In response to a question from Karl, Liz Cheney goes there, noting that letting Trump off the hook for his role in the January 6th attack is more dangerous than holding him accountable, even if Trump declares his candidacy in a further attempt to evade accountability:
Liz Cheney tells ABC it's possible the January 6 committee makes a criminal referral recommending to the DOJ that Donald Trump be prosecuted pic.twitter.com/jgNN3GGd2K
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2022
She also says if Trump is the GOP’s 2024 nominee, it will be the end of the party. (Clip below the fold.) That’s probably wishful thinking if she means the Republican Party will literally cease to exist instead of limping along as a Trump rump pro-insurrection party. Cheney says she’s not willing to give up on the party yet.
Someone on Twitter says other committee members are on the Sunday shows. Good! I’ll provide links in comments as I find them / have time.
Cheney says the Republican Party will not survive if Trump is the 2024 presidential nominee pic.twitter.com/QhqmmMAOEe
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 3, 2022
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Preach, Madam Vice President!
Shalimar
If Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee and he wins the general election, it’s a shakier dictatorship than they would have under the much younger and more able DeSantis. But it’s definitely not the end of the party. And there is no scenario (except Trump running as a 3rd party candidare) where the Republican nominee wins less than 45% of the vote.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Shalimar: I keep hoping Trump will take down DeSantis for us and then lose himself
CaseyL
Trump will absolutely run: being President is the only way he stays out of jail, if any of our legal institutions are still functioning after this year.
OTOH, I can see him running – and the GOP acquiescing/supporting him – even if he is charged with sedition. Normally he would be ineligible to ever hold public office again – but neither he nor the GOP cares about “normal” or “legal” anymore.
After all, if an insurrectionist Party takes power, then it’s not treason anymore. It’s a revolution. A successful one.
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I rooted for injuries in 2016 and look what happened.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Suzanne: We were injured!
Jerzy Russian
How did I wake up in a universe where Liz Cheney seems rational (e.g. the recent Wyoming GOP debate)? There was an episode of Star Trek Next Generation where Worf was cycling through different quantum realities (as I recall this was somehow connected to Geordi’s visor), and each reality was stranger than the last. I don’t recall how this was resolved, but I will stream that episode again and report back if there are any practical suggestions that we can use.
Ruckus
I’ll give Liz the benefit of the doubt here, she is involved/invested in rethuglican politics, although her participation on the obvious side of reality might reflect upon her reelection prospects and point of view. I applaud her for seemingly looking towards the nation rather than her own political ends.
Ohio Mom
Many moving parts here. Does the SC vote in favor of letting (gerrymandered) state legislatures decide the presidential election? Everything else the same, that moves the needle toward Trump’s re-election and all that it brings with it.
Do the January 6 hearings pick up even more momentum? What does the DOJ do with this new information? Best case scenario, the needle moves in the other direction.
Now that Ohio Son is out of the public school system, I don’t have regular contact with my neighbors who are, by and large, the suburban Republican women you hear so much about. They didn’t like Trump, our district went light blue. But what they feeling nowadays, I don’t know.
MattF
There were clips from the Wyoming R debate… And yes, Liz was the only coherent one. The others were just breathtaking.
Scout211
This caught my attention a few days ago from Lawfare blog.
An interesting discussion from a legal standpoint:
schrodingers_cat
We are in the current bind because that is what the majority of white people in this country want. And as the biggest and the most influential demographic they have that power in our polity.
In Massachusetts where white voters (even white men) went overwhelmingly for Joe Biden our politics and policies resemble those of an enlightened nation.
So white voters be like the white voters of Massachusetts not Mississippi.
H.E.Wolf
Lately I often seem to hear the voice of my long-ago gym teacher exhorting all of us at the beginning of class: “Get off your petunias and get moving!” :)
I therefore have postcards, stamps, and a list of addresses for Democratic voters in FL. In honor of tomorrow’s holiday, this is my two-fingers-up to tyrants.
https://postcardstovoters.org/volunteer/
kindness
Not one to toss dirt on Liz Cheney but it isn’t just Trump that’s the problem for her vision of what the Republican Party should be. It’s the majority of the Party. Bless her heart. She thinks she can drag the party back to 1980. She’s coyly being too polite about it. She’s still running for her seat which she will soon lose.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@kindness: The real question is what will Cheney do if and when she realizes the truth we’ve all recognized for years now, that the GOP is already far past the point of no return? Because I think she’s in denial about that critical problem:
There’s no saving the GOP. The problem with the GOP has metastasized; the GOP is now itself the cancer that must be cut out if there is any hope for the survival of the United States as we know it.
What will Liz Cheney do when she realizes that’s where we are?
Nicole
I can’t stand Liz Cheney, but she’s saying the right things here. But I don’t know that it makes a difference. As Shalimar said, in 2024 the GOP candidate is getting at least 45% of the vote. Doesn’t matter who they are or what they say, if they have an R after their name, they’re getting at least 45%.
I see a scenario where Trump loses the GOP primary, but it’s only in the circumstance that the GOP agrees to throw everything behind one candidate in the primary so GOP voters have a binary choice. If they have several GOP candidates running, who refuse to drop out long past when they should have, like in 2016, I think Trump gets it again. He has a base.
That said, if Trump would not be the GOP nominee, I could see a scenario where he runs 3rd party as a ploy to evade prosecution during the campaign. We can but hope. Though Woodrow Wilson won in a landslide, electorally, in 1912, Taft and Roosevelt actually got 1.7 more million votes combined than Wilson did. I don’t see any scenario where Trump running as an independent helps the GOP.
(Though who am I kidding? The GOP candidate will promise Trump a full pardon for crimes past present and future if he agrees to not run and I bet he takes the offer.)
Scout211
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
She will join a House select committee to investigate and prosecute the criminal conspiracy in the former White House. That one was easy.
She is playing to the cameras here, don’t believe that she doesn’t know what has been happening with “her” party.
IMO, she is fully aware of what is happening in the Republican party and she is using her current bully pulpit to try to bring back Republicans who think like she does and will vote her and her agenda back into power.
Ksmiami
@Suzanne: this country is finished.. thanks to Merrick Garland et Al.
Dangerman
Predictions: Trump is gonna declare tomorrow (July 4th). He will blue dress stain an American Flag on stage and no Reichwinger will care.
I wonder how many secret pardons there are. One for Meadows, others for The Family, one for Donald himself?
9am West Coast. Time for coffee.
cmorenc
@Nicole:
If there is such a deal, the GOP candidate-in-lieu-of-Trump will vigorously deny any such deal, and will counter that accusation saying they intend to leave any decisions on whether prosecution or clemency of any citizen is warranted to the justice department. But then if elected, they will make sure to appoint an AG who will end up recommending clemency or no prosecution, and justify it in part on the basis that it’s not in the interests of democracies to prosecute ex-Presidents for arguably political acts.
Bex
@Nicole: That offer will have to come with a bigly check and Putin may be broke by then.
Suzanne
@Ksmiami: It’s not due to Merrick Garland et al, it’s due to the GOP and their voters in the throes of white patriarchy.
But I do think that the institutionalists on our side do not grok the threat. They think that good governance will fix it. They do not understand that the other side’s goal is to destroy this country. We keep trying to negotiate with terrorists and that’s going as well as can be expected.
Martin
There’s so many challenges with prosecuting Trump. How do you find a jury in DC? Not saying that should be a deterrent, but nobody has ever prepared for a trial like this.
I agree that the GOP is done. I think it’s done even if Trump isn’t the nominee. I don’t see how you can define a closed-tent party around white Christianity and survive. Sure you’ll hold Iowa forever, but you’re forever conceding NY and CA and … Texas. Texas ain’t getting any whiter and like California has fucking mountains of Latinos graduating high school, crossing voting age. Sure, they’ll suppress the fuck out of them, but there are limits to how much you can suppress the majority, and eventually they fail.
Pretty sure Trump won’t be the nominee, though. Why take the risk of having your candidate prosecuted when you have DeSantis sitting right there.
Not saying there won’t be a Republican Party in the future, just that any competitive party will be noted in the history books of having obviously torn itself down and reconstructed itself. It won’t be an organic variant of what we have today.
Tony G
@Jerzy Russian: I’m actually amazed at how Liz Cheney has turned out. I’m old enough to remember when the entire Cheney family seemed to be the ultimate manifestation of American fascism, but the Trump party is so bad that Cheney looks OK in comparison. Of course, when she should have done more than a year ago is quit the Republican Party and become an independent (or a right-wing Democrat) — but this is better than nothing.
Martin
@Ksmiami: We survived the civil war. We can survive this. Not saying it won’t require civil war levels of commitment from the left to do so, mind you.
raven
@Martin: Dead as the Pac 10!
oldgold
What are the chances the Short-Fingered Vulgarian pocket pardoned himself?
I think they are damn high.
VeniceRiley
Sad! I’ve had a lovely first week in England. So much green and gentle rolling hills and trees and clean air full of oxygen. Ate my first Cornish pastie, scotch egg, sausage roll, bacon butty, and sunday roast dinner. Walked the water meadows and enjoyed the wildlife. Finally charged cheap camera Canon T7 and took some test pictures. I WILL get Kilo to sit still. I will!
Good luck saving America, I am counting on that Social Security in the future.
Dangerman
@raven: As a UCLA alum, I’m so ashamed of the school. Sure, wave a big enough check at USC and of course they’ll roll over, but, cmon UCLA.
Baud
@VeniceRiley:
Every part of the British Isles I’ve seen has been lovely.
Martin
@Tony G: Oh, policy wise she’s not changed. She’s 100% on board with the proto-fascist policies, just not the implementation. The dipshits running the party now are going to start a civil war. She had plans to achieve the goal in a much more civilized manner.
Liz and her dad were never the punks that load up a UHaul with improvised weapons and attack a pride march. They were the ones that hire professional mercenaries to go in and do the job quickly and quietly (plus Liz has a gay sister so they were always going to slow roll the LGBTQ community).
