Take 2 minutes and watch this. You won’t regret it.
Presidential History: 44 guys who knew America was bigger than them + 1 cult leader.
— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) August 21, 2023
It really is a cult at this point.
Open thread.
Reader Interactions
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patrick II
I still tear up at some of those.
Alison Rose
I hate him.
oldster
Jesus, I voted for a lot of people who made good concession speeches. Back to Humphrey, that was like looking at a who’s who of my votes — I mean the democratic ones, not Bush I, McCain, or Romney.
Anyhow — it’s a good video, making a good point.
Also: I like winning elections. We should do more of that.
Baud
Well done, by why was clip of Betty Ford? Did Gerald say something nasty in 1976?
kindness
I see too many people acting as if Trump can beat Joe Biden. I mean, Democrats will never reach the 35% of the Republican MAGA base. The only way Trump wins is if his side successfully cheats. Of course they’ll try cheating (again).
Baud
@kindness:
Look, I’m confident and we shouldn’t be running around as if we’ve already lost, but any Republican nominee “can beat” any Democratic nominee. That would be true even if the polls currently showed Biden leading by 20%, which they don’t.
Alison Rose
@Baud: He had laryngitis and couldn’t speak well enough, so she read his speech for him. When TIFG gave his BS speech, my mom said something about that he should’ve let his wife read it like Ford did, and I was like….what. And she explained
ETA: Not that she likes Melania or something. She just loathes hearing him speak. I concur.
Bupalos
@kindness: Categorically wrong. The only way Trump can win is if he gets more votes in a handful of toss up states that each have their own challenges. Especially as regards liberals fleeing to concentrate on the coasts.
But what’s worse than getting this wrong is mimicking the Trumpian rhetoric powering our crisis of democracy. In a post calling out that rhetoric. If we lose, it’s because they cheated? Because you know the future and how things are and must be!
Eric S.
@Alison Rose: Thank you. I had the same question as Baud. It’s a factoid I’ve never heard.
Omnes Omnibus
@kindness:
We can safely ignore the GOP base. We can also ignore the people who aren’t rabid but still won’t ever mark the D box on their ballots. We need to keep up the spirits of our base, motivate our loosely attached people, and then rope in enough persuadables. We can do this.
Chris
What I’ll never get over is the fact that this is the guy they chose to make their cult leader. As toxic as the fascist worldview is, yes, I understand how people with those values could look at a German corporal who volunteered at the start of a war, saw four years of combat, got a face full of gas for his trouble, and was ready to go back for more if not for the Armistice and say “yes, this guy’s a total badass, he has all the masculine virtues we admire, he’s the kind of guy we want in charge.”
Trump… is a guy who can’t even walk the equivalent of a city bloc without needing to be driven in a golf cart. And such a pathological coward he can’t even fire a person to their face, he has to do it by the equivalent of breaking up by text. This is the guy they’ve all somehow managed to headcanon as the new Andrew Jackson, the new Robert E. Lee, the great warrior-king savior of the Aryan Race. A guy who’d run sobbing from the room if I so much as flicked his nose.
There have been many people worse than him throughout history, but I’m really struggling to find one who was so pathetically mismatched with the values his followers claimed he embodied. (Of course, take one look at the average teabagger and it gets easier to see why they at least relate to him).
Baud
@Alison Rose:
Thank you. Full service blog.
Bupalos
@Omnes Omnibus: Politics really shouldn’t start with “here’s the list of people we can safely ignore.”
I understand the frustration in dealing with Trumpers who seem to be speaking an entirely different language and one that is primarily characterized by fear, anger, and bitterness.
debit
@kindness: ah yes, I remember standing in line at the polling place, exultant that we we’re finally getting a woman as president. No one would vote for the orange asshole.
Alison Rose
@Baud: Every once in a while, I prove useful. The cat might disagree.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: Oh bullshit. There are priorities. Spending any time and effort on wooing MAGAs so be so damn low on the list that we never get to it. And, for that matter, spending time and effort on most of us here on Balloon Juice should also be low priority. We are already going to vote D.
waspuppet
Also 44 guys who counted America as their favorite country and one who openly, explicitly, repeatedly, does not.
Sure Lurkalot
@Omnes Omnibus: I also believe we need to contest in all ways possible voter suppression tactics which will be fired fast and furious.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Chris:
That’s because you’re looking with reality-based eyes. Their organs of perception see that heroic superhero guy those weird painters keep painting.
Alison Rose
@waspuppet: Yeah, it’s aggravating that he gets to claim to be a patriot when it sure seems like he hates this country.
rikyrah
Suzanne,
I think this relates to what you were talking about. But, this was back in the time of Frank Luntz approved dogwhistles that the GOP and the MSM could hide behind.
And, people like you and me who pointed out what they were actually wanting to do were called ‘ hysterical’.
This muthphucka trying to gaslight folks in that me not wanting ANYTHING to do with someone with differing ‘political views’ is somehow wrong.
When said ‘ political views’ question my humanity, want to justify taking away body autonomy, the rights of people to vote, and that the ‘existence’ of trans-people is somehow wrong..
Those aren’t ‘political views’.
These are a threat to my very existence.
And, I think right-wingers, and the MSM are quite shocked at how many of us on our side aren’t interested in being polite about our HUMANITY.
Jordan Castro (@jordan_castro2) posted at 2:59 PM on Fri, Aug 18, 2023:
Leftists can’t understand being friends with people who don’t share their political views, but for most people it’s just the norm. It doesn’t even occur to them that being friends with someone could conceivably require some kind of political “explanation.”
Candidly Tiff (@tify330) posted at 0:54 PM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
I will never be “friends” with a person who votes for and disregards my humanity or the humanity of people I love. If we work together I will just tolerate you end of story.
(https://twitter.com/tify330/status/1693320516008808592?t=fs0ChnqemNgA_ighlWfI3w&s=03
Bupalos
@Chris: They key to Trump’s appeal is that he manages to pull together a range of emotions from the terrified demented hope of being able to go back in time, to the nihilistic bitterness of a Northumberland finding out Hotspur is dead and wishing everyone would just start murdering each other.
