Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

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

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

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

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Putting in the Work

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Across the aisle…

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  3. 3.

    JMG

    So last evening-night we went to our first holiday party in three years, a what used-to-be-annual event held by an old college friend and his super nice girlfriend/partner of some years at Boston’s University Club near Copley Square. Negative covid test on day of event requested (universal compliance) by hosts. It was very pleasant to stand around and barber with some folks I know well and some I don’t. Two observations. The University Club has a very strong hors d’oeuvre game. In the pandemic interregnum, a fair number of these folks have taken up the Manhattan as their cocktail party drink of choice. Definitely some sociology grad student’s thesis material there.

  11. 11.

    Geminid

    @rikyrah: I think any aware person who’s lived in the South knows that many Black people live in rural areas from Delaware to Louisiana.

    There is a stereotype, though that rural people are white. This overlooks the Black, Hispanic and Native people. It’s like the people fixated on the white working class who ignore all the non-white working class people. I see this sometimes with people’s attitudes about union members.

  17. 17.

    Anyway

    @JMG:

    Yep,this year my group resumed a longstanding  Holiday get-together tradition that was on hold during Covid. We met yesterday — ate, drank, gossipped, caught-up, exchanged gifts a la “Dirty Santa” . My schmoozing muscles had to work overtime.

  18. 18.

    Geminid

    @rikyrah: I’m not so sure Barnes, Beasley, and Ryan made “terrible” campaign decisions. Questionable, maybe.

    Some of this is the license people feel to dunk on losers. With a one point swing in Mandela’s race, for instance, people would be talking about his “brilliant” campaign decisions. My Congresswoman’s campaign messaging was not that different than Ryan’s, and she would have been pummeleled on this score had she lost. She won by 5 points though, so people with axes to grind have to sharpen them on Democrats who lost tough races.

    I think it’s useful to critique lost races, including and the candidates’ strategy and messaging. That is, if it’s done without bias or agenda. I think there is more to be learned from successful campaigns by Democrats like Mary Peltola, Sharice Davids, Marie Glusenkamp Perez and others

    And I do not get the connection between Sinema’s defefection and the three other candidates. If the writer wants to say that Cheri Beasley, Tim Ryan, and Mandela Barnes would have been like Kyrsten Sinema, they out to come out and say it, instead of insinuating it. But explicit or implicit, I think it’s a bullshit argument.

  19. 19.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    There is a stereotype, though that rural people are white.

    If you’re in the Northeast, West Coast, or Midwest, that’s all you see: blacks in the cities, and whites in the countryside.

    So that’s all our media talking heads and pundits have seen.  And that’s the image of America that they present.

    In the Great Migration of the early to mid 20th century, Black people migrated to the cities of the aforementioned regions: among other things, that’s where the jobs were at. But of course many didn’t migrate; their descendants still live in or near the areas where their ancestors had once worked the land in servitude to white landowners, both under slavery and under Jim Crow.

    But that latter group, though numbering many millions, is invisible to most white people who’ve never lived in the rural South.

    But the NYT pundit, whoever it was, shouldn’t worry: there are still plenty of rural whites in South Carolina.  The upstate part of SC was never plantation country, so the rural folks there are largely white.  I’m sure s/he can find a suitable diner there.

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: I think the connection is that if one or more of those other three had won, Sinema would have ceased to matter.

    ETA: I’m highly skeptical of anyone who’s criticizing a losing candidate’s campaign decisions if they only noticed the faults in those decisions after the votes were counted.

    More ETA: Considering how little attention the campaign of Beasley in particular was getting, I automatically discount criticism of her campaign.

  25. 25.

    Cameron

    @Geminid: As somebody who lived in Philadelphia starting in the late 60s, I can tell you that back then ‘construction union’ meant ‘white.’  It took the Nixon (!) administration to force the unions to open their membership rolls.

  27. 27.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Cameron:

    @rikyrah: I have some friends who live in Denmark, SC.  They would be very surprised to learn that it isn’t rural.

    I’d have to look up where the line between urban and rural is drawn these days, but it’s lower than you think.  I remember from history courses that when the U.S. reached the point ca. 1920 when it was more urban than rural, that meant that more than half the population lived in towns of at least 5000 population.

  28. 28.

    gene108

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I wonder what this reporter will do when he/she/they encounters a black farmer and realizes there’s whole communities of black farmers in SC? 🤷‍♀️🤷🤷‍♂️🤦‍♀️🤦🤦‍♂️🙀🤯

  29. 29.

    JML

    @rikyrah: what, we’re going to blame Mandela Barnes for the fact that Ron Johnson and the WI ran an incredibly racist campaign against him and won? We’re going to blame Barnes for the fact that the WI GOP has made it harder to vote?

    His campaign wasn’t perfect, but almost no campaign ever is…and even ones where you do everything “right” you still lose. WI is still tough territory for Democrats state-wide; Tony Evers as a sitting governor barely survived. If he’d been a challenger, he almost certainly would have lost. Barnes lost because Ron Johnson is an incumbent senator, and incumbency matters, especially in a close race.

    It worked to our favor in GA. Not so much in WI. It worked for us in NV & AZ. Not so much in WI. It’s really really hard to flip a seat against an incumbent.

  31. 31.

    HinTN

    comes across as warm, human compared to Blake Masters

    That just about captures everything you need to know about today’s GQP.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I saw some of this stereotyping here, when the funding for broadband in the Infrastructure bill was discussed. One commenter had a grudge against rural white people, and made a “pearls before swine” argument against.  But besides ignoring the Black people who live in rural areas, he also bought the stereotype that broadband funding for underserved people helps country folk alone. A lot of that money is going to underserved urban communities.

    Another aspect to this was that the Infrastructure bill was disparaged generally on account of the circumstances of its passage. Some people wanted to belittle its provisions because of more general controversies.

  34. 34.

    mrmoshpotato

    @lowtechcyclist:

    If you’re in the Northeast, West Coast, or Midwest, that’s all you see: blacks in the cities, and whites in the countryside. 

    My white ass farts in your general direction from Chicago.

  37. 37.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Good morning, everyone!

    Is Baud okay? It just struck me that I haven’t seen him around lately. But I’ll admit to having skimmed/skipped some threads recently.

  38. 38.

    rikyrah

    @Geminid:

    And I do not get the connection between Sinema’s defefection and the three other candidates. If the writer wants to say that Cheri Beasley, Tim Ryan, and Mandela Barnes would have been like Kyrsten Sinema, they out to come out and say it, instead of insinuating it. But explicit or implicit, I think it’s a bullshit argument.

    If we had won just ONE of these races, Sinema and Manchin could be whole azz clowns, and it wouldn’t matter, because we would not need them at all. Not even a little bit. Let alone, if we had won 2 out of the three.

     

    Their inability to get across the finish line, means that we have to deal with Sinema at all. If we had 51 legit Democrats, we wouldn’t remotely have to be nice to that Trifling Trick.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    @sab:

    My first hangover was from eating cherries out of manhatten glasses age five at a wedding reception. Major parental fail there. 

    Apparently they were delicious. 😁

  42. 42.

    rikyrah

    @JML:

    what, we’re going to blame Mandela Barnes for the fact that Ron Johnson and the WI ran an incredibly racist campaign against him and won? We’re going to blame Barnes for the fact that the WI GOP has made it harder to vote?

     

    We are going to blame him for not maximizing the Black turnout in places like Milwaukee, by not hooking up with organizations that could have helped him. It was Wisconsin, why the phuck did he bring in Bernie, and not cling himself to actual Democrats that bring out the BASE of the Democratic Party.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    From WaPo’s story this morning on how Crazy Kari Lake lost the election:

    A meaningful share of Republican voters showed up to the polls but spurned Lake. Statewide, she received nearly 120,000 fewer votes than did the victorious Republican candidate for state treasurer, Kimberly Yee, who stressed financial literacy and fiscal discipline on the campaign trail instead of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Nine percent of self-described Republicans went so far as to vote for Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs, according to exit polling. Independents broke for Hobbs by seven percentage points.

    While early signs of Lake’s undoing now blink brightly, the race was close. She lost to Hobbs by just 17,000 votes — less than a percentage point. And she ran ahead of Blake Masters, the GOP nominee for Senate. “There’s all this hand-wringing, but with a margin that close, there were a bunch of ways to close the gap,” said Sam Stone, Lake’s policy director. The biggest barrier, Stone said, is that the “majority of Arizonans don’t want to vote for Trump or Trump-affiliated candidates.”

    A lot depends on whether or not the GOP can get past Long MAGA.

  48. 48.

    sab

    @rikyrah: I talked to a Black friend of mine who is someone I feel comfortable talking politics with. Sure enough, she said she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Tim Ryan because she didn’t trust him to support Biden. Her son was furious with her for not voting straight Democratic party ticket.

    Our city has been split between two congressional districts. I live in Ryan’s. She lives in Marcia Fudge’s so she never paid attention to Ryan except when he did stupid stuff like attack Pelosi.

    Ryan assumed he would have a lock on the Black vote, which is a dangerous assumption for an Italian/Irish American man.  Too bad because I think he would be a good senator.

