbanites if a new leadership in the party would engage and attract 15 to 20% of nonvoters.
Matt McIrvin
@Ben Cisco: I feel like I’ve halfway abdicated by living in a deep-blue state in the first place, as opposed to a swing state where my vote could actually change things. And it’s a somewhat sheltered situation since my state government is relatively sane. If I emigrated, would it accomplish anything at all, other than symbolically washing my hands of the United States?
patrick Il
Manchin was actively helping Younkin with his press conference Monday.
Ben Cisco
@Omnes Omnibus: BWAHAAHAAA!!!
Thanks for a sorely-needed laugh.
And for helping man the line.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
How do you explain Manchin being seen huddling with McConnell, then? In the context of his other behaviors?
Baud
@gene108:
How many times can people get fired up if they keep feeling disappointed?
The GOP doesn’t promise it’s voters big things. Why can we campaign on more targeted things that voters might want?
OGLiberal
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yeah, it’s racist and it’s also these freaking people who think NYC is like it was in that movie The Warriors. They have no idea. Of course, Alito – having spent most of his live in NJ – should know better…and he does…he’s just a jerk.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ben Cisco: Same as it ever was.
I remain convinced that the one single greatest divide in this country is over whether or not Black people are full, legitimate citizens of this country.
That’s it. It’s the root of everything; and it’s how conservatives have succeed from Reagan to Trump.
RaflW
Voting Rights filibustered 50-49. Schumer changed his vote so he can reintroduce.
So …. Where to now? Manchin claimed he could wrangle 10 GOP votes for something? Where the fuck is it.
gene108
@Xantar:
We don’t have billionaire bucks to fund our voter engagement efforts. Republicans have a near inexhaustible reserve of dark money to work on ways to keep attacking, plus a very far reaching media apparatus.
Unlike Republicans, Democratic voters are on our own to find ways to keep fighting, and after all the energy spent fighting Trump, I think many on our side are exhausted and burned out. I wanted Democrats to vote in lockstep and aggressively pass Biden’s agenda. I really didn’t want whatever shit we have to deal with because of Manchin and Sinema being dicks about BBB, and filibuster reform for voting rights.
RaflW
@Mike in NC: I strongly recommend checking out Run For Something. There are a ton of young people getting involved. If your local area is fronting septuagenarians, that likely means the machine Dems have a lock on endorsements, money etc.
Primary School is another one.
Ben Cisco
@Matt McIrvin:
Narrator: It would not.
Mike in NC
@gene108: Donald Trump ran on a platform of white supremacy and police brutality, and that got him 74 million votes.
Ben Cisco
@Professor Bigfoot: Someone – was it you? – said that in a post in the last few days. By the ancestors, I need to find (and frame) it.
taumaturgo
@Sure Lurkalot: Could it be because the message delivered by the conservative, middle of the road, can’t do anything candidates is tone-deaf for the younger generation? College is out of reach, shitty jobs with shitty wages w/o benefits, nonexistence daycare, unaffordable housing, and all they hear day in and day out from their parent’s mouths are how shitty the whole system has become. Then, political parties demand that they put all that aside and go vote for an old out-of-touch politician. Having been ignored and disrespected by the country they are right to be not engaged and not interested.
Nelle
OT – I think I betrayed my red-hot disgust for Mike Pence. I snorted when reading, in this morning’s Des Moines Register, his reply in a Qand A at U of Iowa. Who convinced him, a guy demanded, to not follow the Trump plan to challenge the electors on Jan. 6?
Pence shot back, “James Madison.” He also reminded the audience that he was on that ballot, too.
Ksmiami
@gene108: Advice to you all… we need to go full metal nuclear on the vaporware that is the Republican Party. Beat them up as against America and apple pie. Turn their perceived strengths into weaknesses- do you want Mitch McConnell telling you how to pray? Etc. I mean forget this being nice shit. Turn this around
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I have no idea.
Chyron HR
@RaflW:
You forgot “Third Way”, that’s definitely also a thing that’s relevant in 2021.