See, they don’t disagree with the proud boys, they just think they’re unprofessional.
Suzanne
@Martin:
We had to fight it to survive it.
I can assure you that I am not up for any of that. I will flee first. Perhaps that makes me a coward, but at least I am honest.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: And many hoped Russia and Germany would take each other out in the late ’30s.
Martin
@oldgold: None. We’d know it by now. It’s not like a papal proclamation. You gotta do paperwork.
Betty Cracker
@raven: This made me laugh.
MagdaInBlack
@Scout211: Yup.
Shalimar
@kindness: Liz Cheney is going to lose this year and she probably realizes it. She’s betting long-term, and will either be back in her seat or Barrasso’s senate seat in 2025, or dead, depending on which direction the Republican party takes next year. She’s hoping they lose big in November.
Martin
@Suzanne: Don’t flee, but you also don’t need to fight. Just provide support. I’ll fight. Can’t promise I’ll be good at it, but I’m not afraid of them.
Omnes Omnibus
Everyone seems cheerful and positive this morning. I think I’ll go be somewhere else.
oldgold
@Martin:
Not necessarily so. The Constitutional grant of the pardon power is plenary.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: Don’t get shot!
Shalimar
@Tony G: She’s better as a Republican. The public hearings are so effective because they have 2 Republicans questioning almost all Republican witnesses. You wouldn’t have that optic if Cheney or Kinzinger had given up their label.
And let’s face it, her still utterly horrible ideology doesn’t really fit with Democrats or Independents anyway.
JCJ
@raven: As a long time Purdue fan (grew up in West Lafayette, my dad and grandmother preceded me as Boilermakers) I find the newest members of the B1G puzzling. I know it is all about the money, but those are some lengthy road trips coming up.
Jinchi
I doubt that would work. The political class only believes in two legitimate parties in this country. Nobody is getting out of being prosecuted because they’re running on the Whig party ticket.
Geoduck
@raven: The PAC12 just died. The PAC10 still exists.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jinchi: If that worked, any criminal could claim they were running for president at any time
Suzanne
Update on the plague in my house: we’re all officially positive. Spawns feel great and are full of energy and are annoyed that they can’t go to the park. Mr. Suzanne also feels good, and just took his last dose of Paxlovid. I am still kind of fatigued with sinus pain and my throat is sore with a mild cough, but not bad. In the Before Times, I would have gone to work in this state. SuzMom is about the same. We still want to lie around and read. She started Paxlovid yesterday evening.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ruckus: Even if her thinking is calculated, if her goal is to see a Republican party that is made up of sane people who believe in objective reality and are not traitors, and to be the queen of that new party, that’s an objective I can get behind.
James E Powell
@schrodingers_cat:
The fundamental fact of America politics.
Everyone in the press/media is contractually prohibited from ever saying anything remotely close to this.
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Me too.
Alison Rose
@Omnes Omnibus: NOT ME.
Martin
@oldgold: Sure, but it still needs to be recorded in a suitable manner for a court to recognize it. So even if Trump did issue such a pardon, someone would then do the paperwork, even if it wasn’t needed.
Say what you will about the courts, they are reliably procedural.
Martin
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yeah, you can’t be a leader when all of the followers are feral.
Baud
@Alison Rose :
Omnes’s comment was sarcastic. So are you happy and cheerful or not happy and cheerful?
CaseyL
@Martin: This.
In that much-cited speech, Cheney referred to the US as a “Constitutional Republic.” She is totally on board with what SCOTUS is doing. She will be totally on board with establishing state legislatures as ultimate arbiters of elections, up to and including substituting their own electors if the “wrong” candidate wins the popular vote in their state.
She objects only to Trumpist methods, not the goals.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Suzanne: I’m always in favor of lying around reading. Sorry you’re covidy
Immanentize
@Baud: Damn, it’s a Klein Bottle of Sarcasm!
MagdaInBlack
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The “Old Guard” republicans have not gone away. I believe they’re behind her, even if we aren’t hearing about them. Ms Cheney is hooked up.
Immanentize
@MagdaInBlack: Also, the Cheneys seem to take their time getting revenge. In less than five years, I expect Elise Stefanik will somehow be involved in a horrible scandal and will end her life in penury. Or, so I hope.
schrodingers_cat
@James E Powell: Thank you for acknowledging it. It is hard to do.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: A lot of us didn’t survive the Civil War.
MagdaInBlack
@Immanentize: Oh yes! Ms Cheney is playing the long game
CindyH
@Martin: Texas may not be getting whiter but a lot of non-whites in TX are very Christian conservative – so we don’t know to what extent
Matt McIrvin
I actually think these never-Trumper Republicans who describe this or that as “the end of the Republican Party” are somewhat in denial that what the party is trying to do is become the single ruling party of a new American autocracy, and that they really could succeed. They imagine there still being something like fair elections in the future, which the Republicans could not win. But it’s not about that.
trollhattan
@Immanentize: @MagdaInBlack:
She’s learned well from daddy and mommy. Keep the knife hidden and at the ready, but don’t rush when to apply it.
ETA After watching “Vice” I wondered how accurate it is. Lynne’s role is far more prominent than I ever considered.
Immanentize
@trollhattan: Kinda like in Dune? The slow blade penetrates the shield.
Immanentize
@CindyH: A lot of non- whites in Texas are getting whiter. It’s the never ending story of white-adjacent power.
Another Scott
@Scout211: (repost) A lawyer commenting at Wonkette made the same point, but went further – arguing that TFG’s actions satisfy the legal requirements for a Treason conviction.
https://install.local/squishable-morning-thread/#comment-34081
TFG and his enablers are in real jeopardy now. There’s compelling evidence that they knew what was going on and were tied up in the planning and execution. That’s why they were screaming for pardons.
Cheers,
Scott.
MagdaInBlack
@trollhattan: I also think the Cheney faction was aware of something being planned, well before it happened. Do I recall a letter/full page ad or something in the WaPo just before Jan 6, signed by prominent folks, regarding a peaceful transition being important?
I have a vague recollection of it and of thinking “well, these folks know something.”
evodevo
@CindyH: Yes. Something the Dems have ignored to their peril – same in south FL. There are a LOT of conservative small-business oriented Latinos in TX and FL, and they are usually NOT in favor of illegals, either. A lot, who are anti-abortion, switched over from Catholicism to evangelical Xtianity because contraception. Wonder what they will do if the SC goes after that next?
Alison Rose
@Baud: I was responding to the second part. meaning I intend to stick around with the rest of the Eeyores.
Southern Goth
@Immanentize:
I don’t know what is worse.
The never-ending focus on whiteness as the political determinant?
Or the lack of focus on educational attainment as a political determinant?
Though I can see how that conversation would go. Probably better stick to whiteness.
Scout211
Speculation about settled vs unsettled law for presidential pardons. Apparently, there is precedent and then there is Trump. Some legal experts were asked their opinions by Time Magazine.
Did Trump issue secret pocket pardons? Is this legal? Is this possible?
My bold.
Suzanne
@Immanentize: Exactly. “White” has never been fixed, and the category will grow to include more groups of people. Also, plenty of Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent are pretty culturally conservative and religious and patriarchal. The idea that those people are just waiting to become loyal Democratic voters is not accurate, IMO.
Alfred Garza, the father of one of the Uvalde victims, was photographed with his daughter before her murder wearing a shirt that reads, “Fuck you and your gun-free zones”. That’s not an uncommon attitude.
Frank Wilhoit
In order to draw a line between Trump and “good” Republicanism, one must reject Reagan. In order to reject Reagan, one must reject Reagan’s voters. In order to reject Reagan’s voters, one must surface the real reasons why he won, which have never been discussed.
In order to identify spontaneous and overt factional violence as a Constitutional threat, one must acknowledge that the 1787 Constitution can only operate through covert and ritualized factional violence.
These things will not happen. Americans will march, in their hundreds of millions, with heads bowed, into the maw of Hell before they will acknowledge their own motivations, actions, and history.
Layer8Problem
@Martin: Plus you know he’d be waving it around at any and all opportunities: “Read it and weep, haters! My own personal get-out-of-jail-free card! Signed by me, your favorite president! Good for all crimes, past present, and future! Gonna shoot someone on Fifth Avenue now!”
Southern Goth
@Frank Wilhoit:
You don’t have to reject anything if you don’t think the two parties at the time of Reagan hadn’t finished sorting themselves into what they are today.
TriassicSands
Let the hand-wringing begin. Oh, wait, it’s already screaming along at the speed of fright.
The problem is much bigger than that. The level of ignorance, stupidity, and racism in the US today simply can’t support free and fair elections. While I deplore the rampant bothsiderism of the MSM and its role in enabling the neo-fascist GOP, one has to be in deep denial to ignore the problems, including apathy and disengagement, that have too often characterized and plagued the Democratic Party and its natural constituency. In order to win in the future, we may need a much larger turnout than we managed in the 2020 repudiation of Trump.
If I make it to the 2024 election, it will be my 15th consecutive vote for president. I am reasonably confident that my vote in Washington State will be honestly counted, but I have no such confidence that the same will be true of my sister’s vote in Wisconsin.
White people are the biggest problem in this country, but not the only one. We know that the Trump cultists will drive over grandma to vote for their god. But this November, the number of people, not exclusively white, who will vote for Republican candidates because of the price of gasoline and the rate of inflation may well determine the future of this country. Of course, votes for Republicans won’t
make gas any cheaper, but they will pose a direct threat to democraincy.
As Democrats on election day, we have two problems: 1) anti-democratic Republicans, both candidates and voters (all mostly white); and 2) poorly informed and disengaged voters who should be strong Democratic voters but who will either not bother to vote or will vote against Democrats on the basis of ignorance and/or stupidity. We can’t do much about 1). We have to do something about 2).
trollhattan
@Another Scott: That take is new to me and makes me more hopeful Trump and his minions might be in real jeopardy. Teflon Don has never had a proper consequence for anything; but there’s always a first time.