  49. 49.

    ryk

    Trump is not campaigning, but he’s selling merchandise. Saturday night I found myself sitting across a table from a guy wearing a shiny new campaign hat. It was black with the logo Trump 2024 – Save America Again riding on an American flag, and it had Trump’s signature embroidered on the brim in gold. It was a way nicer than the plain red MAGA trucker hat. I bet it was expensive. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t say a word about it even though I had a few beers in me.

  50. 50.

    sab

    @Geminid: My husband spent the whole general election throwing shoes at the tv every time he saw a Ryan ad.  “You can’t even tell that he supports any Democratic policies! He’s letting DeWine take full credit for the Intel plant! The rest of the state knows nothing about him and he’s keeping it that way.”

  51. 51.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @rikyrah: <- Discounting the possibility that a black Democrat can feel an affinity toward Bernie. I didn’t follow the Barnes campaign so I’ll believe you that he could have done more explicit outreach to the black community as well.  But let’s build more bridges across our coalition.

  52. 52.

    MisterDancer

    @lowtechcyclist: their descendants still live in or near the areas where their ancestors had once worked the land in servitude to white landowners, both under slavery and under Jim Crow.

    Both my Parents grew up on Southern farms very near the city — so near that the lands are now in the city limits.

    By most measures, they and my Grandparents were farmers. They dd it because they were lucky enough to own land, and they used that land to ensure they kept themselves and loved ones fed. I know this is a major reason why my Mother because a Restaurant Owner, many times over — she grew up with food being a challenge, and never wanted anyone to go thru that, if she could help it.

    And yes, there are Black farmers in my area, to this day.

  53. 53.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @ryk: My town which voted about 60/40 for Clinton and Biden has a dedicated Trump store which has been open since the first campaign.

    Someone drove their vehicle through the store front while it was closed for the night. First time I’ve ever LOLd at domestic terrorism.

    Don’t think they should have done it. But I can’t help my initial emotional reaction.

  54. 54.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: The press believes the ‘average person’ in the U.S. is a white man. That’s why they relentlessly try to find out what white men think and do, and then portray it as “average” and “normal”. As long as they believe this, the idea that all factory workers are white and all rural people are white will continue. To be fair, within a 100 mile radius of where I live probably 98% of the rural people are white, because the vast majority of the people in SWMO are white.

  55. 55.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: I think what the writer is trying to say is that if any or all of those people had won their races what Sinema did would matter a lot less.

  57. 57.

    jonas

    @rikyrah: Read that one yesterday, too. Here’s the shorter Mr. Butthurt Iowa guy: “Over the past generation, globalization and ag industry consolidation have gutted rural America. Democrats should have done more to stop this somehow and now they’re moving their first primary to SC. So rural whites have no choice but to vote for Trump.”

    He’s right that rural whites can mutilate their noses to spite their faces like few other electoral groups in modern America. Where he’s wrong, of course, is that it’s about economic anxiety. It was never about economics.

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Cameron: Yes, that’s how it used to be. This year, when the 30 some unions of the Philadelphia association of construction unions, the man at the press conference microphone was a Black man, their president.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @sab:

    I just think this ignores Ohio’s rightward turn, which I don’t think can be denied. I completely understand the anger from people in blue parts in Ohio – that the blood red smaller counties are setting the agenda for the whole state – but I don’t think any of us can deny it happened.

    Democrats in Ohio cant run on turnout in urban areas anymore. It doesn’t work. Ryan tried something else- it didn’t work either but that may just mean we are now a red state.

  68. 68.

    WereBear

    @Suzanne: A lot depends on whether or not the GOP can get past Long MAGA.

     
    I love that! I’m also fond of the Snowball Analogy, as the Republicans squeeze out anyone with a shred of decency to make an ice ball.

  71. 71.

    WereBear

    @sab: He’s also made missteps before. I don’t think he’s as gifted at politics as he is elsewhere, which I can’t remember or look up right because there’s a new movie with that name and for heaven’s sake.

    Bailing on the attempt.

  72. 72.

    jonas

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
      I thought the word limit had both to do with what Dorsey wanted communication to look like and what the underlying tech architecture would handle most efficiently. Can Twitter still work as a site if everyone’s posting Moby Dick-length rants about whatever?

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @sab:

    My read of Ohio’s whole history is it has always had to decide whether to be a midwest Great Lakes state or whether to be an Appalachian state like Kentucky and it has always tipped towards “Great Lakes state” partly because the north was the manufacturing powerhouse and the center has the giant university and both north and center had tons of scrappy, ambitious immigrants.

    But in what seems to be a conscious, but absolutely mystifying and tragic decision, Ohians have now chosen “Appalachian” and to shut out all immigrants.

  77. 77.

    Soprano2

    @WereBear: Maher is less and less funny as time goes on. He said on his last show of the year that he thought it was great that Musk fired half the workforce at Twitter because he thinks they’re all lazy young people who don’t do anything anyway. Figures he’d be a big Musk fanboy. I think right-wingers aren’t funny because they have a hateful sense of humor – everything they think is funny is something mean at someone else’s expense.

  78. 78.

    WereBear

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Sounds like a rant invitation. Who says he’s not giving the customers what they want?

    Reminds me of how Breyer’s muscled Ben & Jerry’s into giving up control, to save their employees and their own investment.

    Because they knew, as the recipe list got longer and longer, fewer and fewer would notice. And Ben & Jerry are still doing good works.

    It’s not the same ice cream.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @sab:

    You sort of understand it with Florida- they have a far Right celebrity governor who owns the libs every day, they have beaches and warm weather and high growth, but Ohio? WTF? Who do they imagine is going to move here now that it’s far Right?

  83. 83.

    jonas

    @Kay: ​
     

    Ohians have now chosen “Appalachian” and to shut out all immigrants.

    Which makes sense, because when I think of “economic dynamism,” and “progress,” I think of WV or eastern Kentucky.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

     He said on his last show of the year that he thought it was great that Musk fired half the workforce at Twitter because he thinks they’re all lazy young people who don’t do anything anyway

    Scratch an antiwokster, find a cranky middle aged person who resents younger people. They aren’t aging well and it will only get worse as they get older and less and less relevant.
    The problem with pronoun jokes is not that they’re “incorrect”, its that they’re not funny.

  85. 85.

    WereBear

    I’m not dumping on anyone staying on Twitter. Because I’m there for animal rescue, it’s an activist population of kind-hearted people attractive to bullies. I could see their field day coming.

    My accounts, both personal and Cat Business, are currently sending me sometimes anguished alerts but I need to stay away. I left a forwarding address and I have limited energies. If they can make it to my fort, they can get out :)

    I see many I follow responding by curating their feeds, but they are not reckoning the $8 monthly fee. That’s like a streaming fee. It will drive humanitarian operations off, and some already have left knowing they will be targeted.

    For some of them, it might be worth the $8 but there’s no contract with the Ego Monster who “bought” it. You know, when I go the the grocery store, they won’t take a complicated stock maneuver and wish me a good day. I wonder why that’s so…

  86. 86.

    sab

    @Kay: I go back and forth on this. I see your point, but he really did nothing to attract actual Democrats. I think Emilia Sykes and Shontel Brown pulled him over the line in Cuyahoga and Summit counties rather than him towards the top of the ticket helping them.

    If I was a rural Democrat I don’t know if I would have bothered to vote this year.

    I guess we will see with Sherrod Brown in 2024.

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @jonas:

    Right? I live as far North in Ohio as you can go but in a rural conservative area and the place is lousy with confederate flags the last ten years. We have a statue on the courthouse square honoring Union soldiers. Some of these people are on the opposite side of their own ancestors on slavery. It’s fucking bizarre.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @sab:

    Fetterman actually did change margins in Pennsylvania Trump counties (what Ryan tried to do in Ohio- just shift them 5 towards Democrats) so it can be done. Not here, apparently, but in other places.

  89. 89.

    Cameron

    @Geminid: Things actually can – and sometimes do – change.  Unfortunately, in Florida, where I live now, the political changes are….hmm, what’s a nice way to say this?…..’about celebrating our (wink, wink) American values’….yeah, that’s the ticket.

  91. 91.

    MisterDancer

    @jonas:  Twitter’s original power was around SMS. The original character limit was so that you could send a text to Twitter, which was a huge deal back when most phones didn’t have Internet. It meant you could post and read Twitter with just a regular cell connection.

    I thought 240 was a god compromise that didn’t break Twitter’s look/feel but allowed for more expression. I’m not sure what 4K characters really brings to the table vis a vis other services.

  92. 92.

    sab

    @Kay: My family is 7th generation Ohioans, but the in-laws are mostly Chinese, and they don’t feel welcome here anymore. Pretty much all of them moved to California as soon as they graduated from Ohio State. Even the mixed race nephews born in Ohio fled.

    Tim Ryan jumping on the China Bashing band wagon didn’t help. And it didn’t win him many votes. JD Vance with his lovely wife came across as the pro-immigrant choice

    ETA DeWine represented industrial growth with the Intel plant. Ryan represented Appalachia which hates anything new.

  93. 93.

    Geminid

    I think Twitter’s short form communication can be effective. A good example  is Hakeem Jeffries’ tweet on Saturday;

    Violent insurrectionists and extreme MAGA republicans are melting down over repeated election losses.

    So they accuse Democrats of undermining democracy.

    Get lost.

    And from yesterday:

    Dems are working hard to move America forward.

    The extremists want to turn back the clock.

    Not happening.

  95. 95.

