About the title: when my younger brother was a small child in the mid-1980s, he was a fan of the cartoon “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.” According to family lore, one time at a store, little bro was riding in a shopping cart my mom was pushing and saw a He-Man-affiliated toy display and started screaming, “It’s the Bastards of the Universe!”
The same could perhaps be said of GOP U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, his mentor Peter Thiel and propagandist Tucker Carlson. There’s an article at Politico about Masters and a so-called “New Right” allegedly being shaped by Thiel. The article says Thiel’s aim is to build a coherent ideology around Trumpism, and that’s why Thiel strategically deploys pallets of cash to hard-right former employees like Masters and Vance.
My guess is this ideology will coincidentally inform policies that punish Thiel’s enemies and reward himself and his friends, as Trump’s policies did. But here’s what struck me when reading the Politico piece:
Masters’ views, while hard right, are not quite fringe in today’s Republican Party. He’s a harsh critic of Big Tech and says Trump was robbed in 2020. He traffics in the “replacement theory” that Democrats want to change the electorate through a wave of undocumented immigrants. He opposes aid to Ukraine and the right to an abortion. (He recently faced controversy for criticizing Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized contraceptives nationally, though he said he doesn’t want to outlaw contraception and, taking a page from Thiel, threatened to sue an Arizona news outlet for defamation.)
It’s true — these insane and pro-fascist views are “not quite fringe in today’s Republican Party.” That’s why it’s so important to defeat them thoroughly. But how? We’re not the only ones wondering about that. This excerpt from an NBC News story on Biden’s frustrations with our political moment sounds like it could have been generated from a Balloon Juice word cloud:
Biden has vented to aides about not getting credit from Americans or the news media for actions he believes have helped the country, particularly on the economy. Unemployment rates have dropped to below 4 percent — pre-pandemic levels — but polling indicates most Americans believe the economy is in bad shape. Biden grouses that Republicans aren’t getting their share of the blame for legislative gridlock in Congress, while he’s repeatedly faulted for not getting his agenda passed.
All true. The NBC story also says that Biden “shares the view that we haven’t landed on a winning midterm message” and is pressuring staffers to figure it out. One tactic they’re exploring is “villainize the opposition.” In this case, that’s also known as “telling the truth,” and I’m all for it.
ETA: In breaking news, Michael Sussman, the former cybersecurity lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was acquitted of charges that he lied to the FBI when he brought them allegations about Donald Trump. So Barr-appointed Special Counsel John Durham has come up snake-eyes. Good. The time to shut Durham down was 12:01 PM January 20, 2021. Maybe the DOJ will do so now.
Open thread!
Lapassionara
Re, Sussman, I have a law degree, and I could not understand the argument Durham was making. I even tried reading Marcy Wheeler’s explanation, but was still mystified.
WereBear
Works for us here :)
Lapassionara
Also, too, the winning message is the GOP’s plan to “sunset,” aka eliminate, Social Security and Medicare. Also the end of Roe.
Old School
That’s just what you’d expect a pedophile Communist America-hating party to do.
eclare
@Lapassionara: Absofuckinglutely. Rick Scott’s plans should be front and center.
Betty Cracker
@Lapassionara: Agree — I heard Biden hitting the Rick Scott manifesto pretty hard a couple of times. Good!
trnc
Good. Yes, it’s time to shut him down. Some of the usual suspects will scream conspiracy crap no matter what, but most people will accept it and move on.
JPL
@Lapassionara: Tax the poor should be turned into a let them eat cake commercial.
JPL
Oh my!
New York Times Pitchbot
@DougJBalloon
·
40s
Will Sussman at least face sanctions?
cain
I think it’s important that the administration, and Democrats in Congress go aggressively after the GOP. Giving meat to the press is going to be an important part of this strategy – they want horse race? Let’s give it to them in a manner that we control not the GOP. We need to take a page from Karl Rove about reality being what it is right now and while they are processing that, create new ones.
zhena gogolia
Wapo is all inflation and gas prices
Aziz, light!
So those allegations against Sussman were trumped-up charges?
cain
@zhena gogolia: gas prices though is a bit of an issue in the sense that – transportation of goods become more expensive so that means your beef, and veggies are all increasing in prices.
Some strategic executive decisions against that industry should put the fear of god in them. I wish we would stop being so helpless when those assholes try to increase inflation.
Sure Lurkalot
I’m running to the store hair on fire to overpay for EVERYTHING!
JPL
@zhena gogolia: Same with CNN. They spent more time discussing Barr’s claim that the Mueller Investigation came up empty handed, than on Durham’s bogus investigation
They already moved on from the nineteen dead children and Buffalo massacre has been all but forgotten.
eddie blake
OT- but technical: Watergirl, i can’t get the “show full post on front page” thing to work when i wanna right click and open the page in a new window, which used to work on the old page. it appears borked.
also, just personal preference WG, but i really liked having the comments tab on the bottom of the posts as WELL as the top. (frankly, i never hit the top button, preferring to read through the article and then go to the comments when i got to the bottom)
anyway, just great to have the site back at all. hate to nitpick.
Mike in NC
Senator Rick ‘Bat Boy’ Scott of Florida has articulated the 2022 Republican Party plan to permanently fuck the country up. It would make one nostalgic for Newt Gingrich’s hideous “Contract On America”. It’s all about catering to rich white people, the only ones that matter to the GQP.
pacem appellant
It doesn’t help that we don’t have our own 24-hour propaganda broadcast. In the absence of that, Dems have to generate their own news, and they’re sh¡t at doing that, and the consultant class they pay to do that aren’t interested in selling a viable product (but are happy to cash the checks). We’re a bit dim-witted when it comes to self-promotion. I don’t know what’s to be done about it, as I’ve seen now two generations of pols mature and nobody on the left has any answer to Faux-news dominance short of shrugging. It’s pathetic and sad.
debbie
I’m glad to hear the president is even grousing.
cain
@Mike in NC:
Well, evangelicals matter too – they need rubes to go out and vote to help the rich. I mean, money lenders are important!
oatler
The mindset is so deliberately, violently contrarian, I can only believe that the Trump/Qanon psyche has flipped magnetic polarities. I’m thinking of the woman who had to be carried off in restraints for going anti-mask apeshit on the plane (this was during peak pandemic), begging officials to shoot her. This is the GOP, horrified by its own crapulence, but willing to go to Hell if they can drag us with them.
Geminid
“Villainizing the opposition” plays into the dynamic of negative partisanship, where one attracts voters by instilling fear of what the opposition will do to them. Republicans have leaned into negative partisanship for years, and I’ve seen it work at close hand. At this point that’s all they really have going for them.
Some Democrats believe that their party and its candidates have not exploited this dynamic effectively. One of these is Rachel Bitecofer, who has turned from political science to political engineering, and hires out as an “Adslinger and Branding Consultant.” A prominent Phoenix-based Democratic campaign firm, Matters of State Strategies, has hired Bitecofer to work on Arizona’s midterm elections. Arizonans will likely see the fruits of that collaboration in advertising this summer and fall. To put it simply, Bitecofer says Democrats need to make and can make the Republican brand repellent.
kindness
Durham’s bullshit does need to be shut down. Our esteemed Attorney General is being too polite with holdover traitors.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: I’m not surprised they didn’t spend much time on Durham. His case was so convoluted and false that it would take way too long to explain on TV news
ETA: Also most people have never heard of anyone involved, unlike Barr and Mueller.
debbie
@Lapassionara:
The GOP’s position on everything needs to be stated in simple, declarative sentences, and every one of those sentences needs to be pinned on each GOPer’s ass. Just start with the GOP supporting Russia over Ukrainian democracy.
jonas
Hoo-boy, can’t wait to see tomorrow’s histrionic WSJ editorial bewailing this as the greatest miscarriage of justice since the trial of Jesus Christ. Everyone outside MAGA-world knew Durham’s indictments were transparent horseshit and so this was completely expected. And yet *their* lawyers keep getting sued/indicted/convicted! How unfair is that?
