I share this only because I spend 70% of my time giving pep talks to nervous supporters. Be nervous. That’s ok. The stakes couldn’t be higher. And no public polling matters much 4.5 months out.
Mission: Head down. Do the work. We know how to win. And we will. ?????? https://t.co/3YF8Glf5q1
— Rufus Gifford (@rufusgifford) June 20, 2024
Biden campaign chair @jomalleydillon sat with me for her first extended, on-the-record intv since taking the reelect's reins. Read about it in my new @PuckNews column (https://t.co/IU9EpBJ1xy) and/or listen to the whole thing on #impoliticpod (https://t.co/iCde42qmC1).
— John Heilemann (@jheil) June 24, 2024
This is good, encouraging, and I doubt many of you will have seen it yet. John Heilemann, at Puck, interviews Jen O’Malley Dillon:
The chair of the president’s reelection campaign, Jen O’Malley Dillon, is a legend in her business. Born in Boston and educated at Tufts—where she majored in political science, and, way more important, was the captain of the softball team—J.O.D. got her start in presidential politics on Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, where she quickly built her reputation as one of the great field organizers of her or any generation. From there, she ascended the ziggurat of Democratic operatives methodically, skillfully, without a slip: from Iowa field director and Iowa state director for John Edwards in 2004 and 2008, respectively; to battleground state director and deputy campaign manager for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, respectively; then chair of the D.N.C. Unity Reform Commission after the 2016 election, and campaign manager for Beto O’Rourke’s much-hyped but short-lived primary bid in 2020.
And then, in the spring of 2020, J.O.D. was handed an assignment that many considered impossible: general election campaign manager for a candidate considered by most Republicans, many Democrats, and much of the punditocracy to be too old, too frail, and/or too “sleepy” (per the forever amped-up incumbent, Donald Trump) to win the White House. And yet, she pulled it off, becoming the first female campaign manager in history to install a Democrat in the Oval Office.
J.O.D. spent the first three years of Biden’s term serving as White House deputy chief of staff. But in January, she decamped from Washington for Wilmington to take over running the reelect alongside Biden’s longtime chief strategist, Mike Donilon. Since then, she hasn’t done a single extended, recorded, on-the-record interview—until now. Famously hard-nosed, clear-headed, and nonsense-free, her tendency to avoid the press owes much to her allergy to bullshit and reflexive aversion to superficial spin. And yet, in a nearly hourlong conversation for my podcast (condensed here for space and edited for clarity), the confidence she expressed about Biden again defeating Trump in 2024 was unwavering and absolute…
John Heilemann: The debate is less than a week away. If you go back and screen the 2020 Biden-Trump debates, they’re unwatchable—the endless crosstalk, the interruptions. That’s the kind of stuff the new debate rules are supposed to stop. How confident are you that those rules will work?
Jen O’Malley Dillon: I’m confident that Joe Biden is going to stand on that stage, and he is going to show what he showed in 2020—that he is in this for all the right reasons. He’s focused on delivering for the American people, and him standing next to Donald Trump is the best way to show that. Do I think rules are going to protect the American people from whatever Donald Trump might say? Of course not. But I do think having this [debate] really be serious is what the American people want. So, this is a great opportunity, earlier in this cycle than ever before, for the two of them to stand together and for [President Biden] to talk about what he’s done and what he’s fighting for—and not having an audience, not having distractions, not having to worry about Covid, I think all those things are better for the American people…
Let’s talk about the state of the race. This week, a new Fox News national poll put Biden at 50 and Trump at 48. The latest Morning Consult national tracking poll has Biden at 44 and Trump at 43. Those are both, obviously, well within the margin of error; they are statistical ties. But Trump’s peak in the polling averages was in January, when he had a four-point lead. And according to 538, Biden has taken a narrow lead for the first time this year.
Now, national polls are one thing and the numbers in the battleground states are different. But in those states, on the battlefields where you’re fighting, are you guys also seeing an uptick?
Yes. But look, fundamentally, everyone in this country has to understand that this is a very close election and it’s going to be close. And I get [that Democrats] wish it weren’t the case, [but] the race in 2020, the 2016 race, the 2012 race—[all were] close. We are a polarized nation in many ways. [But], significantly, from when Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 [felony] counts, we have seen movement in our direction and away from Trump. There’s also still lots of folks in this country that, yes, know this election’s happening, and yes, they know that it’s coming up, but they’re just not that engaged in it now. And those people are starting to tune in a little bit more.
I had someone say to me earlier today, “Maybe Donald Trump has peaked.” There’s not a lot of room for growth for him when you look at his coalition and how he’s expressing to the folks that voted for Nikki Haley and other Republicans: that he doesn’t need them. Well, we welcome them, and we see a lot of opportunity to continue to grow the people that are with Joe Biden by doing the work of telling his story, what he’s about, and what his vision is. And I don’t see that on Donald Trump’s side…
I’ve heard people in your world talk about how 6 percent of voters in six states will decide this election. As a reminder for non-junkies: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia are the six states we’re talking about—the undeniable battleground states. We can have a discussion about whether you want to include North Carolina.
Oh, we will have that discussion.
Okay, but for now, let’s focus on the notion of 6 percent in six states. Is that how you think about the universe of persuadable voters—undecided voters, up-for-grabs voters, whatever you want to call them—in 2024?Here’s how I would approach this. We have multiple paths to victory. We can talk about the states. There are a number of people that have been with us before, who are people we see every day that the president’s fighting for, but are the exact ones who are not engaged in this race. And so they are a group of persuadable voters we need to reach to make sure that they know what’s at stake and that they’re going to vote.
[Then there are] the people who are actually on the edges and undecided, [and among them] there’s a whole new cohort that has come in since 2020, who were not available to us [then] who we saw vote in 2022, post-Dobbs. They are the same people who, in primary after primary on the Republican side, protested Donald Trump…
By trade, by every fiber of my being, I’m an organizer. That’s how I started. That’s how I will end. I believe in that being so fundamental to how we’re successful. But I also think that you have to really re-look at how people in their lives are engaging, and you’ve got to find a way to tap into that so it feels in stride with everything else they’re doing. So that doesn’t mean you’re reinventing the wheel. It doesn’t mean this is all about new fucking widgets. It means it’s about a blended approach that reaches a person like my mom, who might want to come into an office and be with her friends and do postcards, and people who are young, who matter a great deal, but who don’t see themselves [getting involved in that way]…
… So, then, let me float my theory that, in the end, what we’re going to see is what I think of as “blue wall fall,” where you guys wind up spending almost all of your time and money on Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—because if you win those three, plus that one congressional district in Nebraska, NE-2, which allocates a single electoral vote and Biden carried by six points in 2020, that gets you to 270 and you’re home.
The job of the campaign is to keep as many battleground states in play for as long as possible so we can navigate any flexibility in the race. If you look at 2020, Georgia and Arizona weren’t even in play at all at this point, and certainly were not traditional battleground states. So at the end of the day, all we have to do is get to 270, and the easiest path is certainly [by preserving] the blue wall, where there’s a lot of core-coalition strength for the president. But I am bullish on North Carolina, and I don’t fuck around in saying that—because I was bullish on Arizona [four years ago] and that’s because we looked at it very closely…What do you say when people ask if there’s any chance Biden will either step aside or be replaced as the Democratic nominee?
The first thing I’ll say is that Joe Biden is going to win, period. And I’m not saying that because I wish it to be so, I’m saying that because I know it’ll be so by who he is as a leader and what we are building as a campaign. It’s okay for people to be worried, because we understand the stakes, but now is the time to be clear about the choice: There is just one choice…
Can I just add one thing? We are going to win. But it is because the people of this country take action and take action now. For every single person who is worried, go do something about it. Get a yard sign. Go on Facebook and say you support Joe Biden. Go do your own fucking TikToks. That is what we need now. This debate is going to help put into clarity that there is one choice. And every single person that’s bed-wetting—hate to use that phrase, thanks for putting it back in my head—take action. Do something. You have power. Take it.
On The Road – Dave Foster – Sunrise in Badlands National Park
Baud
America is going to win.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@Baud: Win! With Baud!
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
I will vote as always but unfortunately that’s all I have the strength for this year. And of course yelling at loved ones until they go vote as well :)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Greek Chorus Time:
GOTV.