    WereBear

    To expand on the Mastodon/Twitter environments, my two accounts are already diverging how I handle my messaging. I follow illness/disabled communities. I would be meticulous about alt text and audio options in an effort at exclusivity.

    This got response on Mastodon immediately. Such an attitude fits into their environment and is welcoming. I think the more communities discover the lack of hustle culture, the more genuine our exchange.

    On Twitter, something seemed to subtly downgrade otherwise identical posts, depending on what was probably taken as a political tilt?  The hashtags I used to alert certain populations? Was this part of diverting low income streams, in a way no one would notice in a different kind of group? Who knows what Twitter is up to? We know we can’t trust present or past management.

    For AL’s purposes, there is no substitute. And when the $8 gate comes down that will change things, too.

    If that’s the kind of admission to be paid to keep what is a vital connection somewhat limping along in the hopes it will revive, I have no problem with that. I never liked Facebook, it was no problem for me to quit. But I like Twitter, for much the same reasons many stay, at whatever level they can manage.

    It’s like me publishing with Amazon and getting some hard to find stuff delivered on a monthly basis. This keeps my carbon down and my books selling on their platform. We don’t always have choices.

    For me, leaving Twitter for Mastodon was an upgrade. I have a list of shelters in my email list. One way or another, we are people who find each other.

    But that’s not what is going on. Twitter was a vital part of holding journalists’ accountable. If anyone smart is left in the Republican corporate press, that is another motive to destroy it as a livable place.

  99. 99.

    kalakal

    Chair of Outreach: Senator Bernie Sanders

    ?? Seems strange. I thought Senator Shouty McPointyfinger’s entire thing was that economic class differences were all and that factors such as gender, race, etc had nothing to do with peoples woes. Not sure how that flies these days

  101. 101.

    sab

    @Kay: Ethnic Chinese and others who look Chinese are getting murdered all across America, and Tim Ryan decides China bashing is a good approach.

  102. 102.

    M31

    @Kay: The problem with pronoun jokes is not that they’re “incorrect”, its that they’re not funny.

    I was told this joke by a 9-year-old:

    What are chocolate’s pronouns?

    “Her/She”

    the kids are alright

  103. 103.

    Geminid

    @Qrop Non Sequitur: Fetterman and Ryan’s approaches were similar in that they both tried to cut down Republican margins in small towns and rural counties. I think the difference that determined the outcome was their respective state’s demographics.

    And while Fetterman is often depicted as a “bold progressive” his campaign messaging was in line with Mr. Shapiro’s. Anyway, Senator Bob Casey Jr., a white bread moderate if there ever was one, carried Pennsylvania by over 600,000 in 2018 without any special Fetterman sauce.

  104. 104.

    WereBear

    @BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: Thank you, Captain :) my brain is low this morning. Somehow the fall turned into everything all at once and we are actually glad to have the world slow down with last night’s first real snowfall.

    Which is very late, for us. No wonder I have trouble keeping myself anchored in the proper space-time continuum.

  105. 105.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: maybe that’s the point?  They’ve managed to drive out enough progressives/young people and make it unappealing, so now it’s their Nice Red Wonderland and no one’s going to move in?

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @sab:

    Oh, I agree. The DNA of the state is “midwest progressive” in the older sense of “progressive”, meaning “progress”. It’s perfectly reflected in the early state constitution(s). A focus on education and the public good, a huge influence by progressive, religious Protestants. But Right wing politics are now completely nationalized – Ohio Republicans are as far Right as any other group of Republicans in the generic “own the libs” celebrity way.

    I dont even recognize them as “midwestern” anymore. There’s no prudence or careful stewardship or eye on long term growth- they use it up or burn it down. Reckless.

  107. 107.

    Leto

    @WereBear: I’m sure you know this, but it wasn’t Breyers. It was parent company Unilever. Unilever owns both and it’s sort of a “ofc Uni was going to eliminate everything that made X special in order to maximize profits”. Tale as old as time…

  108. 108.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:

    @Qrop Non Sequitur:

    or maybe it was more that JD Vance kinda disappeared, while Dr. Oz kept himself high-profile (embarrassingly so, with all his gaffes)?

    (I’m saying this as someone who lives in neither media market, so local impressions may have varied.  But it sure seemed like Vance went into stealth mode, while Oz was in the news twice a week, saying or doing something stupid).

  110. 110.

    MisterDancer

    @Kay: Some of these people are on the opposite side of their own ancestors on slavery. It’s fucking bizarre.

    Um…kind of?

    So when I did some research on the American Civil War and Reconstruction, I dove into some works about how The North felt about Black People. And there’s some nuance from Back Then that I think helps explain the now, when you throw in the myths of The Lost Cause.

    ‘Cause back then? According to a least a couple of works, including one that purposed to dive deep into  Union newspapers, and solider letters? Abolishing slavery was barely on the table, and there was even less appetite for full equality.

    I think a lot of actual people in the Union didn’t like slavery, but also didn’t like Black people. And post-War, even though there was a push for equality that worked really well, it wasn’t one that the average folx felt deeply about.

    Which allowed ideas like The Lost Cause to infect the body politic across the Country. It was “easier” to think that The South was just having a moment, that their now-fellow Americans were noble and great, than to face the reality — and that said reality meant Black folx really did deserve equality.

    so yeah, I can easily see how people in Ohio — even without knowing all of this — might have Union ancestors, but still hate Black folx, and even think The Confederates Had A Point.

    It;s not really about slavery. It’s about allowing “Them Negros” to be equal. :(

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    Oh, they recognize they have a growth problem:

    State Reps. Jon Cross, a Hardin County Republican, and Sedrick Denson, a Cincinnati-area Democrat, want to “GROW Ohio” through a bill of that name — the Graduating and Retaining Ohio’s Workforce (GROW) Ohio Act they introduced in mid-December. The bill would provide numerous incentives and inducements, both monetarily and through workforce opportunities, to keep more graduating Ohio college students in Ohio and make it easier for out-of-state students to establish residency to qualify for extra benefits.

    It’s just that most of them are in seats that were carefully drawn to make it impossible for voters to get rid of them, so they kowtow to the furthest Right part of the GOP base. They have no incentive to moderate or even serve the public.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @sab: Did Tim Ryan China bash in a negative way? What I saw him do in his messaging was to cite China’s economic prowess as a reason why Ohioans need to build the skills and make the investments that would make their industries competitive with global rivals. What’s wrong with that?

  114. 114.

    sab

    @Kay: They think like the Dixiecrats of my childhood in Florida. The South is growing now and Ohio is shrivelling.

    As I have said for years, the South in the first half of the 20th century wasn’t a poverty stricken back water because Sherman’s army marched 90 miles to the sea in Georgia. It was a poverty stricken backwater because of economic choices its people made. And when they changed their approach things got better.

    Ohio has chosen to go the other way.

  116. 116.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WereBear:

    It clearly has to do with people who refuse to adapt to a changing cultural landscape. Kay has spoken to this many times with aging middle aged pundits/journalists wanting everything to stay the same when they were young. Plus the successful ones become rich, and then have rich guy problems, which are less relatable. They become less relatable to average people as they age and become richer, thus less funny

  117. 117.

    Leto

    @Soprano2: @Kay: It reminds me of Tim Allen’s sad rant of how Hollywood was too liberal because they wouldn’t continue his dumbass show, Last Man Standing aka Home Improvement 2. Dude, you did these same tired joke 15 years ago. Get new material! Like Maher and Dennis Miller, Allen just peddles the same jokes over and over. Shit’s old yo. The viewing public responded with low ratings. Just take your syndication checks and go away.

  118. 118.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @rikyrah: YUP! like “working class”  to the media always seems to mean   white working class  (men…probably)  everyone  else is invisible.

  120. 120.

    sab

    @Geminid: It was more than pro-growth and investment. It was anti-China enough that my family felt threatened. He hardly mentioned the infrastructure legislation once the general election campaign started.

  121. 121.

    Barbara

    @Geminid: ​This is definitely true in Virginia. Rural counties in the western part of the state are mostly white, but there are many more African Americans in the eastern counties. The notion that urban equals dark and rural equals light complexion is highly weighted towards Midwestern and upper plains states, like Iowa.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    @MisterDancer:

    All good points but the far Right embrace of the confederacy is also a hostility to the federal government existing and Union soldiers (and states) were certainly on the side of the Union.

    You see it even now with the Deep State obsession among Trumpists and “horseshoe” former Lefties who are now reactionary Righties. They apparently have no objection to overreach by local or state police (MOST police) – they only object to OOGA BOOGA(!) Federal Police. They’re confederates. They opposea federal government.

  123. 123.

    WereBear

    @WereBear: BenCisco came up with Popehat’s address. I’m having a bad paradoxical day.

    My writing has never been better, even though I have to watch out for typing fatigue. But at such times, I can dictate. Lately, it’s like all the parts I overworked to burnout drop out to heal, but I’m finding new parts to fill in.

    Just another management task…

  124. 124.

    sab

    @Kay: The problem in Ohio is that things are sluggish enough that young people have a hard time starting a career in Ohio. So they go out of state for the initial job. It used to be that a lot of them came back. Now they don’t want to.

  126. 126.