Baud
@waspuppet:
Actually, I think Buchanan ended up preferring the Confederacy after he lost to Lincoln.
Alison Rose
@rikyrah: I hate when people act like we’re talking about zoning laws for maximum building heights or whatever. We’re talking about human rights, for God’s sake. We’re talking about whether or not certain people get treated as equal citizens. So no, I’m not gonna be friends with someone who thinks I am worth less than they are as a person.
rikyrah
There should be no doubt about how much singing Meadows has been doing.
BWA HA AH AH AH AHA HA H HA HA HA HA HA
ABC News (@ABC) tweeted at 7:46 AM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
EXCLUSIVE: Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told special counsel investigators that he could not recall former Pres. Trump ever declassifying Mar-a-Lago documents, sources familiar with the matter tell @ABC News. https://t.co/P7HlA5Xhkn
(https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1693243036195561714?s=02)
rikyrah
Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) tweeted at 4:31 AM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
In what is being called the “world’s worst traffic jam,” some 200 cargo ships are waiting to pass at the Panama Canal as the area experienced its worst drought in 100 years.
https://t.co/SHh6wa8muF
(https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1693193957306466632?s=02)
Baud
@rikyrah:
@Alison Rose:
The thing is, if you supported a policy that would criminalize their existence (actually, not just based on how they feel), they would not be friends with you.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Alison Rose:
He clearly hates this country and everything about democracy.
But I’ve heard interviews with 1/6 participants who were absolutely convinced they are standing with brave patriots of the past. That breaking down the doors, killing cops, hanging Mike Pence, etc,, constitutes them doing their part alongside actual patriots of the past.
That’s that cult thing. We shake our head at the whole “up is down” thing but they’ve been wholly convinced. Look at how their voters could be convinced John Kerry was a faker and a coward while the sniveling draft-dodging coward was an actual military hero.
rikyrah
THIS CLOWN
The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) tweeted at 0:18 PM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
“I’ve fired underperformers in the private sector. I’m going to it for probably 75% of the people who work as federal bureaucrats in the government in Washington, D.C.
Mass layoffs are absolutely what I’m bringing to DC.”
-Vivek Ramaswamy
Tiff4Mahogany_44![]()
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NATO MEMBER (@tiff4mahogany) tweeted at 1:01 PM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
Federal jobs are high paying jobs, so this would have a domino effect on other industries in a negative way. I have no idea why this 1st generation citizen is promising an economic downturn.
Democrat, Environmentalist, & the establishment (@BlueSteelDC) tweeted at 1:13 PM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
You see the graph Georgia, North Carolina etc with more than 10% fed workforce. Good luck threatening their job and think you getting elected
This doesn’t count fed reliant states w/ big privately run research facilities https://t.co/W1dgFshnT9
(https://twitter.com/BlueSteelDC/status/1693325435809996872?s=02)
Alison Rose
@Baud: I mean, they think we do want to do that. Constantly screeching about how the Dems wanna put everyone who isn’t gay in prison or something. OPPRESS ME HARDER, DADDY!!!
Denali5
What SFB managed to do somehow was pull off the trifecta of lowering the taxes for the rich, making abortion illegal, and appearing to build a wall. Going after transpeople and book bans were just a weird side effect.
Denali5
What SFB managed to do somehow was pull off the trifecta of lowering the taxes for the rich, making abortion illegal, and appearing to build a wall. Going after transpeople and book bans were just a weird side effect.
Alison Rose
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The shit they did to Kerry still enrages me.
Baud
@rikyrah:
You libs are never happy. He didn’t promise to slit a single throat but you still complain.
rikyrah
Deacon Blues (@DeaconBlues0) posted at 0:13 PM on Thu, Aug 17, 2023:
I really think the MSM wants another Trump Presidency. Sure, Democracy will die, but more people will be watching the news as it happens. Ratings and revenue are all they care about.
(https://twitter.com/DeaconBlues0/status/1692223058025591046?t=6FT0hMCLpJPZ1Ja44KRRYA&s=0
Miss Bianca
@Bupalos: Are you as tiresome in real life as you are on the Internet? Jesus, Mary, and Bride – if you’re not tone-policing Hillary Clinton, you’re lecturing the rest of us on the proper deference we should be showing in outreach towards MAGAts. Enough already.
Chris
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Actually, I don’t think they do. I think the appeal to Trump is precisely the fact that he’s exactly as shitty and unsatisfied a human being as the average Proud Boy. Which is why his success is so inspiring for them: it’s proof that they still live in a world that doesn’t judge them for how fucked up their own lives are, but will judge them for what’s important. (Being a white, male, Republican).
Chris
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
And yet they also literally tore down the American flag to hoist the Trump flag in its place. Hard to shake the feeling that they don’t on some level know exactly what they’re doing, even if they’ve learned worship-words like “patriotism.”
zhena gogolia
@patrick II: Gore!!!
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I was puzzled by that as well.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: thanks, I forgot that
sab
@Chris: His followers are losers and find many aspects of his behavior and personality relatable.
Kelly
Pacificorp will shut down our power for scheduled maintenance soon, back on mid-afternoon. In the past this has been OK. Go out and enjoy a summer day. Unfortunately our AQI is 160 Unhealthy. Been running our air purifier for a couple days.
JPL
@rikyrah: He is a clown and I believe he was the reason CNN fired Lemon.
Suzanne
@Bupalos:
Eh. We have limited time and resources. I’m okay with deprioritizing outreach to those assholes.
Besides, we don’t ignore their genuine needs. We — unlike our political opponents — want to make life better even for the people who don’t vote for us.
Eolirin
@Baud: Right, this is fundamentally predicated on the people in question, those who find it normal to be friends with these nutjobs, being white, cis and straight. Other people not only don’t matter, they don’t even raise to the level of awareness.