We have the money (an entirely different can of worms and subject), we have the talent and we have a fundamental policy matter that somewhat cuts across a lot of lines: abortion rights.
We GOTV, we win.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
MagdaInBlack
Good morning. It’s about to blow up a storm here in nw Chicagoland, just as I’m about to leave for work.
And Elmo has produced another child. #12
Another Scott
@rikyrah: Good morning to you!
Good piece, AL. JOD is good.
We’ve got good people, a good economy, no foreign wars for the first time in ages, good policies, enough resources, a good story about the future. They’ve got felons, failed policies, fear and stupidity and grifters. And Dobbs. I like our chances a lot, but we have to do all the work.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
Oh, I like her. Glad she’s back.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Tony Jay
I truly think that the only outstanding question about November’s vote (barring, of course, some blockbuster-level turnabout like Felonious D being filmed personally repulsing an alien invasion while simultaneously shielding a school bus from an attack by cannibal clowns) is how bad the beating gets for MAGAdom and how long are the coattails of Dobbs-fueled victory.
There is nothing positive going for the Stench Campaign. Absolutely nothing. It’s just a litany of humiliating trial-dates and convictions, a persistent 1/4 to 1/3 of GOP voters picking Anyone Else At All in the Primaries, the unsavoury sight of his partisan judicial appointments shitting the bed every time they bang a gavel and the Hench Party itself unable to mount any kind of serious overarching national campaign strategy because Stench himself has hollowed it out in order to turn it into a legal fees dispensary.
And then there’s Stench himself. Babbling away with incoherent streams of whine that can only repulse the easily-swayed voters who only start paying attention to elections after they’ve suffered through Summer Madness.
The Media and the Oligarchs are going to try to shove his carcass across the line, but they’ve tried that before with a notionally superior product and they failed them. They’ll fail again. Badly. It’ll all work out. Shit Midas has his hands all over his own campaign, and we know what that always leads to.
Kay
lol. I missed that. The…mainstream outlet she chose :)
Ken
One, I am stealing “Hench Party”.
Two, I expect the hollowing-out to extend to Congressional races (there are a few reports it already has), with the RNC unable to support candidates with either money or staff.
Baud
@Kay:
I hope the NYT is seething.
Hoodie
Like 2020, this is going to be a turnout election. Obviously, O’Malley Dillon knows it. If you look at their actions, the Trump people know it, too. From what we’ve seen so far, Trump is not seriously trying to get normie voters (only dimwit media types would read that into his actions because they crave a normal horserace so they look like serious people instead of the Washington Nationals in a Harlem Globetrotters game). Instead, he’s trying to juice turnout of his base and maybe mine a few relatively marginal elements, such as misogynist nonwhite males. He’s really doubling down on evangelicals. I think he may even be worried about loss of enthusiasm in that base, as there is some evidence that some of the nuts are actually turning on him because they think he’s not sufficiently nutty.
Some people were surprised that Trump agreed to the debate rules and think he will try to get out of the debate, but he may have done this with another purpose in mind. You have to remember that Trump operates on different narratives than most pols which, regrettably, often works. His debate approach may involve casting himself as Daniel in the Lion’s Den, e.g., CNN liberals and Jacked Up Joe ganging up on him. He’ll try to do that by engaging in some sort of theater that will particularly rely on his base’s ignorance and gullibility. For example, you can bet that most of his base do not understand the debate rules his campaign agreed to, and will see them as unfair when they are applied to him. Trump will deliberately break the rules but in a way that suggests he actually didn’t agree to them, which would enable him to do things like claim that muting his mic is an attempt to cancel him and prevent him from addressing all those unfair attacks by Biden and the moderators. It doesn’t matter how he objectively performs with respect to the rules – which is something normies might care about – because his goal is to shore up his base and look “strong.”
OzarkHillbilly
Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise
Raoul Paste
@Tony Jay: Felonious D
The best nickname I’ve seen
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: was just reading about that AND Charlie Kirk and the Libs of TikTok lady terrorist saying they are going to “outbreed the left” as if they can own their kids’ ideology and sexual preference forever 😆
I saw a photo of fElon’s paramour (an employee at Neuralink) and she has the crazy eyes syndrome like Michele Bachmann!
Suzanne
@TBone:
This is such a weird trope from them. Like….. do they think religion is genetic?
TBone
@Tony Jay: *chef’s kiss
Kay
@TBone:
Or their own spouses. Women often run from “tradwife” marriages when they realize all it means is they do all the work and have none of the control. Then you just have a bunch of super angry ex husbands – so essentially “Twitter”, but in real life.
Baud
@TBone:
They will produce the children we will beat them with.
TBone
@Suzanne: they think they “own” their children (the pronatalist Collins woman who is running for PA House election on a parents rights platform is an example too – wants no regulations for baby carseats, etc.).
If you want to read about it:
https://evanhurst.substack.com/p/if-libsoftiktok-and-charlie-kirk
OzarkHillbilly
Yes, we all know how divisive them darkies are.
p.a.
Given the fact that Charlie Kirk looks like he was spawned in a milk jug and raised by roombas, don’t think they’ll outbreed us.😯
TBone
@Baud: that’s what the gist is – those kids will run away screaming when they’re old enough to find out what the real world is all about!
TBone
@Kay: 😆😆😆😍
Spanky
@Suzanne:
Ummmm…
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: And along those lines, Conservative US lawmakers are pushing for an end to no-fault divorce.
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: just saw that on Mark Elias’ Democracy Docket. 😡😡😡
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Tony Jay:
Felonious D…FOR THE WIN!
Just when one thought we couldn’t come up with even more casual slurs when referring to Hair Furor, well, here we are.
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: WTF
There is too much money in the “family law” business for lawyers to let that happen tho, IMO. Divorce without fault is a big moneymaker.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Exactly. They’re going to have to hold them as prisoners.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s getting too risky for women to have romantic relationships with men.
Baud
@TBone:
Conservatives will still support her-fault divorces.
TBone
@Baud: that would be my conclusion were I of child-bearing age.
TBone
@Baud: 😆
hrprogressive
In a sane country, Biden would win reelection by a Reagan-esque landslide.
He probably won’t have that wide a margin, but his opponent has basically maxed out his minority base, is becoming even more incoherent by the hour, is a multi-time Convicted Felon, and the party and the Stolen SCOTUS have made it clear they intend to roll this country back 250 years or more if they get the chance.
I get being scared. “99% Chance Hillary Wins” will forever enter the chat.
But the choice couldn’t be clearer, most normie voters haven’t even checked in yet, inflation has eased, the pandemic such as it is isn’t on 95% of people’s minds anymore, and so forth.
I’d prefer a 45 year old super progressive myself, I really would.
But I’ll take Dark Brandon over The Trump Reich every single time.
Kay
@TBone:
Nonsense. Middle and upper class people will still get divorced. The lawyers will make more because they’ll fight over whether and what grounds. The only people who will be harmed are low income and working class people and no one was making any money off them anyway.
TBone
@Kay: they make their money in volume (quantity). Low fees, and plenty of divorcees.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
I agree.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: “The bitch wants to leave me just because I made her do the laundry, clean up the mess I made in the toilet, fix the closet door, bathe the kids, get me beer, rub my feet, and while she’s at it put another log on the fire and cook me up some bacon and some beans. Ya jus’ can’t make some wimmen happy.”
eta: I forgot she has to give him her paycheck too.
Aussie Sheila
@hrprogressive:
Come sit by me.
Christ almighty. I get the anxiety, up to a point. Biden may be a bloviating Irish politician of the old school, but that is the point. He has forgotten more than the entire congressional Dem caucus knows.
Just blast out how he smacks that syphilitic crim off the debate stage.
TBone
Huge Pileated Woodpecker sighting in my tree. ❤️ He’s busy pecking, how apropos.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve been following abortion law since law school – a long time – and I have a very low opinion of the “pro life movement” (they’re liars) but even I thought they would make SOME effort to provide some supports to pregnant women and new mothers (and fathers!) when they banned abortion. Nope. All they’ve done is funnel hundreds of millions in public money to fake heath clinics that employ exclusively religious fundamentalist Republicans. They kept all the aid themselves! Just breathtakingly cynical and sleazy. The “movement” exists solely to employ other members of the movement.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Crazy feminists.
gene108
@OzarkHillbilly:
Reagan. It’s always Reagan.