    Barbara

    @Soprano2: ​If you exclude non-factory and non-construction workers from your definition of working class, that’s how you arrive at a view that, for instance, Dobbs wouldn’t affect the midterms. Working women of all colors are just invisible to the media. We don’t count for purposes of their narrative.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    Oh, God, cancel culture jokes. Again. The Oberlin Student Council. Even if you loathe young people like most of these people seem to aren’t they sick to death of the moaning about cancel culture? How  fucking long can they remain outraged at the Yale law students who booed the Right wing speaker?

    It’s funny for Elon Musk to crow about firing people? That’s hysterical? How are they any different than the Trump supporters who LOVED Trumps “you’re fired!” reality show?

  128. 128.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Kay: Hmmm, make immigrants feel unwelcome, while the state’s young people flee to find better opportunity else where….that won’t end well

  129. 129.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @lowtechcyclist: @mrmoshpotato:

    If you’re in the Northeast, West Coast, or Midwest, that’s all you see: blacks in the cities, and whites in the countryside.

    While it is true that rural MO is very white, there are plenty of white people living in St. Louis, including me and most of my neighbors.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    A huge part of it, IMO, in the entertainment and media industries, is the new norm that says men can’t sexually harrass women in the workplace. There was A LOT of sexual harrassment in the entertainment and media industries and powerful men in those industries preferred to keep it that way.

    Middle aged male comedians and media people are pissed that they can’t demand sex from women anymore. The norm changed and it changed against what they want to do, so they’re throwing a hissy fit.

    Fox alone was an absolute sewer of sexual harrassment. They paid out hundreds of millions to protect the men who harrassed women.

  132. 132.

    Geminid

    @Barbara: Tom Perriello would not have flipped the Virginia 5th CD in 2010 without the votes of Black people living in places like Buckingham County. I’m not sure the white Democrats of Charlottesville noticed this.

    Some of the older Black residents were of the Civil Rights generation. I think that group might have a voter participation rate higher than any other demographic.

  135. 135.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    But they find an audience. They’ll just be Right wing comedians. There’s plenty of Right wingers who will guffaw reliably at a cancel cuture joke or a joke where women are made fun of- there’s a big enough market for that.

    That they don’t want to be Right wing comedians because they consider themselves cool and openminded doesn’t matter- they are what their audience says they are. The audience decides.

  136. 136.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I guess Tim Allen never considered people just didn’t watch it? Or at least the demographics advertisers want to reach? It’s literally nothing new. The Rural Purge of the early 70s happened because many of the shows appealed to heavily to older, whiter, rural audiences than advertisers wanted

  137. 137.

    ian

    @Geminid: If we are dunking on those three, can we also get some good shots in on Sarah Gideon, Jamie Harrison, Amy McGrath, or Cal Cunningham? I feel there are more deserving targets than Cheri Beasley, who was abandoned by the national funding groups.

  139. 139.

    sab

    @Kay: Maybe our Ohio Republican primary voters weren’t as nuts as the Pennsylvania ones. We got Republicans that were half-hearted on Trump and Pennsylvania got Election Deniers.

  140. 140.

    Kay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I just think it is incredibly lame for entertainers, a group of people who are wholly dependent on the whims of their audience, to complain that no one wants to watch them anymore.

    I mean, come on. The only measure of success is “people want to watch”. If you’re failing at that you’re failing. Watching is VOLUNTARY. That’s key to their industry. They don’t get to tell the auidence what the audience should find funny. That’s not how it works. Did they not understand this when they went into “the entertainment industry”?

  141. 141.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Scratch an antiwokster, find a cranky middle aged person who resents younger people.

    This is an ever-green problem. I saw someone on Twitter trace the history of “today’s kids are spoiled” back to the 19th century using newspaper articles! It’s resentment that a) you aren’t young and cool anymore and b) the things you thought were cool when you are young are now seen as uncool. They might think what your grandparents liked is cool, though. LOL

  142. 142.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    The problem with pronoun jokes is not that they’re “incorrect”, its that they’re not funny

    What you don’t think the 72 genders joke is the peak of comedy? Libtard! /s

  144. 144.

    Kay

    @sab:

    But Vance ran on a very specific romanticized Ohio past- the part of the state that is Appalachian. That NW Ohio Republicans, who have no Appalachian past, embraced this nonsense doesn’t speak well of them. They have no Meemaw in the holler. WTF. They’re just going to invent a whole past now where they were wandering thru the hills and hollers of Kentucky? Their actual past isn’t good enough?

  145. 145.

    Ken

    @Geminid: My favorite “surprise” St. Louis native is Vincent Price. A lot of people think he’s English.

    I had my high school portrait taken by the Vincent Price Studios.

  146. 146.

    sab

    @Kay: I think those guys voted for the venture capitalist who was successful in San Francisco

    ETA I think everyone knew that Vance walked away from his Appalachian roots a very long time ago.

  147. 147.

    Kay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    And that’s the other thing. The absolute lockstep alliance between the US antiwokesters and the most reactionary and backward Russians. I don’t think they’re coordinating, like a conspiracy. I think they share the same values.

    You know what country is REALLY antiwoke? Russia.

  148. 148.

    Geminid

    @ian: I’m not going to dunk on any losing candidates if there is not a very good reason. I’ll concentrate instead on how the winners won their contests.

    As to McGrath’s and Gideon’s excess fundraising, I think that is on the donors. When a candidate has already raised 10’s of millions, donors need to apply the principle of diminishing returns to their choices, and keep in mind that fundraisers can have personal interests behind their solicitations.

    These overfunded candidacies are a particular example of the the “negative partisanship” dynamic. Charismatic Democrats can raise a lot of money; it seems like Democrats with negatively charismatic opponents can raise as much or more.

  150. 150.

    CaseyL

    @Kay: Fetterman campaigned, and won, in a very old-fashioned way: he visited every single county in the state and held town halls.

    Fetterman also already had name recognition, as an activist and high-profile Lt. Governor.

    Like the classic saying goes, he gave people a reason for vote for him.

    From what I’ve read and heard, Ryan didn’t do any of that.  He ran like someone afraid to alienate GOP voters, not gain Democratic ones.

  151. 151.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: (re: “their actual past isn’t good enough”)

    If it isn’t already being said by red-state Dem candidates to white working-class audiences, it will, or should: “you have value other than your whiteness, did you know that?  You should be demanding better of the people who represent you.  For your kids’ sake, especially, but for your sake as well.”

  152. 152.

    Kay

    @sab:

    It’s funny because there is a clear class divide in NW Ohio between the mostly German and Scandinavian immigrant landowners and the people from Appalachia who came to NW Ohio for high paying manufacturing jobs. One group own everything and are the managers and the other are the employees, even though the migration happened in the 1930s and 1940s. Judges will refer to it in chambers- they can tell by the last names.

  153. 153.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: Scott Lemieux keeps insisting that Ryan ran a fine campaign for the time and place, but the fundamentals were just too stacked against him. It sounds like this is incorrect.

  154. 154.

    Kay

    @CaseyL:

    I can’t say what Ryan did in blue areas- he definitely did outreach in red areas though, like where I live.

    I knew he was a long shot. It’s a Trump + 8 state. I get why blue area Ohians are angry about that- they shoud be- but IMO its just the truth. It’s a + 8 Trump state.

  157. 157.

    sab

    @CaseyL: Ryan did campaign in every county in the state. He worked his ass off. The problem is he did it as Republican lite, and had an actual Republican running against him, while Fetterman had a neophyte weirdo.

    Kay is probably right that this might have been the best approach, but he sure didn’t have a message to reassure sceptical Democrats that he was the reliable team player that he actually is.

  158. 158.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: I’m not sure Ryan and other red stzte candidates focused so much on winning white working class voters. Some of these might be flippable for sure, but the more promising targets were white middle- and upper-middle class voters, both Republican and Independent. I think Ryan understood this.

  160. 160.

    CaseyL

    @Kay: ​

    That’s distressing from a political standpoint, since OH has a lot of electoral votes. I guess we’ll just need to focus on the up-and-coming states which are becoming more Democratic, not less. I was hoping to see NC budge a bit, a it used to be more of a swing state, or at least had more Democrats in office – but that didn’t happen, at least not yet.

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     
    Exactly. Need candidates to do that more: get out, let people meet/see you, speak to their concerns.

  161. 161.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Soprano2: Socrates was cranky about young people too.

    “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”- attributed to Socrates

  163. 163.

    dc

    @lowtechcyclist: I knocked on a lot of doors for Beasley, so I feel empowered to criticize her campaign. She had an effective Democratic stump speech in front of supporters. Otherwise she ran against Washington and implicitly not just Republicans but also Democrats. It would not surprise me to find out (I do not know) that her campaign wanted to keep an arms distance from the national party. I don’t know if it would have made a difference, but given that our young voter turnout, our African American turnout and every Dem voting demographic turnout was significantly lower that its representation in the electorate (unlike for Repubs, which was the opposite), it wouldn’t have hurt if her campaign had done more to get our voters motivated. Our governor is a moderate Dem, that’s how he wins when Trump wins in the same election. But he never does the runaway from being a Democrat thing that I hate and that is demobilizing for Democratic voters, in my view.

  165. 165.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @rikyrah: ​
      Bernie is not necessarily unpopular in WI. He won in 2016. Also Barnes brought in a shitload of other big name Dems. Remember, no incumbent senator lost their seat this cycle. Our one pick up was in PA where the seat was open.

  166. 166.