Bupalos
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well what is your second step to “first, we make sure to ignore X, Y, and Z?” What slices and dices of the electorate are supposed to be woo-able here? Doesn’t the phenomena of Trump and a historic dumpster fire of a Presidency that ended in a basically tied election kind of suggest that we’re dealing with something a little deeper than efficiently targeted outreach?
From my point of view politics doesn’t have to be (and mostly can’t be) about “wooing” in the sense you’re suggesting. We have to win elections, especially with a genuine democracy wrecker on the other side of the ballot. There’s really no such thing in democracy as winning by beating the opponent into oblivion. The long term political task here is bringing this class back into a constructive politics that restores American democratic stability. We can’t keep traveling down the road with 45% of the country having these opinions, however daunting it is to engage and try to change them.
rikyrah
A fellow Yale secret society member said Ron DeSantis rolled his eyes when she talked about her upbringing as a Hispanic girl in Texas: ‘It was like I wasn’t worth listening to’
Story by [email protected] (John L. Dorman) •22h
A fellow Yale secret society member said Ron DeSantis rolled his eyes when she talked about her upbringing as a Hispanic girl in Texas: ‘It was like I wasn’t worth listening to’ (msn.com)
Chris
@sab:
One of the insights I’m saddest to have ever been right on…
Sometime after the 2014 midterms, somehow, the topic of fascism came up, and I was reading somebody saying the same thing I’d read a million times on the topic before: that it’s a mistake to look at the fringe band of loonies with swastikas we have running around in the West today and assume that they can teach us much about the “real” Nazis, the original empire that rallied a nation, built one of the most powerful war machines in the world, very nearly conquered all of Europe et al…
To which my response was “actually, I don’t think they are different. I think the original Nazis in particular were made up of exactly the same kind of freaks and losers who make up the Aryan Nations today. But a terrifying number of white people can be brought around to support exactly that as long as you feed them a steady enough diet of ‘blacks and Mexicans are coming for your women.'”
Welp.
Betty Cracker
The Ramaswamy quote about layoffs is even worse in context because he said he wants to run the US government like Musk runs Twitter — as if that hasn’t been a fucking catastrophe that is visible from space.
Two of the GOP candidates (well, ALL) offer singularly unappealing visions: Ramaswamy — Run American like Musk runs Twitter! DeSantis — Make America Florida. Uh, no thanks to both of those stupid ideas, guys!
Scout211
Judge blocks Georgia’s ban on hormone therapy for transgender minors
smith
@Betty Cracker: But DeSantis has added value because he wants to slit federal workers’ throats, not simply fire them. It’s a mystery why he’s not doing better in the polls.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker:
I didn’t know Vivek wrote for The Onion. An entrepreneur, a rapper, and a writer?! What a Renaissance man!
Alison Rose
@Scout211: GOOD.
Eolirin
@Bupalos: This is a hopelessly naive view of what can be accomplished in an environment in which the information bubble the fascists exist in is impenetrable and hostile to outside voices.
The only way to accomplish that kind of change would require destroying the existence of the right wing media ecosystem. Outreach is literally impossible at an organizational level unless that’s done.
Individuals can do that kind of outreach, but pretty much have to do it one person at a time, so that’s not of value from a strategic point of view.
You can target young people, an area where we’re already doing fairly well, though we do need to be concerned about people like Joe Rogan successfully pulling in disaffected males. The older folk you’re honestly going to see more change from die offs than concerted outreach attempts unless you can dramatically reshape their media environment.
And that’s all entirely irrelevant to gotv efforts. Gotv resources should be targeted at the base and especially those base voters that need some prompting or assistance to turn up.
There are huge differences between the micro and the macro on this stuff, and there’s a need to win elections to accomplish policy objectives that can’t wait until GenZ and Millenials are the dominant political force in the country. We need to win with what we already have.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
This is true. And it’s fine to want to deal with them with empathy. But this situation will not be fixed by us coddling them and letting them think their attitudes are normal or sane.
They take, at most, a grain of truth and blow it up into a world of insinuation and spurious conclusions. If someone wants to talk politics, but there’s no shared basis of reality, I just tell them I’d like to talk about something else or not at all.
Ohio Mom
@oldster: “Jesus, I voted for a lot of people who made good concession speeches.”
Me too. My first vote was for Jimmy Carter’s second term. Was not an auspicious start to my voting career, though I remain proud of everyone whom I voted for.
Captain C
@rikyrah:
“I can’t believe you’re letting politics get in the way of our friendship! Waaaah!”
“Well, you just enthusiastically voted for a guy who specifically wants to kill me, painfully, so maybe think about how that could put a damper on our friendship.”
MattF
I think the primary challenge is getting out your own voters. It looks, at the moment, like events in the real world are helping our side with that. The other side is stuck with promoting bizarre myths about ‘woke’ trying to turn your little boy into a little girl. It didn’t work in Wisconsin or Ohio. It’s a dirty job, even for them.
Bupalos
I’ll start of by saying I don’t think I could be any kind of deep personal friends with a full Trumper and probably not even a former Trumper that regretted it. But I can and do grant them cheerful sociability and am happy to help them out and defend their rights and educate their children and wish them well. It’s the flipside of seeing it as something more like an environmental sickness than anything else.
But it’s worth noting that many of them actually do believe what you’re raising here, the idea that liberal culture does not believe they should exist as people, and seeks to instantiate that belief in the legal order.
Scout211
An opinion piece in The Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal is a fun read this morning. It’s a detailed account, amusing at times, of what he calls Trump’s “quasi-religious mythology of martyrdom.” It’s not a new concept (to us) but it’s an interesting way to present Trump’s legal woes in an opinion piece. A few snippets:
Captain C
@rikyrah:
Some of them probably are hoping that their work enemies are the ones who get sent to the gallows; they figure Trump and his gang will do their dirty work for them.
Eolirin
Nevermind
jonas
@Chris: I think it was Tom Nichols a few years back who wrote a great piece (I forget where — The Atlantic, maybe?) detailing all the ways Trump is just so manifestly un-manly and basically a whiny, little PAB. IOW, the complete antithesis of everything working-class Joes claim to think is tough and cool.