Baud
@gene108:
I have no love of Reagan, but that’s saying he did something good.
Eyeroller
@gene108: In this case he actually did the right thing.
Betty
Jen is so good. She is known for her straight talk, including the occasional F-bomb.
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
I watched the Dem primary debates and Biden has been at this long enough that he can just pull what he needs instantly. He knew more than every other person on that stage and that was a smart and super ambitious line up. He corrected Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris more than once, not directly, but because his answer was better. He knows this stuff and there’s just no replacing “knowing”. That’s the value of experience. There’s an ease that can’t be faked.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Nah, they got themselves pregnant, it’s their problem now. Maybe next time they’ll keep their legs crossed.
Chris Johnson
In a sane country, BOTH options (or ALL options) would be more or less acceptable.
Or perhaps, in a country that’s not completely swamped by foreign meddling and propaganda done to prepare the world for imperial conquest, lots more would be acceptable?
I’m just rewatching LazerPig’s ‘How to kill a God’ youtube video, which is all about how Putin got taken in by color revolution theory and has spent decades trying to take over the world by propagandizing the West instead of actually making his own country better in any way.
It makes me think this isn’t INHERENTLY an insane country. An awful lot of effort and an awful lot of money has been spent to swing it as far that direction as possible, toward a purpose that is now failed (Russia will never take over Ukraine, much less the rest of Europe). This country isn’t as insane as it looks. It’s propped up in that direction, unnaturally, at great cost.
Soprano2
@Kay: I’m pretty sure at this point that the NY Times will never get an interview with Biden or his staff, just because of how much they whined that they were entitled to one.
catclub
and gosh darn it, people like you.
gene108
Today I learned:
1. Jen O’Malley Dixon says fuck a lot.
2. It’s official!!! I’m 50 years old!!!*
*Which is still a young baby, age wise, versus most of the commentariat here. 😁
Eyeroller
@Baud: The problem isn’t that we are particularly insane as a polity. As we’ve discussed so much, the problem is that the still-dominant group (whites) is largely unconcerned about authoritarianism and may even support it, while being immersed in “bad vibes” about the economy. People generally do not associate policies with political parties or with outcomes so most people do vote on “vibes.” If the R nominee were anyone but Trump, it’s likely Biden would lose. Though we may get lucky and people will start to feel better about the economy.
Baud
@gene108:
Happy birthday!!!
rusty
SCOTUS is preparing to cough up a slew of right wing driven cases over the next week. That should also help focus voters minds on the consequences of having Trump pick three of the reactionary six. They are trying to pile together all the opinion releases right before the holiday so maybe no one will notice. Good luck with that. Stripping people of rights will never go well, and there should be a chance for a good number of campaign ads out of the decisions.
catclub
Baud
@Eyeroller:
That’s not really true. Most people vote in a partisan way. They’re just evenly spilt.
The vibes thing is real, but much of that is manipulated to help Republicans. Doesn’t always work to help Republicans win, but it generally works to keep us and our values and policies from becoming dominant.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-24/california-settled-the-no-fault-divorce-question-decades-ago-why-is-it-back-in-the-news
Talks some about fucking Reagan’s divorce.
Much to my shock, this Reddit thread has some great info:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/53sn7v/why_did_reagan_legalise_nofault_divorce_in_1970/
rusty
@Kay: The right should be careful of the law of unintended consequences. The cultural and religious push for marriage is much smaller now. I suspect lots of young people will make the rational choice to forgo marriage all together. That’s already happened in Europe.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
Agree completely. I don’t get the nervousness. Biden will need to ‘practice’ the tricks of the trade, but as for political debating skills, the Dems couldn’t ask for anyone better.
I’m confident he’ll kill it.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Rufus Gifford via Anne Laurie @ Top:
As far as polling goes, I thought this was a good line from Sen. Warnock, in a Susan Milligan piece at TNR:
I think I’m going to make that word, pollercoaster, part of my regular vocabulary for this campaign season.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … APNews.com (from 6/23):
It’s good that folks are thinking about alternatives and ways not to have to play Bibi’s and the GQP’s games.
I ass-u-me the speech will be yet another travesty like 2015. It’s what he does. Maybe he’ll have more props, also too.
But I also expect that it won’t change the US election dynamics very much at all.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
Even younger than the sprout who owns the joint, he just turned 54. Happy Birthday 🎁 🎂!
Suzanne
@TBone: I know what they think; my question is rhetorical.
It’s so weird. Like….. they have all seen, I am sure, kids growing up in “good families” who leave the church, are LGBT, who move away to go to college and don’t return, who get hooked on drugs, any number of things. It’s, like, post-logic to think that “outbreeding the left” is a thing they think can happen.
I mean, America is becoming increasingly educated and decreasingly religious….. and it’s not because Catholics and Mormons aren’t still having a lot of kids!
Another Scott
@gene108: Happy start to your 6th decade!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
TBone
@catclub: I live under a tree but have dreamed of living in a treehouse since I saw the movie Swiss Family Robinson as a very young child in the 60s. Now that I’m old, though, I’m glad to be on the ground.
Garter snakes are cute! I hope your wife wasn’t scared.
Suzanne
@gene108: Happy birthday!
It’s Spawn the Youngest’s birthday, too. She woke up early and was running around the house. I need more coffee!
TBone
@Lacuna Synecdoche: 👍
Eyeroller
@Baud: I know, the MSM reporting on the economy has been abysmal. It’s all infotainment, “ignoramus on the street” “I feel your pain” reporting. It’s not just the Republican lean, though that’s a big part, it’s that according to some observers the press has always had a bias towards bad news in general and especially so for the economy. And reporters mostly seem to be innumerate, and people in general are terrible at understanding relative quantities (crime rates, inflation rates etc.) so here we are.
Even the partisan leans are mostly based on identity, though (which is a “vibe”) and much less on policies.
satby
@Suzanne: The model they’re using is Old Order Amish, not mainstream religions. Where leaving means never to see family, friends, or home again. People still leave, but total shunning keep a lot in the pen. And it’s hard to leave without any of the tools or education that enables survival outside.
TBone
@Suzanne: logic is not their strong suit.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
This can be dismissed as my bias, but the media’s preference for negativity has a partisan lean to it IMHO.
narya
Okay, I’ll reconsider and listen to Heilemann’s interview w/ JOD. I listened to an episode a few weeks ago, with Andrew Weissman, and I got very stabby as Heilemann dismissed the election interference convictions as a “mere” hush-money peccadillo. But I’m still gonna skip the episode with Maggie.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@satby:
https://medium.com/@michellekuehn/growing-up-amish-b1e4eb1b0601
Detailed account of just that.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
A metric ton of ex-evangelicals say otherwise!
TBone
Gah! Kill it with fire!
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/06/dangerous-right-wing-groups-are-very.html?m=1
satby
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I don’t think people realize the complete and total control the conservative homeschool-trad family world exerts on their adherents. Kids are barely being educated past grammer school and with deliberately false information; they only socialize with other people in the same church / homeschool group and the kids are taught that the outside world is dangerous and satanic. Few of those kids run, because they see nowhere to run to. They suicide.
RevRick
@hrprogressive: I hear your preference for a 45year-old superprogressive, but that’s not how our system works anymore. Party bosses like John Bailey of Connecticut, who backed JFK, are long gone. Instead, we have a self-nominating process of candidates who are filtered by $, polls, and early state primaries. And unless they have a political death wish, they don’t take on incumbent Presidents (cf. what’s-his-face from Minnesota).
TBone
@satby: the adults run. The kids are stuck, but they grow into adults with two feet and a working brain. Of course, once they’ve been indoctrinated, not all of them want to run.
We’re counting on the smartest survivors of these large trad family groups getting away.
Lapassionara
@Suzanne: They aren’t thinking of outbreeding the left. They want to outbreed the people they consider “not white.”
jowriter
@p.a.: Outstanding simile. Applies to many magats.
