From one proud Irish family to another — it was good to have you all back at the White House. https://t.co/x62TsIYWVu
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 18, 2024
My Irish-American Nana, the lace-curtain one, would’ve had a phrase for this: Irish schmaltz. There’s a particular kind of faith-and-begorra blarney that hides a knife, and President Biden is gifted in its use: The Kennedy family, which has given so much to America & Democratic politics, is always welcome here. But RFK Jr — the closest you’ll get is if you take the visitors tour, assuming you can score a ticket.
There have been few moments in American history where the "are you better off than four years ago" question has been so trivially easy as now. https://t.co/JyW5vUEQOZ
— Ernie Tedeschi (@ernietedeschi) March 14, 2024
Biden camp needs to run a 'four years ago' campaign that is just literally whatever was happening that corresponding week. Empty shelves, empty streets, corpse trucks, Trump talking about bleach and how he got a gift of ventilators from Putin that explode. https://t.co/gRmUtAVifU
— zeddy (@Zeddary) March 14, 2024
Meanwhile…
An ill-intentioned elderly man with a poor memory https://t.co/vt9k1h0nsA
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) March 16, 2024
Even if you think Trump was just referencing the economy with his bloodbath comments, I would suggest someone running for the highest office in the land shouldn’t employ rhetoric that could be remotely understood as a call for violence.
— Jean-Michel Connard ??? (@torriangray) March 17, 2024
wake up, folks pic.twitter.com/aqwfkvm7G3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17, 2024
YOU LIBS BETTER STOP LYING ABOUT TRUMP SUPPORTING VIOLENCE OR YOU WILL NOT LIKE WHAT HAPPENS
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) March 17, 2024
Headline writers: Don’t outsmart yourself. Just do “Trump Promises Bloodbath if he Doesn’t Win Election.”
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) March 17, 2024
Baud
The most important part of Trump’s comments is that he loses.
p.a.
It’s nothing to do with “outsmarting”, it’s propping up a flop to maintain a horse-race and sell clicks.
satby
Some of those Kennedy grandkids are practically clones of their grandfathers’ faces.
And I think they should run an ad of all the times Joe can get down on one knee to talk to people in wheelchairs, small kids, and for pictures and then just stand right up again. Lots of people in their 60s can’t manage that.
kalakal
Trump promises bloodbath
Biden promises healthcare expansion
Both sides!
Wag
@p.a.: What the NYT refuses to believe is that reporting the truth about what is happening would engage readers far more effectively and deeply than their both-sider bs currently does.
Ken
Now I’m trying to imagine what would happen if Trump got down on one knee, like Biden in that first photo. It’s always good to start the day with a laugh.
Baud
@Ken:
Ever seen a beached whale.
sab
@satby: Absolutely. I noticed years ago that Biden is a lot more agile than me ( 10 years his junior) and I am in better shape than most of my peers.
Princess
Four years ago my child was trapped in Peru under sudden full quarantine, and, unlike every single other western country, Trump’s America was doing fuck all to get her and the hundreds of other Americans there home, so I’ll say hell yeah, I’m better off now. I was seeing masks myself because they’d completely mismanaged the PPE thing. You just know that Hillary’s WH would have been all over PPE.
When we think about how bad Trump was, we tend to think of the big things and we forget just how indifferent he was to the daily functioning of government and how all of that ground down. Most people don’t have direct contact with the Fed but anyone who did, noticed.
Baud
Pregnant people aren’t better off but that’s because of Trump.
sab
@Princess: I remember the search for elastic for making masks.
The Cleveland Clinic outsourced mask-making to Amish housewives in central Ohio
ETA It was the NBA not the federal government that provided leadership.
EarthWindFire
I’m so tired of being told what Trump really meant and still not having it make sense. He’ll prevent a bloodbath in our thriving auto industry by enacting “100% tariffs” Sure, Don.
3Sice
Sad, low energy donor base – considering they threw in a million as a starter, ouch.
schrodingers_cat
Trump meant what he said. The people making excuses for him are complicit. They approve his message and are too timid to say it out 🔊 themselves.
Kay
The anti woke ninnies turn on Elon Musk:
Musk stopped promoting their stupid Substacks the moment he was done using them politically. These people so deserve one another. They’re careerist assholes, sure, but they’re also not very smart.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: Absolutely
Chief Oshkosh
@Wag:
Exactly so. Think of the clicks that they would get if they actually reported on Orban’s visit to D.C. without even saying Hi to Biden, but instead spending the day with the very dangerous fascists at The Heritage Foundation, plotting ways to overthrow our government the way Orban did in his country.
Hat tip to Heather Cox Richardson’s letter at
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/march-17-2024?r=1yjc6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Baud
@Kay:
The Leopard’s Eating People’s Faces Party is the fastest growing political party in the US.
Ken
@Kay: I wonder if Taibbi would have cared, or noticed, what Musk was doing with Substack if it weren’t for those two little words, “including me”.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
No lie told.
TBone
Better off today than 4 years ago: The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025.
Heather Cox Richardson goes into detail in today’s Letter.
On a brighter note, the entire nation is better off in REAL terms than it was 4 years ago, no matter what nightmare fever dreams are being blurted out by the RWNJ Industrial Complex!
TBone
@Kay: 💙😍
TBone
@3Sice: 🤣💙
kalakal
@Kay:
And that’s the bit that really hurts Taibbi and his fellow nincompoops
diddums
Suzanne
@Kay:
LAWL these people are so fucken dumb.
I, for one, continue to be riveted by the Missing Kate Middleton story. Supposedly there’s some official announcement expected from the family in the next couple of days. In the meantime, smart people are going back on the internet and it appears that more photos have been Photoshopped. And not, like, Healing Brush-ing away a zit or a wrinkle. Like inserting entire people into photos.
Baud
The real question is whether we’re better off today than we would be if all our political fantasies had come true.
Princess
@Kay: And what does Taibi mean by “disenfranchising “ anyway? Taking away their right to vote? Words means things, Taibi. What a whiner.
eta Taibbi, whatever.
Jeffg166
I realized just how panicked people were about covid the day walked into the grocery store and saw empty shelves. The hoarding had started.
The one that really got me was all the baking stuff was gone. I knew people who had no idea how to bake were going to start baking.
Kay
@Ken:
“No one in the press seems to care” that my Substack revenue is down!
On Cuomo’s show. Another whiner who thinks he’s entitled to lavish compensation.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Where’s Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie when you need them?
TBone
Some down and dirty mood music for President Biden and all team members 🎶
https://youtu.be/tDTQQWSmo8s
BellyCat
@Kay: Taibbi believes only in his own free speech. And he also believes he should receive payment to express it. Low demand for his goods equals Cancel Culture.
Kay
@Princess:
They use “disenfranchised” to mean “people won’t pay me for a subscription”. It’s like how they’re supposedly “cancelled” but they all get published in the NYtimes. Isn’t it perfect? So dramatic and self pitying but also dumb and wrong.
Baud
I wish I got paid for my comments here.
Princess
@Kay: I can’t even imagine the group Matt Taibbi would be relevant to these days. Poor baby.
TBone
@Jeffg166: this one was perfect. Perfection!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aox7CeOdmOY
He nails Rump to the wall 😉 while simultaneously planting his shoe up his ass!
Tony G
@EarthWindFire: The sad truth is that the majority of white voters will, once again, vote for Trump. These people will literally vote for a pile of shit if they think that that would harm non-white people. This is the reality of the United States. A plurality of Germans voted for Hitler in 1932, and it led to the destruction of their country.
Kay
@BellyCat:
How many “I am bravely opposed to wokeness, the same as all my fancy friends” essays did they think they could sell? My God, there’s thousands of them already in circulation. The NYTimes alone produces at least one a week. Supply exceeds demand.
BellyCat
@Baud: Definite grounds for canceling your subscription.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: “Disenfranchised” = “can’t use the N word” (that’s what this is about, right?)
bbleh
I gotta admit, I’m a little worried that the MAGAts are so thoroughly painting themselves into a corner that some sort of violent outburst is becoming almost inevitable. Like, even in the (very unlikely so far, thank Dog and also Joe Biden) event they win bigly, they’ll have all this anger and resentment built up over so long that they’ll just go nuts about … something. Rumors of busloads (of course) of Inner City residents (of course) from Philadelphia (of course) trying to vote illegally in some white collar county. Total fiction about a “corps” of revolutionary Illegals sneaked in just before the election to something something fraud something poison the blood of our country. And they’ll pick targets and bring Righteous Vengeance or something.