Same with his “Christianity”. It’s so blatantly faked and canned, it beggars belief that he has somehow become the standard-bearer of the faith for millions of American evangelicals.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think a big part of the reason they like Trump so much is he’s a reflection of them. Fascist leaders in the inter-war period had to be veterans because veterans made up so much of the population that anyone who wanted a political career had to have served to be taken seriously.
Today’s Republican party is basically the John Wayne party. They’re a bunch of people who were too cowardly to serve and now feel a need to act hyper-masculine to make up for it. Everyone is required to accept everyone else’s swagger for fear of being called on their own. Even the few who have something to genuinely be proud about can’t call the rest of the party on it or the whole edifice would collapse. Trump is just an unusually extreme example.
Betty
Scary to hear from my “I am not Interested in politics sister” asking what I know about Joe Manchin. Yikes! It was a message so she couldn’t hear the volume of my reply. I didn’t think I should use capital letters.
Baud
@Bupalos:
People aren’t friends with culture. They’re friends with people. I think it’s rare for conservatives to be friends with particular people who think conservatives should not exist. And rarer still for a conservative to take flack about it if they chose not to be friends with liberals.
Even on another level, the problem isn’t that liberals and conservatives can’t be friends if they believe the other shouldn’t exist. Of course, neither side thinks the other should exists, which is why we try to persuade each other on politics. The problem is that right winger want to use the power of the state to hurt disfavored identities, while liberals really don’t, regardless of what right wingers tell themselves.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Yeah. I think 1980 is the watershed moment, the election where the U.S. channel-surfed past a man with a significant military service record (Carter) and an actual war veteran (HW) in favor of a Motion Picture Unit veteran whose main war story was completely made-up nonsense about having liberated concentration camps.
Ever since then, right-wing voters have come to the draft-dodging phonies like iron to a magnet. (Dubya, now Trump). They hate the real thing, even when it’s one of theirs (McCain, HW). They want the bullshitters.
Baud
@Betty:
I would assume it’s a question borne out of ignorance, unless you have a reason to think otherwise. If so, exacerbation may not be the best response.
rikyrah
@Bupalos:
They deny my very HUMANITY
No, I don’t give two phucks about them and Democrats need not waste their time ‘ reaching out’ to them.
We need to find our own voters and make sure that they CAN AND DO VOTE
UncleEbeneezer
@Chris: The fact that he’s nothing more than a failed-upward, bigoted, ignorant buffoon with a loud mouth is why they love him. Because they can all fantasize that they, like him, can run the world solely based on being mediocre (or more accurately, totally incompetent) but white. Everything they say they value (strength, vision, intelligence, devotion to family) goes right out the window if the person who has those traits isn’t white, preferably male, Cis, Het, Xtian etc. They are full of shit.
Another Scott
@Bupalos:
In the long run, we’re all dead. – J.M. Keynes
Yes, we need to win elections now. We need to take advantage of our wins to minimize the power of bad actors to destroy our government and our democracy.
I assume you’re a big supporter of the Brennan Center? They do good work, on lots of the things you’re talking about.
Work is going to get us there.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@rikyrah:
So, I do think Biden and Dems would like to reach out to the “Midwest/Rust belt working class” cohort and tout their economic policies. That will necessarily result in reaching out to MAGA, but not to MAGA as MAGA. I think that is fine.
wjca
Gotta say, Trump got one thing right in his speech. When he says “This is an embarrassment to America!” he is absolutely correct. His speech was an embarrassment.
rikyrah
@UncleEbeneezer:
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
It’s the White Suprmacy, Dear.
rikyrah
@Baud:
I understand what you mean.
Standing up and being proud of what the Democrats have accomplished is fine.
Going to every factory or new infrastructure project. – Good.
Make all those yahoos who have a decent paying UNION JOB look in the face of those who brought serious bacon to them.
That’s why I LOVE the
‘This infrastructure project is brought to you by President Biden’
Signs going up everywhere.
HELL PHUCKING YES.
Almost Retired
@Baud: Ah, President Buchanan. I managed to go from childhood to…well…..almost retirement, without giving him a second thought. And then someone gave me this hilarious biography of Buchanan, entitled “Worst. President.Ever.” It’s an epic tale of failing upward and being the wrong man for the wrong job, but being in the right place at the right time.
Note that the book was released in early 2016, which is why it is not called “Second. Worst. President. Ever.”
https://www.amazon.com/Worst-President-Ever-Buchanan-Presidents/dp/1493030590
Geminid
@Bupalos: I agree with a lot of what hou say in principle, but we’re talking practical politics here. Forty per cent of the Republican voting bloc is basically unreachable. But that party has become a Right Party, and is ceding the center. Democrats are still a Center-Left party and can attract moderates and even moderate conservatives.
I don’t know what your congressional district is like, but mine is purple and Abigail Spanberger talked “bipartisan” and “reaching across the aisle” until some Democrats were probably sick of it (I was not). Had Spanberger lost I’m sure she would have been blamed for talking like a despised “Centrist,” but she won using an approach also employed by among others Rep. Sharice Davids in her Kansas race. I would worry along the lines you do if actual Democratic candidates espoused the hard-edged partisanship many here exhibit, but they don’t and it’s their messaging voters hear and not ours.
You are raising problems more abstract than real, I think, especially when you talk about “the long run.” In the short run, we have to win next year before we can turn our attention to the long run. If we win it will be with candidates mixing more inclusive outreach to moderate voters with tougher “negative partisanship” messaging, and not exclusively the latter.
Bupalos
There are always going to be scammers the trick is to make scamming less effective by educating the targets or helping them raise the right questions in their own minds. The thing you really can’t do is sign those people off because of how weak minded they’ve show themselves to be. There really seems to me to be a kind of political capitulation here that doesn’t recognize itself as such. And doesn’t recognize the overall problem of democratic backsliding as something that cannot be addressed without addressing and thinking about Trumpers – how they got that way, how we reduce their numbers, what forces and factors power their global ascendency at this point in history. People have very simple answers here to this question that they are very satisfied with. But the reality is we have to peel off wobbly Trumpers and increase the odds of other Trumpers wobbling.