Frank Wilhoit
@Southern Goth: Too many negatives, I can’t be sure I’m counting them the same way you are. My point is that the 1980 campaign, whose history may never be written, was the sort. Nothing has happened since.
trollhattan
@Frank Wilhoit: Partway through “Reaganland” I am reliving the ’80s and get triggered every few pages. What an utter fraud and bastard. The worse things he did, the more popular he became. Sound familiar?
Immanentize
@Southern Goth: both are very important. But without the latter, the former predominates.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: I would love to ask old A. Garza what he thinks about that shirt now. It’s all fun and lib owning and machismo until your fucking 8 year old daughter gets mowed down.
Cacti
Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a grave disservice to the Republic, as it set the precedent that the POTUS is too important to be held to the requirements of the law.
Southern Goth
@Frank Wilhoit:
Fair enough, but it’s the same sort that happened with Thatcher, with Brexit, and Le Pen voters. It always tends to break along educational lines.
Maybe it’s not so much a sort as a Regression to the Mean.
oldgold
@Martin:
Currently there is not a damn thing that is reliable about the Supremes.
The text of the Constitution places no procedural qualifiers on the President’s pardon powers, except In cases of impeachment. Show me where it mandates publication? Or, for that matter, that it be in writing?
Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, provides: The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment
Martin
@Southern Goth: Well, I think in the moment the educational attainment is disproven:
Ted Cruz: Two ivy degrees.
DeSantis: Two ivy degrees.
It’s a long list. These people aren’t dumb. But either the evidence of the world undermines their foundational view of how the world should work, or they’re willing to throw it all in the garbage to run a grift (or both).
Suzanne
@Martin: Thee’s a measurable difference in educational attainment levels between Dem and GOP voters. That’s not disproven by the fact that some GOP politicians also have Ivy degrees.
Southern Goth
@Martin:
I think you understand the difference between opportunistic demagogues and voters.
CaseyL
@Martin:
@Southern Goth:
It should also be remembered that Cruz has been a deeply vile asshole his entire life. Even his classmates have said so.
Considering the more vile of the GOPers also have the strongest support, it seems clear to me that “vile asshole” is what they want, what they look for, and what they vote for.
hotshoe
@Scout211: “A pardon doesn’t have to be published right away to be valid, or even published at all.”
huh, that person is supposedly a good and knowledgeable lawyer, but I hope that is not an accurate statement of how courts will treat someone coming up with a “cocktail napkin” signed by ex-president. Not even the corrupt Rethugs should accept that. If they accept that, what’s to stop any thief from forging a cocktail-napkin pardon of their own? Well, ya see, judge, ex-prez Trump pardoned me in advance because I was giving him a percentage …
Doubly so if it’s TFG pardoning himself. Why would anyone believe that he scribbled his cocktail napkin while he still was actually president and (might have) had the power to do something? Okay, he might have had forethought to try protecting himself, but I figure that he would not have the attention span to make it provably datable, with sworn-but-secret witnesses, or whatever it would take to prove it was an actual prez-pardon.
Well, this is not an important thing to worry about now. First, TFG must be indicted for something. This week, lord willing.
But if not indicted, he can go to his death with his secret-future pardon in his pocket and no one will ever know or care.
Another Scott
@oldgold: It the SCOTUS can make up history and ignore precedent simply because ideologues hold the majority, then, yeah, it doesn’t really matter what the Constitution and any applicable laws say. It’s Calvinball.
However, common sense tells us that if a president is using an official power to short-circuit action by another co-equal branch of government, then that action should/must be published as an official record of the government. We shouldn’t have “double-secret probation” in a sensibly working government.
Jeffrey Crouch at WaPo (1/20/2021):
(I suspect that any attempt to do secret pardons were slow-walked by the people in the chain. They couldn’t even get pardons to people willing to pay for them via Stone and Jared.)
We’ll see!
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
I don’t think secret pardons are legally a thing. Any more than secret regulations or any other secret presidential acts are a thing.
Pardons have to be filed with the pardon office. They are public documents. I expect that legally speaking, any pardon that was not properly filed by the deadline of Trump’s last day in office would just be considered a “draft pardon” and not legally binding unless Biden decided to file it.
But I’m sure there are attorneys here who could provide a better opinion.
different-church-lady
Here’s where the rift lies: Cheney is old school in that she sees power as a tool. Trumpers have the Orwellian view — they see power as an end in itself. When she says it will be the end of the GOP, what she doesn’t know she means is that it will be the end of the old view of what a party is for. She does know fascism is chaos, and it will destroy the things she believes in along with all the things she doesn’t.
Martin
So, I have a new theory. Newish, at least.
Taking a step back from the ‘it’s white Christian nationalism, stupid’ line of argument from me, the testimony of the Jan 6 witness from AZ got me thinking.
I think we have two fundamentally different views of what the Constitution even is. (I’m sure there are legal scholars that have covered this, but I’m not able to find their work). Actually, three, but I think two of them are just variants.
I think the modern Democratic Party has filtered itself into a consistent view that the Constitution is a and was intended to be neutral on the topic of culture. That despite being written by a bunch of white Christian men, it doesn’t seek to protect those interests. That is, the Constitution does not function in service to culture. It doesn’t protect English as an official language, it doesn’t protect specific forms of religion. And so on. Nothing in the Constitution suggests that these cultural institutions are inherent to Americanism and should be protected in order to protect Americanism. This was the great experiment – the first government that isn’t ordered around the preservation of a specific culture. And I think Democrats embrace this idea. The Constitution is about enforcing consistency and fairness, and it can only do that by eliminating the temptation to do dumb shit like dictate what people can wear at the beach (looking at you France).
Conversely, the GOP has fully embraced the idea that the founders, by virtue of being white Christian males must have written the Constitution to protect these things. This is why they are so focused not on legal precedence but cultural precedence with Alito going to *desperate* efforts to document that in his ruling. This is why they care so much on who the founders *were*, because the fact they weren’t black or non-Christian is critical to this view. So to them, the Constitution doesn’t exist as a neutral, durable framework that avoids interacting with culture, it’s a framework that exists explicitly to preserve culture, because that’s how every previous country worked.
And this is what shapes the current moment. Dems believe that the 9th amendment backed up by the 5th and 14th amendment indicates that the process for determining the non-enumerated rights are for the state to simply show what interest they possess in curtailing that right. Who is being harmed by these gay men marrying? If it’s nobody, then it’s a right they inherently possess. This is why the current majority of the court seems so perplexed by the 9th amendment because they believe rights have to come from *somewhere*, and the somewhere is the culture – the Bible, etc. It’s not that they are being hypocritical, to them the Constitution has an entirely different assumed function than it does to Dems.
Rusty Bowers reminded us of the Mormon view – that the Constitution is a divine document. It’s a variation of the Conservatives view, but rather than being in service to Christianity and being neutral about the Unitarians and the Baptists, they view it as being specifically favorable to Mormons, and that American sovereignty isn’t a product of a social contract, but rather of divine proclamation. The founders were just the vessels through which God spoke.
Sorry if this is an obvious observation to everyone else here, but it was new to me this week. Testing it against Frank’s observation: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” then yeah, it holds up pretty well. But rather than just being a political view of the right, I think they are of the view that the Constitution not only implies that view, but that it mandates it. Cultures always have in and out groups, it’s kind of the point of a culture to establish that. and if the Constitution is in service to culture, then it necessarily protects those defending the culture and punishes those opposing it.
Kent
I lived and worked in Texas for 13 years. Was close friends with a lot of Latino men and families and my partner coaching youth soccer for 10 years was Latino.
Culturally speaking, the bulk Latinos that I knew and met in Texas are essentially “white working class” or “white working class in waiting” The idea that they are going to support a progressive agenda, or a progressive agenda that goes past the purely economic, is folly.
hotshoe
@Suzanne:
He did not deserve to lose his daughter, but that is only because no human being deserves to lose their children to violent end.
Honestly I hope he spends every remaining day of his life regretting his insane gun-love message. He was contributing in his own little way to the “more guns are always the solution” attitude, that in turn allows the kind of mass murder which destroyed his family and others.
Other parents who have lost children to gun violence have become anti-gun activists.
Maybe he will learn from this. Maybe we’ll never know.
James E Powell
@TriassicSands:
Agree with every word. We’ve got a hard road ahead.
And the “messaging” thing we talk about from time to time is a challenge because the “poorly informed and disengaged voters who should be strong Democratic voters but who will either not bother to vote or will vote against Democrats on the basis of ignorance and/or stupidity” will not respond to the same message. It’s several groups who vote or don’t vote for different reasons. Even worse, the messages that will motivate one group often alienate another.
Spanky
It might surprise y’all, but I’ve got a secret pardon right here, written by Richard Nixon on the back of a scotch bottle label, for “all crimes, past, present, future, etc, etc”.
So I’ve got that going for me when I, um, redeem it.
What’s to stop Barr, et al, from pulling this sort of thing once Donnie’s innumerable Big Macs catch up with him?
Kent
The one consequence of a pardon is that the recipient can then be forced to testify on any matter relating to that pardon since the 5th Amendment no longer applies. And then any refusal to testify could be prosecuted as “obstruction of justice” and any lying on under oath could be prosecuted as perjury since those would be NEW crimes not covered by any previous pardon.
James E Powell
@Martin:
The value of the Ivy’s isn’t in the education, it’s in the connections and the cred.
trollhattan
@Kent: But double-secret probation is “settled law.” Per Boof, I believe.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Fifty years ago, a majority of the college educated demographic voted Republican. That has changed now, and some political scientists use this demographic in their election models as a predictor for Democratic voting. We may have seen this in the blue wave of 2018, when Democrats made inroads in suburban districts in New Jersey, Virginia, Michigan, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, and southern California that had substantial numbers of the college educated.
College education tracks with a dynamic economy. This could explain how Minnesota has become blue and Iowa red, and why Virginia is bluer while Ohio has turned redder. The more prosperous and educated portions of North Carolina and Georgia have led those states’ blue shift, and this dynamic may be at work in Texas too.