Eunicecycle
My husband thinks the message should be “Your kids aren’t safe with Republicans in charge.”
pacem appellant
@Geminid: After my cynical thoughts above yours, I hope that Bitecofer is successful. Dems don’t when they take the high road. When I hear the high road/low road metaphor used (always by Dems), I can already tell you the outcome of the race months in advance.
Baud
Happy for Sussman. Glad his life wasn’t ruined because the GOP needed a scalp to distract people from Trump’s behavior.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Worth a shot!
jonas
@Mike in NC: Bullet-pointed excerpts from that document need to be plastered on highway-side billboards in swing states from sea to shining sea this fall with the headline: “This is what Republicans have promised to do!” If they’re not, the DNC and DNCC need to disband and get new jobs.
pacem appellant
@debbie: You can deliver this on messages even closer to home: Guns over Children. Profit over Health. Pretty much every issue. It beggars credulity that isn’t the core of every Dem campaign in the modern era.
Cacti
Now that Durham has failed very publicly to get even a low level conviction, maybe Merrick Garland will finally pull the plug on his nonsense investigation.
But that would require him to take a position on something, so I’m not holding my breath.
WereBear
@pacem appellant: Would fit right in with the Biden 2020 campaign. I still wear all my buttons!
debbie
@Lapassionara:
Re: Sussman, who’s worse in this whole sorry episode, the GOP or the media? From Bloomberg:
I’m voting media.
JPL
@kindness: Garland should contact him, and say we will no longer be needing your services.
debbie
@pacem appellant:
Agreed. I’m thrown back to the days when Dukakis would take in a deep breath and my heart would sink, knowing a 15-minute circuitous answer was coming up.
Geminid
@pacem appellant: I think a good campaign needs both positive ads encouraging voters to like and trust a candidate, and negative ones inciting fear and loathing of the opponent. The former are best accompanied by the sound of cheerful guitar fingerpicking. The soundtrack for the latter could be the forboding computer-generated sound of thousands of fingers scraping blackboards. Bitecofer argues that the latter type of ads should receive more emphasis than they have. She advocates what she describes as “threat- emotion- stakes” framing.
Tom Q.
Two weeks ago, I visited my parents, and told them (fortunately, despite their age, they’re vehemently anti-Trump/Trumpism), if I were running the Dem campaign this year, I’d run on Buffalo, Alito’s opinion and January 6th. The fact that, two weeks later, I have to amend that to “Buffalo/Uvalde” only makes it clearer. The old-line Dem consultant idea of running on kitchen table issues is woefully inadequate, when the house is on fire.
Some people I respect think Bitecofer is a political idiot, but I think she’s got one thing exactly right: decades of Republican repetition have so demonized the Democratic brand for some people that they’re fully impervious to evidence provided by even the most overt events. The worst part about the 2020 election was that so many Republicans — who’ll tell you in private they’re appalled by Trump, and wish he would disappear — still voted for him (he couldn’t have received 70 million votes otherwise), simply because they view Democrats the way the Hutus viewed the Tsutsis. Unless the Dems can manage the reverse — simply by telling the truth early and often, making another group of people view the GOP as an ongoing, continual source of menace — these asymmetrical elections will keep occurring, where Dems have to perform at 110% simply to match the fervor of Republicans on any given Tuesday.
Another Scott
“Villainize”.
“Give em Hell, Harry Joey!”:
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Geminid:
I always get that backwards. No wonder Baud! 2016! and 2020! went nowhere.
The Moar You Know
Already been done. It’s called “Mein Kampf” and you can buy it at most bookstores.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Democrats ask for that though. Look at any comment section here about any Democratic messaging. It never satisfies people. Short direct statements are condemned as not completely addressing the issue or as being likely to be misinterpreted by the GOP. Detailed statements are both boring and liable to get Dems arguing about details. Honestly, I sometimes wonder why anyone would want to go into Dem politics with all the people who know better just waiting to shred them from our own side.
debbie
@Geminid:
I must say Tim Ryan’s doing a good job with his ads. Direct, easy to understand statements and direct responses to J.D. Vance’s latest nonsense.
Cacti
@The Moar You Know: Thiel is the person who can explain Trump’s policies in the original German.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wasn’t it Obama who would refer people to his website for more details and then continue on with his direct statement messaging?
Another Scott
@JPL: No doubt Thiel is looking on at what’s going on in the UK with great fondness and wants to reproduce it here.
Grr…,
Scott.
GoBlueInOak
Unfortunately, we’ve reached the point in the election season calendar where the underlying fundamentals are mostly baked in and that there is little any particular campaign can do to effect the outcome outside of those individual races where the margins are razor thin.
Democrats are full on burnt toast in the House and mostly like burnt toast in the Senate. Biden is going to wake up on November 9th to a rabidly right wing opposition in charge of the legislature (having already lost the judiciary before he even started), and there is pretty much nothing he can do about it at this point. The macro factor fundamentals are set and the needle ain’t moving enough between now and November. Rumors leaking out that he’s pushing his aides to “find a message” is fiddling while Rome burns, lit up in 10 foot tall neon letters.
And 2023 is full on odds favorite to hit a recession – thanks in part to a Fed determined to fight inflation via creating unemployment. Setting things up for a full-on bloodbath in 2024, since a GOP controlled legislature will be do NOTHING to help Biden deal with that recession.
My recommendation is to turn off the computer, take a vacation, and enjoy life for a few months. Shits hitting the fan this Fall and ain’t changing no matter how many fundraising thermometers get posted.
Geoduck
Ben Garrison posted a cartoon about how Durham the bloodhound was relentlessly closing in on busting Hillary, so this result was almost a foregone conclusion.
Kay
@Tom Q.:
She gets on my nerves and I don’t know why. Even though the other “poll based pundits” seem to treat her with such disdain, so I would be sympathetic to her usually!
Try anything is my view. The nice part about a bad situation is you can try a bunch a stuff. They can take some risks.
Racer X
“…we haven’t landed on a winning midterm message”
I’m going with: Soft on guns, soft on crime.
john b
@GoBlueInOak:
So, in other words, give up. No, thank you.
Edmund Dantes
One thing you can stop doing is telling people that McConnel and others are reasonable republicans. Even if you are doing an 11th dimensional chess thing people don’t pay attention enough for it to work.
So what gets up in the background noise is “even Biden, Pelosi, etc” think gop has reasonable people. So why can’t they just work with them.
It’s horrible messaging. Have you ever heard Mitch McConnell say he needs better Dems to work with? Or any GOPer? Unless they are talking about a Dem that adheres to the GOP platform and just happens to have a D after their name? (Who they will continue to target in every campaign as a raging commie/pedo/socialist)
Scamp Dog
@Baud: Also, the 2016 factorial election is a long time from now.