    M31

    @Soprano2: I saw someone on Twitter trace the history of “today’s kids are spoiled” back to the 19th century

    pretty sure I’ve seen a cuneiform tablet with that on it

  167. 167.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I prefer longer-form blogging platforms to shorter ones, for a variety of reasons–Mastodon’s default character limit is 500 characters, but I find even that constraining…

    …but, everything else about Musk’s Twitter aside, I wonder if it makes any sense to do that on a platform where there is no distinction between “initial post” and “comment on the post”. It would make it more like Usenet or Reddit, where every discussion has the potential to wander far into the weeds and burn on forever.

  170. 170.

    Alison Rose

    The video from Newsom’s YT about the Klamath River restoration is very nice. Rep Jared Huffman (whose district includes part of the river basin), Gov Kate Brown, and Gov Newsom all speak about their efforts on this issue, and they also give much of the credit and time at the mic to a couple of tribal leaders and Secretary Haaland, all of whom spoke very movingly about the issue from personal perspectives. Really glad to see this finally happening!

  171. 171.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: The MSM punditeriat only sees white people who vote R. The rest of us are invisible to them

    I live in the farm country of MA, where the sainted WWC votes D. They too get zero coverage from the pundtwits.

  172. 172.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Cameron: St. Louis is a great city with a lot of history, culture, high quality universities, and beautiful old buildings. What we need is more in migration, or at least more of the people who grow up or move here for school to stay.

  173. 173.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: I thought the same until recently but I am wondering now if it’s true. It seemed like Democratic-leaning voters were being sorted into a small number of extremely blue coastal states while the rest of the country just got more and more Republican-dominated, which would result in permanent Republican federal dominance via the Electoral College and the Senate. But it looks to me like Florida (and Texas?) are now getting a similar influx of conservatives, whose votes get subtracted from somewhere else, and Georgia and Arizona are slowly flipping blue (Colorado already did while most of us weren’t looking). Maybe there’s a counter-Big Sort?

  175. 175.

    lowtechcyclist

    @sab:

    I talked to a Black friend of mine who is someone I feel comfortable talking politics with. Sure enough, she said she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Tim Ryan because she didn’t trust him to support Biden.

    Haven’t had time to catch up on the thread, so I don’t know if this has been brought up, but: isn’t this exactly the sort of behavior we get pissed about when it’s White purity ponies on the far left doing it?

    IOW, even though the Dem would clearly be miles better than the GQP nominee, the Dem’s still not good enough for them, so they withhold their votes?

  177. 177.

    Steeplejack

    @WereBear:

    I wasn’t nagging for an address. It wasn’t even clear to me whether you meant Twitter or Mastodon by “there.”

    Similar to “Medium Cool” when someone talks about three series and someone else responds, “I love that show!”

  178. 178.

    Matt McIrvin

    @schrodingers_cat: Massachusetts is interesting: urban Democrats, rural Democrats, but suburban whites are mostly Republican, particularly in the further suburbs. Some other parts of New England are like that too. There’s an area extending into the Berkshires and parts of NH that is sort of Greater Vermont.

  180. 180.

    Betty Cracker

    @lowtechcyclist:

    …isn’t this exactly the sort of behavior we get pissed about when it’s White purity ponies on the far left doing it?

    IOW, even though the Dem would clearly be miles better than the GQP nominee, the Dem’s still not good enough for them, so they withhold their votes?

    Yes. Yes it is. Now sab, sab’s purity pony friend, sab’s purity pony friend’s son and other Ohio Dems will be represented by Senator JD Fucking Vance. Great job, everybody!

  182. 182.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Also, I don’t want to turn this into another thread about twitter, but I see Musk is going to increase the character limit from 280 to 4000. Cripes.

    If there’s a way to get me to go back to reading people’s blogs, that’s it.

    One of Twitter’s strengths was that it forced people to be succinct.  If someone responded to one of my tweets with <280 characters of bullshit, I could decide in seconds whether it was even worth a response.  If they can respond with ~700 words of bullshit, then forget it.

  184. 184.

    rikyrah

    @sab:

     

    I talked to a Black friend of mine who is someone I feel comfortable talking politics with. Sure enough, she said she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Tim Ryan because she didn’t trust him to support Biden. Her son was furious with her for not voting straight Democratic party ticket.

     

    Ryan was being too cute by half, insulting the Democrats.

    Sherrod Brown has shown the way.

    I bet Brown won’t insult Democrats in his next run for Senate.

  185. 185.

    Ishmael

    @WereBear: Do you have to have a Post account access those postings? I tried to read Popehat there this morning after discovering him locked on Twitter, but it kept taking me to the signup page. It has been so nice being able to read twitter postings without an account

  186. 186.

    CaseyL

    @dc:

    But he never does the runaway from being a Democrat thing that I hate and that is demobilizing for Democratic voters, in my view.

    It damned well is demotivating: if the Democrats are the party we should vote for, why do our own candidates hem and haw over it?

    “Democrats make your life better; the GOP makes your life worse” is short, sweet, and accurate. Try running on that.

    “The GOP has been stealing from you for 40 years. Why do you still support them?” opens the conversation about how the GOP has used culture war topics to distract from the way their economic policies have bled the middle class dry, and made upward mobility a relic of a distant past. Try running on that conversation.

  187. 187.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I am what I call a “low maintence” Democrat when it comes to campaign messaging. When I saw Abigail Spanberger appeal to Independents by emphasizing her bipartisan credentials and her willingness to buck her party (she did, in a few minor matters), I didn’t say, “But what about me?!”

    I said, “You go, Abigail! Just win, baby!”

  190. 190.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @lowtechcyclist: John Scalzi recently advocated for all of us to go back to blogging. He’s maintained his blog all this time, though he uses twitter, etc too. He calls it artisan posting.

    As a consequence, I’ve been fiddling with some possible posts for my blog this morning.

  191. 191.

    Jerzy Russian

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     

    Is Baud okay? It just struck me that I haven’t seen him around lately. But I’ll admit to having skimmed/skipped some threads recently.

    I think the story his abductors put out there is that he (Baud) would be traveling for a few weeks.

  192. 192.

    MisterDancer

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: John Scalzi recently advocated for all of us to go back to blogging.

    He’s not wrong. I mean, that’s what i claim to be doing, here. :)

    And in fairness, I tend to treat even FB as a blog. I’ve not yet got the sense of how to leverage Instagram/TikTok/YouTube and their video-oriented focus, although I’m told I have a lovely voice.

  193. 193.

    Soprano2

    @Leto: It’s also a dumb argument because Allen well knows that shows rise and fall on ratings; if his show had been getting good ratings it would have stayed on the schedule. People weren’t watching, so he got cancelled. Like I said in another thread, these people cannot believe that the majority of us are rejecting them and their message. They think if they can just find “one weird trick” to make us all listen to their message, then we’d all love them. Allen can’t accept that people didn’t like his show and didn’t find it funny, so they didn’t watch it.

  194. 194.

    Soprano2

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone: That’s probably happening in MO, too, because MO’s trajectory has mirrored Ohio’s. A Democrat can’t win statewide here, at least not now.

    ETA – my youngest niece had a miscarriage on Friday. When she called the hospital (I think it was Mercy, OMG!) they told her to bring whatever she passed to the hospital! Her mother told me that they took her vitals in the ER, then sent her out to wait. They finally told her that she needed to see her regular doc on Monday, so she checked herself out at 5 a.m. and went home. To say I am enraged by this is an understatement! I told her mom that she needs to go to Cox, where she might actually be able to get the help she needs, but that Mercy won’t touch my niece because it’s already a Catholic organization, plus with the new MO draconian abortion law the docs are probably terrified of being charged with a crime. I told SIL that’s what MO has become for pregnant women, a place where they cannot get care for a miscarriage. Then the state officials wonder why we’re losing our younger population!!!!!

  195. 195.

    schrodingers_cat

    Currently trending on Twitter

    #Space Karen

    A sampling of the tweets

    1. Space Karen’s pronouns are actually Pillsbury/Doughboy.

    2. Retweet if you pronouns are Boycott/ Tesla

  197. 197.

    Miss Bianca

    @M31: Ha ha ha, I had to say that joke out loud to myself to get the punchline properly, but even reading, it made sense to me!

    Yep, the kids are all right. Hope we can keep them that way! Right-wingers are always looking for ways to fuck with their little heads, because they just can’t seem to stand it that the youngs are growing up more tolerant than they are.

  199. 199.

    Quinerly

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    Lived in Soulard in the city for almost 40 years. Stayed after graduating from Saint Louis University School of Law. Now in New Mexico. I can attest that Soulard and Lafayette Square are very White. I guess we can throw Dogtown and The Hill into that mix too.

  201. 201.

    Soprano2

    @Ken: I found out that our art museum was dedicated by Vincent Price back in the 1950’s. I kid you not, someone in our group asked “Who is that?” Sigh…….

  202. 202.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: Think alot of it has to do with the Anti-Choicers ‘converting’ the many, many rural Catholics in Ohio to vote GQP.  Back in the ole days, alot of those people used to vote for us.

  204. 204.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: It shouldn’t matter to me how much people gripe about a candidates whose messaging disappoints them, as long as they still vote for them. I should be concerned if the messaging debate spills over into contention over questions of party policy, and debating who among our office holders is a “good Democrat” and who is not.