Despite outliers like Boebert and Cawthorne, Republican elites are still college educated as they always have been. But now they have to appeal more and more to the non-college educated, a majority demographic yet a shrinking one.
MattF
@Martin: You might like Hannah Arendt’s book On Revolution. It places the US Constitution in a broad historical context as the final step in the American Revolution. She notes that the writers of the Constitution were avid students and collectors of past republican constitutions, and that their prime goal was to create a new republic that would last.
Another Scott
@Martin: Good comment, but I think you give the SCOTUS and the RWNJs too much credit. The religious beliefs of the Founders was very complicated and some/many/most of them were not “Christian” in the way we use the term today. They’re making stuff up – as usual – when they claim otherwise.
MountVernon.org:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: He may well think there should have been one more good guy with a gun there to shoot the shooter.
Martin
@Kent: Related to that, to me policy has to have an implementation mechanism, otherwise it’s just a neat idea, and not a policy.
So if you are pardoned, you have to be pardoned for some specific thing, and that thing needs to be stated, otherwise it’s ambiguous which crime you *didn’t* commit. The legal system isn’t going to bench itself just because it thinks you might have been forgiven for that crime. Another reliable aspect of the legal system, it tests itself. Maybe too much, but ‘does this law really say this’ is a core motivator for the profession.
A pardon is a policy – it says ‘these people are forgiven for doing this thing’. It doesn’t say they didn’t do it which is why you can compel testimony, but at its core it has to say what that thing is, or else it does nothing. At some point Roger Stone needs to convince the court ‘I’ve been forgiven of this’ and the court needs to reconcile that the pardon does cover the accusation. That implies a certain degree of documentation and precision. Without that, the legal system ceases to function, and I can’t imagine any lawyer, even Clarence Thomas, signing on to nullify their own profession.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: I think that the radicals will have to be thrashed over several cycles before they turn the steering wheel back over to the Chamber of Commerce types who used to call the shots in the Republican party. Even then, Liz Cheney won’t have much of a future in the party. Adam Kinzinger might, if only because he is a man.
frosty
@Martin: Very interesting writeup here, thanks.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I guess I don’t know exactly what the Founding Fathers were thinking except to the extent they actually wrote down what they were thinking (which they frequently did). They were a complicated bunch who disagreed on a lot. We know they were very keen on not basing the thing on religion, because they had experience of that sort of thing going violently wrong. Some, like Franklin, were kind of vicious xenophobes; others were not. Many recognized slavery was an evil but they had to tolerate it for the time being to get any kind of deal at all. It’s all very messy.
I don’t think we should see the Constitution as attempting to enforce a culture, but I don’t base that on some attempt to read the minds of the Founders so much as on what I think a just society would be like, and the fact that the Constitution, for all its flaws, doesn’t seem to be contradicting that.
Kropacetic
One might argue that was when the madness started. One might argue it was earlier.
Suzanne
It also tracks with age and gender. Millennials are much more likely to be highly educated than older people, and a higher percentage of Millennial women have a college degree than men do.
There is enough of a behavioral/voting difference between white people with degrees vs. whites without degrees that I agree that it is an especially salient marker for white people.
J R in WV
@Immanentize:
Or she gets pregnant without even knowing how that works — and can’t get a medical termination of that rapist’s child. These people are sick MFers in every way.
Suzanne
@Martin: I don’t know if most conservatives even try to scrape together a coherent narrative of meaning around the Founders, or if they’re just engaged in pure will-to-power. The narrative changes to suit the argument at the time.
Actually, this is what I believe. I don’t think they’re logically coherent and I don’t think that bothers them. They want to win, and we keep losing because we keep trying to point out that they changed the rules of the game and they cheated and we’re hoping that the onlookers give a shit. This is why I think we’re in a really dangerous place. We’re arguing about the text of the Constitution like they won’t just throw it out to declare a rich white man’s government at the first opportunity. They’re amassing firearms and stacking courts with their flunkies.
Martin
@Another Scott: I don’t think the specific manifestation of the culture at the time of the nations founding is actually relevant. I think it’s more a question of these people being unable to conceive of the founders, obviously being the product of a culture, writing a document that is not in service to that culture. It’s more the point that Government of course exists to preserve culture, because, to Franks larger point, that’s all that Government had ever done – king, dictator, etc. The mere expression of a national language is an expression of government enforcing culture (there is no stronger expression of whether someone is or is not French than whether or not they speak French, and language borders have generally proven more durable than legal borders – witness Ukraine right now).
So if you take the assumption that the Constitution’s main job is to preserve culture, then you have license to pick and choose whatever aspects of culture should be protected. That the culture has changed is not a problem. Put another way, this view of the Constitution implies that every judge is merely a petty king who can impose their own notion of what is the current cultural meta onto each decision.
It seems to me that the framers, who didn’t necessarily disagree with the British cultural meta, would go to all the effort of declaring independence, fighting some wars, and then codify that very set of mistakes into the new government. I mean, FFS, Washington was an Anglican. That wasn’t what they were opposed to. They were opposed to the rules merely being the whims of King George, with no due process, no need to do the work of determining ‘is this fair’. And I would argue that’s what the GOP finds most offensive about the due process decisions. In defense of the rights the GOP want to curtail, they have to show their work in court, and showing the work is both hard and makes them really, really look like assholes. The new approach is much easier. No need to show your work. Don’t like abortion, just ban it and pretend all of the messy bits don’t exist.
I’m not giving them a pass. I think they are utterly wrong. But I think I misunderstand at which point in the process they go wrong. I thought it was in a dishonest application of the Constitution. I think now that it’s a very consistent application, but it’s a dishonest assumption of what the Constitution even is.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: Here’s a slide from a presentation for FL teachers on how to teach civics under a new DeSantis administration initiative:
Betty Cracker
Whoopsie, slide below:
James E Powell
@Martin:
What you are saying is interesting. I’ve no doubt that a certain number of right-wingers would make those arguments.
But I doubt that Republican voters have ever given that much thought to the Constitution. I doubt they’ve ever read it. Their politics are simple: people I don’t like should suffer. Not much more than that.
J R in WV
@Martin:
I think that many, if not most, of the writers of the Constitution were not particularly Christian. Surely quite a few were Unitarians, who are deists, but don’t necessarily believe in the divinity of Christ.
[The Unitarians are pretty loose and have nothing like a catechism or set of beliefs one must ascribe to belong, so some may be Christian, and others deists.]
And I suspect that given the First Amendment and that clause* in the body of the document at the end of Article VI about no religious test to hold office, even most of the Christian Founders wanted to allow other religions to hold their faith here in the United States.
*
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: “Historical facts and truth” o rly
Martin
@Suzanne: I think you could ask a simple question:
“Does the Constitution protect the US as a Christian nation” and get two very clear answers. These may not be front of brain concepts (hell, it wasn’t for me until recently) but I think back of brain we have a clear answer, and I would bet that correlates VERY strongly to political party. I don’t think that’s always been the case – I think the Democratic Party clarity on the question is quite new, and I think the Republican Party consistency on that question has increased a lot recently.
raven
@JCJ: I was born in Urbana, IL and myself and my folks are all Illini Alums. We’re on a road to nowhere. . .
raven
@Geoduck: Rotsa ruck
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
The first two statements contradict that last one pretty directly. After all the Constitution says “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” and goes on to require that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ” — neither of these parts of the Constitution appear to allow the government to attempt to establish any religion, Christian or otherwise, and especially not Mormonism, which was not yet invented at the time of the establishment of the United States.
sab
@Betty Cracker: YIKES! as we say in the Midwest.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
About that third dot…sorry, bullet because Florida.
“Founders expected” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion“ is holding on Line 1.
Uncle Cosmo
This. And yet we have posters here insisting we spend significant time, effort and $$$ to bump up Latino turnout – so that they can vote against Democrats.
Martin
@J R in WV: We have even more direct evidence of that from the Treaty of Tripoli.
Congress ratified this language. Not sure how you can spin “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion” in any other sense.
Kropacetic
We should bump up turnout amd access as much as we can, wherever we can; not for political advantage, but because it’s the right thing to do.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s why the Founders prohibited religious tests for holding office and banned the establishment of religion.
Would you like to see the primary source document?
Jeffro
@CaseyL:
Good points here. I had thought he would not run, but now he can’t afford not to, in the hopes that somehow the GQP (both the inspired and the blackmailed) will rally to his side as charges start dropping
However, for this part…I think we have plenty of indications that other GOP candidates feel they can take him on, praising him at times while also frequently pointing out his flaws (probably in the same sentence!) They’ll publicly support him against the hated Dems while privately breathing sighs of relief that the hard work of the J6 Committee has taken trump out of viability, not just for the presidency but the GOP nomination.
HeleninEire
@Suzanne: You are not a coward. You have spawn the elder to protect. You also have spawn the middle and spawn the youngest both of whom who have as of now called themselves girl. You are being pragmatic. You are being a mother protecting her children.
gene108
Mostly because President Lincoln and then General Grant far exceeded the abilities of anyone else around them or against them.
I don’t want to base my future hoping two relatively obscure people step up to become legends. That usually doesn’t workout for most nations.
Baud
@Uncle Cosmo:
In terms of large racial/ethnic groupings, there are whites, Latinos, blacks, and Asians.
Black voters are already carrying the country on their shoulders, and the Asian population is still pretty small. So what do you propose we do?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Kill whitey?
Kropacetic
The Founders (TM) just knew that the inherent superiority of the right brand of Christian culture would remain paramount. They trusted Americans to do the right thing. And if said culture was undermined by outside forces, authoritarian Christendom would once again assert its dominance.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Obligatory.
Omnes Omnibus
Dopey-o
But is it half-empty or half-full?