Where I do agree is that the messaging cannot be ala Tim Ryan, which is disastrous and will backfire.
Jackie
@Kelly: Our AQI is at 273. We’re in a basin, so w/o winds to blow this out, we’re stuck. Every area around us is “better” by about 100 AQI. Supposedly TS Hilary is coming to our rescue sometime this evening/tomorrow.
stinger
@Baud:
This.
Sister Golden Bear
@Bupalos:
These aren’t conspiracy theories, they’re justification for (violent) action against anyone they dislike. Plus more projection that an IMAX multiplex, since the cultist are ready, eager, and already taken action to eradicate trans people from public life — and now they’re saying the quiet parts out loud about eradicating us entirely.
I, for one, feel no need to reach out to the cultists who want me dead.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: I am working on getting on better shape and losing weight. I need the drop about another 30 pounds. I am not going to worry about the last five pounds right now. I am going to work on the next five pounds. Same as in politics, you going after the most gettable votes first. When we have 55% of the national vote locked down, I will worry about getting 60%.
Roger Moore
@Bupalos:
I think this is mostly a BS whine. They know they won’t actually be killed or sent to reeducation camps or anything; they just won’t be able to practice their brand of bigotry. They just want to blow it up into a claim they’ll be killed to justify their own threats to kill the people they hate.
This is true of a lot of their rhetoric. They know they’re personally safe, but they want to squash anyone who disagrees with them. They exaggerate the danger their opponents pose. Instead of just threatening them with a loss of power and prestige, their enemies threaten their very existence, so they’re justified in their own genocidal plans. It’s an incredibly common rhetorical approach for people planning mass murder, and treating it seriously gives the would-be murderers exactly what they want. Instead, we need to push back and point out what a load of BS it is.
dirge
I think it’s a variation on the theme of lies as loyalty tests. Sure, you could try persuading people of the truth, or organizing them around a well thought out plan, or rallying them around a great leader, but they might have done that anyway, without being asked. It tells you nothing about their willingness to sacrifice their dignity for you. It does nothing to demonstrate your power over them.
So you demand that they repeat a lie, the more pointless and absurd the better. You insist they execute incoherent, unethical, and counterproductive plans. You present laughably corrupt and incompetent fools for them to follow. Most people will refuse, and that’s the point. Kick them out, declare them the enemy. What’s left is a seething mob, devoid of reason and dignity, willing to say or do anything to demonstrate their allegiance. That mob can’t do anything sophisticated, but it can implement a pyramid scheme, protection racket, or bust-out.
It is a feature, not a bug, that the fascist leader is utterly devoid of redeeming qualities.
I’ve seen this process play out at smaller scale in a few businesses, with a clique of idiot executives cementing control, while investors, customers, and productive employees either flee or look on in paralyzed horror. Back in the 80’s, I saw a small group of radical evangelicals do it to a previously liberal church, eventually getting their hands on a rather substantial endowment.
This is how the fascists think everything should be run, and that’s the only value they all share and care about.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I think that’s a great way of putting it. We need to reach out to people who bought the MAGA rhetoric, but we need to do it in a way that doesn’t compromise who we are as a party. Some, probably many, of the MAGAs won’t accept it because who we are as a party is what they object to, but we need to try to reach anyone who is potentially reachable.
Msb
I recognize everyone back to Adlai Stevenson, and I suppose Dewey preceded him. But who are the earliest guys?
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: FWIW, I think you’re right about the importance of outreach to wobbly Trumpers, Repub-voting or -curious centrists, etc., because the alternative is every goddamn election for the rest of our lives being the most important election of our lifetimes.
I’m certainly not the one to do that outreach because I am filled with contempt for lots of those folks and have a hard time not showing that. But there are people who are good at it and elected Democrats who’ve successfully done so, including Jon Tester of Montana, and I hope he pulls it off again next year.
I didn’t follow the Tim Ryan campaign closely, so I don’t know what he did that was so terrible. It’s my understanding that Dems didn’t turn out for him, which is the same thing that happened to Charlie Crist in Florida, who ran a pretty good campaign, IMO.
It irritates me that any Dem would choose to sit out an election and therefore leave the field to a monster like Vance or DeSantis. So fucking stupid! But we have the voters we have, and a lot of them are short-sighted dumbasses. And we have to figure out ways to turn them out anyway, plus appeal to anyone who may be gettable, etc. Le sigh…
Ruckus
@Chris:
Look at the people that very willingly support him. They are victims of their own personalities, the same as SFB is. They think they deserve power – because. They are not in any way realists. They believe that they are superior because they like and have guns, because they hate people that don’t look like them, who they think that the color of their skin is better or that they think they are willing to fight and kill for their politics. Or all of that. They are the people that often have crappy jobs because no one wants to have them working for them. They are the people that are afraid. I knew one fella that worked for my dad and he carried a revolver in his car because everyone was out to get him. He was and they are victims of their own devising who think the only way to be safe is to get rid of everyone that isn’t them. Live and let live is in direct opposition to their views and concepts of life. They are scared shitless, which is why they have so many guns. And the worse thing is that they are their own worst enemies. The are conservatives because they want to go back to a time when all you had to do was look like them to be ahead of the game. They think they are revolutionary war heroes, working to set people like them free from the direction they see America moving – towards equality, because they think they are being lowered for that equality, and they think they are far better.
And they are not.
Bupalos
@Geminid: Totally agree that I’m talking abstractly, and that actual politicians (Biden being the highest case) are conducting a politics that runs mostly counter to BJ-geist and that of online Democratic partisans.
I agree we have to win this election and think we will, and I’m not mostly talking about a this-election problem. Frankly, negative partisanship is very likely to deliver a win there. I’m pointing a little more vaguely at the need to make progress at the same time on the deeper problem of negative partisanship even as it is the jetfuel powering a 2024 win.