    As to messaging in general, I think that if one analyses losing campaigns exclusively they can be misled by a skewed sample. The winning campaigns need to be considered as well and they may provide more useful information. I think we can learn a lot from the purple district successes of Sharice Davids, Gabe Vasquez, and Marie Glusenkamp Perez without the divisiveness that arguing over losing campaigns can generate, and with no good result.

  205. 205.

    JML

    @Omnes Omnibus: and we have a winner. it’s really hard to unseat an incumbent.

    In OH, they were really swimming against the today: OH has been utterly trending the wrong way. Just saying “but Sherrod Brown!” is meaningless. yes, he runs smart campaigns, but he’s also an incumbent that is without scandal and doesn’t throw himself into losing fights. The VPI in OH was not good for Ryan, not nearly as close as it was for Fetterman (who did a fine job winning an open seat, overcoming his health problems during the race).

    The numbers really do matter.

  206. 206.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Leto: But even more than that – it ran for NINE SEASONS. It was a shitty show but was pretty successful. And Fox decided to cancel it because after 9 seasons it wasn’t performing as well.

    But no, it has to be because of “teh liberals” and this made up cancel culture thing. Yeesh.

  207. 207.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: This is what I tell people whenever they start ragging on young people. I also say “I bet people who were our age when we were young were saying that about us”. It’s unfair to criticize people as a group just because they are young, or old, or middle-aged. I now also have the new weapon in my quiver of “did you know it’s young white men who ‘don’t want to work’? Fortune magazine told me so!” That might shut a few of them up, because of course when they say young people don’t want to work that’s not who they are talking about.

  208. 208.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Blogs are great, but for me, the function is entirely different from Twitter’s. I loved the curation possibilities on Twitter and the potential to interact with millions of people, which blogs can’t match. I finally got a mastodon account (@[email protected]), but I don’t think it will serve the same functions either. Gonna really miss Twitter!

  210. 210.

    Soprano2

    @NotMax: OH GOD NO, please NONONONONONONONO!!!!

    You’re probably right, they need to fill those old venues with something that appeals to an older, right-wing audience.

  212. 212.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: It’s probably also important to compare like with like, and messaging that works in a district wouldn’t necessarily translate to statewide success.

  214. 214.

    Fake Irishman

    @Matt McIrvin:

    possibly.

    Don’t go to sleep on Texas though. We didn’t get the turnout or margins we wanted at the top of the ballot, but even with that the state legislature was essentially a push and Dems mostly kept local and regional control in places where they gained it in 2018.

  215. 215.

    Paul in KY

    @Qrop Non Sequitur: I do think Sen. Fetterman (God how I love typing that!) had a better opponent to run against than good ole Yale boy JEB Vance, esq

     

    I do think Sen. Fetterman would have beaten him also, but New Jersey’s favourite son was not ready for primetime.

  217. 217.

    Miss Bianca

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Plus the successful ones become rich, and then have rich guy problems, which are less relatable.

    I think you’ve hit on an additional insight here, Goku. Rich + aging = Bitter Old Unfunny Asshole phase. Not just Maher and Chappelle – John Cleese, one of my comic icons, has gone that way too. Disappointing.

    I, too, don’t get half of what the youngs are into these days. But I try to remember that that just means that I’m an old fart, not that the youngs are Doin’ It Rong.

  221. 221.

    Miss Bianca

    @Soprano2:

    I saw someone on Twitter trace the history of “today’s kids are spoiled” back to the 19th century using newspaper articles!

    Hell, the saga of olds slagging on Kids These Days goes back to the time of Aristotle, at least

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: haha, you got there before me!

  222. 222.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Kay: “the drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, and we who live to please must please to live.” Ben Jonson, maybe? Or some other English playwright and actor. ( And I wish to God that clothing designers understood that as well)

  224. 224.

    frosty

    @Geminid: “Low Maintenance” is a new word for “Yellow Dog Democrat”, which dates back to the Solid South IIRC.

    “I’d vote for a yaller dog if it has a D behind its name”

  226. 226.

    Miss Bianca

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: My ex and my best friend (who ended up together – long weird story) are both in St. Louis. They have thrived and own a small house there. I have always figured that if shit totally hits the fan and I am unable to remain in CO for some reason, that I would head to St Louis to start over.

    Plus, I have roots there of a sort – my father’s mother’s family came from St Louis. I would have to do some genealogical spelunking to see if I still had relatives there, but pretty sure I would find some if I dug hard enough!

  227. 227.

    Matt McIrvin

    @schrodingers_cat: The mill towns often have a non-white population that tends to flip them D (I live in one). The surrounding super-white towns, though, are relatively conservative.

  228. 228.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay: ​

    It’s funny for Elon Musk to crow about firing people? That’s hysterical?

    One of the reasons people laugh is out of joy. There is rarely much introspection as to whether that counts as comedy. Conservatives enjoy cruelty. They have fun punching down. So, yes, to them this shit is gold, it’s hilarious, the pronoun jokes never get old. And how dare anyone object on behalf of the people they’re punching. It’s just a joke, right?

  229. 229.

    Kay

    @Paul in KY:

    I represent a lot of white working class whites and I think a big part of it is a backlash to feminism. They are men who are pissed that women aren’t as subservient anymore, including white working class women. That joke about how Musk is an “angry divorced man” so lurched Right rings very true for me. The WHINING about how they aren’t allowed to pester women for sex anymore- and said TO ME- I am a woman!

    Louis CK would prefer it if he were allowed to masturbate in front of women at work, because he wants to and how dare anyone tell him he can’t. Stop cancelling him! He does what he wants, when he wants to and no one else gets a say in it.

    I do’t think it’s a coincidence that the media star of the Elon Musk show is Matt Taibii, who rose to fame on wildly misognynist “satire” – HATING women- depicting women as disgusting and dumb and useful only for sex. They want that world back. The world when they were young.

  230. 230.

    Paul in KY

    @lowtechcyclist: I’m a bit perturbed at that lady. You just hold your nose and vote for the D you are not necessarily enamoured about.  Jeezus! Tim Ryan would help Pres. Biden out a bazillion more times than JR Fake Cornpone Vance would.

  231. 231.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MisterDancer:

    I think a lot of actual people in the Union didn’t like slavery, but also didn’t like Black people.

    At least from my reading of history, this seems to have been very much the case.

    If the South hadn’t fired on Fort Sumter (or any other similar bits and pieces south of the Potomac that the U.S. wasn’t going to let go of), I wonder if there’d have been sufficient support for the North to try to force the South to remain in the Union, or whether the North would have collectively said, ‘fuck it, let ’em go.’

  232. 232.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Miss Bianca:

    Hell, the saga of olds slagging on Kids These Days goes back to the time of Aristotle

    Yes, but back then Plato was complaining about young boys leaving lust-inducing butt prints in the sand, and also HOW DARE ANYONE SAY THE GREEKS ARE GAY.

  233. 233.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: I thought that Mr. McCormick, who narrowly lost to Oz in the primary, was the better candidate and I was relieved when Oz won. McCormick might not have beaten Fetterman but he would have had a better chance than Oz.

    Like fellow hedge fund executive Glenn Youngkin, McCormick had very little public record. He started as a blank canvass to the voters and had the money to paint that canvas to his smadvantage. Oz carried a lot of baggage into his campaign that made him suspect among conservative voters.

    But, a certain stable genius in Florida was able to push the flawed Doctor Oz over the primary finish line with his endorsement.

  235. 235.

    Kay

    @Paul in KY:

    So two of my grown children, both men, I’m listening to them talk. One is mid twenties and an electirician and the other is 20 and a college student. College student’s GF told him she is “slightly” gay, he’s upset about this, and my older son responds to this with “all women are slightly gay now”. They’re both like SIGHING over “how women are now” – hysterical.

  236. 236.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    @lowtechcyclist: I am what I call a “low maintence” Democrat when it comes to campaign messaging. When I saw Abigail Spanberger appeal to Independents by emphasizing her bipartisan credentials and her willingness to buck her party (she did, in a few minor matters), I didn’t say, “But what about me?!”

    I said, “You go, Abigail! Just win, baby!”

    I think of it more in terms of political engagement.  As I see it, politically engaged people who are left of center (which includes everyone here at BJ) should be quite aware that any Dem is better than any Republican, and shouldn’t need any further reason to vote Dem.

    People who aren’t particularly engaged in politics are another story entirely, of course.

  237. 237.

    Paul in KY

    @CaseyL: I think they think that they must try not to give these delicate flowers the notion that they have been stupid voting for the GQP. They have been stupid for voting GQP and that great slogan you referenced might lead some to that determination more than being wishy washy about it.

    If I’ve been stupid about something, I am open to being called on it & changing my ways to not be stupid. Others, it appears, are not that pragmatic.

  240. 240.

    Brachiator

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I can do pics on Instagram. But I’m still at the thinking stage about videos, which you need for TikTok. Apparently, a ton of books get sold via TikTok.

    This is very interesting. While looking at reviews of new laptops, I see considerable discussion about photo and video editing. I watch YouTube and am often impressed by how well made the videos often are.

    I don’t do Instagram or Tik Took, but know that these platforms are very popular, but did not know that they can be important to authors.

  241. 241.

    Paul in KY

    @Soprano2: Allen appears to be a rich dude who hates that he was taxed as a rich dude.  Now, he was taxed that way all thru GHWB and GWB and Cheetolini as well, but he seems to think Democrats are at the root of this misery he must endure as a rich man.