Ben Cisco
@RaflW: See Professor Bigfoot @61 for your answer.
Jim Appleton
Chiming in from some comment below about Stacey Adams re Georgia.
Morris Day says, “You’re welcome.”
taumaturgo
@gene108: Well this is further proof that any legislative proposal that doesn’t have the corporate power seal of approval is doomed, no matter the level of support of the people. As long as we keep believing in the big lie of the party duopoly the plutocrats will continue to get what they want and we better be happy with the trickle.
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: dude I’m not sure we are even a country anymore- more a place to earn a living and buy stuff. Society is pretty atomized and no one knows history or much of anything
Leto
@RaflW: It’s hanging out with the Sandy Hook Stop Fucking Killing Children Bill. Where to now? Authoritarian rule. President Manchin’s happy with it, everyone else here needs to get used to it.
Sure Lurkalot
@Old School: Hard to find apples to apples demographics quickly but 18-34 year olds make up 31% of registered voters and they tallied 7.65% of the vote yesterday.
It appears they sign up for the class but skip it.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: In the absence of a crisis, I’m not sure Dems can be targeted and keep the coalition together. It’s easy to be focused when you have a homogenous coalition with common goals. Not so much with a fractious, diverse caucus with multiple factions insisting that their priorities must be centered.
Ben Cisco
@Leto: With all due respect, FUCK THAT.
TEL
@Xantar: Totally agree with you. Since when has winning elections ever been easy? Especially for Democrats – the deck is stacked against us because the D candidates tend to be a lot more honest and less dirty than the R candidates. On the other hand, while R’s are good at winning elections, they have lost the ability to govern – which is why they tend to be bad at holding on to seats in purple areas. Sigh.
Mike in NC
Lee Atwater would laugh himself sick if he were alive today, watching Republicans terrify white parents over non-existent Critical Race Theory.
taumaturgo
@Ksmiami: Very well, but is your proposal going to happen with the current old, decrypt, and corrupt current democratic leadership? It’s a fool’s errand trying to teach an old dog new tricks. The base should demand the resignation of those in leadership responsible for the horrible showing. Remember Biden won Virginia +10 and the incompetent McAuliffe and the DNC blew it. Out with all of them.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s what I was afraid of.
@TEL: Dems dominated when we welcomed a large Jim Crow faction into the caucus.
senyordave
Two Democratic Senators Vote Against Rahm Emanuel For Ambassador (of Japan). I’m glad to see that at least two Democrats have some sense. I understand why this shit happens, but it would be nice if the Democrats didn’t do this sort of stuff. Emanuel is a pile of crap, and shouldn’t be given this as a reward.
Icedfire
@RaflW: There’s an element of the ratfuckery mistermix referenced as well, especially where I live on the Northside.
Multiple cop apologist/OSN/All of Mpls candidates trumpeted “DFL” endorsements that referred only to the crusty corpses on the DFL Senior Committee, and “Labor” endorsements from conservative subsets of labor unions and/or police and firefighter unions that hardly deserve the name.
I will never forget how close Victor Martinez came to being elected in Ward 5. Nor will I ever forget the STrib beshitting itself endorsing Mickey Moore who doesn’t even live in the city. Minneapolis’ progressive veneer is far thinner than most people are willing to admit.
Ocotillo
I was called in to help yesterday afternoon by Mrs. O at her polling place. Here in Texas, primarily in most voting areas, the only thing on the ballot was 8 proposed constitutional amendments.
Youngish (late 20s, early 30s) Hispanic voter motioned me over. He asked, “how do I vote straight Republican?” I said it’s not a partisan election, these are proposed amendments and I could not coach him one way or the other. SMDH
Baud
@Mike in NC:
I think like people who enjoy horror movies, those white parents seek out being terrified.