West of the Rockies
@jonas:
I recall an essay noting that Trump voters would not accept his behavior from a coworker, brother, friend, sister-in-law, etc (the cheating, lying, bullying, physical shoving, etc.).
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: It’s complete nonsense. If we really wanted to eradicated White People, why do we constantly push policies like Vote-By-Mail, PPP loans and Infrastructure spending that disproportionately helps rural, white areas of the country? Liberals don’t believe in Eradicating groups. Period. Any Trumper who pretends we do, is just repeating the projection myth that we sit around fantasizing about putting them in FEMA camps, the way they actually do about us.
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: And when it comes to the Sophie’s Choice of one or the other: spend this resource (money, time, energy etc.) on:
1.) converting MAGA voters or
2.) registering and GOTV of our own voters
We should ALWAYS prioritize the latter where/when we can, simply based on the much greater odds of success for both the short (winning this election) and long-term (getting one more reliable Dem voter for future elections).
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
He doesn’t hate this country.
He hates the people that don’t believe that he is the greatest human being ever. Don’t believe that? Just ask him. He has money, and that makes him great. He is a TRUMP, that makes him great. Just ask him.
He is a small boy – on the inside. He is a human who stole money from his siblings to become worth far less in every single way. He is the epitome of a failed little boy because he thinks he is better than everyone else, because…… and he has been proving himself wrong at every waypoint in his life.
Tom Q
@Msb:
Wendell Willkie came right after (before , in chronological terms) Dewey.
rikyrah
I think Crist reached out more to the Dem Base than Ryan , who didn’t at all.
Roger Moore
@Bupalos:
I think one of the most important things the Democrats can do is just govern competently. This is probably a bigger deal on the state level than the national level, but even on the national level it’s important. Being the good government party is a win on two levels. On the most basic level, it gives people who want a good government a reason to vote for the Democrats. On the more advanced level, it builds faith in government more generally so people are more likely to vote on the issue of competent government rather than the culture war or (even more damaging) vote for the party that promises to destroy the government since it’s definitionally useless.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I don’t actually disagree with you, there are likely some that can be saved. But how? If they are convinced that SFB is the world’s greatest human, they are deranged. How do you fix that without their willingness to change. Making that kind of personality transition is very tough and winding road, and most humans that hold their kind of views will take a dramatic amount of work, time and desire to wake up. And yes I used wake up. They use woke, Woke, WOKE, because that is exactly what they are afraid of, waking up and being like all the normal people.
RevRick
@Chris: I think you overestimate the esteem Germans might have felt for Hitler as an embodiment of masculinity. He was, after all, still ONLY a corporal after four years of fighting on the front. And he was often mocked as the guy who chews on the carpets.
Buffoons were a big part of the Nazi regime (especially Goering). And that made it difficult for the opposition to take them seriously… until it was too late.
Both my parents served in the American embassy in Berlin before the War, and they noted that spectacle played a huge role in the regime. Bombastic, menacing speeches. Mass rallies. Identifying symbols. Visual imagery and sound. A harkening back.
This was also true in Mussolini’s regime.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
This.
It’s called projection. Their desire is for a world that they are on top. Equality is a concept that is as far away from their desires as it is possible to get. And it is because they think they are the top of the food chain. Equality? They think that lowers them, not raises everyone else.
Betty
@Baud: It is ignorance. She believes Biden is too old and wants an alternative. She will take my word for it that Manchin is not what she wants. I worry that too many Democrats who don’t follow politics can be taken in by the No Labels scam. The”reasonable “alternative.
sab
@Betty Cracker: He ran as a centrist reach across the aisle guy in a state that really didn’t know him outside of his own district. He is a parochiol school educated Irish Italian male who started out pro-gun and pro-life. He was always good on race, but nobody outside of his district knew that. So a lot of Dems didn’t trust him at all. My dad’s nurse’s aide told me she couldn’t bring herself to vote for him.
He needed to sell himself statewide to Democrats and he didn’t do that.The more he targeted the rural vote the more he aliented the urban base of the party. His task was probably impossible because he counted on but didn’t have the loyalty that Sherrod Brown has earned over the years.
It was really a shame, because he had become a lot closer to Sherrod Brown ‘s positions over the years.
smith
Some cults go through this cycle as well, demanding ever greater sacrifice and more extreme expressions of allegiance, and casting out those who don’t comply. The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it guarantees not only that the remaining adherents get more intense, but also that there will be fewer of them over time.
The GQP has been carrying out these purges for several cycles now, but mostly aimed at Republican candidates, not so much their voters. But look what happened in 2022: In many GQP primaries the more “pure” candidate lost, and the apostate won. Maybe I’m being too hopeful, but this trend might not be due only to centrists and independents showing up to vote, but also to more weakly-attached MAGAs falling off the edges.
trollhattan
Swing state voter suppression
Swing state voter suppression
Swing state voter suppression
That’s their only path back to the White House.
MAGAs cannot be swayed into voting for Biden, so the only approach is getting them to dejectedly stay home.
Also, too, “undecideds” are a myth cooked up by newsmedia to given them something to waste our time talking about.
Geminid
@sab: Did Tim Ryan campaign with Reps. Joyce Beatty and Shontelle Brown? Much, or at all?
rikyrah
Abortion Is So Popular Republicans Are Inventing Conspiracy Theories to Trick Americans Into Voting Against It
BY CHRISTINA CAUTERUCCI
AUG 21, 20235:50 AM
Abortion bans are unpopular. So unpopular that Republican extremists seem to have to invent conspiracy theories to trick Americans into voting for them.
That’s the major takeaway from recent political battles in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In all three states, abortion-related ballot initiatives and elections were framed by right-wing groups as the only thing standing between parents and “trans ideology” in the classroom.