Never wanted to have a weapon at home before. But now …
BellyCat
@Kay: While imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, apparently that doesn’t pay the bills.
Tony G
@Kay: Very poor quality control in those mass-produced essays, too. William F. Buckley at least bothered to open a Thesaurus from time to time in order to pretend to be intelligent.
Bupalos
I’d caution folks that treating the 4 years question too literally is likely to backfire. Folks aren’t going to look at the calendar here and Trump isn’t going to be blamed for the pandemic itself and probably not even for its mishandling either. Functionally this question is going to play as “were you better off 2017, 18, 19….essentially before the pandemic and probably most of us are going to gut-answer “yes.” We need to have an answer that isn’t focussed on how bad things were but the things that are happening that functionally make life better.
This is always an unfair question, and it’s one that is going to be a political loser for us and on which we need to redirect.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
It was indeed the NBA.
Wednesday, March 11th, is one of the days from that period that’s burned into my memory. I was in a thread at my old online home about whether the NCAA should cancel its tournament. There was some debate about whether they should, but it seemed pretty clear that there was roughly zero chance that they would.
At that point, just a few colleges and universities had canceled classes. That was all.
Then that afternoon the NBA shut down. That seemed to give permission for the rest of the sportsball world to follow: by Friday, the NHL, MLB, and the NCAA had canceled their games. By Monday, universities, colleges, public schools had all either shut down or had announced that they were doing so by the end of the week. Hospitals were postponing all non-essential surgeries – my wife got caught up in this: she’d had ankle surgery scheduled for Thursday the 19th, but on Monday afternoon she got the call that it was postponed indefinitely.
But yeah, the NBA was the first institution of any significance to shut down. It seemed like everyone else was waiting for someone else to take the lead. Major props to the NBA for stepping up, while Trump was doing everything he could to pretend it wasn’t that big a deal. By April, he was demanding that places open back up.
Thinking about that time makes it boggle my mind even more that people want him to lead this country, after the horrible way he handled the only major crisis of his administration.
Tony G
@bbleh: To my chagrin, I have a MAGA idiot in my extended family (a very dumb young man who likes to brag about his “arsenal” of semi-automatic rifles). I usually see the young man about once a year; that’s more than enough.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Bupalos
@Tony G: hopefully as in 2020 it will be a smaller majority than it had been 4 years before. And hopefully the trend of support for the authoritarians growing among non-“whites” won’t continue.
lowtechcyclist
Leopards eating faces. Who could’ve seen that coming?
ETA: Baud beat me to it by a mile. :-)
JML
@Ken: Taibbi’s much like Nate Silver in that he had a moment a number of years ago and has been chasing it ever since like a heroin user. He’s now mad that the media doesn’t care that Elon Musk used him and his brethren and then screwed them? He’s competing directly with the people in media he wants to back him up. 15 years ago he would had understood the inherent conflict that comes up with monetized media like that and railed against the corporatization of it. Now, he’s just grubbing for cash like the rest.
Tony G
@Bupalos: Given the stupidity of the U.S. public (there, I said it) any strategy is a losing strategy. But, empirically, under Biden, unemployment has been lower than it’s been since I was in seventh grade in 1969, when Led Zeppelin was the hot new band. People like to bitch about inflation (which is down now anyway) but when people are unemployed, that’s when they’re really suffering.
Bupalos
@Kay: I can’t get past the usage of “disenfranchising” here.
Tony G
@Bupalos: Yes, I hope so.
TBone
@Baud: inspired! 🎶🤣
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-dqW4uBEE
catclub
@Bupalos: I think that ‘four years ago I visited the grocery store’
is very effective. Pictures!
‘Four years ago Trump was blocking cruise ships from coming home so he could pretend covid numbers were low.’
Four years ago trump was muzzling the CDC to not report covid numbers.
Four years ago Jared was stealing masks and selling to the highest bidder.
Kay
@bbleh:
I don’t know if this is comforting or not but I think a lot of the malevolent MAGA energy has dissipated, at least where I live (75% Trump). Several other commenters in Trump areas say the same. 2020 really felt like there was a heightened risk – I had an actual sort of road rage encounter with one of them in the days before the election and they did these “rolling rallies” where they essentially shut down a highway by going 20 miles an hour in a caravan and no one in local law enforcement would do anything because they were all Trump cultists too. It was really aggressive behavior and meant to intimidate and frightening because it was clear they had co opted law enforcement.
It’s like the air went out of a balloon now though. I genuinely think the high Covid casualties they took disheartened a lot of them. It’s all fun and games and owning the libs until half your friends die.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
My main political fantasy is still the one about everybody getting Raptured who says they believe in the Rapture. But since they’re all still around and voting for Trumpublicans, I’d say that’s a No.
BellyCat
@Bupalos: Courtesy of COVID, fewer Trump voters than Biden voters are still alive. Harsh reality of refusing to mask that polls among the living can’t accurately convey.
rikyrah
ICAM about the Biden campaign investing in those 4 years ago ads. They literally write themselves
Bupalos
@Tony G: I think the state of the economy (provided it continues to be robust) will be a big positive for us. My point here is we have to talk it up, we can’t rely on talking down late 2019, which seems to be the gist of the post. We have to talk about what’s going right and excuse what is going wrong (a lot) with the salient and true observation that the chaos of Republican radicalism is destroying civic and international order.
Kay
@Bupalos:
It’s really amsuing to me because you know who started this ridiculous interpretation of “free speech”? Sarah Palin. She was the first Right winger I heard who insisted anyone who disagreed with her/didn’t promote her stupid career was cancelling her and infringing on her 1A rights.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: one of my favorite memes that really upsets the Evangeluglicans is where hundreds of inflatable sex dolls are filled with helium and set free to rise up and meet jeebus midair. It really messes with their heads in the best way. I’ve been accused of “mocking God!” while they clutch pearls and retire to their fainting couches.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
All that bad-boy cred down at the Tuba Blowers and Horn Reamers Club not enough for you anymore?
Politics changes a man.
catclub
@BellyCat: About 150 Million eligible adults voted in the 2020 election. About 140 Million eligible adults…. did not.
About 1.5M? have died from covid in the US. Even assuming a 60-40 split so that more red state anti-vaxxers died. that is a shift of 200k voters.
lowtechcyclist
@bbleh:
I’d be worried about this if they win, because they would (accurately) see it as having been giving permission to go wild.
If they lose, they can look back to 1/6/21 and see how it would play out for them.
Betty
@Kay: Don’t forget the “hostages” as well. Seeing the courts putting the January 6 guys behind bars was a wake up call.
3Sice
@Kay:
I’ve noticed the signage and flags have declined, and what remains has shifted back to standard Bircher paranoia.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Yeah, that was from an episode of Six Feet Under IIRC.
I’d tell ’em that God’s a big boy and can take a joke better than they can.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Jeffg166: We were coming back from a weekend trip and starting wonder if this Covid thing was going to get bad. On Tuesday I heard TFG was going to be addressing the nation and said to my wife, he’s probably going to start a panic and we ought to pick up a few groceries before the overreaction starts. So we did, including some TP (“panic shoppers always go for TP, we might as well get some”).
The panic, including the Great TP Shortage, started the next day. His effect on the nation was pretty much Kevin Bacon in “Animal House.”
We ran out of TP anyway.
Bupalos
@catclub: that just isn’t how the 4 years ago question works politically. It’s about a general feeling and it’s almost always an more or less effective point of attack from the out party. Whatever the specifics of that calendar day and what was in the political news that makes an easy ad, I really don’t think the 2018-2019 zeitgeist was in the kind of state that would make such an ad really effective for us.
We’re political and political news junkies. We remember and weight things that our fellow citizens do not.
Ken
How very 1984. We need a word for the royal equivalent of Kremlinology. Windsorology?
Kay
@3Sice:
I think you’re correct and that could be dissipation too. Not as Trump-focused, just the general far Right energy we’ve seen since Goldwater. They’ve melded ino the larger Right.
I’m not worried about violence from the voters. I’m worried about far Right lawyers and judges trying to overturn when he loses and media going along with it. The leaders are what I’m worried about.