Sure Lurkalot
@taumaturgo: I may agree with your “could it be they have nothing to vote for” whatabouts but I’ve seen this country go south since Reagan (when I was a youth) and I have always voted, every fucking election. Why preach this apathy?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that even if a Voting Rights Act passed, it wouldn’t really stop the seemingly relentless march to authoritarian rule, not when you have an opposing political party that the majority of the dominant racial group votes for in every election, that immediately reverses everything the other political party does once they gain power. It’s unrealistic to win election after election, keeping the other bad faith side out for years on end
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes,,,
It always feels like we’re making the mistake projecting our thinking on to Right, I think GOP how is stands are Crazy Old Billionaires who want establish the Republic of Gilead as their legacy before mother nature does the right thing and everyone crazy relative who just wants to scream at other people for being different. And the amoral grifters – Trump, Youngkin, JD Vance and so, tie them together just to scam the lot of them by doing stupid shit.
Ruckus
@The Dangerman:
1000000% this.
OGLiberal
@MomSense: This, many times over. Just about everybody I went to high school with is insufferable from a political perspective….even the ones who work in education! I always say that my generation watched Wall Street and came away thinking Gordon Gekko was the hero.
Ocotillo
I saw that there was a big swing in white women in Virginia that voted for Biden, moving over to Youngkin.
So, given the choice between the party whose answer to a school mass shooting is to legislate more access to firearms or the party that is accused of wanting to teach their little ones CRT, white women said I will take the mass shooting.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
So, basically, you’re saying there is no solution?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I knew it wouldn’t be long before we got to the infantile bleating about the DNC. Can visions of the hidden beclawed hand of the wicked withered crone Debbie. Wasserman. SCHULTZ! be far behind?
TEL
@MomSense: Yeah, it was the same for me. Reagan was very popular in my high school, and a lot of those kids became lifetime republicans because of him.
taumaturgo
@Mike in NC: What did the democrats run on? Trump is evil, evil I say. Everything else is turning into false promises and pretenses. How else do you explain a 10+ swing of suburbanites to vote R? Yesterday’s racist remembered their roots? The media? Or lack of coherent messaging from the party and the retreaded McAuliffe? The base must hold its own accountable.
Starfish
@Carol: They are taking care of their children cause schools are barely open. They are working themselves into the grave cause the olds destroyed the social safety net.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ben Cisco: Most likely.
I grow more convinced of it every single day; from the way Republican white people are fighting to disenfranchise Black people because they don’t like the way we vote to the ostensibly Democratic/”liberal” white people are ready to abandon us to the Confederates if it might cause them a paper cut.
No, I’m not bitter… but I see what I see.
Chris Johnson
@RaflW: Oh, that’s interesting. If a couple republicans can decide to caucus with the Dems, THEY then become the important ones. They only need, what, three? If there’s three, it’s all about them and Manchin and Sinema are completely irrelevant.
In a world where you run away from Trump in order to get elected and hide your (R), this is actually a hell of a good strategy. Rather than Manchin and SInema breaking to the Rs in order to ???, profit (fucking how? None of that side of the aisle makes sense or has a clue), you have Manchin and Sinema threatening to do that and then three Republicans tired of McConnell and Trump, flipping to become the most important people in the world AND the rescuers of infrastructure, climate, voting rights… and claiming they just felt a moral duty to take a stand, for sanity and the survival of the Republic for which they stand.
Not that any politician would look at what Manchin’s doing and go ‘gee, I would like to be the most important person in the world and not him’ for purely selfish politician reasons… right?
taumaturgo
@Sure Lurkalot: How is it going with your voting record? What you choose to call apathy, I call holding our leaders accountable for their political malpractice when the opposition party is taking their brand and incessantly trashing it, even calling for violence against individuals and they sit on their hands while cashing corporates checks.
Kay
Just a reminder- if a Democrat had won a red or swing state last night every single national Republican would be on television claiming fraud.
The fraud claims have disappeared. Again. They’ll miraculously reappear if NJ is contested.
Our elections have again become models for democracy- the Will of the People!- but that could change in the next 48 hours, if they need it to change, and only in one state. Media completely adopts this framing too.
The only legitimate voters are Republican voters.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ksmiami: there are those white people for whom it cannot be a society if Black people are full members of it.