Omnes Omnibus
@GoBlueInOak: So your advice is that we should just give up? Yeah, no.
Matt McIrvin
These people are proposing the ethnic cleansing of the United States.
Time was, we had concerted efforts across the society to portray this very concept as un-American. Of course we’ve had xenophobia and racism from the beginning. But the whole idea of an American ethnostate is absurd, yet that’s really what our hard right is steering for.
dnfree
@debbie: you know who else did the circuitous answer thing? John Kerry. I used to scream at my radio or TV all during the 2004 campaign.
Hoodie
@Eunicecycle: “They’d rather protect armed lunatics and rifle through your underwear drawer for birth control pills”
cain
@Another Scott:
Did you see that nice nostalgic photo of a traditional white bred family having a picnic? I am surprised the GOP don’t use that picture when talking about the good ol days.
Geminid
@Tom Q.: There is a tendency to conflate “kitchen table issues” with pocketbook issues, which are primarily economic. At least I think so. To me, kitchen table issues are ones that normal people might talk about in informal gatherings, or around the “kitchen table,” as opposed to some of the ones that a smaller group of politically engaged people on Twitter or political blogs debate fiercely and at length (such as the value of kitchen table issues). I think that issues like school and shopping center massacres, as well as the end of Roe, will be kitchen table issues in this sense.
I say this because “kitchen table issues” has now become for some people short hand for “dumb centrist messaging” and this obscures more than it clarifies.
Jackie
@GoBlueInOak: “My recommendation is to turn off the computer, take a vacation…”
Enjoy your vacation.
sdhays
I don’t like to be this blunt, but this is unbelievably stupid nonsense.
Kay
It’ll never happen, but it should. They want “credibility” restored but they’re not willing to do a single thing to make that happen. It’s entitled behavior, pure and simple.
JPL
@Another Scott: Oh my!
Bless their hearts.
Betty Cracker, If you are around look at the tweet. There’s some serious material for Rick Scott.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: The hungry ghost.
Kathleen
@Omnes Omnibus: I want to marry that comment in a platonic pixel ceremony.
JustRuss
Well the economy is in bad shape. Gas prices are high, supply chains are still a mess. Low unemployment is nice, but it’s not the whole story. Housing prices are spiraling out of control. And no, none of this is Biden’s fault, and the notion that Trump or Republicans would do anything constructive about it is laughable, but unfortunately our media sucks.
James E Powell
Definitely need to
demonizetell the truth about Republicans.We need massive presence across all social media. Right-wingers have completely outworked us on this front. Back when I was a twitter regular, I always knew that the right-wing outrage of the day was because would be trending on twitter. If I ever saw a Democrat’s name, it was because some bullshit right-wing claim against that Democrat.
I know twitter & social media are not the world, but they are a part of the world, a part that could be decisive in close elections. It’s mistake to cede that territory.
Kay
@Geminid:
There’s this interesting kind of divide happening though, where STATE level Democrats seem much more willing to engage on contentious issues than federal level Democrats. Michigan state Democrats think abortion is a really good issue for them. They’re running with it. Lots and lots of state Democrats are running overtly pro public schools campaigns, directly opposing Christopher Rufo. They’re winning locally too- the school board elections are a DECIDEDLY mixed bag for Mr. Rufo. They’re beating him a lot.
I feel like it’s rudderless as a national Party -drifting- so they’re just improvising. It’s oddly positive in its own way.
Tom Q.
@Geminid: Well, I didn’t mean it to imply centrist anything. I just think the Dem consultants — who, at this point, are a bit long in the tooth, and too likely to be stuck in old, out-dated approaches — still think the party’s best bet is to emphasize prescription drug prices, saving Social Security, etc. But I think, this year, an emphasis on small-bore economic issues will work against the party: however unfair it is, Biden/Dems are getting little-to-no credit for low unemployment, but way out of proportion blame for an inflation that’s beyond their control (and a worldwide phenomenon).
The only alternative, as I see it, is to concentrate on/make it into the bigger issue: that the GOP is a cult that wants to rig elections so their minority will rule indefinitely, imposing hugely unpopular policies on guns and women’s reproductive rights, with even more extreme positions on the economy to follow once they’ve been installed in office. This is an existential threat, and for once needs to be fought as such.
I think voters are ready for such an approach; the trick is getting elected officials who’ve been used to the simpler, all-politics-is-local method, to realize the landscape has changed: that Republicans have made it All Politics is National, and Dems will actually benefit from acknowledging that’s the new turf.
Ruckus
@Eunicecycle:
“Your kids aren’t safe with Republicans in charge.”
He should add a bit more.
“Your kids aren’t safe with Republicans in charge. And neither are you.”
David Collier-Brown
@Geminid: one of the disadvantages of villiainizing Republicans is that it plays into their “don’t trust governments, trust corporations” initiative. That makes using the police powers of the state against arguably unlawful actions can be characterized as an improper political use of the state.
We suffer from this in Canada: breaking the Health Act is breaking the law, but Conservatives argue that the law should not exist, and that hospitals in Ontario should be much more commercialized. (We have a few “grandfathered” private hospitals)
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: I think it was on here that I read that most people don’t “feel” the unemployment rate unless it’s high, so you get no credit for it being low, while people “feel” the higher prices every day, so you get blamed for them being too high. Plus all the other stuff Biden has no control over, like the shortage of baby formula, are a problem too; he gets blamed for the shortage, then gets little credit for doing things to try to make that better. It really does seem that the press has it in for him this year; I saw one headline on a tweet about Biden “trying” to comfort families at Uvalde. They use that “trying” construction a lot when they talk about what Democrats do, because saying “try” implies “failed” to most people.
Calouste
@Matt McIrvin: America, or a significant part of it, has been an ethnostate for most of its existence. Maybe only the last fifty years or so it hasn’t been. Loving v. Virginia was only decided in 1967 for example.
Geminid
@Kay: Bitecofer is an upstart, a mushroom in the world of political analysis and consulting. This may account for some of the animus I’ve seen. And she is super confident in public appearances, and that can rub people the wrong way. But Matters of State Strategies, the Arizona firm that hired her, are experienced pros, and they think her work, not her TV appearances, will bring value to Arizona campaigns.
Bitecofer has described herself as “a data girl in a data boy’s world,” and I think this true. She also got her Ph.D from the University of Georgia and taught at Cristopher Newport University in Virginia, so she doesn’t have a highly prestigious academic background. I think both this and her gender are advantages, though, because she has an outsider’s point of view which is a good thing.
lollipopguild
@oatler: Their idea is that we will be in hell while they will be in heaven. I had a BIL who was very conservative who constantly talked about the 1950s and how we needed to “go back” to the 1950s. It’s heaven for some of these people, for others its the 1850s.
Geminid
@Tom Q.: Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you made that judgement. I just see it made in the Twitter debate about Democratic messaging that is part of an incessant “progressive” vs. moderate war of tweets, and that was what I was referring to.
Captain C
@GoBlueInOak: Great advice. We should just lie back and enjoy it, maybe think about England.
Matt McIrvin
@GoBlueInOak: So we’re gonna lose–how big a loss matters further down the line. It makes it harder or easier to claw our way back.