Soprano2
@Ken: No, they can’t understand things unless they are personally affected.
3Sice
Anybody remember rural fields being fallow during the Trump interregnum?
That was weird.
3Sice
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The one local big box grocer that put a limit on toilet paper, never ran out. Go figure.
Soprano2
Sure, the world’s most thin-skinned bully is in favor of real free speech. Can these people hear themselves? What they mean is that he was going to let conservatives say whatever they want to without any moderation or worries about violating terms of service.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I have zero interest in the royals and of course they’re clumsily lying their asses off BUT I think it’s clear that something is really wrong with her – she’s being treated for something serious – eating disorder, depression, serious physical illness- so I have some sympathy for her. Unless it’s just that the marriage fell apart in which case they should just admit it with a one sentence release and stop being so silly.
BellyCat
@catclub: Given Hillary’s narrow loss, we don’t need much! :-)
(Your 60/40 split seems generous? I’d guess it’s more like 70/30 or higher)
Kay
@Soprano2:
I dn’t know if you followed Taibbi’s performance in Congress, but it was just insane. He has SUCH a high opinion of himself, posing dramatically with GOP House leaders on a “search for the TRUF!”
He was up there insisting the “Twitter files” were the Pentagon papers. They’re all such sloppy, lazy clowns. It’s like they try to imitate the grown ups they admire – journalists from the past they’re aware of- and they’re such a shoddy, cheap version. They’re all subsidized by billionaires too. If it’s not Harlan Crow it’s Elon Musk and if it’s not Musk it’s whichever rich family own the NYTimes. They’re very comfortable revolutionaries.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I suspect that as a result of her surgery she’s gained a bunch of weight and doesn’t want anyone to see her or take a picture of her. I can’t blame her if that’s the truth.
Jeffro
Biden/Harris 2024 new line of attack after the “bloodbath” comments: “Why should trump be held to different standards than anyone else who wants to be our president? And why are those standards always lower?”
Reframe the whole fucking thing for voters and the snooze media alike.
Bupalos
@BellyCat: The point is that it’s a likely meaninglessly small number in political terms. A second point would be that in the real world as opposed to this polarized online exercise, the actual political effect of covid deaths (like opioid deaths) is at best ambiguous and at worst actually increases support for authoritarianism.
Baud
@Kay:
Aren’t most revolutionaries in the U.S. today conformable? At least the ones that are notorious in media and social media. If there’s one who’s going hungry, they don’t come to mind.
K-Mo
@Bupalos: I think I disagree with you, but I don’t know. Regardless, I think this is the key question. How can the Dems reframe the line of thinking you cite to: comparing 2019 to, say, 2023 and saying I liked the former?
The thing I like about the 4-years-ago today (besides it being a very simple concept) is that it reminds people that we had a huge, pandemic-caused, economic disruption. The truth is that the US under Biden has been very fortunate to recover from a massive downturn with only what looks like a temporary bout of inflation. That is very tricky to do and we have perhaps been lucky as well as deft. Now vs. 4 years ago says, either evaluate Biden directly on the timeline, or if you want to eschew that, take into account the pandemic and acknowledge the economic miracle we are living.
Mousebumples
@Suzanne: Khris Middleton (Milwaukee Bucks player) has been out with an ankle sprain for about a month and Bucks fan social media was totally (intentionally) mixing up Kate and Khris. Khris played in yesterday’s game, fwiw.
I wouldn’t say I’m invested… But Charles and Co., aren’t very good at this.
If memory serves, Rudy Gobert was making fun of COVID one night at a presser, and tested positive the next day. Which made it Very Real, Very Fast for the NBA.
George
@Wag: The NYT does not care about engaging readers more effectively. The NYT is operated only to promote the narrative that serves the purposes of its managers/owners and the people in power.
It’s not like one day the editors of the NYT will wake up and become real journalists again (or for the first time). They are successful at what they do and they will keep doing it.
Baud
@Kay:
@Soprano2:
I’m half tempted to spread a rumor that she’s transitioning just to work JK Rowling into a conniption.
Baud
People were much better off in 2000 and 2016 because of Dem policies, but it didn’t help. So make the case, but realize that a lot of people are looking for excuses, and a lot of media want to serve those people.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: I remember that, because we were at the bar when it happened, and they were broadcasting it. That’s when I knew for sure it was going to be bad, because if the NBA was willing to cancel games, that’s bad. I told my manager to be as conservative as possible on ordering anything that couldn’t be frozen; she thought I was overreacting. At midnight on March 18th we had to shut down, and we were closed for 9 weeks.
Jeffro
LOL so true – classic “hockey stick” growth curve. =)
dmsilev
Four years ago this week, Trump was busy telling the United States that COVID was just a blip, the case numbers would come down right away, it would be gone by Easter, and we should all not worry ourselves about it. Meanwhile, grocery stores were being stripped bare of everything vaguely edible, the great national toilet paper shortage was beginning, states were starting lockdowns, we were all being told to keep six feet away from each other, masks made from handkerchiefs and napkins were all the rage, etc. etc.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: Plus, the government is under the control of a Democratic president, so they wouldn’t get any breaks like they did in 2021.
JCJ
@Suzanne: My favorite theory regarding Kate Middleton is that she is the new drummer for Slipknot. It makes sense. They fired the old drummer so the job is available, and they perform wearing masks so she can remain hidden.
Jeffro
@Kay: BellyCat put it well earlier in the thread:
I’m going to keep that in mind the next time I hear some RWNJ nimrod complain about ‘Cancel Culture’. “You believe in the blessed ‘invisible hand’, right? Free markets above all else, right? Maybe demand just fell right through the floor, friend.”
Bupalos
@K-Mo: We don’t get to dictate how voters engage with the 4 years question. We need to start with an understanding that it is a manipulative, dishonest question at heart that directly appeals to voters to turn off their brains. The reason the Reagan campaign formulated it is to turn off debate about the specifics of competing plans to deal with economic malaise and try and bundle every kind of disenchantment and drop it at Carter’s feet. It’s a stupid question that cheers on stupidity, and is fundamentally anti-incumbent in structure and effect. We really need to start there before we think about boosting it in advertising because we think we can make the comparison work in specific ways.
Jeffro
I have a feeling that the powers-that-be at the RNC (or more likely, Koch Industries) did some similar math and figured out very early on in the Biden presidency that losing 200k of their voters across 50 states (heck, probably even most of those were in red states where it wouldn’t make a difference) was worth it. Worth going anti-mask, anti-vax, whatever, just to keep their side unified and potentially kneecap our nation’s pandemic recovery.
Kay
@Suzanne:
My daughter got me Jo Malone – London perfume as a gift and it’s lovely – woodsy and herby – but I saw on Instagram that it’s Kate’s favorite perfume so now I’m a little put out that she shared that. I don’t really want to follow her.
Timill
@Baud: Excellent! You should do it.
My actual bet is on chemo and hair loss.
gene108
@Bupalos:
A few Republicans brought “are you better off now than four years ago” out as a dig on Biden, and got slapped down hard. Reminding folks how badly Trump handled the COVID response can help refresh memories on how bad he was and is.
evodevo
@Kay: LOL Leopards – face. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of a-holes…
zhena gogolia
@Wag: EXACTLY But it wouldn’t please Wall Street.
Kay
@evodevo:
You have to give Don Lemmon credit – he was the only one smart enough to use Musk rather than letting Musk use him. He’s going to revive his career based on Elon Musk’s thin skin and refusal to accept criticism.
Smart!
geg6
@satby: I know I can’t do that. He’s in better shape than I am at 65.
ETA: I couldn’t do that at 50.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Twitter/social media revolutionaries who think it is a heavy lift to vote in every election but a revolution and its aftermath are going to be easy can be best defined in one word. Delusional. In two words: Future Republicans.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: He was so repulsive.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: I like that! I retorted “I’m mocking YOU, asswipe! You’re not God and have no authority here!” The “You judgy, sanctimonious bitchez” was left unsaid, but will be appended in future.
bbleh
@lowtechcyclist: since I’m indulging in a little paranoid Eeyorism here, I’d be more worried if (WHEN, dammit) they lose, cuz they will have convinced themselves in advance that they for sure are gonna win. It’ll be 1/6 all over, only bigger, and I don’t think they do looking back — that’s for ee-leetists and their “facts.”