Do Black people have the rights white men claim for themselves? To own and carry a gun? To run for office? If successful in running, to execute the duties of that office?
What white people refuse to acknowledge: the one biggest political divide in this country.
Which is why it is never really addressed.
Watch and see.
Steeplejack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Senators talk to each other across party lines all the time.
Subsole
@Hoodie: Worth bearing in mind College Degree whites broke pretty strongly Dem.
It’s white no college that is and has always been the problem.
taumaturgo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, now is clearer to me why the Democrats lose, lose, and will continue to lose. Without accountability from the top, this is the result. Wish you, the DNC, and the next corrupt candidates the best in the 2022 midterms.
Subsole
@Hoodie:
Thank you Jesus, someone else gets it.
Ben Cisco
@Professor Bigfoot:
Found it….
Truth is looking more self-evident by the day…
Subsole
@Baud: I think someone said in an earlier thread that, essentially, we are using our brains to speak to people who think with their hearts – or asses, as may be.
That more than anything else is why Dems always get our asses handed to us.
I think there’s merit to it. Look what happens when people were faced with visceral things, like Trump, or Derek Chauvin. Or firebombing a church. Or the OKC courthouse.
Sad, horrible fact, but we hotra figure out how to translare Adam’s analysis into something people feel.
Shouldn’t be hard- we have plenty of emotion, right here in these comments…
taumaturgo
@Kay: The most important question is, where is the current leadership pushing a version of your narrative? Silent? On the phone busy asking for donations to blow the elections? Why do voters don’t listen to them?
Steeplejack
@Baud:
The “promises” thing is a good point. Part of the Republicans’ success is that they have gotten very good at making “big” promises that never fail because they’re not based on anything real. “We’ll protect you from antifa/CRT/socialists/‘defund the police’/MS-13/Haitian caravans,” ad nauseam. Those bad things never happen, so, hey, mission accomplished!
Old School
@taumaturgo:
With notably rare exceptions… like 2020, New Mexico 2021, California 2021, etc.
Geminid
@taumaturgo: The people who swung were not part of the base. They were some of the 33% of Virginians who self-identify as “Independent.” And to have an 11 point difference from one election to the next only requires flipping 5.5% of the electorate.
Subsole
@eversor: Like the ‘nym.
No vindicare?
JMS
I get the moaning and groaning but could we spare a minute for Michelle Wu, Ed Gainey, and even Eric Adams. And it looks like Murphy will make it in NJ—first Dem repeat since the 70s. Even a close win is a win. 2 steps forward, 1.75 steps back. Same as it ever was.
Leto
@Ben Cisco: I typed up this huge thing but in the end deleted it. Yeah, fuck that. But I don’t know what to do about it. I’ll continue to fight, but this isn’t simply an “off year” election reversal. We elected Biden but lost more of the House, had to settle for a 50/50 Senate, we’re losing in the states, and it’s gaining momentum. And we’re having to deal with DINOs killing a lot of good stuff, including absolutely critical voting rights reform. Idk. It’s almost 4:30, so I guess that’s close enough to 5.
Subsole
@gene108:
For which I hope Baron Blacklung enjoys his 30 coins.
Fucker.
gene108
@Baud:
Being a broad coalition, with little central control, means each activist group is fighting for their own agenda. We can’t please everyone, so who gets their agenda cut?
The paid family leave people? The police reform people? The reduce greenhouse gas emissions people?
At the end of the day, I have no clue what issues get pushed and what gets dropped. Most people don’t notice 99% of the public policy that exists around them, so I’m not sure it really matters what to prioritize, as long as something gets done with no internal bickering.
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: The historic record isn’t great. There’s so much invested in our white male patriarchal bindings and it’s self reinforcing and unquestioned by so many.
Subsole
@MomSense:
Eh. Least they ain’t Millenials.
N.B. : I am a Millenial.
Baud
@JMS:
Glad about NJ. I had thought that was safe.
Chris Johnson
@Leto: Is it gaining momentum, though, or is it simply escalating the backlash? To me it seems like we only respond to emergencies, and the Republicans only respond to FAKE emergencies.