The right understands this. They fight like tigers even when they’re getting shellacked, with the understanding that it may not pay off for decades. Why don’t we?
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: I saw that too. Infuriating. I think it was NYT.
Matt McIrvin
@lollipopguild: the 1950s–what, when tax rates were super high, unions were stronger and the US spent on massive infrastructure projects?
Captain C
@Hoodie: I like this. And if they howl, all the better; the focus is still on the (very true) message.
Kay
@Geminid:
I don’t know anymore. Lately I think a lot of this stuff is overthought. I think they should run good candidates with good campaigns and tell the truth, which will involve a lot of “demonizing” Republicans, necessarily. If the male pundits are right and all is lost anyway then they have nothing to lose by trying a simpler approach. This is kind of what I’m seeing state level. It’s almost “fuck it- there’s no plan and no coherent direction so I’m just making my own road”. You support public schools or abortion rights? Good! Run on those. That’s my advice to them. There’s freedom in playing a bad hand. Embrace that.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus:
Commenters loved Professor Obama, except for the ones who found him professorial!
Kay
@Geminid:
I think the idea that if she makes money at it she is somehow discredited is nonsense. No one says this about Nate Silver. Give her Arizona. What the hell. It’s not like anyone else has a better idea. I hope they’re paying her. I think people should get paid for work.
Uncle Cosmo
@GoBlueInOak: My recommendation is that you go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw. We’ll win this without your vote.
PJ
@eddie blake: seconded on missing the comments button from the bottom of the posts.
Robin Goodfellow
I’m going to have to disagree with you right there, the advantage the Republicans have had, is that their voters show up during midterms, especially when a Democrat wins the preceding presidential election.
This is not a normal election cycle I have no doubt that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v Wade this summer, this by itself changes everything. The public is getting fed up with the Republican position on guns. The January 6 Select Committee will significantly damage the Republican brand.
It’s going to get ugly for the Republicans, Democrats will show up on Election Day. To top it off Durham lost his partisan hatchet job today, that is one less bullet in the Republican holster.
Bill Arnold
@GoBlueInOak:
This is false and you can fuck off and die, or at least stop trying to elect Republicans.
Kay
@Geminid:
I GENERALLY think more Democrats should do more with sort of First Principles. Sherrod Brown does this really effectively. If you want to talk about insulin subsidies then for Gods sake talk about it in the context of Democrats 75 year commitment to health care. Brag! You’re talking anyway! It’s always presented as either/or and that’s just not true. It can be done because it has been done. Democrats enjoy a health care preference from voters. They DID that. Democrats used to enjoy a public education preference from voters. They did that too, and then they let it erode. They know how to fucking do this. I have witnessed them succeed at it. It’s confidence. Do they actually believe in these things? Then say it! No one will rap their knuckles and who gives a shit if they do? Say it anyway.
Kay
@Robin Goodfellow:
I think Democratic turn out might be good too. One of the weird benefits of what I see locally as their belief that it’s kind of rudderless is it forces them to take matters into their own hands. They may not feel well “led” but they’re gonna fucking move anyway, because they see where this is going :)
Bottom up, perhaps not by design but instead by default.
Matt McIrvin
@Robin Goodfellow:
There are two effects of roughly equal size. One is that Republicans are more likely to show up for the midterm. The other is that the “out” party without the Presidency is more likely to show up for the midterm. When Republicans are in the White House, they tend to cancel; when Democrats are in they compound.
If we could work on effect #1, that would be cool.
Bill Arnold
RCP polling averages.
2022 Generic Congressional Vote
Look at the chart, the last 30 days or the last 3 months. The Republican advantage dropped by close to a factor of two in the last two weeks of May. Economic fundamentals are great, excepting inflation. The Republicans are showing their colors with their support for mass murder with guns (and much more so with COVID, if we want to go there), with their misogynistic disregard for basic female human rights, with support for Russian fascists (Republicans always support fascists; it’s tradition), the Rick Scott manifesto, etc. The 2022 elections are still very much in play.
taumaturgo
@pacem appellant: Start at the top of the party by holding the leadership accountable.
Baud
@Kay:
Rose colored glasses. Even Hillary Clinton is going to support the GOP this year. Mark my words.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: Adding to this, goblue isn’t wrong that almost all of an election’s results are vibes-based–I’d say 85-90%–but 10-15% is still a lot that we can affect, whether that’s motivating our base, demotivating theirs, or courting the vanishing swing vote.
Geminid
@Kay: I think that Arizona firm is paying Bitecofer good money. Certainly more than she was making as an adjunct professor at Christopher Newport, teaching a lot of classes with no chance for a tenure track position.
A single mother with a special needs child, Bitecofer took a big step when she left her job at Christopher Newport. But she believed in herself and has made herself a place in the massive political-industrial complex.
Now she has moved back west, to a middle sized home in a middle class neighborhood in Salem Oregon. That’s where she earned her undergraduate degree.
Bitecofer had been out of school for several years when she was listening to Rachel Maddow on the radio one day. When she heard Maddow say that she had a Ph.D. in political science, Bitecofer said to herself, “You can do that.” While she hoped for an academic career, now Bitecofer is happily involved in practical politics. And this fall, she’ll get to watch her beloved Ducks play football.
schrodingers_cat
Do we have the same brother? My younger brother loved He-Man and the masters of the Universe.
Major Major Major Major
@Bill Arnold: Don’t we need to win the generic by like 5-10 points to break even?
Sure Lurkalot
@Ruckus: And a bit more?
“Your kids aren’t safe with Republicans in charge, not at school, not at the grocery store, not even in places of worship. And neither are you.”
JML
As a former political consultant, that’s one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard. the political season and electoral calendar barely even starts this early in the year. hells bells, we’re still not finished with primaries in every state, and most of the (ill-informed) electorate doesn’t start paying attention until after Labor Day (if they do at all).
You can lose an election this early, you when you do catastrophically stupid things like a) forge a bunch of signatures on your ballot petition, or b) listen to GoBlueInOak’s advice but that’s about it. Everythying is else is wide-open. You think inflation helps someone like Ron Johnson in WI?
regardless, anyone that wants to raise the white flag in fucking May is pathetic, and I don’t want them on my team.
NobodySpecial
@GoBlueInOak:
Your horseshit could not be piled any higher, nor could it smell worse. Fuck right the fuck off, and when you’re done doing that, go fuck off some more.
eddie blake
“crt vs grt”
“facts vs. fictions”
“dnc vs gqp”
“they lie, your kids die.”
“quistians are coming for your contraception.”
StringOnAStick
@Bill Arnold: Every time I see one of these doomers I figure they would prefer that we lose, that the planet burn and that the US turns full fascist, and they are doing their best to discourage others from voting or even having any hope so they can look so prescient when the worst happens. Maybe they like the idea of the world burning.
It seemed like one of our prior climate doomers here has disappeared; with him I figured he got a bonus payment for every liberal suicide he helped cause. He certainly helped push me that direction.
Soprano2
No update on my stepson yet, but there may be one soon. A Hawaii police officer called me asking for my husband. Since I’m at work I gave him our home phone #, but when I called hubby a few minutes ago he hadn’t talked to them yet, and the officer didn’t leave a message. I gave hubby the # that was on my phone to call. That doesn’t sound good to me. Here’s hoping that they just found him.
JPL
@Soprano2: I hope it’s good news.