@Kay: from your keyboard to the FSM’s galactic monitor! I’m in a sea of it here, like it’s just assumed a White guy is a Trump supporter, and it’s an almost shocking thing when someone actually explains why they’re a Trump supporter. I’ve always believed 75% or more of his support is cranky old folks who would have trouble even getting TO a riot, much less rioting, but that still leaves a lot of not-so-old ones who just seem to be seething, and who are willing to believe ever-more-deranged fantasies.
@3Sice: concur. For now. But summer is coming.
Either way, I trust Joe and his people won’t be squeamish about having massive force lined up and ready to go on Inauguration Day, nor about making sure it is well and widely known.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Taibbi was a leftie blog darling (include this one) for his unhinged innumerate nonsense about Goldman Sachs.
There was plenty to criticize about capital markets following 2008 meltdown but he was not credible even then. His math was usually wrong by orders of magnitude.
TBone
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: did you see the video at #36? Bog roll!
Bupalos
@gene108: Absolutely. I’m not saying you don’t use this approach to defend against the question, which is fundamentally both anti-thought and anti-incumbent. I’m saying you don’t raise it and boost it yourself, thinking your in control of how voters interact with it.
The best spin on this is probably directly referring not to the effects of the pandemic, but to a clueless Trump wrongly predicting it would not be a big deal, and then extending that to say that we’re better off with someone less aggressively ignorant in charge of whatever unforeseen challenges are coming next. But we definitely want to redirect from the simple ‘do you prefer the present or the past’ context, because these days the (fictionalized) past tends to win out.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@bbleh:
I worry about that too.
evodevo
@TBone: One of my favorite Six Feet Under episodes LOL
schrodingers_cat
Concern troll is concerned. Democrats should cower in a corner. Be afraid.
R-Jud
@Soprano2:
My wild guess is rampant endometriosis that invaded the bowel, leading to the need for a temporary stoma/colostomy bag while the bowel resection heals. Fits with it being extensive abdominal surgery and non-cancerous.
geg6
@Bupalos:
”
Huh. Pretty much everyone I know is better off now. Especially those who work in manufacturing, which is a large proportion of the locals around here. Same for those who work in health care, which is probably an even larger proportion of people in my area as it is pretty much the largest segment of employment in the Pittsburgh area.
Bupalos
@BellyCat: Politics aren’t static. Without invoking zombies, consider that it’s entirely possible that dead Trumpers create more Trumpers.
TBone
@dmsilev: I posted a Fascistbook meme of him with a penis photoshopped on to his nose and titled it “Premature Resurrection” for Easter that year. Went back into FB jail for it after only just being released that day. Banned for life a few days later 😆 My friends were so proud!
Trivia Man
@Tony G: Led Zeplin? Are they the Black Sabbath wanna be band that covers old blues tunes with no attribution? They might have a nice little career if they dont get too rambunctious. I hear good things about their energetic drummer.
Suzanne
@Kay: I am fascinated by the attempt to create a historical record. Like, this isn’t Facetune of the Kardashians we’re talking about. This is an official monarchy funded by taxpayers, and they are straight-up fabricating images and telling lies.
It amazes me that they think they won’t get caught.
schrodingers_cat
Am I the only one who doesn’t care about the Royals across the pond who have now lost most of their ill gotten Empire.
The only British royal I remotely cared about was Diana. She was an icon, her work with AIDS patients was inspirational. The rest of them can disappear tomorrow for all I care.
geg6
Agree completely except for that last phrase. I have less than zero sympathy for her. Word is that she’s a racist git. Fuck her.
Harrison Wesley
So Trump is recommending blood baths for the next COVID variant? Maybe I’m not keeping up with the news like I should.
Bupalos
@geg6: I’ll take it a step further and say as far as the presidency goes everyone in this country is just literally better off. That’s just not the politically salient question, it’s whether these other people you know (and the ones you don’t know) see themselves that way. The polling here is fairly clear, that Biden is in what has historically been a very precarious position. Trump in 2020 had much better polling numbers on these questions, which is why Republicans seek to bring this question to the fore and why we have to have a more open-eyed approach than the “ha ha yeah, look at this online picture and you tell me” kind of thing. We have to engage on changing the perception, not be confident that somehow the reality we see will just win the day for us.
JAFD
@Kay: Back in ’84, IIRC, some paper did a survey on ‘Political Scents’; reported that Chanel No. 5, Chloe and Joy were ‘Democratic perfumes’, Chanel #29, Tuberrose, and White Shoulders Republican (there were others, clippings lost osmetime in four decades). Aramis was a GOP aftre shave, Paco Rabanne (anybody remember their magazine ads? ;-) ) Dem.
Wonder if there’s been any research into this area since ???
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
Yup.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
In 2020, 158,594,895 people cast votes for President. So that’s more like 99.7 million persons 18 or older who didn’t. So 61.4% of persons 18 or older in the U.S. voted.
But the Census counts citizens and noncitizens alike. According to the Census Bureau, “[i]n 2020, there were an estimated 231.6 million citizens of voting age.” So really only about 73M U.S. citizens 18 or older didn’t vote in 2020, and about 68.5% of U.S. citizens of age 18 or older voted in 2020.
The pool of potential voters is further reduced, but to a lesser degree, by those incarcerated at the time of the 2020 election (~1.2M), those prevented by state laws from voting due to past felony convictions (haven’t seen an estimate for this), persons that aren’t capable of voting anymore due to dementia (there were ~1.3M persons in nursing homes in 2020, and the number of them that don’t have dementia to that extent are surely outnumbered by persons not in nursing homes who do).
So really around 70% of those who could have voted in the 2020 Presidential election, did vote in it, and probably somewhere below 70M Americans who could have voted, didn’t.
geg6
@Suzanne:
To be fair, I have noticed that none of them are the brightest bulbs in the box.
Mike in NC
Did Fat Bastard send an actual telegram to his master in the Kremlin, congratulating him once again for his upset victory in the Russian hoax election?
TBone
Heads up, required reading:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-17-2024
Recall that Heritage sponsors Project 2025
geg6
@Bupalos:
Well, I really am not concerned about polling. It’s as flawed as trickle down economic theories. Few polls have been correct in at least 8 years. You want to talk about polling, leave me out of it because I don’t have faith in them. I’ve read quite a bit about them and know enough about them to know that their entire industry is as broken as the GOP House.
ETA: Oh, and I really don’t need to be told that persuasion is a major part of a political campaign. But I don’t need to persuade the people around me that they’re better off. They know that. They are just confused about who brought that about thanks to the shitty media in this country.
TBone
@evodevo: 💙🌻
Sherparick
One of the things have changed for the far, far, far worse the last 30 years is the destruction of most local & major regional newspapers, along with the monopolization of local TV news in Sinclair. It is a bit mind boggling now that 6% of all working journalists in U.S. are now employed by the NYT, which had an outsize role even then, but now dominates the news like “Pravda” did in old Russia. And today’s paper, does not even carry a mention of yesterday’s story on Trump doubling down on being a full Nazi regarding immigrants, or last night’s comment of about making everyone listen to him the way Kim makes North Koreans listen to everything he says.
Soprano2
@R-Jud: Whatever it is, my guess is that she doesn’t look good so she doesn’t want to make any public appearances, and seeing how the press is about the royals I don’t blame her. I believe it was said she would be out of the public eye until the end of March, so posting this photo (and others if they’re photoshopped) is an own goal. They brought this scrutiny on themselves.
Baud
@geg6:
Good economic times under a Democratic president are solely due to the hard work of ordinary people.
Bupalos
@geg6: I’m not going to argue that the polling is currently accurate let alone that it’s reflective of what we’ll actually see around the time of the election which is a political lifetime away. That said, it does convey broad political information relative to other periods of time. I think it’s polarized panglossianism to suggest that Biden doesn’t have a major political challenge in front of him that is reflected in this “better or worse” litmus, and I think it’s important to address that thoughtfully and without blinders.