TBone
@Lapassionara: I respectfully disagree. A lot of it is racist, but a lot is reactionary ideology. Harkens to the Puritans.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
Yeah, no doubt. I swear, sometimes it feels like everyone I grew up with whose family were into conservative religion (LDS and evangelical mostly, but not exclusively) is still working out their religious trauma in their forties.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
Okay, someone else having the exact same birthday, including year, feels bizarre.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Happy birthday to you too!
Manyakitty
@MagdaInBlack: oh god. We don’t need any more of his DNA.
Sandia Blanca
@Soprano2: I would love to see Biden give an exclusive to Paul Krugman!
Suzanne
@satby: No doubt what you’re sayin is true. But lots of conservative communities aren’t quite that tight. There’s tons of evangelical and LDS kids in public schools (often because their parents are broke AF and do not have the resources for homeschooling or to live in an exclusive community). Lots of those kids end up falling away from their conservative upbringings.
Kay
@Another Scott:
I’m convinced the US is an actual impediment to any kind of ceasefire or temporary agreement at this point. Just ask yourself – would you consider us a fair mediator in this dispute if you were on the Palestinian side? There’s a whole world outside this country and they have opinions and objectives too- they seem to going in a different direction.
Another Scott
This – from the “commie” person – burns me up.
How about instead, “Why not Mind Your Own Business and stop horning on people’s decisions on having kids or not and their own health care? Who are you to butt in on that?? Don’t you have your own life decisions to worry about??!”
Grr…,
Scott.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
@gene108: Who let their little brother in?
Kay
@rusty:
That’s a really good point.
Suzanne
@Lapassionara: There is a lot of discourse about outbreeding the left. It’s incredibly strange.
One weird thing that has emerged in relatively recent years that drives much of the socially conservative right-wing up a wall is that educated liberal people marry one another at higher rates than working-class people, and are staying married. There is definitely a fear that left-liberals are better at family formation and that conservative men aren’t finding conservative women to marry. Hence the rise of tradwife discourse.
Another Scott
@Kay: As flawed as the US is, we’re still the major outside player in situations like this. If we don’t do the work, nobody else will – we’ve seen that for decades and decades…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@Kay: truth
i guess it beats honest work/trying to make a living in the real world?
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: HB2U!
Cheers,
Scott.
Sally
@Suzanne: Gosh, I remember how ill you were while pregnant with her. I can’t believe that she is running around the house!
Baud
@Suzanne:
The binding energy in the right is based on owning the libs. They’ve successfully created a cult of people who will sacrifice their own self interest in service of the lib-owning movement.
satby
@TBone: nope, lots of them don’t. That’s my point. It’s like the Amish on steroids, and I’ve been surrounded by them for the last 8 years. Amy Coney Barrett grew up in a similar system, but one that uses education to move into and control the world the rest of us live in. Blithely assuming otherwise is severely underestimating the damage they can and will do, and not just to their internal victims.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Big BJ birthday day!
Cheryl from Maryland
@Kay: This is why lower and working-class people don’t get married at the same rate as Middle and Upper-Class people. Divorce is expensive. However, so is child support when a break-up occurs, married or not.
Kay
@TBone:
Divorce is motion practice. Motion, appear, motion, appear. They won’t make money on volume. Too much lawyer time. It’s so disfavored we have a lawyer paid by the county who does low income pro se divorces – the parties meet with her and she prepares the paperwork. No one minds because no one wants the work.
The volume areas in law are the areas that can be standardized and are one and done – bankruptcy, collections, and simple petitions in (family, not employer) immigration. One that no one recognizes and is really lucrative is traffic. Not civilians. Professional drivers. If you have a cooking traffic practice you bring in a lot of money and you file almost nothing and make one appearance, if that. But you have to be good an give them value because it’s all word of mouth. The traffic lawyer here is the second highest in revenue and he never leaves the office.
He works his magic on the phone with muni court prosecutors :)
Geminid
@Kay: Egypt, Qatar and the US are the mediators here, not the US by itself.
JAFD
@gene108: Youth is wasted on the young ;-)
Have a happy half-century celebration, and many many good years more !
satby
@Suzanne: agreed, if they get exposed to alternatives, many do. I’m talking about ones who’ve learned from those “failures” and work harder to isolate their flocks until the teachings are reliably hard-coded.
They’re a minority, and I’m just trying to make the point that we can’t assume that the kids will grow up and run away to freedom because we see our values as better. Because it’s not a given.
satby
@JAFD: Hey, hope you’re doing better JAFD!!
TBone
Egads! Is this why Dotard was insisting this past weekend in Philly that “they” don’t want us “to have any water?’
https://www.nbcchicago.com/weather/chicago-area-residents-asked-less-water-delay-showers-severe-weather-threat/3471606/
Aaarrgggh I don’t like to get into his brain, but the “open closed, open closed” crap he was spouting now makes a scintilla of sense. Off to gouge my eyes out …
Manyakitty
@gene108: happy birthday and many more!
satby
@Frankensteinbeck: Happy Birthday 🎂🎉!
Maybe this joint isn’t as geezerish as it seems 😂
The Thin Black Duke
@satby: “Slavery Is Freedom.”
Manyakitty
@Suzanne: happy spawn day 🎉 🎂 🎈 🥳
Baud
@satby:
We’re old at heart.
satby
@The Thin Black Duke: Same battles EVERY decade.
narya
@gene108: @Frankensteinbeck: Happy birthday! and also to @Suzanne: ‘s Spawn the Younger!
Manyakitty
@Frankensteinbeck: many happy returns of the day 🎉 🎊 🥳
Suzanne
@Cheryl from Maryland: The changes in marriage patterns are really interesting. Educational attainment level has become a really prominent axis of “assortative mating”. Back in the days that the MAGAts are all nostalgic for, it wasn’t….. women usually didn’t go to college but many still married college grads. But for my age cohort and younger, couples are much more likely to have similar educational attainment. And marriage rates go up the more education they have.
The social conservative right wing hates this. They accuse us of “not preaching what we practice”, and consider it humiliating to many men to not be able to find a wife.
It’s stressful to relationships to not make much money, and educational attainment still greatly affects earnings. Also, it’s a sign of a shift in values and the role of women in the family and society.
satby
@Baud: 😂😂
Huge storm rolling in now, big enough to threaten a power outtage. Let’s see how long I last on here this morning.
JAFD
@satby: Think I’m starting to get better. Still short of energy. Been sleeping a lot, this past week. Going in for checkup tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone for your good thoughts !
TBone
@Kay: I worked for divorce lawyers and family law lawyers of many stripes. Some love to fight in Court. Some run “puppy mills.” In Pennsylvania, it was a volume business because no-faults don’t require much attorney work – lots of it can be delegated to support staff on the cheap (i.e., my lower pay job). I spent many unhappy hours on the phone doing “marriage counseling” ha ha. Might be why I’m unmarried and cohabitating. It was a near miss with hubby, we almost tied the knot!
Nelle
I’m jumping to the end as I have an unexpected two year old guest (AC went out at daycare), so I can’t read it all right now.
My question – do you have the Neighbor to Neighbor program for GOTV? I have a friend who basically gave herself the job of setting it up and running it for Urbandale, Iowa. (It’s nearly full time; she started it when she retired.)
I am responsible for being in contact with all registered D’s in my neighborhood (about 75). Some I never see and just leave info at their doors. Some I know quite well, to the point of being able to help when there is a problem in their lives. My summer neighborhood walks generally have time for chatting as I go around. This year, I’m also reaching out to good acquaintances who are R’s by tradition, but are also troubled. I just ask them what issues matter to them and give them space to voice discomforts and questions, things that Maga world won’t allow. Just gentle probing for cracks. If they voice concerns about both candidates, I might say something like “It sounds like this might be the year for you to think about leaving that ballot line blank.” That might be the best we can do.
Surprisingly, one woman quietly told me to keep bringing the info for her 20yo D daughter. I think the father is adamantly R, but the wife wants the info “for her daughter” who, as it turns out, has moved out. Please keep bringing it, she told me.
I realize that, as a retired person and someone not intimidated to start conversations with strangers, this really suits me. I’ve also moved so much that I know that if I want a community, it’s up to me to make it (8 states, 2 countries in 44 years of married life).
Oh, and I have a big porch. Sympatico neighborhood types show up for porch wine. One time, we pooled ideas of who has what skills if a civil war erupts. There was a decent size group on the night of the conviction of DJT.