In Ohio, political ads intoned that malicious entities from out of state were arriving to “encourage sex changes for kids.” In Wisconsin, Republicans distributed a video that claimed a child was “transitioned into a boy by school officials without parental consent.” And in Michigan, millions of dollars went into ads that warned “minors as young as 10 or 11” could be sterilized without “their parents even knowing.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/abortion-votes-republican-plan-trick-transphobia-ohio-wisconsin-michigan.html
Geminid
@sab: I read a Politico article about Tim Ryan’s campaign. It quoted one guy who heard a Ryan ad and was like,”Wait whut? I thought the Republican primary was already over!”
Bupalos
@Roger Moore: I think we should probably recognize that when we’re talking about a hundred million people, we’re talking about a spectrum of views and motivations, not one. Many of them really do equate their own right to existence with the right to fully participate in society while holding and expressing their “traditional” religious views. And they feel legally (or via corporate policy etc.) locked out of existence as a Christian or as an Orthodox Jew or whatever. I can disagree with the assumptions they are making about the relative importance of recognition of their right – versus the rights such recognition would infringe – without needing to deny the potential depth of their feeling excluded.
A lot of these people are from communities of continual decline, and operate on the notion that a kind of strict and overt religious umbrella is the only thing standing between their family and a host of mass social trauma like fentanyl overdose of their children, or suicide, or family dissolution.
All of which is just to say “don’t be sure they don’t actually mean it and are just putting us on.” There’s a wider variety within this running-away-into-the-imaginary-past thing than we may credit.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Well, Crist got walloped by 20 points because half the registered Dems in the state couldn’t be arsed to show up, and it pisses me off! There’s definitely voter suppression issues here, but that doesn’t explain 50% turnout.
I’ve been voting in gubernatorial primaries in Florida for decades, and I don’t think the candidate I supported in the primary has ever won the nomination. Not even once! But I still show up in the general and vote for whichever Democrat did win, even if I don’t personally like them or feel like they prioritize my particular issues.
I’m hardly an especially virtuous or civic-minded person; I just don’t like being ruled by right-wing crooks, so I show the hell up. Everyone else here does too. I wish we could figure out a way to convince others to also do that. It’s such a low bar!
Baud
@Betty:
I’m glad she has you to listen to. In any event, Manchin is no spring chicken.
Betty Cracker
@sab: Well, I hope your dad’s nurse’s aide likes being represented by Senator JD Vance because she sure helped put him in office. What a fucking idiot.
sab
@Geminid: I cannot remember if he campaigned with them or not. Ohio’s redistricting was really in flux almost up to the election, so he might not have. As far as I can tell Ohio’s Black political leadership likes him, but I don’t know how big an audience that reaches beyond the party activists. His ads were so much aimed at across the aisle that my husband used to throw his shoes at the tv. So the normies on our side stayed home or didn’t check his box even if they voted
ETA I am not blaming Blacks. I think women were more of a problem.
Anyway
@UncleEbeneezer:
But what about muh guns? and muh gas stoves?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: There was also poor Democratic turnout in New York last year, and in Virginia and New Jersey the year before. I read that California Democrats left a few Republican House seats on the table last year because of lower turnout.
This could be a problem again in 2026, but probably not next year, especially if Trump heads the Republican ticket. I think he was the most potent GOTV force for Democrats that I’ve ever seen.
wjca
@Ruckus:
But he lost the popular vote twice. So, since most of the country doesn’t believe in him, he ends up hating the country for that reason.
sab
@Betty Cracker: She is as reliable a Democratic voter as there is, and he didn’t manage to persuade her. His campaign dissuaded her, so that is on them. I live in his district. She lives in Marcia Fudge’s.
And JD Vance just came across as a non-entity.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: How do you think Virginia’s statehouse elections will shake out in November? I was reading something earlier about Youngkin (allegedly) contemplating using a Repub sweep in VA as a springboard to the GOP presidential nomination if the rest of the not-Trump’s continue face-planting.
wjca
You’re right, you can’t fix the cultists. They are effectively unreachable.
The ones you can reach are the ones who voted by label (Democrat or Republican). Maybe you convince/show them that you want what they want. Maybe you just show them that the guy with their preferred label this time has to get trounced in order for them to get to someone they can support. (Which starts them away from the whole vote-by-label mindset.)
Betty Cracker
@sab:
Manifestly she is not! But this conversation demonstrates why I should keep right on being a crabby blog commenter and supporter of voting rights/education groups in non-public-facing roles, etc., rather than a phone canvasser or door knocker. I would crawl over broken glass to vote for the most inept shitbird Democrat on earth rather than sit home and allow a “nonentity” like the malevolent MAGA oligarch boot-licker JD Vance coast into office on my non-vote!
sab
@sab: White Catholic male politicians in Ohio do not have and do not deserve the trust of Black voters, and pro-choice voters. Ryan needed to earn it, and he didn’t even try.
rikyrah
Senator Mazie Hirono (@maziehirono) posted at 2:15 PM on Thu, Aug 17, 2023:
There are rumors circulating that could be deterring families on Maui devastated by wildfires from applying for @FEMA aid. Let me be clear:
FEMA cannot seize your property if you apply for assistance.
There is no application fee.
Crowdfunding will not impact your FEMA claim.
(https://twitter.com/maziehirono/status/1692253772880441786?t=QGh9gjDScqmyFHek6NZg5Q&s=03)
rikyrah
Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) posted at 11:52 AM on Mon, Aug 21, 2023:
NEW: Special Counsel’s office notifies DC federal judge Tanya Chutkan that Jack Smith would like to file a “reply” to Donald Trump’s request for April 2026 trial date
Smith wants to file response in advance of the Monday August 28th hearing at which Chutkan will set trial date
(https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1693667377685168492?t=CfpLlNPBzarbZ6n-CRawJg&s=03)
rikyrah
LIPS SO PURSED.
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) posted at 11:56 AM on Mon, Aug 21, 2023:
to avoid another govt shutdown Freedom Caucus demands end to all prosecutions of Trump and his criminal associates. lol
(https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1693668452056141854?t=xjs0Fpc8zo-77eHuzbOHVQ&s=03)
RevRick
@Baud: Buchanan claimed that Lincoln was only doing what he had begun, following the mass resignation of Southern Democrats from his Cabinet.