Soprano2
@Bupalos: To me this is all about the price of everything. People can remember what things cost in 2019, and they want those prices back, end of story. I do refute the cheap gas crap I see on FB, I always reply that it was because of Covid and a steep fall in demand, and I certainly don’t want that back. But I take your point, people are nostalgic for cheaper groceries and cars and houses and rent, and those prices aren’t coming back. You can tell people what caused it until you’re blue in the face, and all they hear is that stuff is a lot more expensive now than it was in 2019. I looked at cars this weekend because I need to get a new one, and while I was prepared for the prices whoo boy, they are a lot higher than in 2019 when I bought my Hyundai.
RevRick
Trump’s response to COVID was the epitome of fascism, because his refusal to wear a mask and take precautions is, as Umberto Eco pointed out, at the heart of fascism’s cult of the hero. It was the “I’m so tough and brave” image he wanted to portray that reveals how much a hero cult is really a death cult.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
The CDC estimates about 1.2M Covid deaths, and slightly over 200,000 of them occurred before the end of September 2000, so presumably didn’t vote.
And while we can argue what percentage of the million Covid deaths since then were in red states, let’s face it, only those that occurred in at most seven swing states (AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI) will potentially make a difference in electing the next President. You’d really have to apply that percentage to the number of post-2020 election Covid deaths in each state.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Prices between 1980 and 1984 also increased a lot. The price increase is real, but the emotional reaction is fake or manufactured.
bbleh
@Baud: who labor daily under UNFAIR gummint bureaucrats who spend My Hard-Earned Tax Dollars™ just keepin’ me down!! Damn you, Nancy Pelosi!!
geg6
@Bupalos:
Good thing I never said any of that, isn’t it?
Old Man Shadow
A handful of nutters with assault rifles could do a lot of damage.
I hope the government is ready for them.
Marcopolo
@Sherparick: Agree about the decimation of local media. But here’s the NYT covering the drumpf Ohio rally.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/us/politics/trump-speech-ohio.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dU0.sir9.UmpIP0xdPxeb&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: I’m going to beg people to spend some time with the consideration that politics is not static. Counting dead Trump voters (even if you can do that) does not tell you anything on its own. We should understand that by now, after 30 years of waiting for the “demographics is destiny” to kick in.
In a broader sense, we need to engage with the reality that the Republican strategy to make life worse works for them politically. Even killing their own voters, to a certain degree, works for them. It’s a similar dynamic to what Putin is doing in Russia with the war.
Soprano2
@Baud: That’s true, inflation was a lot worse then than it is now. People who think the past couple of years were bad didn’t live through the 1970’s and early 1980’s. The interest rate on my first car loan was 16.5%, and that was for a year-old used car bought through a dealership, not one of those “buy here pay here” places.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I don’t worry about that them behaving badly after losing because everyone knows now that rioting minions go to prison even if the organizers possibly don’t. The minions haven’t been turning out since the January 6 prosecutions started.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t have personal reasons to hate them like you do, but why would I care about a family of rich people who don’t even do much with their money? They’re just… strangers. Their family squabbling is meaningless and unimportant.
Soprano2
@Bupalos: I want to chime in that I wish people on our side would quit saying things like “all TFG voters are stupid”, because they aren’t. It’s true that some are, but many aren’t, and it doesn’t help to dismiss your competition by saying they’re dumb.
Bupalos
@geg6: I think you’re reflecting it. Honestly I can’t quite tell what you’re saying in response to the “4 year question” that is the subject of this post. You seem to be calling my considerations concern-trolling, arguing for not paying attention to polls, and blaming it on “the media.” That pretty much l is what I am aiming at with the descriptor of “blinders” but that I might not be reading you right.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Suzanne: I’m less impressed by the photoshopped great-grandchildren than the original”Mother’s Day” shop job—we’ve had big family pictures where people who couldn’t make the appointment worked in. With a bunch of wiggling kids with kid attention spans and a very old woman, taking the pictures in batches and then assembling them is one way to avoid tears & frustration.
However, the internet is clearly enjoying riffing on this! I’ve seen some very um, interesting work being done.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos:
Could you remind me who here is arguing that politics is static?
EarthWindFire
@Tony G: Absolutely. I go a step further. They want us to think they’re better than the rest of us while voting this way. That’s why we get all the “what he really meant” AND the “he tells it like it is” gibberish simultaneously. I’m just sick of it, that’s all.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t hate them, but do have problems with the institution they represent. Unlike the Germans, the British have never apologized for their role in killing millions by starvation and war and impoverishing many more. For over a century or more across their globe. I don’t think they should be celebrated.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I agree. Too many people don’t want to accept that the other side’s voters are worse than stupid.
Jackie
@Mousebumples:
Yup. I remember that vividly.
Now is the time for Biden’s media group to make ads showing the empty stores, empty streets, businesses with closed “temporarily” due to Covid. Empty/shuttered MLB stadiums… Plus TIFG’s famous infrared light and bleach treatment.
Or, perhaps the Lincoln Project – their ads are usually good.
RevRick
@Baud: This question really boils down to the inflation that occurred as a result of COVID. Trump claims that it wouldn’t have happened if he had been re-elected, bullshit his followers and a lot of the clueless believe.
The problem is that the last time inflation hit these levels was forty years ago, and since we don’t grok this until we’re out on our own, we are talking about people over 60. Two -thirds of the population has no effective experience dealing with inflation. And since our polity tends to overestimate the power of the President, inflation must be Biden’s fault.
Is that fair, or even half real? No. But it’s the reason why the “are you better off?” question gains so little traction.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: If the “are you better off…” question prompts the response of pictures of empty shelves in grocery stores, it is not a win for the GOP.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed and another variation is pretending that Rs are only popular among the poorly educated. They have a significant following among the wealthy and that includes Ivy League and grads of prestigious colleges sometimes with multiple graduate degrees.
Bupalos
@Omnes Omnibus: People trying to count x dead 2020 Trump voters and suggesting that means a lower vote count for Trump in 2024 by x.
moonbat
Well, I can always count on the discourse here to take a good situation (better off that you were 4 years ago) and turn it into an absolute negative for our side.
When Biden crushes Trump in November like an overripe grape can we FINALLY stop assigning super powers to the GOP? They are subject to the same political cycles just like Dems are. They were ascendant for a while with a powerful media messaging machine behind them, but times change.
I think the majority of American people have seen the ugly side of that whole “permanent Republican majority” story (Trump, Dobbs, 1/6, “bloodbath”) and they don’t want it. And as @Kay said earlier the legal aftermath of 1/6 has made even the cultists a bit more timid because now it appears there will be actual consequences for their actions. I’d much rather be in our position right now than theirs: tasked with keeping that sundowning, pill-popping, Hitler wanna-be, standing up and lucid for the next eight months.
schrodingers_cat
@moonbat: I see one concern troll doing that and getting a lot of push back from other commenters.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: That’s the simplest, most obvious answer. And it would track with her and the Royals’ vanity and obsession with maintaining optics of stability/normalcy.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat:
They’re working on it.
Baud
@RevRick:
I think we should argue our themes and not try to win with there themes. The media will push their themes, but from what I’ve seen, Biden is good at redirecting the conversation. Social media not so much.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: You know, the only thing that could possibly interest me in the Missing Kate Middleton story is the thought of her running away entirely and being on the lam somewhere.
Other than that…meh. I mean, besides being a royal broodbeast and cutting a few ribbons, what does she actually *do* that’s worth all the (AI-generated) hand-wringing?
henqiguai
@schrodingers_cat: [#121]
Yeah, concur. But gotta nit pick (’cause I’m just sitting here awaiting laundry to dry); all empires were effectively ill-gotten, from the perspective of those who were conquered to form said empire.
rikyrah
@Chief Oshkosh:
thanks for this catch.
Omnes Omnibus
This right here. Yes, we face challenges of the next few months, there is a lot of work to be done, complacency kills, and hope is not a strategy, but, ffs, we are in position to win, and win big, if we do the work.
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
I’m open to whatever form of speculation people want to try, but they at least should start off with the facts as we know them. That was really my point.
The problem is, while demographic changes have kicked in and are continuing to do so, demographics aren’t evenly distributed, and the Electoral College isn’t going away. So we’re still in the position of having to win close races in a handful of states, even as our national popular margin keeps growing.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: But apparently really isn’t sufficient. We need to more fully embrace that the polling here is completely on it’s head, that Democrats are going to easily cruise to a crushing victory because people are definitely better off and that question is going to prompt thoughts of toilet paper shortages that Biden solved!