  242. 242.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: The other side of the coin also applies: if you’re either a white socialist or a Black person, you may be aware that any Democrat is better than any Republican, but it’s also wearying to be consciously taken for granted and have the issues you care about ignored because you have no alternative.

    And without some pressure on candidates, it’s possible that things will get to the point where the Democrat actually is no better for you.

  243. 243.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Brachiator: On both those platforms, you can follow a hashtag, and both have hashtags devoted to book reviews: #Bookstagram and #BookTok. My B&N recently had a table full of books “as seen on BookTok.” So they function like book bloggers

  245. 245.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @dc: i wonder if this has to do with Beasley’s own demographics. She’s a black female gen xr running in a red/purple state(merlot? burgundy?) She has the memory  of Reagan/Bush1&2,+ TFG even post Obama?

    Mandela Barnes just had the bad luck of the timing of the child sexual assault convict  staying free pre sentencing going out and killing the girlfriend.

  246. 246.

    Kay

    Louis CK was especially sad for me because I thought he had a great understanding of children- he treated children like separate people with dignity in his stand up, which is how I want them treated. To find out he’s like “haw haw, now you have to watch me masturbate” to his female colleagues was very disappointing. Gross. Now I don’t even want him around children.

  247. 247.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I think that civil war was inevitable once the southern states seceded. Two countries with a 1500 mile border would never have avoided war, especially with the violence that would have erupted in the border states. But it’s probably a good thing the war started when it did. It could have been even bloodier had it begun a year or two later.

    I’ve always been struck by an incident of the first shot at at Fort Sumter. Virginia Congressman Roger Pryor had come down to Charleston to urge the South Carolinians on. He told them that his state would join theirs but that they must “strike a blow” to make that happen.

    So, when the Confederates resolved to open hostilities, they offered the fiery Virginia politician the honor of triggering the first shot. Pryor shrank from the responsibility. Fellow Virginian Edmund Ruffin volunteered, and he fired the shot. Ruffin, who had made a name as editor of a magazine devoted to progressive agricultural practices, later fatally shot himself after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

  248. 248.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: Sage points, Kay. You know Ohio much better than I. I only used to visit Canal Winchester when I was a boy. All my relatives up there were/are Catholic. Back then they were pretty liberal. Now, they are all right-wing wackos. One of them is a millionaire, so I sorta give him a pass. The other 5 or so are most definitely not.

    Certainly, the great betterment of women’s lives here is US has pissed off alot of dudes who thought of their prior state as a ‘courting’ plus.

  249. 249.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: People with Confederate sympathies often speak as if the Union side started the war in response to secession, even though everyone knows that’s not true.

    I think that if the Confederates had remained peaceful after secession, the US would have let them go–but also that that never could have happened. The slave states were trying to impose their will on the North before secession, and they would not have stopped just because there was an international border.

  250. 250.

    Paul in KY

    @lowtechcyclist: I don’t think Pres. Lincoln would have let them go, but he might have been outvoted or constrained by congress.

    Thank God Pres. Lincoln went to war! We had to be united. I don’t think a divided US/CSA helps win WW I and where do you think CSA would have been in WW II?

  251. 251.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay: I know – I wasn’t very familiar with Louis CK’s stand-up routine, but I was utterly charmed by his stint on Parks and Recreation. He seemed like a decent, stand-up (pun not necessarily intended) kind of guy. Disappointed! Again.

    And Jesus…what kind of sick freak wants to *force* someone to watch them masturbate? I mean, WTF?

  253. 253.

    CaseyL

    @Paul in KY:

    There is a way to get the message across without implying the voters have been stupid.

    “Look, even the smartest people can be taken in by a good con artist.  It’s not stupid to fall for the con when you don’t realize it’s a con – but when you do realize that, and still vote for them, you need to ask yourself some hard questions.”

    And always, always circle back to the fact that when Dems are in control, the economy is better and peoples’ individual lives are better.

    I do believe that when people can’t pay their monthly expenses and wake up in a cold sweat over their financial present and future, and don’t see anyone working to make that better that they are susceptible to “culture” issues.

    But if someone is working on the “make that better” part (as the Democrats are doing now, as close to warp speed as they can) that creates a wedge to bypass the culture crap.  All those manufacturing and other jobs the Biden Administration is rightfully touting: Democratic candidates can and damned well should be out there saying, over and over and over again, people wouldn’t have those jobs if the GOP was in control.

    I mean, I don’t endorse St Wilmer’s reductionism that economics are the only important issue and we should ignore everything else, but economics are certainly an issue we can loudly and proudly address.

  254. 254.

    Barbara

    @Geminid: ​

    Two countries with a 1500 mile border would never have avoided war, especially with the violence that would have erupted in the border states.

    And yet, we have never gone to war with Canada — not really. No, it’s not the border, it’s creating and enforcing a border where there previously had been none that is the problem.

  256. 256.

    Matt McIrvin

    @CaseyL: The left, particularly online, does have a bit of a bad history of being contemptuous or suspicious of converts for not having been with them all along. “I was smart enough to see this; why weren’t you?” People grade each other on how long ago they got wise. The right LOVES a conversion/redemption narrative, by comparison–it’s central to evangelical Christianity which is a power base.

  259. 259.

    Kay

    @Miss Bianca:

    When he talks about how he wants to say to parents who are hitting their kids at the grocery store “did you just HIT that small person. What is WRONG with you?!” I completely related. I loved all his stuff about children- I thought it was not something I had heard before. Truly original.

  260. 260.

    Paul in KY

    @CaseyL: I like your slogans up above. I’m fine with them coming to the realization that they’ve been had. That’s a  good way to peel some of them away from the anti-freeze they’ve been drinking.

    The ones motivated by hatred/racism, you’re not going to get as long as the GQP is explicitly the GWPP.

  261. 261.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The whole Musk thing getting booed at Chappelles show.  So Musk is all Red Pill now and he goes to a stage show in SF?  Sounds like the people who claim Musk is just pandering to the MAGA hats because he knows they are dumb enough to pay for Twitter subscriptions are right.  So Musk so fake he even fakes racism.

  262. 262.

    Brachiator

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    On both those platforms, you can follow a hashtag, and both have hashtags devoted to book reviews: #Bookstagram and #BookTok. My B&N recently had a table full of books “as seen on BookTok.” So they function like book bloggers.

    Very cool. It is good to see new ways of marketing and getting the word out about good books.

    Downside is that it is hard to keep up with all this.

  263. 263.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kay: I lol’d, this is hilarious and I remember having similar (but not as stupid) conversations when I was in my early 20s. And it’s largely because we don’t know shit about women until we’re older. For example, I have some female friends who are sometimes fascinated by other women’s chests. They’re not excited by it at all – but sometimes they’re just sort of like “wow, that’s impressive”.

    I just can’t imagine dudes doing anything like this. “I’m not gay or anything but that guys is hung”  ^_^

  265. 265.

    Barbara

    @ian: ​You mean as opposed to 600,000 dead? I stand by my assertion. I do think the Civil War was kind of inevitable but not based on a 1500 mile border.

  266. 266.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think this is right, but I would add that the white men and women in the working class are angry that anyone is ahead of them for anything they want now. Back in the late ’90’s a white guy I worked with was complaining about how all the minorities and women get first shot at the best jobs now. I asked him how it felt to have to stand in line rather than always be at the front of the line. He just started at me and walked away; he had no comprehension that for most of the history of the U.S. and Europe white men were always first in line for everything they wanted. They had the bad  luck to be born once that stopped being always true (although it’s still true a lot of the time), and they resent it.

  267. 267.

    J R in WV

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
     

    businesses with Fox on the TV, etc.

    There is a relatively recently opened restaurant here locally with an interesting S Pacific menu. So I went there one day to get take out dinner, sat at the bar to study the menu, ordered.

    Looked up at the big screen TV above us — was Faux News!! Great food, will never eat there again if I can help it. Evidently many people from the S Pacific region are V conservative..?

  268. 268.

    Soprano2

    @Miss Bianca: Too often we make the mistake of thinking actors are like the characters they play on movies and TV, when they can be anything but. Harlan Ellison said you never want to meet your heroes because you’ll almost always be disappointed.

  269. 269.

    CaseyL

    @Paul in KY:  I agree, in part.

    There are some categories of voters I simply write off:  single issue voters, for whom abortion and guns are the tentpoles of their identity.

    And most people for whom bigotry is the tentpole of their identity.

    I’m a little squishy on this one, because once-upon-a-time even bigots voted for Democrats because of the “kitchen-table” stuff.  (In Ohio, f’rex.) That is, they were bigots, but they cared more about good wages and benefits, and voted for whoever got them that.  Like I said, I think a lot of these people – already bigots, mind you, but pragmatic about self-interest when it came to voting – were lost to the GOP when it seemed no politician gave a damn about their kitchen table stuff.  That meant their priorities shifted: If my life is shit, and is always going to be shit, then my tribal allegiance comes first.

    I frankly don’t know how many of these voters exist, people who are bigots and always will be bigots, but will vote their economic self-interest first.  Maybe none. maybe not enough to matter.

    The thing is, this country  hasn’t had a massive Federally-funded and Federally-run domestic economic program since the 60s, and we do now.  I’m interested to see how that shakes out.