And whenever they do get power, they run amok in such a way that they produce real emergencies, and back and forth the pendulum goes. Next thing you know they’ll be running Trump again, especially if he’s busted for being an absolute criminal shitheel. They seemingly can’t NOT escalate. It makes our primary tactic, survival and outlasting ’em.
Hoodie
@Subsole: I would say the problem is the large pool of voters who don’t show up unless there’s a presidential election with either (1) an Obama on the Dem ticket or (2) a Trump on the GOP ticket. That’s a communication problem. White working class voters are a declining share of working class voters, but we’re not getting that other part of the working class in sufficient numbers. I reluctantly somewhat agree with our sometime disagreeable colleague taumaturgo. The Dem leadership is somewhat sclerotic if it’s running Clinton-era folks like McAuliffe, who I actually thought was a good governor but ran a pretty weak campaign this time around. Over the past few years, a lot of our candidates won simply because they got swept in by a great candidate like Obama or lucked out in running when Trump is on the ballot. That happened here in NC with Hagan, and Cal Cunningham couldn’t even manage what should have been a win when Trump was on the ballot. He was really a lousy candidate, even without the sex scandal. I like Biden and appreciate the risks he’s taken, but a not insignificant part of the party is not backing him up and thus bringing the team down. Time to try some really different players, particularly at the congressional level.
Ben Cisco
@Leto: Here’s what you can do – and I mean this sincerely:
Vote like you’re going to spend the rest of your life as a black man (or woman) in America NOT named Clarence Thomas or whoever that nutter is that just won LT Gov in Virginia. Vote like your life LITERALLY depends on it.
topclimber
@taumaturgo:
It sucks that we have to work around a system where the Plutocrats have one party that is a wholly-owned subsidiary and the other where they have a large equity position. In other words, I agree with you.
It also doesn’t help that our system has a butt-load of points where a determined minority can veto everyone else.
Yet, over the years Dems get shit done. We have an overwhelming party consensus on addressing climate change. If young voters can’t see how that is way better than the other guys and get their asses out to vote, then we are truly screwed.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I wouldn’t say that, but yeah, I do wonder if it’s sustainable to maintain such a large tent on a long-term basis. At the federal level, we’re sort of dependent on Republicans fucking up in horrifying ways to even get a shot at unified control, and that’s true in many states too. In others, Republicans maintain control no matter what.
Old School
@Baud:
But they do. We’ll build a giant wall. We’ll re-negotiate all of the treaties. We’ll provide fantastic health care. We’ll make America great again.
Republicans just claim they’ve done everything they’ve promised.
Subsole
@Baud: What else do they have to give them meaning?
Emerald
@Cameron: Manchin isn’t going to switch parties. The instant he switches he loses all of his power. Plus, he would have to cuddle up to trump. He’s having too much fun right now doing his obstruction. As a Republican, he’d have to be just a common foot soldier. He wouldn’t like that. No, he’ll try to remain as a thorn in the side of Democrats for as long as he can.
eclare
@Ben Cisco: I am a white woman in the south. I take my cue for who to vote for from Black women. For example, once Black women in SC overwhelmingly voted for Biden in the primary, that was it. I voted for him on Super Tuesday.
topclimber
@topclimber: “We” in the last sentence refers to humanity, and of course the subset known as Dems.
ruemara
@James E Powell: This part. Terry was not a terrible candidate. It was historic turnout for an off year election, but once again WHITE MEN & WOMEN turned out to vote for white supremacy. Stop blaming normal human beings with a relatively good record (he expanded medicaid, now he’s terrible?) for the fact that the overwhelming about of the white electorate is RACIST AS HELL. They just figure if the white hoods & cross burnings aren’t done, they shouldn’t be called that.
Cameron
@RaflW: It was a LIE, of course, like everything else he says.
Amir Khalid
@RaflW:
You didn’t actually believe him, did you?