That’s how you win Monday morning on a partisan blog!!
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
Why can’t they just produce her? There’s something wrong going on
schrodingers_cat
@henqiguai: Yeah but we don’t pretend that they are the moral leaders of all mankind. You will find many gushing posts in the archive about the dead queen, for example.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Me from Saturday night: I saw Wales trending and I thought it was something about the Welsh performance in the Six Nations and clicked. More fool me… Now I really am done with the internet for tonight.
Bupalos
@Miss Bianca: Roman Holiday was awesome.
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. I can’t see paying any more attention to the British royal family than to, say, the Kardashians.
Jackie
@RevRick: TIFG got Covid; hid it and then tried his hardest to give it to Biden during that presidential debate. When he was hospitalized, I seriously hoped for his death – very uncharacteristic for me – but I was SOOO ANGRY that he purposely exposed so many innocent people working at that debate…
Bupalos
Habeas Kateus!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: Or at least a body double, heavily bundled up and wearing reflective sunglasses, photographed from 100 yards away? That would keep the wild speculation down.
Well, maybe not. But it would be pretty funny
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: AFAIK Kardashian ancestors didn’t kill millions by inflicting a genocide by starvation multiple time across multiple continents.
TBone
Good news exoneration story out of the City of Brotherly Love:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/philadelphia-man-incarcerated-as-a-teen-is-freed-after-more-than-a-dozen-years-in-prison/ar-BB1k6aPU
But DAMN justice delayed for that long. On purpose?
rikyrah
@bbleh:
the thing is…they think someone’s playing with them, and that we have to humor them.
TBone
@Jackie: I actively rooted for, cheered for, and prayed for the biggliest self-own in human history for that bloated, orange carbuncle. It would have solidified my belief in a higher power. Alas and alack!
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: I played tennis with a guy the other day who was bemoaning the time his daughter missed from training because of Covid and everything being “shut down” and his wife being too “paranoid” about his daughter’s health…that’s the kind of Independent/Swing/Libertarian voter that I worry about with the Four-Years-Ago question. So I guess the question is who exactly are we trying to reach with it? If it’s Dem-leaning, infrequent voters then yes it’s a good strategy. If it’s NeverTrump conservatives, then yes, it probably helps. But if it’s the first group, it probably doesn’t and may even hurt. Most of my family are in this Govt Is The Problem, Independents camp, and they are forever convinced that things have gotten worse because of
The GovernmentDemocrats.Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
The Royal and Orderly Company of Exorcists and Bellringers has been having a problem with scheduling. Normal service will resume very soon and the backlog of Royals will be cleared by Easter at the latest.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
Is the current generation of royals responsible for any of that?
rikyrah
@Bupalos:
I disagree.
I think we need to take them literally. And show LITERALLY what was happening in this country. And, end the ads with whatever insane thing Trump said in the conference.
What you’re talking about is ‘ context’, or ‘further explanation’.
We can put THAT back on the GOP.
THEY SAID…
Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?
And, we should respond to THAT question with the brutal pictures from the REALITY of America during that time.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Current British royalty just have the wealth and gems their forebears plundered from nations worldwide.
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: The heart of the ‘demographics is destiny’ political argument in the US was that minority growth in Texas was going to flip it and completely rearrange the electoral map and force realignments. The demographic changes have generally EXCEEDED the projections. But politics is not static. Those changes have both created a right wing white ethnic backlash, and are reducing the ‘minority’ response of hispanics as they gain economic power and dems are now unpredictably bleeding that demographic.
And you have to really pick and choose your cherries and time periods to paint a scenario where Dem’s popular vote is reliably expanding over time.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah:
Correct. We aren’t bringing the subject up. The GOP is. It is perfectly legitimate to answer their question as they asked it. Having them respond, “That’s not what we meant,” is their problem, not ours.
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: Where did I say that they had. They have never apologized either and neither has the British government. Neither have they returned the stolen goods.
Tony G
A significant percentage of the voters in this country actually believe that boring old Joe Biden is a communist revolutionary, and a significant proportion of those people actually believe that Joe Biden is being controlled by Satan. This country has always been insane, but in recent decades it’s really gone off the rails.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
[ womp, womp ]
(I assume there will be more machinations before he actually has to sell anything. Stuff is slow.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Bupalos: I think the move of suburbs from Republican to Democratic control is a durable trend. It accelerated in the 2018 midterms, and has continued since then.
Similarly, the shift since the 1970s in party affiliation among the college-educated, and among immigrants seems to be real, and those are growing demographic cohorts.
Both these dynamics are due in part to Republican radicalism, but they will need a couple election cycles at least to refocus the party.
WereBear
It created a ripple effect throughout the world population.
People not knowing how anything worked desperate to Do Things.
mrmoshpotato
It’s depressing how true this is. Fuck Dump for murdering over a millions Americans. ETA – and all the other shit he did.
JPL
@rikyrah: yup Pictures of empty shelves is a quick reminder. People should be reminded of the unemployment rate then and now.
Scout211
@Another Scott: More details. CNN
So what are the chances that the court will grant the request?
catclub
@geg6: I practice getting up with no hand assist from crosslegged on the floor. as long as I can do it today… I can probably do it tomorrow.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Another lie. I assert they counted the hours carefully and billed for them.
If nothing else this whole thing has demonstrated some lawyers’ willingness to lie to the court.
schrodingers_cat
@WereBear: People missed you in the cat thread from a couple of days ago. How have you been?
rikyrah
There is nothing in the history of THIS COUNTRY, that would make me, as a Black Woman, ever be comfortable with living with that kind of delusional thinking.
Our survivalist instincts, make it impossible for us to believe such nonsense.
Sons of Killmonger & Disciple of Dark Brandon (@2Strong2Silence) posted at 6:32 AM on Mon, Mar 18, 2024:
The amount of white pundits & journalists contorting themselves to rationalize Trump’s call to violence this weekend should tell you all you need to know. One more time: DON HENLEY WROTE A SONG ABOUT THIS FORTY YEARS AGO.
17 GOP-held Biden districts targeted to flip blue (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 6:56 AM on Mon, Mar 18, 2024:
it’s largely because most white people from every imaginable political persuasion & even LGBTQ orientation refuse to believe that Trump’s political violence would ever be employed on them
but if they believe that, they are tragically mistaken
(https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1769694461741633649?t=CjjVL_2BkA7_2ljwLLTL_A&s=03)
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I agree. Make them regret that they asked this question.
Bupalos
@rikyrah: In my opinion that question simply doesn’t operate literally. If it did, it would suffice that the numbers are the numbers – people ARE generally a little economically better off in the United States than they were 4 years ago. It’s an intentionally mind-numbing question designed to be over-broad and about feelings. Now to the extent that people really do connect with fear and dislocation over the pandemic personally, and to the extent that lack of toilet paper exemplifies this, then I guess this kind of picture is a somewhat effective defense. I think we could do a lot better in a deeper and more meaningful way however to cite Trump predictively discounting the pandemic as a nothing-burger and then suggest his bad leadership therein made it worse than it had to be. And that we’re better positioned now and for the next bad thing that is coming with more stable, competent leadership.
But in a broader sense we aren’t disagreeing – It’s the Republicans job to bring this anti-incumbent nonsense up and our job to effectively jiujitsu them with it. I interpreted the tweet above talking about “never a clearer case” as suggesting the 4-years question is something WE should be actively pushing.
schrodingers_cat
This immigrant agrees with you. And I have seen this movie before. I know what follows when calls like this are made.
...now I try to be amused
@Kay:
This. Trump would be nothing without all these people in the establishment “working towards the Führer”.
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: It’s not just about vanity, though. Do you know how vicious the attacks on her will be if she’s even one iota less attractive than she was before the surgery? It’ll be hateful and unremitting in an attempt to force her to be exactly the same as she was before. Women already face lots of appearance-based hate online, and if you’re famous it’s even worse. Better to stay out of the public eye than to weather that.
Kay
@Bupalos:
I’m a little concerned about Bidne’s polling. It isn’t any one poll – it’s the consistency of the low numbers.I”d like to see it tick up a bit but I don’t think we’ve seen the base consolidation yet that I look for so he has room to grow.