Kay
@Geminid:
I’m aware. It’s just that the entire US focus is on the Israeli public and the US public. There’s another party here! From my perspective, which admittedly is ordinary mediation principles, it is INSANELY lopsided. No one who I have ever had in a mediation or a in a meeting seeking an agreement would accept this level of bias – it’s unacceptable. Imagine how the US saying for weeks that Hamas wouldn’t accept the terms – not true, the proposal was essentially the same proposal Hamas made in May – SOUNDS to Palestinians. Especially now that Netanyahu has admitted he never intended to agree! It’s just a daily humiliation for them. We lie about them, and it’s not for their benefit – it’s for an Israeli and US audience. It must be fucking enraging.
satby
@JAFD: Glad to hear that, take care of yourself!
gene108
@Suzanne:
🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
I haven’t looked forward to a birthday this much, since I was a little kid.
Thank you all for the birthday wishes.
raven
@Suzanne: I met my wife at a party and asked her what she was doing in Athens? “Working on my masters in Adult Education” was her reply. I didn’t even know what that was and, seven years later, I had my doctorate in the field!
satby
@Suzanne: Happy Birthday to Spawn the youngest too! She’s probably really excited about it, hope it’s as good as her dreams.
Kay
@Geminid:
Blinken says the US opposes any formal recognition of Palestine because the US has to broker it to protect Israel. That’s fine – that’s the choice we made – but let’s not kid ourselves – they are advocates for Israel. The Palestinian population is only important as to how it affects Israel. I see it in the language over and over – if I see it, imagine how they see it. To pretend this is some kind of good faith intervention for the Palestinian people is insulting. Find a fucking neutral party or give the Palestinians a genuine advocate to counter the US advocacy for Israel. Be fair. This is bullying behavior. By the US, not you, btw
Tony Jay
@Raoul Paste:
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I cannot take credit. I swear I saw Felonious D here first and decided to borrow it.
OzarkHillbilly
That’s the way my lawyer does it. The city/county gets their money, and I don’t lose any points on my drivers license.
satby
@Nelle: That sounds very effective! Good on you!
I know “postcards” is a conjure word around here, but person to person is my preference. Admittedly, no one is unaware of my political leanings so assumptions are made going in 😆.
Belafon
@Kay: You seem to be assuming that either side actually wants a ceasefire.
Mousebumples
@satby: I mostly like postcards due to where I am in life. Something I can do during naptime for kiddos or after bedtime. Plus, I can impact non local races.
I did enjoy canvassing in my pre kids days. Maybe again when they’re older, but can’t really make it work right now. And while I’ve done phone calls, I really don’t enjoy those.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
Only way I kept my license at one point.
Geminid
@Kay: The proposal Hamas accepted in May was their own proposal, and it differed in critical details from the one the US, Egypt and the US are backing and that forms the basis of the Security Council resolution passed last month.
As for Netanyahu, he’s already walked back the walkback; you probably know that. Hamas can put him to the test any time by accepting the US/Egyptian/Qatari proposal, but they want to protect themselves and their own political position, not the interests of the Palestinian people.
I agree that Americans (including yourself) are overly focused on the US/Israeli side of this problem. Americans often look down on Arabs and Arab nations, and do not value them as actors, just victims. That was the case long before this war began, and dismissing the Egyptian and Qatari roles in this negotiation continues that misconception.
OzarkHillbilly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I lost my license when I tried to deal with an “uninsured motorist” ticket* after an accident. I missed one (minor) thing I needed to do and my license got revoked. The state never even bothered to tell me.
Ever since my motto has been, “Never again, never!”
* the real crime, as always, was being broke.
Belafon
@Kay: Also, I’m struggling to find confirmation of your statement that the US opposed any formal recognition of Palestine. I actually found an article where Blinken says that Israel will only have security only if a Palestinian state is established. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/blinken-calls-a-pathway-to-a-palestinian-state-a-necessity-for-israeli-security
satby
@Mousebumples: Undestandable.
TBone
@Cheryl from Maryland: here in Pennsylvania, you can DIY a no fault divorce.
https://www.pacourts.us/learn/representing-yourself/divorce-proceedings
Baud
@Belafon:
I don’t have a cite, but I think we opposed other countries recognizing Palestine right now.
narya
@TBone: Illinois, too.
Baud
I keep thinking today is Wednesday.
TBone
@narya: 👍 I guess the cult wants to standardize divorce law across the nation instead of leaving it “up to the states” hahahaha 🙄
Another Scott
@Belafon:
I think she’s referring to things like the April UN veto:
Diplomacy and politics are weird. How does one recognize a state without recognized borders?? Other states have managed to do so, however.
Wikipedia tells me 145/193 (75.1%) of members of the General Assembly recognize Palestine.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
oldgold
Handling dissolution of marriages actions is a miserable way earn a living. Early on, I was involved in a scores of them.
Now, except in the rarest of circumstances, do I get involved. Every week I turn down at least one dissolution of marriage representation.
Getting rid of no fault will only make a bad situation worse.
narya
@TBone: I was just glad we could do the whole thing pro se. The full story requires some time, and, preferably, a fermented or distilled beverage for the narrator . . .
Kay
@Belafon:
Right. We say that. But we always block it. Because the United States has to broker it to protect Israel’s interests. We make everything worse in this dispute.
I think it is a GENUINE blind spot, btw. The bias in the language just blows me away – to not hear it you have to not want to hear it. Frankly, Palestinians shouldn’t accept it. It’s in no way equitable.
Miss Bianca
@TBone: I never had a lawyer when I got divorced in CO. Basically, all the ex and I had to do was agree on who got what, and file the paperwork. No kids, no custody/alimony arrangements, no problem.
Kay
@Belafon:
Again and again the Biden Administration will issue a statement on whatever that day’s disaster is, and it will be sympathy for Israel – fine! Ordinary Israelis are innocent civilians too. But any sympathy or concern for Palestinians is literally an afterthought – it will be late, vague and insufficient. Always. We’re not honest brokers on this issue. We chose. It’s okay to admit that in a dispute but you HAVE to admit it or you are just in the way of an agreement.
terraformer
@Baud: they probably passed on interviewing her because she says gasp! “Fuck” a lot, and seasoned members of the elite just don’t utter that in polite company
rikyrah
The Associated Press
@AP
BREAKING: Israel’s Supreme Court rules that the military must draft ultra-Orthodox men in a decision that could lead to the collapse of Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
https://x.com/AP/status/1805515752058863942
Manyakitty
@rikyrah: good. That should blow up the Smotrich and Ben Gvir crew. They’re truly repugnant blights on the world.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: that’s great news!
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I wish it was wednesday, than I’d be looking at a high of 86 instead of the 96 we’re getting today.
Geminid
@Kay: I think that collectively, the US, Egypt and Qatar are honest brokers. Their role would continue throughout the negotiations that are part of Phase One and Phase Two.
I agree that the Palestinians need a better representative than Hamas, but Hamas started this war and maintains it so they are a neccessary participant. However, the ceasefire deal does not guarantee their status as sole the sole authority in Gaza and could allow their replacement by another Palestinian entity. That is why they are so wary of it.
Personally, all I think Sinwar and the other military leaders are entitled to is evacuation to Algeria, as the Saudis have suggested. Then they can negotiate with their civilian leaders over their share of the hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money stolen from the people they ostensibly represent.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Suzanne: Yes. More or less. Hence why having lots of kids often goes with religion. Then you isolate the kids and force feed them your ideology and voila! You’ve grown the church,
Works for Republicanism too,
The danger is if they have any information sources other than the parents and the church. And thus we push for home schooling and bible college.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Keeping women trapped in unhappy marriages.
Then again, these young women are just deciding..
Nope..to marriage itself.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: Wait, what? Orthodox are exempt from national military service?
Edit: Skimmed the article. Yep. The most hawkish Israelis are sending OTHER people to fight the wars they’re exempt from. It’s the ultimate “Sabbath goy” arrangement.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Back when this was in place before…
there wasn’t the plethora of true crime shows.
Now, it’s not my genre, I can’t stand it…
but, if you don’t think that people aren’t getting ideas from those shows…
I’m just saying….
rikyrah
@Baud:
@OzarkHillbilly:
South Korea calls it the 4B Movement.