Layer8Problem
@GoBlueInOak: Got it: “IAmALifeLongLiberal but we’re all Doomed, DOOMED, I tells ya!! Best to just curl up under the mattress and suck our thumbs. Fighting’s for the weak futilely trying to stop the inevitable tidal wave!
WHO’S WITH ME!?!”
debbie
Redshift
@Kay:
She was getting on my nerves for a while when she seemed to have gone full pundit, posting stuff like “this is completely wrong” with no explanation or any useful information. And she does sometimes have the Nate Silver-ish thing that since her negative partisanship research was what gave her the right result that made her famous, it’s the explanation for everything, and she’s right and everyone else is wrong.
But I feel like she’s come down from that, and now is back to talking about things in a more useful way.
Major Major Major Major
@Layer8Problem:
Oh good, the pie filter is back.
ian
@Geminid:
Put me down in the camp that says Rachel Bitecofer is overrated. I follow her on twitter- I read what she has to say, and I agree with a lot of it. But what she has to say isn’t brand new. She isn’t offering any kind of magic salve or mystery that the rest of the Democratic party simply can’t fathom. She advocates 1) against a 50-state strategy, 2) the Democratic Party operates more like Fox News and MAGA in terms of messaging, and 3) that our voters will not be turned off by hardcore negative messaging. She may be right, she may not be- but this idolization of her ideas like no one has ever thought of this before I find to be frustrating. She’s just an edgier version of a dem campaign consultant.
Old School
@Major Major Major Major: FYI – You might want to go back and delete your comment using your actual name.
Layer8Problem
@Major Major Major Major: Damned right, and with Sea Lion Chow too! Thank you, WaterGirl.
Major Major Major Major
@Old School: Some day the other FP’ers will learn that if one of my comments is in the trash it’s there for a reason… thanks.
debbie
Worth watching all the way through:
Scott
“Villainize the opposition”. I’ve been saying that for a while now. It is the only thing that works in today’s political environment. Go negative and go now.
GoBlueInOak
@Bill Arnold: No I am not. I just understand how the fundamentals of elections work. And VOTE HARDER is not a thing that works. And folks are perfectly free to waste their donation dollars on whatever they want – but personally I’d rather focus my donation money on more productive efforts than lining Democratic Party consultant pockets on useless media buys.
So yeah, this cycle is lost, toast, over. No matter what form the Roe decision takes – and the bumbling swing voters are more concerned about inflation and “the economy” anyways. Only thing Roe might effect – and Roe is an extrinsic factor largely outside of any electioneering strategies – is how large or narrow the GOP win margin is.
What CAN be done is a deep hard look at the Democratic Party’s coalitional strategies and figure out what is and is not working to gear up for the NEXT cycle. Turnout strategies aimed at counting on the section of the electorate least likely to vote and hardest to turnout is starting every election cycle at a deficit. The electorate coalition that currently constitutes the Democratic Party is not one that can consistently win each cycle, and that has some increasingly large internal contradictions. And one that is way too isolated to urban areas to win in a land-based, first past the post system we have in the United States.
I mean – c’mon – PA, Michigan and Wisconsin are now swing states at Presidential level, on top of already being a total sh*tshow as far as state legislatures & House districts in those states. Those were Blue Wall states less than a decade ago. And doubly so as the opposition is getting *this close* to permanently cracking off a portion of the Latino vote, at which point we’re really screwed.
But yeah, VOTE HARDER. Cheer LOUDER. Everyone STFU and toe the line…
danielx
@GoBlueInOak:
Hillary Clinton would like a word.
Major Major Major Major
@GoBlueInOak:
Probably best to wait until the patient is dead to do the post-mortem. Otherwise you’re just, well,
by attempting to solve a problem you haven’t fully defined.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Lapassionara:
Nearest I can figure the theory (which is a stupid one) was that if Sussman had said “I represent Hillary” as opposed to being vague, the matter either wouldn’t have been investigated or been swept under the rug.
Apparently, allegations of crime made by a Democrat should be ignored or just given a cursory inspection.
By Sussman not being specific, the investigation was taken more seriously.
hueyplong
I’ve seen a bunch of GoBlue[geographical locale] posters, and every one of them has been a staunch advocate of despair over Dem electoral strategy. One might even think there’s a pattern.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Holy hell, get that into wide circulation.
trollhattan
@GoBlueInOak: Better Boris, Boris.
Nah gah bite.
Geminid
@ian: Who idolizes Bitecofer and her ideas? I don’t. But I do respect her and her ideas, and they certainly come from a better base of social science knowledge than my own.
Negative partisanship is a dynamic that Bitecofer uses as an explainer and, she hopes, a tool to win votes for Democratic candidates. When it comes to election modeling, Bitecofer diverges from polls-based analyses in that she bases her modeling more on voting behavior of various demographic groups, and their distribution in a particular electorate. For instance, her predictions for the 2018 midterms were based partly on the number of college educated in the suburban districts she thought Democrats would flip.
Bitecofer would be the first to admit that she did not originate the concept of “negative partisanship. The phenomenon was given that name over ten years ago by another political scientist. She does give a good exposition of it in her February 2020 New Republic article “Hate is on the Ballot,” which still is an interesting ten minute read.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: Also note, there’s no actual solution being offered.
Saying that the coalition needs to be reworked and “Latinos are getting away” or “we’re too Urban!” isn’t something you can just throw out there, especially since the only ‘solution’ offered is “Deprive Democrats of money and give it to some other unnamed group”.
Because when someone says “our coalition sucks” and “we need more latinos and less urban people”, it sounds a lot like they’re advocating tossing blacks and latinos for some other group that currently believes all Democrats Are The Devil and that giving guns to schoolchildren will solve violence. Those people aren’t reachable, and we’d lose huge chunks of the base.
Gravenstone
@Lapassionara: It’s the old stand by: If you can’t Dazzle them with your Brilliance, Baffle them with your Bullshit.
lollipopguild
@Matt McIrvin: No not that 50’s. The 1950’s when blacks browns, gay people were invisible and women were cute sexy kittens who did what ever the big strong man told them to do.
StringOnAStick
@hueyplong:
Well, isn’t that interesting.
Layer8Problem
@hueyplong: Hm, a pattern you say, with a faint hint of a boiler room in Tysons Corner, or Saint Petersburg, or maybe Macedonia? And every time one of us pies them Peter Thiel or Rebekah Mercer sheds a silent tear.
Bill Arnold
@GoBlueInOak:
No, you do not. Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 in the last two weeks before the election, with both the Comey letter and some piled-on well-timed weaponization of the various email fake-scandals dominating news cycles contributing to a ~2 percent drop for HRC. This wasn’t ordinary late-election tightening; it was in part engineered (though exactly how much Comey was compromised we don’t know), with the Republicans way outplaying the Democrats with the manipulation of the media. Trump won by very little (80K votes?) in a few battleground states.
Shifts can happen. They can be made to happen. It’s an uphill climb (steep, for the House) for the Democrats ATM, but not a conclusion, 5 months out.
Did you believe that the Democrats would win both Georgia Senate seats in 2020(2021)?
The Moar You Know
Goddamn, I’m not back for 24 hours and already I gotta use the pie filter.
Major Major Major Major
@Layer8Problem: it’s just somebody in California who disagrees with you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@GoBlueInOak: Repeating the same rant, I am smelling a troll here.