  271. 271.

    Jerzy Russian

    On the Google app on my phone, one of the headlines is “Man Holding His Penis is Oldest Depiction of a Narrative Scene”.  The link is to ARTnews.com.   I wonder what future historians, should they exist, will write about when they use the newly-invented technology that lets them scan 11,000 year old hard drives in newly dug up data centers on an island formerly known as Iceland.

  272. 272.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think that if the Confederates had remained peaceful after secession, the US would have let them go–but also that that never could have happened.

    The North would have been corrupted and weakened had they let the South go. Slavery not only would have continued, but the North would have permitted free travel of slave owners and their captives into Northern states. Treaties would possibly have forced the North to enforce fugitive slave provisions.

    None of the civil rights amendments and legislation would ever have happened.

  273. 273.

    cain

    @J R in WV: Might be worth putting in the comment card saying you’re not coming back because of Fox News playing on the TV and you won’t be telling any of your friends either but mention they had great food otherwise.

  274. 274.

    Geminid

    @Barbara: The problem with the Confederacy would have been a disputed border, with border states like Missouri and Kentucky themselves wracked by civil strife. The prewar violence in Kansas would have spread eastwards and attacks and bloody reprisals would have drawn fighters from the North and the South.

    Both nations would have built up their armies and they would have started hostilities early on. After Fort Sumter the belief was common to both sides that the war would be “a six month affair,” and this misconception would have persisted until disproven.

    And it might have been a transatlantic war. Influential elements in Great Britain wanted to support the South so as to take down a country they saw as a rival. In Ireland, on the other hand, there were plenty  of people who were ready to secede from the United Kingdom at the first opportunity, and their compatriots in the US would have helped if their government gave them the green light and the arms.

    I never read that the US Ambassador to Great Britain, Mr. Adams, raised this possibility in order to deter recognition of the Confederacy. But he did not have to; the British knew their vulnerability in this area.

  276. 276.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    Does anyone have a guest link to that Fortune magazine article about white men not wanting to work?

  277. 277.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JML:

    The VPI in OH

    Nonsense – VPI is in Blacksburg, Virginia!

    (Seriously, what are you using VPI to stand for?)

  279. 279.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Soprano2:

    This is what I tell people whenever they start ragging on young people. I also say “I bet people who were our age when we were young were saying that about us”.

    Nobody my age would be dumb enough to take that bet! To quote Brewer and Shipley:

    I like to wear my hair long, how can there be anything wrong
    when you’ve already accused me twice of looking like Jesus Christ,
    Hallelujah!

  280. 280.

    Suzanne

    I know this is a dying thread, but this piece in Slate does a good job explaining why all this empty office space abbeys min the post-pandemic is not going to be converted to high-density housing. I get asked this question a lot — here and elsewhere — and the answer is almost always the same: converting a building from one occupancy type to another is architecturally very difficult and expensive. And that’s to say nothing of the local zoning regulations. And ultimately…..it just usually does not “pencil out”, meaning that it costs more than the expected profit would be, so it isn’t financially feasible.

    This is not the solution to our housing crisis.

  281. 281.

    cintibud

    @rikyrah:

    Ryan was being too cute by half, insulting the Democrats.

    Sherrod Brown has shown the way.

    I bet Brown won’t insult Democrats in his next run for Senate.

    We will be able to test this in two short years. I really don’t expect Brown to win – Ohio is a red state now. I hope I am wrong.

  282. 282.

    Brachiator

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    Does anyone have a guest link to that Fortune magazine article about white men not wanting to work?

    Do you mean this story?

    Men are dropping out of the labor force because they’re upset about their social status, according to a new study.

    Here’s a link.

    This link should also let you go to the Federal Reserve report, which is the source of the data.

  284. 284.

    JML

    @lowtechcyclist: Voter Partisan Index, or something like that. It’s been a while; I’m not currently in the political consulting business. It’s the measure of what the partisan vote advantage is, like R+8 or D+4, giving you a quick look at an estimate of how much more republican or democratic a district or state is.

  286. 286.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Harlan Ellison said you never want to meet your heroes because you’ll almost always be disappointed.

     

    I don’t like that either though, because Louis CK wasn’t my hero. He’s just an entertainer I sometimes enjoyed listening to. He has to meet rock bottom “workplace decent person standards” and insisting he somehow has the right to masturbate in front of female colleagues fails the rock bottom test for me individually.
    He doesnt have to be heroic. He just can’t be an absolute entitled douchebag.
    “We never asked to be your hero!” I respond with “well, good, because none of you were. Don’t flatter yourself”

  287. 287.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @MisterForkbeard:

    I have some female friends who are sometimes fascinated by other women’s chests. They’re not excited by it at all

    Personally, I don’t think I know any women under the age of 40 who don’t have a non-platonic interest in other women’s chests.  The current slang among women seems to be ‘tiddy’.  Very few of these women are interested in actual sex with other women, but like the view and would definitely consider making out.

  291. 291.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @gene108:

    The author of that NYT guest piece is actually the editor of the Storm Lake Times, the newspaper in Storm Lake, Iowa.

    That goes a long way in explaining the histrionics about ‘Rural America’.

  293. 293.

    J R in WV

    @cain:

    Might be worth putting in the comment card saying you’re not coming back because of Fox News playing on the TV and you won’t be telling any of your friends either but mention they had great food otherwise.

    Didn’t see comment cards, plus was in a hurry to get out and home, so just left.

    Dinner was good, tho, chicken adobo… so good.

  294. 294.

    Miss Bianca

    @Suzanne: So, if all those buildings are now useless as office space, does that mean that teardowns would be in order to replace them with housing? (along with *massive* government subsidies, I imagine.)

  295. 295.

    Kay

    @Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):

    IMO, as someone who lives in a rural area, a lot of the panic and whining about rural areas comes from the fact that rural areas are quite dependent on government subsidies and they are afraid that if the United States progresses and becomes more liberal they won’t have the clout they need to get that money.

    During the Obamcare fight Sherrod Brown told us that the CEO of our for-profit rural hospital was quietly lobbying Brown for more and more federal ACA money while writing anti-Obamacare editorials in the local newspaper. The local hospital relies on Medicaid. It’s also the 2nd largest employer.

    Conservatives in rural areas should calm down. Liberals have always gotten rural areas gubmint money and they always will. Congress could be 100% urban Democrats and they would still fund rural low income people.

  296. 296.

    Suzanne

    @Miss Bianca: If they were to be replaced with housing, yes, tear downs would be likely.

    But they’re not going to be torn down, at least, not the vast majority of them. In all but the densest cities, it will not make financial sense, it would be better to keep the office building even if it was only 10% occupied.

    SuzMom worked in an office building (approx. 9 stories?)  kitty-corner from the WTC in the Financial District in the late 80s. It was torn down about 15 years ago and replaced by a god-awful-ugly residential tower, approx. 75 stories tall. The value proposition is there because the new building is much bigger, and it’s a name architect in a high-profile location, so rents are ridiculous.

    But they are not going to replace the 5-story office buildings in the vast majority of American cities with affordable housing any time soon. Office buildings will sit vacant for decades before that happens.

  297. 297.

    jonas

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
     

    The slave states were trying to impose their will on the North before secession, and they would not have stopped just because there was an international border.

    Any settlement with the North would have to have included an agreement to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. A badly beaten North might have agreed to that if terms had been imposed on it, but it almost certainly would have been the cause of another war eventually.

  298. 298.

    artem1s

    @Kay: ​
     

    Democrats in Ohio cant run on turnout in urban areas anymore.

    There was no effort to get the NE OH urban Black population to the polls. Ryan’s mistake was assuming Mandel would be the candidate to beat and he took the Black vote for granted. The turnout in Black communities in Cuyahoga County was only about 20% – white suburban was over 60%. there is no state wide candidate who can win without turning out the Black vote in Cleveland and Akron. The independent voter in OH was always going to turn out for JD Vance over Ryan. Why pick the generic version when you can have the real thing?

  301. 301.

    Paul in KY

    @CaseyL: I agree that I will gladly take a bigot’s vote, as long as they understand I will do NOTHING to help along their bigotry. The GQP did a good job lying to these people about why their wages were stagnant, etc. They, also, were a bit gullible in lapping up that BS.

  303. 303.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: Did he really have that as a condition for employment or something like that or was that his creepy go-to come on?

  304. 304.

    Paul in KY

    @Suzanne: That’s what is driving the ‘get-the-Hell-back-in-the -office’ movement. Even if those bldgs are empty, someone is still paying a loan off on them or at least paying big prop taxes on them. If you have no tenants, don’t know how you can make those payments.

  305. 305.

    Paul in KY

    @artem1s: You would have hoped the black vote in those cities would have come out just for self preservation, as Sen. JEB McVance will not be good for them.

  306. 306.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: Tim Ryan could have campaigned with Representatives Joyce Beatty and Shontelle Brown, and Congressional candidate Emilia Sykes. May be he did. But if he didn’t that was a mistake.

    I don’t think that would have changed the result, but Black Democrats should see representation; otherwise they can feel taken for granted and I don’t think any part of the Democratic coalition should feel they are taken for granted.

  307. 307.

    GibberJack

    @Kay: It seemed to me Bill Cosby had that kind of connection with children as well. It could be I am misremembering.

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