Ben Cisco
@eclare: Thank you. I appreciate you.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@gene108: The ‘for some reason’ you refer to for why these folks have such strong appeal to white voters in white areas is Fox news. In every area it was offered, partisanship increased.. with people becoming more right wing. The relentless repetition of one sided news is why this is happening. People who live in outlying areas believe what they are hearing, especially about cities and minorities, because they don’t live in those areas and don’t know any better.
Subsole
@Sure Lurkalot: Because we all deserve punishment for refusing the Glorious Golden Socialist Sunshine of a candidate who sucked down millions in small donor donations, fired up the sainted Hip, Cool Youth like no one before
and got his dick broke off and fed to him rectally by the incompetent corporatist third way duopolistic clintonite arblegargle candidates we are supposed to guillotine en mass. Or something.
All about the righteous sulk, some folks are. Personally, it’s beyond trite at this point.
@Ocotillo: White non college. College WW held up their end, from what I saw.
Leto
@Ben Cisco: I’ve been doing that since 1996 (first year I could vote). It’s been of immeasurable help that my dad was a history teacher and taught me most of the stuff that he couldn’t in class. My parents are life long Dems, I’m the same, but I don’t know how to convince the rest of white America to understand wtf has been happening for the past almost 100 years. I’m not even going to try to explain the John C Calhoun to Trumpov connection because the majority of American’s 1) just don’t give a fuck and 2) they hate history and believe racism is over. They absolutely refuse to understand that they’ve been lied to since the 1930s. And a lot of it goes back to what you and Prof Bigfoot say: they don’t want any equality with POC, and I don’t know how to get around that. And we haven’t spoken about the LGBTQ community, immigrants, the disabled, poor people, etc…
Again I’m still going to fight because in the end there’s no other choice.
Ben Cisco
@ruemara:
With an assist from their allies in the media, who wouldn’t call it racism with guns to their heads.
ruemara
@Ben Cisco: Exactly. And I’m with you. The quality of the allies is of more concern than they think.
@RaflW: EXCEPT that old guard backed the Buffalo democratic primary candidate and endorsed her. wtf.
And incrementalism is about the only way I had any rights at all. You’re not going to get a massive gain. The Progressives are at fault for demanding massive changes that are easily spun as radical. That’s basic.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@taumaturgo: Of course, if they youth aren’t actively involved in the political process, they will continue to be ignored and disrespected. Why bother catering to people who can’t fund your campaign, won’t vote for you, and won’t pay attention to anything you do for them if you get elected (but sure will criticize on social media everything you can’t get done)? They make themselves irrelevent that way.
Professor Bigfoot
@Leto: it’s a mad, paranoid fear of a Black person being “above” them.
I could tell you about being a Black supervisor of white engineers in Corporate America, for example; but here it is— if there is actually equality, then sometimes there WILL be a Black supervisor/manager/boss/President “over them.”
And there’s a certain species of white American for which that’s just a bridge too far. As evidenced by their absolutely insane reaction to that middle of the road family man and Harvard legal scholar.
It’s been pointed out that one reason Black people went for Joe Biden so hard was that we watched him play eager, willing second banana to a Black boss; and we know how rare that is.
Subsole
@Old School: Don’t remind them. They’re having a good hard revenge-fap at the thought of Donald winning and making us all pay for rejecting the Great Red Mahdi of Vermont.
Be rude to spoil the afterglow.
Geminid
@Ocotillo: I think some of these Virginia woman were responding to the persona Youngkin projected. He certainly was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but Youngkin had a good tailor and came across as a very charming ram.
Leto
@Professor Bigfoot: one of the fortunate things I consider to have happened to me in my military career was that I had some amazing bosses. Most of those amazing bosses? POC, men and women. Most of my worst bosses? White dudes. Maybe I just got lucky… but having odds like that are extremely rare and the more rational answer is… yeah.
Re Biden: had to tell more than a few white friends, there’s a reason black people backed him almost to a person. If you’re an ally like you say you are, you need to stfu and pay attention. I’m eternally glad we have Biden.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Skimming through this thread, it seems like the word “Covid” hardly appears, if at all, after the first sentence of the OP.