Baud
@Kropacetic:
That’s not in the primary source document. You would never make it as a Florida teacher.
different-church-lady
By coincidence, last night I was reading about Gerald Ford on Wikipedia and came across this passage:
Martin
@trollhattan: Yeah, I don’t think it’s as wrong as its being taken though. ‘Expected’ doesn’t mean ‘demands’. I expect Republicans will act like assholes. I don’t demand it.
I think it’s not uncontroversial to say that the founders saw that the public was religious and that religion was a civic virtue. I think the founders disagreed that religion was necessary to civic virtue. So it’s can be a correct historical observation, but I don’t see how that observation is suggestive of anything unless you take the view as I outlined above that to conservatives the Constitution serves to exclusively protect Christianity in the US.
It’s a very odd list. Two statements of principle and then an assertion of fact that clearly couldn’t have been trusted to be surface in the first two. Like saying you love your kids equally, especially Timmy.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Dems are too feckless to do that.
@James E Powell:
Very obligatory.
Geminid
@Another Scott: George Washington was also a Freemason, and they espoused a Deist philosophy I believe.
In his younger years, Benjamin Franklin was introduced to Deism when a man commissioned him to write a pamphlet refuting this novel and pernicious doctrine. Franklin wrote in his Autobiography that he came away from the project believing that the Deists had it right.
Baud
@Martin:
Heh.
Kropacetic
@Baud: I created an argument based on the implications of the third “standard” in BC’s slide. I would love to see how they source that particular assertion. Wouldn’t surprise me if they had some quote from an outlier member of the founding fathers supporting it.
I’ll just consider it bonus points if my guessed rationale is halfway correct.
Betty Cracker
Another slide from the civics ed presentation for FL teachers:
different-church-lady
@Dopey-o: If the Klein bottle is in Schrödinger’s box, then it’s empty and full at the same time.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
Separation of church and state comes from Thomas Jefferson. They easily tossed that aside as they do the things Jesus is quoted as saying in the New Testament.
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin: Barb McQuade of the Sisters In Law podcast noted that Most of Hutchinson’s testimony would be inadmissible as hearsay, but DOJ can and likely is using it to get to Oronato, Cipolone, Meadows etc. and any shared texts/emails etc. which don’t have Executive Privilege if shared with anyone besides legal counsel. Anyways, it’s a reminder that stuff that looks like a slam-dunk for conviction (Hutchinson’s testimony) may not be nearly as damning in a criminal court. Of course, Do Something Teitter rarely acknowledges such limitations that DOJ/Garland actually face.
J R in WV
@Martin:
Thanks for the great educational assist regarding the US NOT being a christian nation. One more founder-written document proving the exact opposite!
Wife was once in the long ago a reference librarian, before computers were common devices, and was asked the religious beliefs of the various signers of the founding documents. That’s how I know that several of them were Unitarians, back then a pretty common faith.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: No point in steering now.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I feel protected from groomers already.
Kent
Most Texas Latinos that I knew were not full MAGA. They were suspicious of the insanity that is the Texas Republican party. So I think they are persuadable. But that doesn’t also mean they are going to automatically support the progressive left when it comes to any social issues going beyond the purely economic.
There is also a certain mentality among working class Latinos that I think many on the left do not get. There is a widespread sentiment that they are the toughest and hardest-working group of people in the US. That they will do the jobs that “Anglos” and Blacks refuse to do. And that they care more about their families than others do. There is a certain element of truth to both beliefs. And candidates wishing to gain ground in the Latino community are best advised to speak to those beliefs rather than undermine them. So talk a LOT about supporting hard work and family values which the GOP does so much better than we do.
Cmorenc
@Suzanne:
in the hard-right GOP view, they are not trying to destroy the country, but rather to restore it to their idyllic imagination of the USA in the late 1950s, before hippies and leftist politicians and judged ruined paradise. Even if it takes installing a de facto fascist state wrapped in the hollowed shell of a nominal democratic government, structured to assure RW GOP control of enough institutions to prevent leftists from ever regaining enough controlling power to change that paradigm.
Baud
@Kent:
I think that makes a lot of sense, and not just for Latinos.
Scout211
@Betty Cracker:
Good God! Errr, I mean WTF?!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Doesn’t that first point undermine the basis for the Republican Party?
Baud
@Kent:
@Baud:
I’ll add that, IMHO, any Democratic populism that has a chance of success will not be one that a lot of liberals would be comfortable with.
ETA: I think many liberals already get uncomfortable when Dem presidents and others publicly display religiosity.
Kent
I have this conversation on occasion with my more MAGA fundamentalist relatives. I usually make the exact opposite argument which tends to discombobulate them. To whit…
“Of course the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Christianity played a fundamental role in the two universally acknowledged original sins upon which this nation was founded: Slavery and the genocide of our native populations. I am happy that Christians are finally willing to own up to that. Much of this country was built through slave labor, or financed indirectly through profits gained from slave labor. And most of the land we occupy was stolen through genocidal wars. Every bit of it supported and endorsed by Christians and Christian institutions. How could anyone ever think otherwise?”
scav
@Baud: Are you implying that pussy-grabbing, lobbying, and armed insurrection aren’t the very epitome of moral perfection?
Baud
@scav:
WWJD?
ETA: I wouldn’t put lobbying in the same category as the other two. Technically, public interest groups lobby too.
Kent
That is the art of politics. It takes a phenomenally good politician to build broad coalitions. Something that Bill Clinton, Obama, Biden, and earlier Democrats like FDR were masters at. Carter, Dukakis, Mondale, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie? Not so much.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Hairdressers? Barbers? Or dog/cat groomers?
Suzanne
@Kent:
I will also note that patriarchal attitudes are pretty common, in my experience, in this cohort. “Toughness” being a masculine virtue, of course.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: That one is just shitty from top to bottom. Self-government requires a people committed to a collective social contract. You don’t need to agree with the specifics of the contract, but you need to commit to its validity.
In case anyone was wondering why Dems are so insistent on being institutionalists, even in the face of insurrection, this is why. The contract is more important than what the contract says. Without respect for the contract, we have no country.
Baud
@Kent:
You could, of course, say that about any winning or losing candidate.
But I agree that a large part of why the Dems sometimes come off as indecisive or “feckless” is not (only) corporate influence but because our coalition is so diverse and hard to manage.
Ken
Great, now I’ve got half a dozen ideas for a “Modern Major General” parody echoing in my head.
Kropacetic
@Kent: Wasn’t Hillary Clinton, as of 2016, the top vote-getter in all American history? For all the good it did…
James E Powell
@Kent:
I am not sure I agree that the GOP does it better, just different.
When they say “family values” they mean white supremacy, patriarchy, and an oppressive form of Christianity that would make criminals of LGBTQ.
When we say “family values” we mean better wages, food, housing, health care, and other things that keep families together & thriving.
My generalized & anecdotal experience from teaching the children of families from Mexico (mostly), El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras is that they are socially very conservative. A lot more fundamentalist than Catholic. Very patriarchal. Their views on African-Americans are not much different from those of older white people in midwestern diners.
Kent
No, not really. We have a housekeeper who is a Mexican immigrant. She shares every sentiment I just expressed. And will happily tell you that she and her other Latina counterparts are so much more hard working than any Anglo housekeeper you might find. And she will also bend your ear about family and family obligations and how Latinos value family more than Anglos. And frankly, she is probably right on both counts.
You want to speak to her? Talk about hard work and family values. Not about Latin-X and BIPOC nonsense. Or any other acronym. Our local Democratic frontrunner for Congress here in the WA 3rd gets the exactly and knows how to do it. And she also has Hispanic roots: https://marieforcongress.com/
Baud
@Kent:
I think Gallego in AZ said the same thing.
But which Dem is doing it the wrong way? I have a feeling that this is like Defund the Police. That was never the Dem position by a long shot, but the message of a few gets attributed to the whole party.
ETA: Sometimes we get slammed for what we tolerate as opposed to what we actually do.
scav
@Ken: I am the very model of a modern christian warrior
I protect the rapist of a pregnant naughty four-year-old
Fair Economist
@Suzanne:
The utter drek coming out of the Supreme Court wingnuts – supposedly the most learned and legally aware people on their side – shows they aren’t even trying to make a coherent narrative. Citing a 300 year dead witchburner to take rights away from women? Ignoring the plain language of “well-regulated militia” in the 2nd Amendment? They’re just using their power to do whatever they d*** well please, logic, fairness, and the Constitution be damned.
Baud
@scav:
That is very good.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: It’s godawful—The Miami Herald published all the slides, and as much as I was appalled by the fact errors and omissions, I was struck by how shoddy the whole thing is. It’s a shitty work product in every way, including poorly written, ungrammatical content and horrible graphics.
Kent
Well yes, the population is growing. So every election has a new biggest vote getter compared to the last. But the fact of the matter is that she lost ground with a lot of Obama voters. We can list endless reasons why from Bernie to Comey to Russian interference to the NYT’s emails obsession. And 20 years of conservative media attacks on her person. In fact she wrote a book about it.
But the fact of the matter is that EVERY election is going to be a shitstorm of feces thrown at the wall by the GOP. EVERY ONE. It takes a masterful politician to be able to navigate that. Obama did it. Clinton didn’t. I liked Clinton, I campaigned for her and voted for her. And was devastated by 2016. She is a brilliant woman and would have been a great president I think. But she wasn’t the politician that was needed to put 2016 out of reach.
Suzanne
@Kent: I think we mean the same thing, really. In AZ, I saw a lot of pride expressed by Mexican women about their husbands / boyfriends / fathers / brothers / uncles being “willing to do the difficult jobs that white people won’t”. I frequently heard the assertion that white people were weak and lazy. None of that is to say that women didn’t also work hard, but that they were more in the service sector and that there were a lot of traditional-extended family structures. Women having the primary role in caring for children, but they might be their grandchildren or nieces/nephews.
Immanentize
@J R in WV: Unitarian back then (and we’ll into the last century) did NOT mean Unitarian Universalist, it meant Unitarian Methodist which was a remnant sect of the Puritans. My Mom was such a Methodist.