Josie
@rikyrah:
I am glad to see this. As the mother of three sons, I have always maintained that if my boys are not exempt from a draft, then no one (including religious followers and women) should be exempt. The possibility of being drafted can have a profound effect on how one views war.
Geminid
@rikyrah: Also, the Submarine Case has resurfaced. It comes out of a years-old military procurement scandal that ensnared some of Netanyahu’s associates but not him. Now a commission of inquiry is shining a harsh light on Netanyahu’s role, at a bad time for him.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Maybe that’s because lots of women have figured out that conservatism gives women a raw deal, and they want no part of it. Also it seems that a lot of conservative men don’t outgrow middle school, and not a lot of women are attracted to that.
BritinChicago
@hrprogressive: Inflation has eased but prices, of course, are still high. (Deflation, overall decline in prices, doesn’t tend to happen without high unemployment and zero or negative growth.) And people still remember the lower prices and blame Biden for the rise. Wages overall have gone up enough to offset price rises, but people tend to think that that is due to their own merit and hard work, not to the President. So yes, the choice should be clear but to many people it is not, or is unclear in the other direction. Am I scared? You bet I am.
Miki
@Kay: “Nonsense. Middle and upper class people will still get divorced. The lawyers will make more because they’ll fight over whether and what grounds. The only people who will be harmed are low income and working class people and no one was making any money off them anyway.”
Truth.
jonas
Yes, and this has been a sore spot in Israeli politics for quite some time, but has really come to a head now with the Gaza war. At the time of Israel’s founding, the politicians struck a deal with the Haredi: you accept the legitimacy of the secular state (a lot of ultra-Orthodox were vehemently anti-Zionist, believing the spiritual conditions for the re-establishment of Israel were not met yet), and we’ll essentially leave you to study Torah unburdened by the obligations of a secular society. At a time when large swaths of rabbinical Judaism and Jewish learning had been destroyed in the Holocaust, providing a space for a (then) small number of orthodox scholars to work in Israel preserving Torah study seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. Fast forward 50 years, and the Haredi (thanks to large families and immigration from Russia and elsewhere) are now a major bloc in Israeli society that everyone else, including the IDF, has to support while getting very little in return, save for radical religion.
tam1MI
Slate magazine has an article about how Jamal Bowman is apparently going down in flames in his bid to be re-elected (he’s down by double digits to his challenger). Slate says that it is because AIPAC poured millions of dollars into defeating him – he took a harsh anti-Israel stance over Gaza and Jewish people comprise about 20% of the population there – and also because his opponent locked down union support. Any New York Jackals have any insight about this race?
rikyrah
@Kay:
They aren’t against government funding. They just want to fund their friends, and use public dollars to do it.
Old School
@gene108: @Frankensteinbeck: @Suzanne: Happy Birthday to all of today’s birthdays!
rikyrah
@Kay:
Have said awhile that his time in government is his Superpower. He literally knows the ins and outs of government. He literally was the guy, on that train back and forth from Delaware, who was pouring over the notes and briefs that his staff prepared for him all those years. His longevity, combined with his desire to actually use the government to help people, is what makes him a good President. He knows the levers.
rikyrah
@gene108:
Happy Birthday :)
Baud
@tam1MI:
I have zero insight but if this is true
I don’t know how a progressive incumbent Democrat lets that happen.
tam1MI
@jonas: Didn’t the Israeli Supreme Court just issue a ruling striking down the exemption?
rikyrah
@rusty:
Exactly..good luck with that.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
It’s hard to see that as anything other than child abuse.
The only good news is that there really aren’t a lot of families, as a fraction of the population, that are able and willing to do the whole tradfamily, total homeschooling thing.
Not to mention, if they raise their kids in an environment like that that’s so completely separated from the larger society, how are those kids, when they grow up, going to see the point in voting? It’ll just be this thing that Pastor says they should do, but if all the bad stuff they’re told is happening out there is just a distant rumor to them, why should they care? It’ll have nothing to do with them.
hrprogressive
@RevRick: to be clear, I did not think “Primary Biden” was a good idea, just that I wish we had someone, you know, better.
If we’re lucky, we get another Biden Term, and then maybe in 2028 or 2032 we can try someone younger, and more progressive.
If we’re lucky.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
I want to go older.
tam1MI
Especially in New York, of all places.
rikyrah
@satby:
This breaks my heart.
Belafon
@Another Scott: Thanks.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Yeppers. “The Supreme Court is taking away your freedoms. Happy Fourth.”
“What’s the difference between the Supreme Court and George III?” “We haven’t declared our independence from the Supreme Court. Yet.”
rikyrah
@Lapassionara:
no lie told
smith
@hrprogressive: If we still have elections in 2028, the chances are approaching 100% we’ll have a younger candidate. The old guard is old, and we’re not likely to make exceptions for any more 80-year-olds beyond Biden. Whether the 2028 candidate is more progressive, we’ll have to see, but most of the names that come to mind are pretty good. As with everything else, we just have to make it past 2024.
tam1MI
The younger and more progressive candidates have to get through this election cycle, where their natural voters have already loudly announced they intend to throw the election to the Republicans to teach the Perfidious Normie Centrist Dems A Lesson. It hasn’t occurred to any of them that all they will be succeeding in doing is turning Progressives into an endangered, unelectable species.
OzarkHillbilly
Political malpractice.
Belafon
@hrprogressive: I often wonder what people mean by better in this situation. Did you want someone who was a better progressive, or someone who gets progressive stuff through Washington? Pick one, because I don’t see anyone who is both. And I currently don’t see anyone, other than Pelosi, who is better at the second than Biden, that’s what you need in Washington.
Baud
@smith:
I’ve expressed the fear that if Biden loses, we’ll move more to the center then more progressive. I don’t claim that this is based on objective analysis, but I have a hard time seeing unsuccessful trends remaining viable over the long term.
smith
@Baud: If Biden loses we will not be in normal times any more. The federal government will become an arm of the Republican party, and the Felon will not leave office at the end of the term if he’s still alive. Recentering the Democratic party will be the least of our worries.
satby
@rikyrah: dealing with trying to help one now. They quit selling at the market because the kids were getting exposed to “other things”. It was a significant portion of their yearly income to give up, but that control must be maintained.
The kid is at risk of suicide.
Baud
@smith:
Another possibility. But whether Trump successfully becomes a dictator is separate from whether he’ll have popular support. A Dem-led opposition will not be pushing the envelope on progressive policies IMHO.
Who knows, of course?
Hoodie
@Baud: You only have to look at the UK to see what can happen. Labour has moved right since Corbyn and stands to mop up in the next election. Perhaps progressives don’t realize how it might have been a bit of luck to get Biden who, because of his age and established credentials, has pushed through some progressive reforms that a younger centrist would not have attempted.
frosty
Thumbs up for the Waylon and Friends reference!
Baud
@Hoodie:
Fair point, although I’m wary of making analogies to different countries facing their own unique conditions.
The difficulty I have is that Dems have been moving leftwards for about two decades and progressives still cannot claim a single governor or legislative body in this country as their own. Obviously, many blue states are doing great things, but I’ve never seen progressives hold any of them up as their standard bearers. They seem to focus on legislative advocates like AOC or Bernie, rather than actually winning control of government. So how are they going to elect one of their own as president? That’s a big leap.
TBone
@Miss Bianca: exactly – my legal admin. job was to handle all the paperwork and to keep the angry-at-spouse client phone calls off of the attorney’s to do list as well. Each state and each local court has different Rules of Procedure though.
Kay
@Geminid:
I don’t know how you remain optimistic about this process. As you know, it isn’t just Netanyahu. The far Right are firmly in control and they are expansionist. Something has to give for them to continue to expand and that “something” is Palestinians. Israel cannot meet their stated objectives as long as a large group of Palestinians remain. They’ve been telling us this since October. You really have to willfully ignore everything they say and do to “believe”, IMO. We just watched Joe Biden spend an enormous sum of credibility and political capital to promote the fantasy that the proposal was Israels. Netanyahu told him to go fuck himself, TWICE, in a week. The Israeli government deliberately humiliated and discredited the US President who is the best friend they have or will ever have. . That’s what happened.
Not that my opinion matters that much but I think you are absolutely good faith on this. You care about both groups. But I don’t how you maintain hope. It’s admirable.