Layer8Problem
@Major Major Major Major: And California’s such a hopeful place too.
Ben Cisco
@GoBlueInOak: FIDO.
raven
@GoBlueInOak: Where do you go when you go away? Go there please.
different-church-lady
“Democrats: We don’t want your children to die.”
hueyplong
IIRC, back in the day, GoBlueinMich lamented the unfair treatment of Bernie during the primaries and how poorly it reflected on Hillary as a candidate and then, four years later, GoBlueinSomewhereElse felt the same way about Biden.
different-church-lady
@GoBlueInOak:
You’ll be following your own advice, I assume?
Kay
@Scott:
I think Democrats do this more in campaigns than they get credit for. I don’t know where rank and file Democrats get this idea that our candidates never go negative. They absolutely do, not as a national, unified message but in campaigns. That’s not attacking the whole “brand” of Republicans but if you were a canidate in a Senate race I don’t think you would agree to “we’re going to attack the Republican brand”. You’re rightfully focused on your own race.
Talk to some Republicans. According to them we’re all ruthless character assassins.
Ben Cisco
@raven: LOL
surfk9
@Major Major Major Major: It may or may not be. But I reject the defeatism. I have spent many hours since March canvassing for Josh Harder here in Lodi and I can tell you that Democrats can be motivated by the right message if it is delivered to them. When I started I expected to be yelled at or doors slammed in my face. It has never happened. The most common response has been for them to thank me for being a democrat who was willing to knock on their door and talk to them (which they have never had happen before). Because of that I choose to work my ass off instead of succumbing to messages of doom.
Major Major Major Major
@surfk9:
GoBlue is and always has been a person in California who disagrees with you, I promise.
bluefoot
“Bastards of the Universe” makes me think this should be set to Queen (from the Highlander soundtrack)…
@Bill Arnold:
I completely agree that shifts can be made to happen. We need to work more effectively on mechanisms to do that, especially since the MSM has a definite right-wing/pro-Repub bias.
Bill Arnold
(The tweet is mocking a NYTimes piece on UK politics.)
Kay
Tim Ryan, being very negative. Not even June yet!
Gravenstone
@Matt McIrvin: They hand wave past all that and just remember the halcyon days of yore when every other country was in awe of us, or afraid of us; when women, “colored folk” and other less desirables knew their place and didn’t rock any damned boats; and when the white patriarch was the Lord and King of his domain.
In other words, they remember a fantasy as brought to you by 50s and 60s TV.
Kay
San Francisco. Guffaw.
Gravenstone
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, this post reminded me that several of the old “favorites” need to be promptly returned to residence therein.
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
Shorter Foxxx: Heads I win, tails you lose!
Gravenstone
@hueyplong: Dwight gets around, apparently.
Major Major Major Major
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch: I flipped through the comments to the NYPost writeup and nobody seems to understand that jury decisions are unanimous (or anything else).
Nicole
That favorite boogeyman of the Right, Saul Alinsky, talked in Rules for Radicals (which, unlike most of the people who criticize Alinsky, I’ve actually read), about the importance of demonizing the opposition. You need a bad guy. The GOP actually follows his rules far more than liberals do.
“Republicans want to take away your Social Security.” Repeat ad nauseam, and don’t engage when the GOP says no, that’s not true! Just repeat ad nauseam.
Kay
Completely indistinguishable from Republicans now. Identical to what Republicans say, except with many, many, many more words. The Contrarians need a whole essay to impart what any random elected Republican says in a Tweet. A Tweet you can read for free.
Geminid
@Kay: Ragnarok Lobster makes a point of retweeting Tim Ryan or his supporters twice per week on average. That’s how I learned that John Legend is backing Ryan. The tweet you just posted will pobably be up on @eclecticbrotha by tonight.
As a more general comment regarding another commenter: Mr. Lobster made a succinct judgement regarding pessimistic “Democrats:”
I can understand pessimism as an emotional defense mechanism. And some people’s intellectual insecurity makes them fearful of being caught being optimistic. When people are insistent that others share their pessimism, or disparage those who don’t, I start to wonder about their good faith. Some people want the Democratic party as presently constituted to fail.
MisterForkbeard
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch: If you want to see something REALLY nuts, you should see Trump’s reaction over on his dimestore twitter knock off. It’s really sad
ETA: It’s also really clear that Fox is taking their marching orders directly from Trump’s batshit statement.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: In fact, when Democrats do go negative, they get crapped on for it. “They’re not telling me what they’re FOR.”
Hillary Clinton got knocked in 2016 both for only being negative on Trump and for not being negative enough.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Y’know, what GoBlue said? Isn’t that more or less what Adam Silverman has been saying for the last 6 months or so? And Adam’s been right about quite a lot. He warned us earlier this year that visible minorities needed to get to Blue states or leave the country because of the possibility of widespread violence in the next year. Low and behold, the “Great Replacement” enters the GOP mainstream a few months later…
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
@Nicole:
/fixxed
debbie
@trollhattan:
If only!
MisterForkbeard
@Matt McIrvin: Do you remember Hillary’s “The Alt-Right are racist and that’s kind of bad” speech? She was pilloried by everyone outside of the Left for it. How dare you associate Trump with his loudest supporters? How dare you notice what these nice white boys are doing? How dare you notice Trump encouraging them? Etc.
She was attacked for not talking about her own policies, though she’d made 3 policy speeches in the previous week and none of them had been covered. Our media is and has been really awful.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: I don’t understand how they use so many fucking words. Like, I do not understand how that happens at a mechanical level.
debbie
@Kay:
Here’s Vance being “proactive”:
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard: Oh come on! Tell us what TFG said
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: If porn was responsible, the whole country would have been wiped out years ago. Also, I want to see Vance’s internet search history
TheTruffle
Of course a Sanders advisor would say that. Of course.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Silverman never told people to give up on political activism.
hueyplong
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’ll go ahead and say I don’t want to see Vance’s internet browsing history.
JasonBriek
Republican politicians all over the country have repeated the Great Replacement theory
A century-old racist theory reentered the political discourse around immigration and has become commonplace on the campaign trail as Republicans hope to retake control of Congress in November.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s whining to me. Who cares what they say? They shouldn’t expect political media to endorse their campaign approach. Of course they’ll say that- they can be ignored. They don’t have to respond to every criticism. Decide on it then execute it and don’t apologize for it. OMG, are they still listening to Morning Joe? The crew that enthusiastically promoted Donald Trump? They have to do interviews with them. They don’t actually have to do what they say.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@debbie: If ANYTHING would make a dude bro glibertarian not vote GOP, it’s threatening to ban porn.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Maybe he never exactly said that in so many words, but he always expressed skepticism that anything could be done to stop the GOP, in the past year or so.
He’s even on record as saying he doesn’t think Americans have in them to overthrow a GOP dictatorship government IIRC
RaflW
The FTFNYT Opinion editors decided today would be a great day to publish some Putin-polishing surrender-garbage from a Claremont Institute senior fellow.
I hate almost everything right now (though not this fine little jackal site here).
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: Doomposting is every Jackal’s god-given right.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Adam is very knowledgeable about military affairs. I defer quite a bit to his judgment there unless my own knowledge or experience contradicts him. On domestic politics, he is another guy with relevant degrees and some experience. There are a lot of people on this blog with relevant degrees and experience.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’ll repeat my comment in a way that is less likely to have it filtered.