Its just one person but I spoke with my oldest son yesterday, the ex pat. He’s in Democrats Abroad and is a centrist Democrat, so further Right than I am. I was really surprised that he no longer considers polling valid – he’s a numbers person. He compared it to “blood spatter evidence” (which has been discredited and that comparison would get my attention) and said it’s “junk science”. He’s just done with it.
But I don’t think you’re a concern troll for worrying if we’re creating a bubble. People do that. Human nature. One always has to watch for it.
catclub
@rikyrah: I agree with you. “Are you better off?”
Well the stock market is massively higher.
Unemployment is massively lower.
Supply chains are fixed.
so, yeah.
Kay
I just unironically used the word “concerned”
lol
Kay
@Soprano2:
That’s a good explanation. I didn’t think of that. Especially gross British media – they’re just horrible, vicious petty gossips. Ugh. We think ours is bad and then I look at theirs.
WereBear
@Kay: Kay, she won’t know.
Do as you wish.🤣
Miss Bianca
@Bupalos: Christ, you are *such* a concern troll.
Not to mention condescending as all fuck. Really? YOU are going to “beg” me to consider the bleeding fucking obvious? Oh, bedad. Get over yourself.
geg6
@Bupalos:
You definitely are not reading me right.
I think most people where I live are better off and they will tell you that if you ask them. They have better jobs, or just have a job or have had salary increases since Trump times. When you remind them of the chaos and shortages of Cheetolini’s handling of the pandemic, they generally agree (many have actually forgotten it, as may be understandable). The problem with media is mostly disinformation, usually from FOX or Newsmax or the right wing echo chamber, and that much of the mainstream media tend to amplify political news from a Republican perspective. This is not just my opinion, but that of nationally known media critics like Froomkin, the CJR and others. The polling problem is a well known problem and it’s not just me saying that either. Respected experts in polling are saying polling is broken and that no one knows how to fix it.
So my best advice is to pay no attention to polls, use persuasion with your normie or undecided friends and acquaintances by reminding them of the failures of Cheetolini and the successes of the Biden team and ignore the screeching of the media whores. There is no danger or stupidity in reminding people of what was happening four years ago and it’s folly to refuse to point that out.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Right there with you, O2. Right there with you.
marcopolo
@Kay: I’m just some guy who isn’t the least bit interested in royal hijnks but…if Kate did just undergo some medical procedure that affects her appearance (or mobility or whatever) I just see a lost opportunity to: 1) highlight that the royals are human just like everyone else & and that this is relatable and humanizing; 2) make it an education moment about the importance of our taking care of our physical well-being. Like Fetterman talking about his stroke recovery & mental health issues. Yeah, I know, I am totally naive about this stuff.
geg6
@UncleEbeneezer:
Anyone in the government’s the problem independent lane is a Republican. I wouldn’t bother with them.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: No lie told.
@schrodingers_cat: I’m with all y’all. Cram that messaging right down their throats, to use their favorite obsessional turn of phrase.
Citizen Alan
@Ken: Personally, I’m picturing those block and tackle setups used to get tnights in full armor onto and off of their horses in the middle ages
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
No. They don’t have to be stupid. That they don’t have character, and mean me harm..
I’m very clear on who his voters are and how they view me and mine.
Bupalos
@Miss Bianca: Glad I could be of service!
Bupalos
@geg6: Doesn’t sound like we ever had any disagreement here. Sorry if my posts were not useful.
geg6
@Soprano2:
Ooooo, maybe she can ask her sister-in-law about how to handle that. Oh wait…
Fuck her. I hope she looks like the piece of shit she is for the rest of her life and is jeered every day for it. She’s a terrible person.
geg6
@Bupalos:
Oh man, you really are an expert goalpost mover, aren’t you?
You said not to talk about whether people are better off now than four years ago because they don’t care about that. I disagreed and think it’s very useful to take their own (Cheetolini and the GOP) framing and use it. We don’t agree. I don’t see how you can say we do.
Tony Jay
@Soprano2:
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. You may be entirely right, but the deal between The Firm and The Press has elevated Our Future Queen of Hearts to the kind of soft-touch, high-reward status where the Media’s narrative would much rather ‘celebrate her astonishing bravery’ and spend thousands of words adoringly gushing over how she’s so incredibly beautiful that even putting on a few pounds (she looks like one of you, now!) only enhances her near mystical empathy with the native British prole.
The British media are feral rats, but they work for nest-bosses who have very specific narratives to follow and who wouldn’t take kindly to one of their underlings threatening the future media profile of ‘Queen Kate the Ascended Normal’.
Unless they know something about her future viability that encourages them to get their clicks right now. In that case they’ll tear her apart with their intrusive demands for “what the people deserve to know”! Because they are scum.
Soprano2
@Kay: That’s the first thing I thought of. Women who aren’t the standard idea of beauty and thinness, especially those who are celebrities, are treated horribly on the internet and social media. Why would you expose yourself to that if you don’t have to. OTOH, posting the photoshopped pic was an own goal, because it called attention to the fact that she hasn’t been seen since the surgery.
Soprano2
@marcopolo: You are naive. Do you know how they would savage her for her appearance if it wasn’t perfect? It would be unbearable for her. Men are allowed to look crappy and be less than perfect online, women generally aren’t. For some stars gaining 5 pounds brings on all kinds of abuse and name calling. It’s seen by many as a personal failing for women if they appear less than perfect.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I’m clear on that too, I’ve been saying since 2015 that they love TFG because he hates the same people they do, and allows them to hate openly. I would now add “and promises to hurt those people”. So many people don’t understand what TFG’s appeal is, but I think I get it pretty easily. I heard someone else say that in TFG evangelicals have found the bully they believe can force their world view on everyone, that “nice guys” like George W. didn’t get the job done so now they think force is the only way to achieve their goals. I believe this – they want to control the U.S. the way whites controlled South Africa, because they think they know better than us what’s good for us.
Soprano2
@Tony Jay: True, but if she’s gained 50 pounds or something similar to that then all bets are off.
cain
Do these headline writers really not get the fact that there was literally a bloodbath the last time he lost an election??? How many people fucking died – cops, insurrectionists, JFC.. these people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soprano2: Didn’t Renee Zellweger “balloon” to 135 pound for her Bridget Jones roles? At 5’3″, that would put have put right in the middle of the normal BMI range. But she got “fat” for the roles.
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
I only heard that argument once, and that was probably fifteen years ago.
1988-present.
wjca
No, there wasn’t. There was a riot. Several people were killed, or died subsequently, and that’s bad.
But “bloodbath” is not just one but several orders of magnitude bigger.
Bupalos
@geg6: The misunderstanding is probably that I was focused on the tweet saying dems should run a big “are you better than 4 years ago” advertising campaign featuring the toilet paper, on the consideration that it’s never been more true that we’re better off than 4 years ago.
I consider that a bad idea because the 4 years ago thing doesn’t work literally like that IMO, is inherently anti-incumbent, and that the polity on the whole does not seem to be responding very enthusiastically to the question however much we partisans are like “sick own, bro!”
I don’t disagree that it can be useful defensively to cite the visceral pandemic dislocations, though I think that is somewhat empty political calories, and I’m guessing everyone (loosely speaking) more or less thinks of the pandemic itself as an act of god that Trump gets to use more as an excuse than anything he gets blamed for. I think a politically more nutritious approach is to remind everyone that Trump was totally fucking wrong and clueless about it even while he acted like a know it all, told you it was nothing, told you to drink bleach, and generally encouraged chaos like his zombies swarming public meetings. And since this is an age of anxiety, suggest that the bad scary surprises coming in the future will be better handled by more experienced, level-headed leadership.
More a nuance thing. But probably with a real disagreement that I think overall we are at a disadvantage in 2024 and appear slightly more likely to lose than win, with 3 quarters left to play and a ton of shoes left to drop.
Bupalos
You’ll need to explain what you mean by that. Dem national vote margins obviously did not regularly expand over this period of time. Neither in the presidency or congress or governorships or state level reps.
TBone
@Omnes Omnibus: yes. She looked lovely, too. Pudgy cheeks and all, something we of a certain age and physical state can readily relate to. Also, those diary entries were*chef’s kiss when that book came out
Kathleen
@Wag: NYT used terms “caustic” and “discursive” to describe his speech.