TBone
@narya: 🤣
😭 sorry to hear that BUT glad you were successful in any event!
rikyrah
@smith:
say it again for the bleacher seats.
smith
@Hoodie: It seems to me that we have already experienced this with the Bill Clinton administration, which in my opinion moved decidedly right in response to the disruption of Reaganism. It has taken too long to reverse that. Part of Biden’s political genius is being able to find and occupy the exact ideological center of the Dem party. As the party has moved left, so has he. That movement, though, was not of his own making, but a combination of trends, not least the dying off of the Olds and the political maturation of the Youngs.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: Yet!
Barry
@Soprano2: “I’m pretty sure at this point that the NY Times will never get an interview with Biden or his staff, just because of how much they whined that they were entitled to one.”
And have demonstrated that they are 100% hostile.
rikyrah
Karine Jean-Pierre
@PressSec
The Department of Justice will be appealing both decisions to block key provisions of our SAVE Plan. We will never stop fighting to lower monthly payments and help borrowers get out from under the burden of student debt – no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.
https://x.com/PressSec/status/1805614372678447122
scav
It’ll also be interesting watching those proposing to litter their way to cultural supremacy run up against developing hard truths about maternal health care their current “victories!” have produced. The serial monogamy that often results will likely seem initially attractive to the sperm producers, but having to rustle up still more trad women, but now willing to instantly supporting the preexisting broods while also laying their lives on the line. That should be a competitive market — the handmaidens might even get a little uppity with it.
Manyakitty
@satby: tragic
Citizen Alan
@satby: Actually, I think it’s more like the model we see in israel today, In which the law and the government effectively encourages ultra conservative fundamentalist jews to have as many children as possible, paid for with lavish welfare benefits while freeing those fundamentalists from most of their obligations to the social contract, including fighting in wars that the fundamentalists are eager to start.
frosty
@Josie: Absolutely right about the draft. My mother changed her opinion on Vietnam when my twin brother and I pulled a 34 in the draft lottery.
smith
@scav: Judging from the cries of anguish from incels on the right, there is already a severe shortage of willing handmaids. Thus the effort to propagandize young women into tradwife servitude. Also to try to convince them that if they’re not married and dropping spawn by their early 20s then they have failed as women. My guess is this effort will fail, since almost all young women have access to popular culture’s more alluring role models.
Citizen Alan
@TBone: Racism or reactionary views? The chicken or the egg?
Geminid
@Kay: Actually, I am not hopeful at this point. Hamas’s window of oportunity is closing, and I think the US, Qatar and Egypt will wfrite them off if they don’t agree soon. There are already reports that Qatar will expel Hamas’s civilian leadership if they don’t sign.
As for the Right being firmly control of the Israeli government, they are certainly in control since Gantz and Eisenkot left the government, but I wouldn’t say their control is firm. Netanyahu has a very bumpy road on his way to the Knesset adjpurnment July 28th. This will likely be the last government Smotrich and Ben-Gvir will ever be part of, and they and a few Likudniks are the source for 90% of the amnexationist rhetoric you say is representative of the entire government. There are plenty of government coalition MKs who think this talk of annexation is insane.
TBone
@Citizen Alan: 👍
Outbreeding The Left includes outbreeding POC
Hoodie
@Baud: Yeah, but isn’t that part of being “progressive”, i.e., you’re pushing the envelope so, of course, you probably won’t have a politically successful standard bearer in the sense of a president? Seems to me that the bulk of progressive success has been under older centrist presidents (e.g., Roosevelt, LBJ, Biden) that have sufficient centrist creds to be able to push selected progressive initiatives.
narya
@smith: And, really, any woman with two brain cells to rub together has to look at the deal being offered. I think it was easier to sell when I was a kid–women couldn’t get credit in their own names, had a hard time getting into professional schools/professions, etc., and so many occupations paid so little that it was harder to conceive of just going it alone. Those conditions have changed. (The example I keep telling my younger nephew is seeing the NASA control rooms: when I was a kid, it was all white men, in white shirts and ties, and now it most profoundly is NOT.)
scav
@smith: One would rather expect the allure of the style would decline somewhat when the odds of personal physical harm get layered onto the 50s frock and makeup tips.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rikyrah:
It’s why I think he’s the best president of my lifetime after winning on Try #3. I don’t think he’d be nearly as good if he’d won earlier.
His age, and natural predilection for politics, is a feature, not a bug.
Soprano2
@TBone: That’s an interesting approach to preventing rain-related overflows of the sewer system. I’ve never heard of a city doing that before, interesting.
JWR
Kristen Welker had a substitute last Sunday, some dumb as a post guy, and he asked the Biden surrogate, “Biden said he would serve as a bridge to the future sort of president. So what happened?” I scratched my head, wondering what he was talking about, but then the Biden guy pointed out that he, Biden, never promised to be a one term president. It was the media that had drawn that one-term inference.
smith
@narya: My guess is that those young women who are tempted by the whole tradwife con are ones who are rather afraid of adulthood. They may have grown up in sheltered environments where it seems normal for a woman to cede all adult decisions and responsibilities to her husband, or they may simply be people for whom the challenges of becoming an autonomous adult are overwhelming.
Some may find it a comfortable niche, but I’d posit that for that to happen, they’d need to be surrounded by a like-minded community, and also to find a husband who is able to support her and what we’d assume will be a large brood of children. Even many well-educated men can’t get jobs that pay well enough for that. A man who has been mis-educated by home schooling and Bible college is going to find it difficult unless he can get a good gig in wingnut welfare somewhere.
prostratedragon
Special Counsel has filed a reply to TFG’s boo-hoo-hoo about the search of “his” boxes. This part here is cherce:
Emphasis on the cherce marker mine. Gotta keep ’em reminded.
Citizen Alan
@hrprogressive: And if not, at least the progressives will have something to bitch and moan, about for 4 years.
Look, Do I wish that joe biden were thirty years younger? Of course I do. I also wish that I was thirty years younger, Because when I was twenty five, I was a hundred pounds lighter, had a full head of hair, and still had hope for the future of the human race. But Joe Biden, as he is today, is the second best option we have to joe biden suddenly becoming able to regenerate like doctor who, which ain’t gonna happen
Baud
@Hoodie:
That’s fine if they’re happy being advocates and not governmental leaders. It doesn’t seem like they’re happy in that role.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@frosty: I was curious the other day about my draft status if I was alive back then. There is an actual website that told me if I was born 4 days earlier I would’ve been drafted.
VFX Lurker
Ragnarok Lobster has covered Bowman’s missteps on Twitter for months. Bowman lost voters in his district with his words and his deeds.
Bowman dismissed rape survivors’ stories as “propaganda.” He also pulled a fire alarm outside of an emergency and disrupted Congress before it took a vote.
He walked back his words, and the House censured him for pulling the fire alarm. However, his campaign for reelection continued to alienate and/or ignore voters in his own district. For example, last weekend he held a low-turnout, mostly-white rally in the South Bronx, which he does not represent.
Fake Irishman
@tam1MI:
Kos had an interesting take on the Bowman race yesterday, noting that while the AIPAC money is real, that also that pro-Palestinian has progressives whaven’t exactly been backing him up — they picketed one of his joint appearances with AOV for example. The message was “Hey, if you demand that your rep take controversial positions, you damn well better back them up with election help, or you doom them and rob yourselves of any ability to influence electoral politics”
Baud
@VFX Lurker:
FWIW, I don’t think he should lose because of the fire alarm. At least it wouldn’t factor into my decision.
rikyrah
Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)![]()
@AWeissmann_
Another tell that Judge Cannon is unfit: her refusal to have the assigned Magistrate Judge, who is far more experienced than she, handle any pretrial motions. Why wd she refuse to take this routine step? 1-It would move the case along (ie she does not want it to go to trial before the election) 2-The Magistrate judge would rule impartially and she we then have to overrule him and wd look that much worse
7:43 AM · Jun 25, 2024
https://x.com/AWeissmann_/status/1805582487780741420
Baud
@Fake Irishman:
Welcome to my frustration with left of center politics in the US. Everyone wants to free ride on us, and then blame us when we’re not strong enough to beat back the fascists.
rikyrah
@smith:
There’s a reason why there aren’t 40 year old tradwives making videos.