If ANYTHING is likely to keep dude bro glibertarians from voting GOP, its threatening to ban pr0n.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
<sigh> Awaiting moderation.
Kay
So like polite dignified behavior that protects their privacy and also spares the Secret Service their “marital spats”, which no one wants to hear.
Here’s how the awful NYTimes political team spins that:
We could stop caring what they think. That’s allowed.
Tony Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Tubby, silver-bearded man in glasses holds up a sign reading
“ACTUALLY NOT ALL BLOWHARDS ARE CULPABLE FOR THE BEHAVIOUR THAT APPEARS TO BE THE CAUSE OF YOUR INTENSE ANNOYANCE!”
But it’s a big sign so he rapidly gets tired and goes home to have a cup of coffee and a biscuit.
Baud
@Kay:
Maggie is trying out for the role of NYT Pitchbot.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
They don’t actually have anything to say but they write a bit and read it. It doesn’t say anything so they add more words. Do this enough times and you reach overload as you read it and it becomes nonsense you can’t actually make heads or tails of. A more profane and shorter way to say this is – It’s Bullshit. It’s one reason I swear, it gets right to the point.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I hold no brief for that particular commenter, but more generally, pessimism about the upcoming elections may not be an emotional defense mechanism, a result of intellectual insecurity or a desire to see Dems fail. It’s possible pessimists are honestly assessing the situation and predicting a shit-storm for no other reason than because that is what they think is going to happen. Really, it’s not that outlandish to think that — that the party in power during the middle of high inflation, high fuel prices, an unresolved pandemic, etc., may get drubbed at the polls!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Sounds to me like Haberman is being a disingenuous, snide troll there. “See?! Biden is just like Trump! Take that you partisan libs!”
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’ll just link to it here as a picture:
https://i.redd.it/rp5mdbrcru291.png
Ruckus
@debbie:
I always take that as proof that the person saying this reads/looks at copious amounts of porn. His take (it’s always a he isn’t it?) is always because no one wants to have actual sex with him.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
But he’s been pretty consistently right. What makes you think he’s wrong?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I am trapped in MODERATION!!! Help!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard: Thank you! That made me laugh
Mo MacArbie
Here’s a message: schools get shot up regularly, and Republicans are worried about kids using the wrong bathroom. Hell, bathrooms are the safest places in the whole school. Has anyone shot up a bathroom?
But, on second thought, forget that. Maybe I’ll just repeat the talking points. Biden says he has to believe that there are some reasonable Republicans who will help get sensible gun laws passed. All we need are a few reasonable Republicans. What could be more reasonable than passing sensible gun laws? We don’t even need all Republicans to be reasonable, just some of them. Are there any reasonable Republicans? I guess we’ll see. I don’t want to predict failure, but if we can’t pass sensible gun laws, then that tells us that there aren’t any reasonable Republicans.
Seriously, I don’t get why “Cheer louder” gets such a bad rap. Want Dems to be more like the GOP, then repeat the talking points. That’s what they do. They repeat them. Don’t critique them. Repeat them.
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Always glad to help!
For further schadenfreude, there’s also reporting that the jury thought the Sussman indictment was hot fucking garbage and “should never have been prosecuted” and was a “waste of the government’s time”.
Yep. Obvious Politcal Hatchet Job was an Obvious Political Hatchet Job.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Does it matter?
ETA: Trying to talk you of ledges is a Sisyphean task.
MisterForkbeard
@Mo MacArbie: This might actually be a what I’d do as Biden. Push for new gun laws. Talk about how they’re approved of by the majority of the country, they’re very reasonable and there are reasonable republicans so this should be fine, but that we need their cooperation. Repeat “There are reasonable republicans out there who love America’s children”
When they fail to get anything done at all, full court press on “I was wrong: There aren’t any reasonable republicans. They’re ALL putting guns above your children. So the only way to get change is to hold the house and get two more senators, and then we’ll pass X Y and Z in the first month of 2023.”
Not that it’ll happen. And not that it would work. :/
Kay
@Ruckus:
Josh Mandel was the favorite of the Christian fundamentalist Right in Ohio so Vance has to spend a lot of time pandering to them. They were right too- Mandel is an actual person, at least, if a horrible one. JD Vance is a wholly invented character.
He’s keying into something real in Ohio, which is white working class young men are in real trouble it’s just that he blames everyone else for their problems. I’m somewhat sympathetic to them- I see it- but if the plan is we’re going to blame literally everyone and everything else I quickly become unsympathetic. It’s not directed at them- it’s directed at their parents – who are also looking for someone or something to blame.
Tom Q.
@Betty Cracker: I think one can agree that the particular circumstances (the ones you mentioned: inflation, particularly in gas prices, plus the pandemic that just won’t go away) make this a challenging midterm for the incumbent party…BUT, at the same time, the current GOP represents such an existential threat to what a solid majority (approaching 2/3) of the country wants, that it’s worth taking the shot of campaigning on that and seeing if it can counteract traditional trends.
Mr. GoBlue, and some others, are acting as if there’s no such thing as extraordinary circumstances. For me, the possibility of Republicans using these traditional trends to conceivably legislate themselves into a permanent minority-based majority is the definition of extraordinary circumstances, and Dems are fools if they don’t campaign that way.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It’s not an outlandish prediction. But would we be so blasé if people honestly predicted failure when it comes to a protest, or a unionization effort, or litigation brought by a civil rights group? Not only predicting failure, but did so using pretty discouraging rhetoric? My guess is that people would find that offensive and discouraging.
the pollyanna from hell
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Adam has been right, he’s been wrong. A good man to have here on our staff; a bad man to follow blindly. There is no good man to follow blindly.
Major Major Major Major
@Tony Jay: The denizens of your rainy isle get a bit of wiggle room in my book.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course it fucking matters! We’re talking about the US turning into Hungary or Russia, for god’s sake! Or worse! Things like Social Security and Medicare, programs that Americans have relied on for decades, will be destroyed if Republicans have their way. GOP corruption will steal our wealth away from us! Look no further than Florida. Gov DeathSentence just signed a bill into law deregulating the nursing home industry all because some industry donors wanted it, nursing home residents be damned! If they’re willing to do shit like that in the open, then what aren’t they capable of? We should care because it’s looking increasingly likely like the GOP is going to go all in on ethnic cleansing
Matt McIrvin
Personally what I think is that we’re almost certainly going to get drubbed in November but that this is no reason to tune out. Like I said, the right fights just as hard (or harder) when they’re 10 or 20 points down, and that helps them win over the long term. The modern conservative movement was forged in the landslide of 1964 in which they lost almost everything.
My issue with the guy in this thread isn’t that he’s saying we’ll lose, it’s that he’s actively telling people to tune out of politics. Which feels kind of like intentional sabotage.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): In January of 2020 I kept saying Biden would win the primary because history said he would, given polling; most elections play out to within a tolerance of what the ‘fundamentals’ would predict. (I took a lot of shit!). But I didn’t say “so let’s move on to strategizing and fundraising for the general!”
Will Dems lose the House? It’s highly likely, but not guaranteed. If they do, it’ll be because the vibes demand it. But this is a stochastic analysis and doesn’t hold nearly as much predictive power for any individual seat-flip.