Ruckus
@Xantar:
I’m almost twice your age and it’s been going on from well before I was born.
We all have the survival instinct. Every last one of us. And it manifests itself in some strange and ridiculous ways. We bond in groups, political, color, gender, talents, etc and it effects us singularly as well. The problem is that it is about 99.999% impossible to survive all on your own. Even if you live in the wild, or maybe especially if you do, you have to depend at times on others. Do you survive on what you kill? Did you find, melt, forge the steel for the knife you use to hunt? A number of people did their bit to make that knife. And that’s about as simple an example as possible. We need other people to make reasonable decisions, do reasonable labor, not try to kill each other to survive. It’s easier in smaller groups, you can know everyone, most/all of you can see the possibilities.
Our politics right now is basically two widely opposing groups, the ones who think that our wealthy “betters” will save us and the other that understands that our wealthy betters for the most part could give a damn if we all die. The reasons are less important that the groups are so far apart. And they have and always will see life from 2 very different directions but the spread has gotten dramatically farther, to the point that all available compromise is gone. They want to go way back in time and we understand that’s impossible.
Matt McIrvin
@Mike in NC: We had a bunch of younger candidates for City Council but most of them didn’t win.
Urban Suburbanite
The election here in Seattle was a big win for the Democratic machine and the status quo. There’s also a weaselly Republican coming in (she was part of that lazy as fuck “Walk Away” scampaign) whose opponent was denounced by Tucker Carlson as the most dangerous candidate in America – this was for the city attorney seat.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
This is 100% true. I had a surreal conversation with one of my redneck uncles a while back. He has lived in Florida all of his life, but in the northern half of the state. He told me if you go to Miami and don’t speak Spanish, people will refuse to serve you in stores and restaurants.
I told him that’s bullshit. I said I’d been in Miami a few weeks before and go there a few times a year to visit friends, and even with my limited Spanish, I’ve always managed to order food and go shopping, etc. No one ever refused to serve me or kicked me out of a business for speaking English. But he sincerely believed this bullshit he probably heard on talk radio or wingnut TV.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
A lot of old farts are living longer and become more conservative as they age, because you either have a lot or almost nothing to conserve. Some will understand that democracy is better than conservatism, because it moves the entire system forward, as does the movement of time. But just like that, some will think the past was better so let’s go backwards. Those who forget the past will repeat it is a truism for a very good reason.
Subsole
@Hoodie: I understand that people are frustrated.
You wanna talk frustration? I have been taking it from these fucking people all my life, near half a century now. I want to hurt them back. In a lot of ways, I didn’t want Biden. I wanted the anti-Trump.
I want to melt their fucking guns down and force feed their kids birth control and staff every last single one of their restrooms with a bespangled chorus line of drag queens doing their most absolutely divine Streisand.
I want to carve fucking Baphomet’s Fourth Seal of the Conjuration of Wax into their God-damned performative stone tablets of the Levitican Code that they love to make everyone respect, despite never having read 90% of them.
How fed up am I? Fed up enough to re-elect Joe Fuckhead AND The Dip from the Desert if it gets us to 51. And what I’d say about those two right now would land my white ass on a watch-list.
So ply me not with outraged discouragement, Rob Roy.
Anyone sitting there blathering about how the K’rupt Duop’ly doesn’t deserve their engagement ain’t discouraged. Or principled. They’re pouting.
I am a Millenial. I saw all the shit afflicting them. Guess what? All those Boomers and GenXers? They saw it too. Because time is, in fact, linear. They still show up. I still show up.
If our house is on fire, it is not my job to talk them into hoisting a goddam bucket. And I am beginning to mightily resent people who act like it is.
Suzanne
@Subsole:
I think education level is a giant cultural gulf for white people, much more so than even ten years ago or so. When we talk about the racial axis at play, we’re sometimes missing this key difference.