It’s because they are making the
” We were discarded and thrown away for a younger model” videos.
TBone
@Soprano2: I wonder how Dotard got his two remaining brain cells stuck on it, though. Is he getting briefings that he’s paying attention to, or is it stuff printed out by his Emotional Support Printer (assuming my theory about the “open, close, open, close” word spew refers to climate change storm preparedness is correct)?
Philly has similar storm drain issues.
VFX Lurker
I learned about this in 2006 from Max Brooks’ excellent World War Z. The steps Israel takes to protect itself from the zombie apocalypse (contract its borders; bulldoze Jewish settlers’ houses to build a wall) leads to an Israeli civil war between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox.
The civil war ends quickly because the Orthodox had exemptions from military service and no military training.
TBone
@rikyrah: 👍😂😆
TBone
@VFX Lurker: I forgot that part of the movie! Good reminder!
TBone
Important debate prebuttal:
https://digbysblog.net/2024/06/25/the-peace-president/
TBone
THIS.
Must see advice, IMO!
https://x.com/maddenifico/status/1805243567260016843
SHAZAM!
smith
Might be worth reminding young women tempted by handmaid-hood that evangelicals have the highest rate of divorce of any religious affiliation.
ETA: Should have said white evangelicals. The divorce rate among Black evangelicals is quite low.
Eolirin
@smith: Won’t be the case once they get rid of no fault divorce…
Hoodie
Baud: Same as it ever was. They can be political leaders, but they generally will at most represent factions of a coalition. Idealists often are dissatisfied and/or impatient, but that’s to be expected because the world never fully conforms to one’s ideals. Even if they could get a nominally progressive president (they arguably have one now), they’d probably have problems. There are actually MAGA types who are dissatisfied with Trump, e.g., they want him to make Mike Flynn VP. People are fractious.
Bill Arnold
@Chris Johnson:
Yeah, that was a well-done video.
Eolirin
@Baud: IDK. I feel like there’s actually pretty broad consensus not just within the party but within the electorate in terms of broad policy strokes, which limits how far we can tack to the center. The factional fights are over how we far we should go in achieving those policy goals, not about what those goals are and they’re pretty muted, in large part, I think, because we don’t have the votes to actually have those debates.
The further left parts of the coalition are mostly pragmatic in terms of our elected officials and will take whatever they can get. We’re constrained from the right not the left.
As you’ve identified the thing that loses us elections is that the Democratic party supports civil rights, good governance, and broadly, democratic principles, and we can’t stop doing that.
We will win or lose to autocrats pushing white supremacist positions, and normal political realignment is simply impossible under these conditions. If we lose there won’t be anything to realign to; we won’t have fair and free elections and the positions candidates take won’t really matter. If we win, as long as the threat keeps elections close we won’t have space to have the internal debates necessary to really create real factional divisions for the party to have to meditate between. We’ll simply be bound by the most right leaning members of our caucus in the
house andsenate.Edit: The senate will always be to the right of the house, so the house makeup doesn’t matter as much.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m glad my central air got installed and running last Friday for sure!
Soprano2
@tam1MI: I’m not a New Yorker, but Josh Marshall is, and he wrote an article about the race yesterday. This should be a good link. The short story is that Bowman isn’t really representative of his district, so his positions on Israel are problematic, plus he’s not a good retail politician. Honestly, it sounds like he should lose the primary to me.
Geminid
@VFX Lurker: In Israel’s first 3 decades, Ultra-Orthodox Israelis (or Haredi) served in the IDF at nearly the same rate as the non-Harerdi. This started to change under Menachim Begin’s government in the late 1970s. Now, most of Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox take advantage of the draft exemption and subsidy for Torah study, whether or not they actually study.
That takes 13% of Israeli 18 year-olds out of the draft pool. Since Israel’s Arab citizens are not drafted (a small number volunteer), that means 67% of the population bears the burden of national defense. What with the demands of this war, that 67% is getting very fed up with the situation.
One rabbi explained that military service exposes young people to influences outside the Haredi world, to their detriment. The Haredi ethos of “apartness” also affects the economy, since the Ultra-Orthodox are poorly prepared to participate in an educated workforce. So, the direct cost of the subsidies is compounded by the opportunity cost of wasted human capital.
Soprano2
@TBone: Every city has those issues, some more than others. My city has one of the oldest I/I abatement programs in the U.S. – we started with a pilot project in 1992, then when we had a huge overflow at our treatment plant in 1993 the program became part of the consent decree they entered into, and we’ve been doing it ever since. That’s how I started working at the city, going door to door to ask people about their sewer and stormwater flooding problems. I see that 60% of Philadelphia’s system is a combined storm/sanitary sewer system. Cities are slowly trying to separate those systems. Thankfully, we’ve always had separate systems here.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I don’t know if you fool with Twitter, but Tom Watson* is a district resident and active Democrat, and he has commented on this race a lot. I’ll post more of Watson’s analysis tonight, but he says the real story in the 16th is the grass-roots efforts for Latimer, who is a well-known known and respected veteran of Westchester County politics.
* Other Tom Watsons on Twitter include the golfer and a Labour politician. This Watson teaches at Columbia and lives in Mount Vernon.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I don’t, but Marshall did mention in his article that the challenger seems to be much more suited to the district and seems to be a better politician than Bowman is.
Geminid
@Soprano2: George Latimer has been involved in Westchester County Democratic politics for forty years, as county councilman, state Assemblyman, and County Executive. The “progressive” Working Families Party endorsed him in his last two elections for County Executive.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid:
I notice that the “ethos of apartness” doesn’t seem to prevent them from being heavily engaged in the political process. I have no truck with people of whatever race, religion or what have you who expect to be catered to by a society they have no desire to be a part of.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Oh yeah, accepting subsidies and refusing to serve, while exerting political power in elections is as hypocritical as could be.
The two Haredi parties have unusual power in this government because they were willing to go along with Netanyahu’s scheme to “fix” his corruption cases through judicial reform. But they have no special political loyalty to Netanyahu, and I think Aryeh Deri’s Shas Party is a potential point of failure in this coalition.
Deri seems sort of like a Boss Tweed for the Sephardi Ultra-Orthodox. Shas has 11 MKs while the Azhkenazi United Torah Party has 7. Polls show Shas and UT making out Ok if new elections are held; it’s Likud that would be the big loser.
wjca
I wonder if you realize just how detatched from reality this is. Biden has gotten thru more progressive legislation than any president in memory. Why? Because he looks like, and is, an old white guy. A safe old white guy. So he can do things your preferred candidate cannot.
Yeah, you can probably manage to elect someone further left next time. The Republicans are self-destructing enough to make that possible. But, as noted elsewhere, your bench of progressives with experience actually running a government (you know, like governors) is damn thin.
So, you’ll get someone more to your liking. And then spend years lamenting how (s)he isn’t delivering everything for you.
EDT See also what Hoodie says at #212.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Fake Irishman: That’s normal though. Progressive activists demand all sorts of things, and then don’t back candidates who try to implement preferred policies. Its never good enough.
narya
@rikyrah: Exactly. And I think that’s the addendum to what I was noting. The original “bargain” only worked if everyone did their assigned part. As soon as women saw that they could/would be traded in for a younger model, the whole bargain falls apart.
VFX Lurker
@tam1MI: Another take on why Bowman will lose tonight:
The video in the link above notes that Bowman voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal in 2021. He did not pay a price for this vote in 2022, but it does not make him look good right now.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@VFX Lurker: Cori Bush also voted against the infrastructure bill and also faces a strong primary opponent.
Geminid
@VFX Lurker: Bowman’s vote against the Infrastructure bill is one reason labor unions support his opponent. The head of the Carpenters Union local wrote a devastating op-ed about this for the media site Lohud, which covers politics in the lower Hudson Valley.
Geminid
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: The “strong primary opponent” factor is what will sink Bowman and Bush, on top of their own incapacity. Rep. Omar also faces a primary challenge, but she is a competent legislator and her opponent is a lightweight compared to George Latimer and Wesley Bell. I expect Omar will win, despite her position on this war.
emjayay
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The Ultra men are otherwise occupied studying the Torah, because it hasn’t been studied enough yet.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Geminid: I agree.