Kropacetic
Democrats get judged by their craziest perceived activist, no matter what the elected representatives actually do. Republicans get judged by their highest theoretical principles, no matter what their elected representatives actually do.
Suzanne
@Fair Economist: Agreed. The bullshit Kagan pointed out about “major questions doctrine” is a perfect illustration of “making shit up as you go”.
I think lots of left-liberals consider consistency a virtue, but social conservatives really don’t. Charges of hypocrisy don’t land for them, because they think hypocrisy is less bad than accepting a behavior that they dislike. Hypocrisy is just one of many human frailties to them, not evidence that one’s judgment might be flawed.
Kent
Every politician who uses the phrase LatinX or BIPOC for one.
My wife is Hispanic and a Democrat. She is a first generation American born and raised in Chile. She also works in a medical practice that is targeted at Hispanics. Or more accurately, she runs Hispanic and Spanish-language clinics within a larger HMO. She will tell you to STOP with the Latin-X and BIPOC stupidity. She is “La Doctora” not “Doctor-X” And she is my “esposa” not my “espos-X. And our daughters are “las niñas”, not the “niñ-Xes.
Narya
@Baud: ding ding ding! I keep explaining that to a friend who is less engaged, more normie, very frustrated, etc. it’s just harder to wrangle when you’re committed to a big tent.
livewyre
@Baud: Really good point. It seems like tolerance itself is what’s being held against us; that we’re expected to fight back against every untested activist slogan or gathering in order to be considered legitimate, rather than taking the demands and energy on board. I wonder what we lose from that.
The Truffle
Liz Cheney voted for Trump. She is not one to talk. Zip it, Liz.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: Harvard and Yale had a big split over it. So did many of the earliest established churches in New England.
livewyre
@Kent: Obviously the real enemy is prescriptivism. There, I said it.
Kent
@Suzanne: I’m just disagreeing with the notion that hard work is a paternalistic or masculine trait. I teach HS and probably 30-40 percent of my students are Latino. I guarantee you that my Latina students share this sentiment. And probably think they are more hard working than the guys. Which is probably true at least academically.
Kropacetic
@livewyre: I’m sure the media, Republicans, and the Bill Mahers out there who demand a Sister Soulah per day only have our best interests at heart.
Kent
Politics is the art of persuasion. All I am saying is that if you want to persuade people you need know how to speak to them. Both in your choice of subject matter and language. Anything else is political malpractice.
You don’t think language matters? Would you use the n-word speaking to a black audience?
brantl
@Martin: Turd Crud is dumb. He just is, I don’t care who was stupid enough to give him a degree, he’s still dumb.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Yes. Our coalition is also made up of many marginalized identity groups who don’t necessarily share goals with other identity groups.
Also, I keep saying but I think it is critical to remember, the GOP’s voters are much more inclined toward authoritarianism and thus they are better at joining a group and sticking with it. The same aversion to authoritarian structure that leans many people more toward the left-liberal viewpoint also makes them averse to joining a party at all, voting even when they don’t see results, and all of the other behaviors of alignment.
cain
@Martin:
You are missing one other vector – thanks to the pandemic, going to a physical location to work is trite now. This means that people can apply for jobs anywhere – and some are moving into the rural areas.
Once that happens, GOP will have a hard time with gerrymandering because left leaning people are moving into those areas they think are R+10. It’s going to really piss of the natives though. :-)
livewyre
@Kent: I sense a grain of truth to that, but from a sideways direction – it could be that it’s not so much hard work being a particular cultural value, so much as that white supremacy demands laziness of its adherents as an affirmative value (that’s then projected on others).
According to it, what they get must be handed to them without effort because they are born supreme. The most entitled supremacist has to be inherently better than the most accomplished “other”, and will sit around as long and as loudly as it takes in order to prove it. Anything shows diligence compared to that.
cain
@raven: amd Tupac!
cain
@Martin: She’s making a bet – if the GOP completely collapses – she’ll be there to pick it up the pieces and lead the party out into the promised man. She will hold incalculable power.
Kent
That notion is mistaken. There are plenty of truly dumb GOPers. Mike Pence, MTG, Gohmert, Boebert, etc. But Ted Cruz is not among them. He is ruthlessly ambitious, amoral, and evil. But he is not dumb.
Omnes Omnibus
This is only true of some kinds of jobs.
livewyre
@Kent: I must be using my words poorly then, because I’m only half disagreeing. My point is that we’re better off not telling others what to say to each other – no matter whether we would prefer it to be more experimental or more traditional, or more formal or more colloquial.
raven
@Immanentize: The Ten Suggestions!
Suzanne
@Kent:
In “White Working Class”, Joan Williams writes about how care work (even though it’s difficult) is seen as women’s work. And she notes that suggestions to men who are displaced from men’s work like manufacturing and construction to transfer into fields like nursing or hospitality are interpreted as deeply emasculating and insulting. Even if they paid the same amount and were just as demanding, men’s work just has higher status to it. I see a lot of that attitude among the many Mexicans I knew and interacted with. That’s what I mean by “toughness” being coded as a more masculine virtue.
Kent
@livewyre: Exactly.
The so-called ‘white working class’ is not really hard-working. What they want is their privilege back and long for the days when they didn’t have to work hard because they gained those union jobs and middle class incomes through privilege before the immigrants and others and globalization came in and took it all away.
Read some of Nick Kristof’s writings about the decline of his old home town of Yamhill in Oregon into a morass of economic decay and drug addiction. I live in that region and my great grandfather built a farm in Yamhill County where my father grew up.
What Kristoff doesn’t tell you is all that decline of the white rural logging economy is happening within easy commuting distance of the most prosperous suburban economic engine in the entire Pacific Northwest outside of the eastern suburbs of Seattle. Beaverton is home to Nike, Intel, and a bazillion other high-paid jobs, construction jobs, etc. All within a 1/2 hour or less commute from the declining farming and timber towns that Kristof describes. They want that high-paid mill job back that their daddy had which required ZERO education They don’t want to get off their buts and seek economic opportunity anywhere else within commuting distance that might require actually being slightly educated.
I am, of course, generalizing. But generalizations have a truth to them. My worst, most difficult, and least motivated students tend to be lower class white kids who are fed a lot of bile at home.
Geminid
Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallegos on Democratic messaging to the Latino community:
Gallegos is a member of the Progressive Caucus, and he’s not making this critique from a “centrist” point of view but rather that of a perceptive Latino politician.
These remarks are excerpts from a Politico Deep Dive podcast interview, and published in the April 22 Politico Playbook. I don’t listen to podcasts but I bet this is a good one.
Gallegos also described preparing his colleagues for battle against the insurrectionists on January 6. Gallegos said that having survived a combat tour in Iraq with the Marines, he was determined that he wasn’t going to die, even if that meant that some of “those fuckers” would die.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I had decided that you were cleverly making the point that they weren’t going to be teaching civics at all.
Suzanne
@livewyre:
As does patriarchy.
Here’s a truth bomb I read this week:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
The problem with all of that is that those high-paying jobs require many years of expensive college education that may or not pay off, and require people to put themselves tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And not everyone is capable of doing those kinds of jobs, nor wants to. Massive income inequality and the decline of unions has absolutely contributed to this. For the past several years university costs have outpaced inflation
However, I will give you the construction jobs
Kent
Yep. Take a deep dive into the whole evangelical notion of “complementarianism” sometime. They have constructed it into an entire religious belief. Patriarchy is a powerful drug. And there are plenty of women who are eager and willing to go along.
raven
@Geminid:
The Truffle
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I really don’t care. I think she knows her political career is mostly over. She will never be a senator or president.
The GOP is starting to eat their own. They started on it quickly.
Suzanne
@Kent:
I spent my formative years in Mesa, Arizona, known as “the most conservative city in America”. I was surrounded by white Mormons, white evangelicals, and Mexican Catholics.
Allow me to tell you about allllllllllll of the ways I was told I would be a disappointment to my family and I would die an old, lonely, fat, cat lady.
Kent
Some jobs do, some don’t. The prosperous fast-growing high tech suburbs are FULL of good-paying jobs that don’t require extensive formal education. It just means getting off your butt in your small declining white town and driving the 1/2 hour into town where you will be forced to work among women and immigrants and other non-white people who will likely kick your ass in terms of productivity. And they are jobs that you can’t simply get because your dad was drinking buddies with the foreman at the VFW.
Now I grant you that there are many places in this country like central Appalachia or the rural Great Plains where that isn’t so much true because they aren’t close to any economic engines. But internal migration for opportunity has been the story of this country for colonial times. This current crop of disgruntled white rural folk are the first who refuse to acknowledge that.
Westyny
@Baud: so we’re stuck with Old Testament Jesus . . .
zhena gogolia
No respite today? I need respite
raven
@Suzanne: Ha, my fascist half brother and his Nazi wife live there but I hear they may move to Texas because Arizona is too liberal!!
Kent
@Suzanne: Yes, I didn’t mean you specifically, but the readership here at large. A lot of people who aren’t from that world have no idea how deeply evangelicals and fundamentalists are invested in that notion.
I come from conservative Mennonite roots which isn’t evangelical but it is fundamentalist. And “my people” are most certainly of that belief. As a guy it didn’t really affect me. But it certainly affected and enraged my female cousins who I was close to in age and sentiment. And I had to sit around and listen to a LOT of lectures from old men who were railing on about “women’s roles” and such going way back to the early 1970s when I first started noticing it.
raven
@zhena gogolia: log off
raven
@Kent: I’m reading “A Hundred Little Hitlers” about Portland.
Suzanne
@raven: Having living in and canvassed thousands of homes in the Phoenix East Valley since the 90s, I want to take an iota of credit for Arizona being “too liberal”. BWAHAHAHAAAAA.
Geminid
@Immanentize: Unitarians also drew from the Congregationalists. The Universalists joined later. They were a mid-19th century outfit that believed in universal salvation.
In his great biography of Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg has Lincoln telling a Universalist joke:
Baud
@Suzanne:
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, a bit of white collar bias there.