Matt McIrvin
@Ben Cisco: I mean, I could see it saving my life in the event of an actual nationwide Day of the Rope, which I’ve pretty viscerally feared more than once…
…but let’s face it. In such an event, as a 50-something liberal cisgender mostly-straight white guy living in a Democratic-voting corner of the US, my place in line to be exterminated would be millions of places from the top. I think we can all name all the people who would be in more danger than I am. And hauling ass in the face of all those other people getting it before me… well, it’s not the most honorable response, to say the least.
Subsole
@Suzanne: Yep. Out in the Basin, my 2 year degree made me an uppity college puke.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Baud: TFG promised all kinds of things in 2016. He literally said vote for me and all your wildest dreams will come true. Once he got elected though he just ignored the fact that he promised all that stuff and just boosted everything that went right, whether or not he was responsible, to the moon. There’s a lesson in there…don’t focus in public on your failures just keep talking about the successes. Whether the MSM would let Dems pull the same trick or not remains to be seen but they could try.
Ben Cisco
@Subsole:
A little long for a band name, but…
Also, that’s one hell of a line.
Ben Cisco
@Matt McIrvin: Your words bring honor to your house.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ben Cisco:
I think Death Cab For Cutie shattered that norm
to say nothing of Kay Kaiser’s College of Musical Knowledge (just trying to beat NotMax to a punch)
Ruckus
@ruemara:
Absolutely This.
Politics is the slow roasting that is never done. The only way it goes faster is revolution. And that’s far more often far messier.
When people have seen how screwed up humans can make things, they never want to go fast or they want to go all out, maximum speed. Maximum speed is messy, often half ass, or sometimes all ass.
We are trying to change centuries of repetition of crap. The thing is that the humans in charge get used to the crap pretty easily because it’s their crap. Then they began to think their crap doesn’t smell. Then they can’t see how any other crap is better or even good for anyone, because somehow they have managed to be in charge of the crap. Hell they become the crap.
The bottom line? Change is hard, long time stuff is harder to change. And change never goes forward easily, because humans are often very resistant to change because they believe the current is OK or good for them and change will reduce them in some way.
I wish I could see equality, actual equality, in my life. I’m hopeful but I’m not holding my breath. I do wish far better for those younger than me.
Central Planning
@Subsole: How are you a millennial and also almost 50 years old? I guess if you’re comparing yourself to the age of the universe, then yes, you are very close to almost 50.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: Absolutely NOT this! Hard to imagine an even more wrong reading of the situation than this, IMO. But I’m too tired to argue about it today. Tomorrow! ?
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Not saying the progressives are wrong for what they want, just wrong for being pissed that they can’t get what they want in 5 minutes. Because life has never worked that way, all those messy humans get in the way. One has to fight and keep fighting to make change and to get it to stick. Someone up thread said that dems vote on the big issues/elections but not in the numbers in the small stuff. That is only a part of the problem, but expectations of everything? I’ve lived a long time, from a family of democrats who wanted better for everyone and I’m in that camp 1000%. I’ve seen a lot of movement and betterment for a lot of people and no it isn’t close to enough. Politics is hard because it’s people. And people can be difficult and some expect miracles or that everyone should agree with them and in my experience that happens so rarely that never is a very close description. My point was don’t get so discouraged that you can’t keep fighting, don’t stop demanding better for everyone, especially for those that have a harder time demanding for themselves.
Sometimes I don’t express myself all that well, I apologize for that. I wish I knew how to fix that, but then how would you know it’s me?
Starfish
@Woodrow/asim: You have friends here? Come visit.
@RaflW: Yes, there is a lot of this going on where I am.
Basically, there are various factions in Colorado that may or may not be in touch with one another. Paid signature collectors for something, or other will be threatened by the party as in “We will no longer do business with you if you collect for this person or this initiative.” In that way, only things connected to the existing power structure get done.
I am disappointed in a school board race. There is someone who is well-connected at the state level and has some background in that may align with mental health needs running against someone who was a district history teacher for many years. The one who was more connected to state level initiatives one even though she has never really taken any interest in this school district.
Subsole
@Central Planning:
Old Millenial. Born just in time for Reagan.
The kids’re gettin’ older, man.