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
Said it for awhile. They wanna party like it’s 1924. They want their Daddy and Granddaddy’s White Man Freedom to say and do whatever they want to those they believe are ‘less’.
It’s true, force done through Judicial fiat. Which is why, in terms of body autonomy, they are so against those abortion rights referenda that have been going across the country. How they are fighting against the people having their voices heard by using the ballot box to tell them.
This is absolutely true, and nobody has time for this foolishness. That they think that they can impose Jim Crow on the entire country..no, I don’t think so.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: I prefer to say all Trump voters are evil fascists, but that’s just me
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
You didn’t bother to give any other reason why I should think of them differently.
Maybe you should have said that in the first place.
cain
@Sherparick: Consolidation is happening everywhere – the federal govt has done a poor job (regardless who was in charge) in reigning all this in.
I think the Democratic party should realize that consolidation is bad as it gives more power to oligarchs who all vote republicans and will spend money on their opponents.
Ksmiami
@UncleEbeneezer: if they really hate government that much, then they are Republicans
K-Mo
@geg6: Despite the acrimony of this conversation, I found it enlightening to read through. Going back to the OP, I wonder what is a good way to operationalize this:
“We need to have an answer that isn’t focussed on how bad things were but the things that are happening that functionally make life better.”
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
That’s a sweeping statement, and it’s wrong. Counterexample: Dem vote, Presidency, 1988-present.
1988 39.1M
1992 44.9M
1996 47.4M
2000 50.5M
2004 59.0M
2008 69.5M
2012 65.9M
2016 65.9M
2020 81.3M
That’s it. I’m done with you.
dirge
Yeah, I see people bring up the Goldman-Sachs/Vampire-Squid article as an example of the old, good, left Taibbi, but I remember it as the moment I realized he was full of shit.
I’d just spent some time writing software for vampire squid outfits (not Goldman specifically, but peers and related), and I’d seen some criminally sleazy stuff. I had rather enjoyed Taibbi’s prior polemics, and was very much looking forward to his takedown of the crooks I’d been working for, but… halfway through I realized the thing was a sensationalized mess of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and missing connections. I was surprised and disappointed, because I knew firsthand that the thesis was basically right, but could also see that he had no clue what he was talking about.
So I updated my evaluation of him. What appeared to be a sort of poetic license was actually just an indifference to truth. He was appealing to an audience that could not see, or did not care, that he was playing fast and loose with the facts.
Sure, there are leftists who go in for that sort of thing, but there’s a lot more demand for bullshit on the right, so it’s no surprise where he wound up.
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: That’s raw votes my dude, not margins or even share of the electorate. No idea why you’re getting huffy on that.
You did manage to surprise me with one of the years declining in raw votes. Thanks Obama!!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@dirge: See also, Glenn Greenwald.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: Very true.
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
Done.
dirge
My Greenwald story is from back when he was commenting at dkos in the Iraq war era. He’d picked a fight with someone, who was wrong about some finer point about John Yoo, IIRC, and I attempted to expand and clarify a point Greenwald made. He was apparently unable to perceive that I was agreeing with him, and picked a fight with me too, eventually working his way around to the opposite position from where he started. I concluded that this is not someone we should want as an ally.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: My UK team had just finished regular season by stomping Florida at their place on ‘Senior Night’. I was sure looking forward to tournament. That team did one of the things that Cal teams don’t normally do: shoot great FTs. Only the 2012 team had also been known as very clutch FT shooters. Will say that this year’s team also shoots FTs pretty well…
lowtechcyclist
@lowtechcyclist:
BTW, r^2 = .92.
Paul in KY
@3Sice: I remember lining up at Krogers at 0700 to be able to get in and sprint for paper products & Lysol. Good times…
Paul in KY
@Kay: I guess they’ve been ordered not to & since she will presumably one day be queen, they might be a bit afraid of losing future perks, etc.
Paul in KY
@JCJ: Which one? They have 2.
Paul in KY
@Trivia Man: I hear their drummer really likes to party…
Matt McIrvin
@dirge: I really started to question what he was up to when he went after Fred “Slacktivist” Clark for daring to post some mild critique. Someone described it as like trying to pick a fistfight with Mr. Rogers.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: They are responsible for not acknowledging it and their ancestor’s complicity in it.
Paul in KY
@Scout211: I mean, duh on that. The SOB has to sell a bunch of shit to come up with a good percentage of it himself and then the bond company could get the rest.
Ha!
Matt McIrvin
@dirge: The thing that bothered me about Taibbi’s writing in that era was that it seemed to border on far right goldbug critiques of fractional reserve banking and fiat money– that the problem with these financial manipulations was that people were inventing funny money that wasn’t based on something real you could touch. And it was at a time when an expansion in the money supply was probably needed.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: I say tough shit to that. She’s got a job to do and should get out there and do it. That’s what a true Brit does!
Paul in KY
@Bupalos: But dippity fuck TFG is basically also running as an incumbent. I think we can really skewer him on that stuff. Show stuff dated 4 years prior (to the day) and show how fucked up & bad it was at that time.
Hoist them by their own petard.
dirge
Well, that’s the infuriating thing: people absolutely were inventing funny money, but he utterly misunderstood how.
Most prominently, banks attributed ability to pay to prospective home buyers who obviously couldn’t, effectively turning nonexistent future income into current cash. But I also saw a ton of much more subtle stuff, generally involving “innovative” approaches to risk and compliance, or clever regulatory workarounds, many of which were essentially Rube Goldberg machines for overstating asset values, or using the same asset to collateralize multiple obligations. A huge part of the business consists of finding clever ways to conjure money from nothing, without appearing to do so, often without even realizing what you’re doing.
Taibbi saw none of that. He just hand waved in the general direction, and wound up sounding like a LaRouchite.
Citizen Alan
@George: At this point, any discussion in which the NYT is mentioned as a reliable news source should be met with the following statement:
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: I don’t think they’re dumb. I think they’re evil and delusional. You can be highly intelligent and think that the moon landing is a hoax, so I have no problem thinking that someone can be highly intelligent and think we should end our democracy and turn America into Somalia For White People.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat: Technically, neither did the Royal Family’s ancestors since they’ve been nothing more than the figurehead for an elected parliamentary democracy for centuries. If, for example, Queen Victoria had popped up and said in response to being pronounced Empress of India “I think we have no business being a colonial power and ought to remove ourselves from India immediately,” would the British government have complied? Seriously, who was the last British monarch to have any meaningful say in British foreign policy?
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: So they’re like every other excessively rich family to have ever existed.
Citizen Alan
@Bupalos: I remember when The Coming Democratic Majority came out. And my immediate thought was that the GOP could delay that coming majority for quite a while if they were willing to bring back Jim Crow but expand it to other minorities besides Southern blacks. And they could delay it for a very long time indeed if they managed to turn the US into an apartheid state, which is plainly what they now want to do.
Timill
@Citizen Alan: I’ll go with George II, as the last reigning monarch to lead troops on the field of battle.
Citizen Alan
@Timill: So, before America was a country then.
dirge
Yeah, dumb people are only capable of fairly conventional sorts of stupidity. In order to achieve truly evil, delusional, exotic forms of stupidity, you need to bring a lot of intellectual firepower to bear, in a sustained assault against your own better judgment.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: Good question. Probably William of ‘William and Mary’. So late 17th century.
Paul in KY
@Timill: That’s a good answer too.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: I guess you could say every wealthy family that ever existed is a little bit like the Royals. But most wealthy families did not have one of the world’s most powerful militaries to enable their plunder. The Fricks and the Carnegies had the Pinkertons; British Kings and Queens had the Royal Navy and well-supported generals.
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: The question at hand was reliably expanding vote MARGIN. No one cares that we’re adding votes if the Republicans are adding the same number, that’s obviously not what anyone was talking about with “demographics is destiny.”
Bupalos
@Citizen Alan: The problem is it’s simply a failure to recognize that politics is unpredictable and dynamic. It’s not something that has to happen but is being “delayed” or some natural progression that they can marginally interfere with. You could have done this with any immigrant group or higher growth demographic group at any time in our history, extending it out and making terrible predictions which you’d then have to explain away year by year. Demographics is not destiny because there is no destiny because people and groups change their outlook and allegiance in response to events.
BellyCat
@Bupalos: Sure, let’s address dynamic politics. How about the effects of Roe and new voters pissed off?