Uncle Cosmo
Direct our finite time, effort and cash to increasing turnout among groups that are most likely to increase the net vote for Democrats. IMHO that does NOT include Hispanics, for reasons already enumerated (culturally and religiously conservative, machismo, etc.) as well as others (fragmented by land of origin).
There is a very sound reason Dubya and Jeb were pushing for a “grand bargain” on immigration 10+ years ago – they saw an opportunity to bring the Hispanic vote over to the GOP based on their culture. They misread not only Latinos – who as has been pointed out aren’t particularly worked up over immigration – but their whiter-than-white base (including, e.g., Italian-Americans who were godfathered into the albino persuasion after WW2 & turned into some of the nastiest racists around) which was having none of it
I will happily support efforts to increase turnout among Native Americans and African-Americans (we still have a ways to go there), but not one penny for the same among Hispanics – at best a wash and probably a net loss.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: I’m white collar and I have to go to work
Kent
That happened the year after I graduated college and left Portland for the Peace Corps.
But yes, the Pacific Northwest has no shortage of racists and no shortage of white “moderates” and “liberals” who put up with it for property values, school quality and such. You want to truly see some political hysteria, sit in on some of the school attendance boundary adjustment hearings within the Portland Public schools. It is a whole lot of sotto voce racism expressed in terms of “community schools” “gifted and talented programs” and the like. It is one thing to have a good Ethopian or Salvadoran restaurant in your neighborhood. Another thing entirely to have your kids zoned to the less than highest-rated [and consequently whitest] schools.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: Respectfully put, people are really overthinking this “Boot on human face forever” thing.
raven
@Suzanne: My dad moved up by Bell Road in the late 70’s and my stepmom just sold the house last year.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Fuck those people! Except growing up that way is part of what made you Suzanne, a smart, interesting, successful, not lonely, not fat, independent woman, and as far as I know not cat-lady, not that there’s anything wrong with being a cat lady!
We love you just the way you are.
Kent
@Uncle Cosmo: Nonsense. You could not be MORE wrong.
Take Texas, for example. Biden won Hispanics in Texas 58% to 41%. Whereas his vote among whites in Texas was 33% to 66%.
His margins just weren’t as high as Obama’s or Clintons. But he still won Hispanics and it wasn’t particularly close.
The task is to speak to Hispanic voters, not ignore them or assume you have their vote locked up like you do the Black vote.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
Out of curiosity, what kinds of jobs are those that don’t require extensive formal education?
raven
@Kent: Same as it ever was I guess.
Baud
@Kent:
I don’t think we should take the black vote for granted just because they have disproportionately been voting the right way for a long time.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: I recommend that you read the November 1, 2020 Politico article “Inside the machine to bring out the Latino vote-and turn Arizona Blue.” Reporter Laura Barron-Lopez described the efforts of a coalition of Latino community groups and labor unions whose volunteers visited hundreds of thousands of Arizona households. They believed that in-person outreach was the most effective way to reach their community. So there’s no point in discouraging efforts to reach Latinos, because that horse is already out of the barn.
And this project must not have hurt, because Mark Kelly and Joe Biden got more votes than any other Arizona candidates ever.
Suzanne
@WaterGirl: I went to my 10-year reunion after some heavy persuasion from Mr. Suzanne (his was a couple of months later and we were flying to the Bay Area to attend his). Mine was full of people who were judgey shitheads back then who told me “I always thought you were so cool” and then wanted to party. (Remember what I have said about Kyrsten Sinema and ex-Mormons.) Which, cool, glad you got over yourself, and I was happy to have fun with them that one night. But I had far more fun at Mr. Suzanne’s party, as everyone was far more chill and just was there to have fun without dick-measuring. I did not bother to attend the 20-year.
Ruckus
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I think to a degree it is. She is old school rethuglican. Conservative but not insane. Maybe willing to discuss liberal ideas and to agree with somethings as long as the democrat side grows slowly. I’ve been paying attention for decades and as rethuglicans have lost power to repress they have become far more radical, going in reverse at warp speed. She is old school, that understand that they can’t have everything and can’t stop progress, nor suppress all democratic ideals. She recognizes that it is supposed to be a 2 way street, not the 4 lane, high speed backwards concept admired by those that see the founding of this country was a mistake.
Another Scott
@Geminid: Tyop
RepRubenGallego
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who honestly isn’t trying to be your editor/stalker.”)
Baud
@Another Scott:
Funni.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
That’s so sad. People who never actually grew up. Did they peak in high school?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Hilari
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I peaked at age 3.
Uncle Cosmo
I don’t want to actively discourage those efforts. If someone considers it their calling to bring those voters into the Democratic column, they should have at it. I simply wouldn’t support them to the detriment of others I consider more likely to produce good outcomes. The bazillionaires of the Greedy Oligarchs Party are going to outspend us everywhere and anywhere just with the change they find under the seat cushions of their yachts; we need to be smart about where we put our resources.
Geminid
@Another Scott: That’s ok. I often make these repetitive mispellings and am glad to be corrected, as you did once with @eclecticbrotha.
Starfish
@Uncle Cosmo: One thing that a lot of people seem to miss in doing these demographic breakdowns is that the Latino voter is not one monolithic thing.
The Latino voters may reflect some broader community values in the region that they are in. If people like guns here, chances are ALL the people there like guns.
If people are liberal on issues like education funding, then the Latino voters may reflect that value. It is not all the same in all the states.
They may have different priorities, but the priorities may align with everyone else in some ways.
Mi Familia Vota was doing a lot to turn out Latino voters in the southwest.
What I noticed from acting as a circulator (a person who registers people to vote) is that other circulators that I was with were not asking Latinos or fat people if they were registered to vote, assuming that Latinos were not eligible and assuming that fat people were conservatives.
We were in an area that was purplish so in registering people to vote, we were definitely registering some Republicans.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: Got it.
Have your neighbors been able to move back in yet? That fire was some time ago now, but repairs can take quite a while..
And there was bad Chesapeake Bay news today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The crab population is crashing. Again.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, sorta. Lots of people raised to be socially conservative / working class get disillusioned when they fall away from their church, can’t make a good living with their assistant store manager gig, and figure out the nerdy liberals were right all along. But by the time they figure it out, they’ve often got kids to support and not much education to do it with.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Hey, nothing wrong with that. Trump threw his dinner against the WH walls. Presidential!
Suzanne
@Starfish: Mr. Suzanne and I volunteered multiple times with Mi Familia Vota. (Mr.Suzanne speaks fluent Spanish and i am passable.) We always circulated and asked all the Latino people we encountered when we were circulating. Maybe 1 person out of 40, at most, was eligible to register. Many were undocumented, DREAMers, and I’m sure there were some felons, too.
different-church-lady
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Congressional representative.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
‘@Kent:
@different-church-lady:
LOL. I should clarify that I meant the jobs Kent was talking about that don’t require a ton of formal education
Southern Goth
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The joke back in the 90s was that you could get a job in IT if you could spell HTML.
Companies have gotten a lot pickier since then but there are different parts of IT where a certification or two and some college could get your foot in the door.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There’s a lot of office and admin jobs that don’t require a degree. Admin assistants, document control, accounting assistants, etc. Cities that have lots of professional service firms have a lot of these jobs.
Geminid
@Starfish: My take on the first and second generation Latino immigrants I’ve worked with and live among is that they want what any smart working class person wants: good work at good pay, decent health care, and opportunity for education and upward mobility for themselves and their children. When it comes to policy, we don’t need to try and pick some ethnic lock. Ways and means of propagating Democratic messaging might be a different story, but that is not esoteric information either.
Another Scott
@Geminid: When J’s folks were living with us, we had home health aids to help out during the day and at night (2 shifts). Most were African immigrants – Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia. Lots of good people.
I was surprised when I heard the Ethiopian woman mutter under her breath in exasperation once about “those Africans…”.
IOW, People are People. Even when they seem to be members of larger groups to us outsiders, they shouldn’t be pigeon-holed. There’s no magic incantation to get “Latinos” or “Blacks” or “white women” or “GenXers” or “LBGQT+” to agree with and support a particular Democratic candidate. Meet people where they are and tailor the message to their concerns when you can.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Every job I’ve had in my decades has required going to work. Machinist/mold maker. Professional sports. Bicycle shop owner.
None of these, or jobs like them can be done from home. Most jobs that can be done from home are less than 30 or so years old. Even a clerk typist had to go to work before home computers and massive internet.
Felanius Kootea
@Suzanne:
This is partly true. The one thing all marginalized groups share is wanting to belong, to be seen, heard, and to feel that they can contribute and that their contributions are valued.
This is very significant for coalition building (going back to Kamala Harris’s remarks) and the only party interested in coalition building that helps these groups achieve their goals right now is the Democratic party.
I’m not sure why more people don’t see and value this. I have Nigerian-American relatives here in the US who are Evangelicals but they understood not to vote for Republicans or Trump out of a self-preservation instinct. We (Democratic party we) should help build people’s understanding of what’s going on in the US, especially because those who’ve lived under authoritarian rule and came here to get away from it will do everything in their power to make sure it doesn’t happen here.
Republicans have figured some of this out and sadly used it to scare Venezuelan-descent voters in Florida into voting against Biden by portraying him as the type of socialist/communist their families were trying to get away from. Democrats can play offense here, not just defense. That’s why I like Gavin Newsom’s ad. I don’t know how it plays to white Americans but I know how it plays to some immigrants who want “freedom” and to belong.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Starfish: Just two of the initiatives that I think would appeal to and help Latinos: Universal Pre-K, and free Community College. Magdi Semrau and others say that Universal Pre-K would be a gamechanger in public education. That and free community college would mean a lot to working class and middle class people of all varieties, and these investments in our human capital would benefit every American in the long run.