There’s some concerning stuff on the horizon, and I do think the party has some major issues, but right this second we need to be thinking about how to put our best feet forward in the general. I’d probably recommend a hyperlocal approach, since the vibes are bad, but what do I know?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Taibbi was the subject of many fawning first page posts on Balloon Juice and other leftie blogs. He was way off base even then.
schrodingers_cat
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It has been the Republican mainstream since W’s immigration reform failed.
Betty Cracker
@Tom Q.: I hope you’re right and agree that these aren’t normal times, so the normal rules might not apply.
@Baud: Definitely — I have seen that happen here around issues activism too, particular on guns.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My question was does my answer matter? As should have be clear from my ETA.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
What concerning issues and major problems for the party do you see?
Old School
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No one is saying that it wouldn’t be bad if the Republicans gained control of all branches of government. What there is saying is that the election results are not etched in stone at the point.
This very blog is working on getting out the vote. People in each state are doing what they can to keep the Democrats in control of Congress.
And while I haven’t tracked Adam’s predictions over the years, I feel safe he saying that he has not batted 1.000. Do what you can to make a difference rather than worrying about worst case scenarios.
schrodingers_cat
Hive mind: I have to vote in Mass Dems convention as a delegate this weekend. What should I look for in the Lt. Governor candidates? I am not even sure what a Lt. Governor does and from the answers I got from the Lt. Governor reps, they don’t seem to know either.
sab
@debbie: So Sussman was indicted and put on trial for performing his civic duty of reporting a suspected crime. Had his life and career on hold for a couple of years for doing his duty.
Grrr
ETA: Remind’s me of Jamie Raskin’s father’s trial.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: It is usually a fairly unimportant kid in and of itself. I would look for a promising young, up-and-coming politician. The Lt. Gov. in WI is Mandela Barnes who is using his higher name recognition from the job to run for the Dem Senate nom.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The current coalition is not well positioned to win and hold national power. For a variety of reasons, many of them unfair, but you dance with them who brung ya. Something will have to change–and it won’t be the voters.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I know that Republicans could do well in the midterms. But I don’t assume it.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: There are 5 people running. 3 men and 2 women. I am deciding between the 2 from western MA since the governor candidates are both from the Boston area.
Joe Falco
I remember growing up in Southern Baptist churches listening about child sacrifice to the god Moloch in the Old Testament. Since we’re talking about using Rovian tactics to help elect Democrats, Christian Democrats should then use the issue of gun control to convince other Christians that being soft on gun violence like the Republicans are is the same as sacrificing children to the god of guns. If the strategy is to use every tactic available, no matter how repugnant it may seem, Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to appeal to Christian voters in these terms.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Meaning specifically what?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Will this election season will be challenging? Yes, of course.
Are we doomed and should give up, flee the country, and/or go on a 4 month vacation? YMMV, but I think that’s unhelpful and you should probably keep it to yourself.
Success is not guaranteed. But neither is failure. Anyone who tells you different is lying to you and themselves.
Unless they are a real, legit time traveler, they don’t actually know how this turns out.
O. Felix Culpa
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s good to be concerned about the midterms because they matter. A lot. The trick is to turn that concern into positive action. You live in Ohio, right? Go volunteer for Tim Ryan. It’s an important election, he’s a good candidate, and your work on his campaign might help him win. That would be an awesome outcome.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker:
@Geminid: I know you did not say this, but the assertion that the results in November are “baked into the cake” before June has begun is fallacious and puerile nihilism. There are a lot of close races out there that can go either way. Val Demings and Stacey Abrams aren’t throwing in the towel, and I don’t think any Democrat should either.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The Democratic Party is insufficiently popular with the right voters to reliably win power as things are currently structured. There are a few things you can do about this: gerrymander (which we’ve done this cycle), sue (unlikely to accomplish anything), or change. I have my own opinions about some things we could change that would probably cause some griping if I wrote about them and anyway I don’t feel like relitigating the last couple election cycles.
Archon
One of the problems was even though Biden came in with a bunch of issues, Democracy reform should have been number one on the agenda. At worse it should have been a priority after getting the vaccines out.
Making it clear that was a priority would have been a galvanizing issue for Democrats even if it stalled out, or was broken up into pieces. Now we have an electorate who thinks inflation or the economy or not wearing masks is a more important issue then Democracy.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I was never a fan of either him or Greenwald. I thought his information on the bail out was just wrong.
Greenwald is to me a frustrated prosecutor- a person who never had the kind of state power he would like to go after people so turned to diatribes and bitterness. He simply doesn’t have the mindset or approach of a defense attorney or a defender of rights. It just isn’t how they think or act.
I honestly don’t trust anyone who went with the cancel culture panic. There’s something really grasping and controlling about it – I think 20 year olds can experiment with these things without a bunch of middle aged former “vanguards” scolding them. “Cancel culture” would have tempered itself. We didn’t need the hall monitors rushing in to declare it an existential threat to liberalism. These fucking people cant let go. They can;t accept that that they’re not going to setting the cultural agenda forever.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Major Major Major Major: If Democrats sued, they probably wouldn’t win, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t accomplish anything. The lawsuit would be in the news. It would be a clear show that they were willing to fight on all fronts, even if the odds are against them.
WaterGirl
@eddie blake: On which post did “show full post on front page” not work? Because I just tried it on “…Back to the Fray” and it worked just fine.
I also right-clicked on a random post on the front page and it opened in a new tab for me.
So please be specific. I am pretty certain that you could NEVER right-click on “Show full post on front page”. Are you suggesting that used to work?
If you want to see the full post you click on the post title.
I am already aware that the #comments is not showing at the bottom of each post on the front page.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat:
Taibbi is a stunt writer. Never put your faith in stunt writers, no matter how much you’re enjoying the stunt.
WaterGirl
@GoBlueInOak:
In other words, roll over and play dead, have some fun, and cede the election to the people who are no longer in favor of democracy.
I’m not buying what you’re selling, and no one else should be either.
Captain C
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Are you sure about seeing his browser history? I have a feeling it would make our eyeballs bleed.
Baud
@Captain C:
jackal-action.com
Captain C
@RaflW: Maybe we can drop those writers and editors off in Luhansk with a hundred or so bucks and no phones, and they can tell us how wonderful it is there when, or if they get back.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I think you spelled your nym wrong.
GoBlueInOak
@Bill Arnold: Hillary Clinton lost to the most undisciplined, politically inexperienced candidate imaginable. The fundamentals were totally not in her favor, and only due to her opponents total insanity was she polling as well as she was. Any halfway competent Republican, and she’d have been running behind the entire time.
GoBlueInOak
@Matt McIrvin: The right wing wins not by VOTING HARDER, but because (1) they intentionally changed the composition of their electoral coalition to peel off Dixiecrats and other White voters disgruntled about post LBJ racial justice reforms and (2) jumped at just the right time (1994) to leverage those decades of coalition composition strategy on the heels of a deeply unpopular attempted re-working of the nation’s healthcare (HillaryCare) and a broad tax increase that had required a Gore tiebreaking vote in the Senate.
Its always been about the White vote – and specifically the GOP strategy for cleaving off Whites from the Democrats and Democrats lack of a coherent strategy to prevent that.
GOP’s base doesn’t show up at midterms because they vote harder. They show up because Whites show up at greater percentages than non-Whites and always have – and the GOP has made Whites a larger and larger share of their electoral coalition over time.