Tyler actually became a member of the Confederate Congress. He died before he could be tried for treason.
rikyrah
Going to say this again:
Without the blowup about this on social media,
they would have gotten away with it.
The DOJ needs to visit these criminals.
CBS News (@CBSNews) posted at 8:30 PM on Sun, Aug 20, 2023:
The three affidavits used as the basis for an Aug. 11 police raid on a small Kansas newspaper and other related locations were not filed until three days after the search warrants were executed, records provided by the paper’s attorney show. https://t.co/0Ztgep63IX
(https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1693435250129416197?t=PqWLZEMKNit4j0nEf7ocaQ&s=03)
rikyrah
I love this for Jenna..
She really whining about why MAGA’s not paying HER legal bills?
BWA HA HA HA AH AH AH AH AHAH
Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) posted at 0:06 AM on Mon, Aug 21, 2023:
Jenna is in the Find Out stage https://t.co/uyovTVeYyG
(https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1693489685862158733?t=CSSC598YafHLMDg-E0IYLA&s=03)
dirge
This is surely some part of what’s going on. There’s plenty of polling and anecdotal evidence that consolidating around the ever more intense core is costing them heavily with “moderate” republicans, though it’s also pulling in a few fringe types who wouldn’t otherwise show up. But on the whole they’re narrowing and shrinking their coalition, and that seems inevitable given the cult dynamic.
It looks like a mafia style bust-out of the GOP, selling off its reputation and cohesion to fuel a last desperate bid to capture power, just long enough to consolidate anti-democratic control. Then they’ll bust-out America.
So it’s something of a race. Can they consolidate control over the GOP before that coalition disintegrates?(yes). Can they hold it together long enough to use it to destroy democracy? (TBD)
WereBear
My explanation is that the MAGA mind lies to itself so much they have a magnetic attraction to someone successful with the same kind of mind.
They are dazzled by his reputation for wealth. It really is a medieval mind.
In so many ways, not just the Tarantino one.
catclub
@Chris: I would guess Mike Pompeo is the badass they did not pick.
Ruckus
@wjca:
I believe that you are simplifying SFB. Sure he seems like an idiot, but he’s not actually that dumb. What he lacks is any kind of actual logic. That doesn’t mean his brain doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work in any kind of logical manner. He has for somewhere around 65-70 yrs thought he is the perfect person. Now somewhere in the back of that level of illogical thought is a somewhat intellectual human. But because his conscious thought is mostly illogical, what comes out his mouth and in his manner looks like ignorant, racist shit. Because it is. And because he’s done and been this for so long, that’s what we see. A few like it, because they feel a kinship with it. That’s who showed up in DC on January 6. And of course the longer one is immersed in this area of “thought,” the worse it gets because it is all negative. And at 77 yrs old, he isn’t going to change. The big issue is that as humans we can all fall into this type of thought and behavior if we are not careful. And quite a few have, he is not alone.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
It really is a medieval mind.
Absolutely this.
I imagine that it would be rather difficult to look forward with one’s head firmly lodged in the outlet port.
Msb
@ Tom Q
thanks!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: That is definitely Youngkin’s dream. Conversely, his brand will take a hit if Republicans do not do well in the General Assembly elections. So Youngkin is pulling in large sums for his “Spirit of Virginia” PAC and spending on ads statewide and in the battleground districts. There are not many of those, maybe 4-6 Senate and 10 or so House seats.
The Blue Virginia blog had an article a few days ago saying that if the “lean D” and “lean R” districts came out as predicted and the “tossups” split evenly, the result would be a 21-19 Democratic Senate and a 50-50 House of Delegates.
That’s not exactly comforting! But I think Democrats are well motivated, and they have the high ground in the electorate on the issues of abortion rights and gun safety.
Republicans tried to defuse the abortion rights issue by not putting their proposal for a 15 week abortion limit to a vote on the House floor, even though they had a 52-48 majority. I don’t think that tactic will work though. It just makes them look sneaky, which they are.
And Republicans tried to repeal 5 of the 6 gun safety laws passed in 2020. Democrats will hang those votes around their necks. The laws are very reasonable and most had 70+% approval in polls taken early 2020. I think Democrats will pound gun safety and abortion rights to good effect.
I think Democrats will win both houses, but then again I thought McAuliffe would win in 2021. I recognized that Youngkin was an attractive candidate but I still thought McAuliffe would pull out a win, maybe by a smaller than usual Democratic margin.
McAulliffe may have been a sort of wet blanket for Democratic voters, and Democrats will be better off without him on the ballot. I voted for McAuliffe of course, but I never liked the guy, whereas I like Ralph Northam, Tim Kaine (a lot!) and even the boring Mark Warner.
Kathleen
@Geminid: I saw a picture of him with Shontel Brown on Twitter. He only came to Cincinnati once (possibly twice at most). I heard nothing in his campaign ads that targeted Black voters like he did white voters. Nothing. Greg Landsman, who beat Chabot in OH#1 had 2 big themes he hit over and over: Chabot tried to overturn your vote that you worked so hard to earn and Chabot opposed health care legislation. Landsman never mentioned Joe Biden or “Democrats”. He hit on those 2 (plus 2-3 other) issues and his message was clear. Plus as a city councilman he had already engaged Black community years ago when he worked on legislation for free pre school.
I heard Ryan’s ads on a Black owned radio station and he ran them back to back to back. His ads were cliched and felt like they were thrown together with little thought towards engaging his audience. Turnout was down in Hamilton County, which is mostly blue. I think he ran a horrible campaign.
Jamey
*Funny how we can watch the GOP creep further into madness through the years.
Sucks how this country has permanently lost 30% of its people to a lazy, pestilent carnival barker.
[*Okay, not funny. Tragic.]
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: Sounds like Republican rat-fuckery is afoot. Probably trying to make them more susceptible to buy out from unscrupulous realtors.