Baud
@Geminid:
I was surprised to learn that Biden is still talking to Machine and Sinemana about the BBB bill. I’m glad to be surprised because I’d prefer that sausage making to happen outside the media this time. That said, I don’t know if pre-K and community college are still under discussion. Those are two things I was particularly upset about losing because of the Diabolical Duo’s intransigence. (And I wouldn’t benefit personally from either.)
Geminid
@Baud: The way I heard it, it’s Schumer trying to work something out with Manchin. At this point, that’s probably the most efficient way to get whatever can be gotten, and with the least process publicity.
Baud
@Geminid:
Makes perfect sense. Although I can’t imagine the Biden people aren’t somewhere in the deep background.
Ruckus
@Baud:
So I did have you correctly pegged.
Geminid
@Baud: I would not benefit directly either, but we both would get to live in a less dysfunctional and more prosperous society and that would be our return on these investments.
Kent
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Scads of high-tech manufacturing jobs. Down the street from me is a company called WaferTech that manufactures semiconductors. I took my Materials Science students there for a field trip. They have a hard-time recruiting good people for what are essentially high-tech manufacturing jobs. They hire a lot of engineers, but also a lot of people with tech-related associates degrees for technician jobs. They pay well and have upward mobility.
A LOT other manufacturing type jobs, logistics jobs, warehouse jobs, etc. have decent entry level salaries and upward mobility. They are certainly as good or better than many of the millworking jobs that rural folks around whine are all gone because of the spotted owl or whatever. They are just mostly located in the suburbs, not backwoods rural logging towns.
A lot of allied health care jobs don’t require tremendous education either. Just *some*.
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid: The house looks pretty well finished from the outside but there must be things left to do inside, because no one has moved back in.
TBH I give less than 50-50 odds they’ll reoccupy – the mother is in her late 80s and has some cognitive decline and I expect her to continue living with a son in DC pending a slot in assisted living . The other son who lived there is unemployed & living on Social Security – I doubt he has the resources to cover taxes and utilities as well as living expenses. I have a feeling the place will be on the market in a couple of months.
Kent
Yes, universal pre-K would be a gamechanger.
Community college is already pretty cheap. What we need is BETTER community college. But that is a whole other subject. As a teacher I see a whole lot of students go off to community college and basically get into an academic track that is nothing more than taking the preliminary prereqs for a traditional 4-year degree. But they don’t ever then transfer on to a 4-year school and then are left with a useless degree as opposed to taking a terminal technical degree that has jobs waiting.
They didn’t like English, Math, and Science when they were in HS and guess what, they still don’t really like those same classes when they are at community college. So drift away back to that mall job or whatever they were doing in HS but now with student loans and nothing else to show for it.
Baud
@Kent:
Interesting. I had thought community college was really popular and useful for folks.
Raven
@Kent: When I immediately flunked out of Illinois myself and a bunch of my “cohort” went to the local CC. We got the GI Bill and could drop a course the last day without penalty. It was a great way to pump that GPA. It took years but it eventually paid off for me.
Geminid
@Baud: Joe Biden to Ron Klain: “Tell Chuck and Joe that I’m too busy to hear details, but you guys keep plugging and I’ll sign whatever you come up with. And let Joe know that I haven’t forgotten about those appointments and administrative actions he wants. I’m just really busy right now. I know he’ll understand.”
“And Ron? Call Geminid! Honus has his number.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
@Suzanne:
@Southern Goth:
Hmm. I should consider these. Though, I don’t know where to look, tbh. I remember in college they had “road maps” that showed what classes a degree needed and what sequence they should be completed in. Is there anything like that?
Baud
@Geminid:
Heh.
Kent
Community college and technical college are two different things. Even if they are often part of the same school. But often they are not. I used to live and teach in Waco, TX.
This is the local community college: https://www.mclennan.edu/
This is the local technical college a few miles away: https://www.tstc.edu/
Notice the difference and difference in emphasis. The technical college is all about technical training and workforce training and there is none of the “get your basics out of the way so you can transfer to a 4-year school”.
Way too many kids are convinced by school/society/parents that what they need is a COLLEGE EDUCATION by which they mean a 4-year degree. At the same time there is a whole mindset that the correct inexpensive pathway towards that end is go “get your basics out of the way” at the local community college then transfer on to that big 4-year school which is likely in some distant city.
But only something like 10% of students who start down that path actually finish it. Meanwhile they could have gone to a technical/trade school and studied something they were actually interested in and have a good paying job in the same amount of time rather than a job back at the mall and student loans hanging over their heads.
Starfish
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think some of them may require being a journeyman of some sort.
– Here is a path for a journeyman electrician. It may vary where you are.
– Diesel mechanic school
– Welding school
– HVAC school
Forklift driver is on the super low end of things that you need to get certified for. Crane operators may be at the high end.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kent:
The GOP harps on “personal responsibility” and “bootstraps” to feed into “their minorities are lazy takers” schtick so their supporters turn against the very policies that would help them. Supporting family values? They surely don’t support policies that make it easier to have and raise a family or care about health and well being beyond the womb.
The GOP talks the talk on these issues. They don’t support them. That is what I think needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
Kent
And no, community colleges are struggling because they don’t do enough relevant job-force technical training. Community college enrollments are dropping around the country even as populations are growing. And it isn’t just the cost. Tuition at most community colleges has been relatively stable. It’s the fancy 4-year schools that have had so much recent price inflation.
NotMax
‘@zhena gogolia
Apparently no Medium Cool nor alternative thereto either.
::pouts::
Ruckus
@Kent:
This has been going on for at least 60 yrs. Community college can be great but it is often geared to getting students who didn’t excel in HS ready to go to a 4 yr college at a far reduced cost if you aren’t taking certain directions.
Iron City
@Immanentize:
Not an expert on Unitarian history by any means but as I recall the denomination formerly known as Congregationalist was folded in fairly recently. I think that covers the Adams family at least, maybe others.
artem1s
dumbass. that was the plan all along. The wingnuts have taken over thanks to your father’s fuckery from Nixon forward. The Cheney Regency and Bush New World Order has been despised by the white christian nationalist who are now turning the US into a fascist state. You thought you were using a bunch of dumb rubes to get W elected – and kept the evil Clintons away from your best donors. Turns out those dumb rubes have turned on you now. The MAGAt Brownshirsts want to destroy the GOP even more than they want to destroy the libs.
Southern Goth
@Kent:
4-year engineering/tech programs in Georgia at Georgia Tech and SPSU had co-op programs where you would alternate work and school.
For those who aren’t familiar, it’s like an internship except you got paid a market wage for the job.
Geminid
@Kent: I think some of the more useful training community colleges around here give is in the health care field. CNA’s, LPNs, radiology technicians, etc. My friend Debbie was able to earn her nursing degree at Piedmont Community College, just outside Charlottesville.
Evidently some community colleges have very good academic reputations. At least, when I read an article about Congresswoman Sharice Davids, the writer mentioned that Johnson County Community College, the school near Kansas City that she attended, was well known for it’s academic quality.
Geminid
@Geminid: I guess Kansans must have taken pride in the state’s community college system. That may be one reason they elected Laura Kelly Governor in 2018, trying to stem the decline in their state’s institutions brought by Republican rule.
Starfish
@Geminid: Some people have accused CNA programs of directing certain students towards some of the lowest-paying, most labor-intensive programs in the medical field.
Raven
@Southern Goth: UGA now too
Jay
@Baud:
Up here, “Community Colleges”* are where you go to for 2 years to up your grades, ( or take classes you didn’t take), to get into a University program, or,
Get a technical certificate, ( 2 year or less) in a specialized White Collar job like web design, or, ( see asterisk),
Take a 4 year program that provides a lesser valued by employers, degree similar to a known University for lower cost.
*BC libs “bumped” up most Community Colleges to “University” status by offloading a bunch of Provincially run education programs on to them. Eg, Thompson Rivers University.
A bunch of the former “Community Colleges” also had regional Technical programs along with several full Technical Institutes. The “gate” on Trades programs is still the same as 40 years ago. You take a 6 month pre-Apprentice program, then need to find a sponsor, ( Employer) willing to pay you to get 6 months hands on experience. You do 4 years of that then take your Red Seal exams, ( which also weight both your past classroom grades, and employment history and references).
Almost no established Company in the trades want’s to hire a first year Apprentice when they can “poach” a more experienced 2nd or 3rd year Apprentice for the same wage. Out of my Class of 36 graduates, only 2 got apprenticeships, one through his Dad, who owned a “shop”, the other through his high placed Uncle in “the Union”. Jacob, at the place I used to work, was the only one last year, of the 48 graduates in his class to get an Apprenticeship, as an electrical apprentice, due to “contacts”, despite a massive demand for the Trade in the Lower Rainland.
Geminid
@Starfish: I’m sure they do. My area has a lot of nursing homes in addition to it’s major medical center. The CNAs’ cheap labor just benefits upper management and ownership, not patients. The patients suffer for it I think.
I guess the remedy for this is a higher minimum wage and eventually, unionization. Maybe if the CNAs see unions organize Amazon and Starbucks they’ll see the possibilities. We need to keep the presidency in Democratic hands though so Republicans can’t tilt the balance between labor and ownership back in ownership’s favor. We’ll all suffer if that happens.
topclimber
@Kent:
A two-year degree and some years of work makes getting the next two years of undergrad education a lot easier. At least, that is what anecdotal evidence has taught me.
A student with a job treats coursework like a job. There is a lot less drama and foot-draggin/-shooting than compared to more privileged types who don’t need to work at all. In other words, work brings a maturity that helps deal with school. Another bonus: many schools offer credit for lifetime experience, as well as co-op courses that employers might be more interested in funding than , say, Nietzschean philosophy.
The problem is less the rationale for a 4-year community college than it is unrealistic expectations. Many students cannot afford years 3-4 without full-time jobs. Part-time attendance means that many don’t finish until year 6.
Colleges must tell incoming students that and teach them that there are multiple paths to the credential and/or education they desire.
Gvg
@Martin: statistics is counting large numbers. A few exceptions do not disprove the trends. In fact their have to be exceptions.