Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

When I was faster i was always behind.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

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

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

So many bastards, so little time.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / New Dawn Open Thread: Britain Goes Labour

New Dawn Open Thread: Britain Goes Labour

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The Associated Press reminds us provincials — “The UK election winner only becomes prime minister when King Charles III says so”:

The Labour Party has won Britain’s general election, bringing a new party to power for the first time in 14 years. But Labour leader Keir Starmer won’t actually become prime minister until a carefully choreographed ceremony on Friday during which King Charles III will formally ask him to form a new government.

It’s a moment that embodies the fact that, technically at least, the right to govern in the United Kingdom is still derived from royal authority, centuries after real political power was transferred to elected members of Parliament.

The process is swift, if somewhat brutal for departing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak…

First, Sunak will go to Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the king. Then Starmer will arrive for his first audience with Charles.

“There’s a tiny window where between the exiting prime minister, and officially the appointment of the new one, where technically power resides for those few minutes with the monarch,’’ Whitelock said. “So there’s a brief moment where there’s effectively a kind of vacuum in terms of parliamentary democracy. … But, of course, straight away there is that moment where the new prime minister is appointed.’’

That occurs when the prime minister-to-be sweeps into the palace for a ceremony known as the “Kissing of Hands,’’ though no kissing actually occurs. After the king asks Starmer to form a government, he will bow and shake Charles’ hand. A photo will be snapped to record the moment power is transferred.

Though there’s no record of what is said between monarch and prime minister, dramatic activity will be swirling outside the palace gates. News helicopters will follow Starmer and Sunak’s cars to the palace and back. Commentators usually breathlessly record their progress and speculate about what’s being said behind closed doors.

Traditionally, the new prime minister then leaves the palace in a prime ministerial car and returns to Downing Street to make a statement, receiving the applause of staff members as he enters the famous black door of No. 10 and begins the business of government…

After suffering a brutal defeat at the polls, Sunak will be forced to vacate the prime minister’s official residence before Starmer arrives just a few hours later.

The soon-to-be ex-prime minister will be driven to the palace in a chauffeur-driven ministerial car. But after tendering his resignation, he will leave in a private vehicle and head back to his private residence.

The transition is so rapid that the moving van for the exiting leader is usually somewhere near the back door of Downing Street as the new leader takes his bow out front…

The king will return to the public stage later this month for his next big royal event: the state opening of Parliament.

Traditionally, the monarch arrives in a horse-drawn carriage, sits on the Sovereign’s Throne in the House of Lords and wears the Imperial State Crown.

Then, during a joint meeting of House of Lords and the House of Commons, he will deliver a speech written for him by the incoming government to lay out its legislative program…

The British Consul-General in New England, on Independence Day:

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  2. 2.

    Shalimar

    Labour ends up with 413 last I heard, 3 more than the exit poll.  Reform only had 4, so they fell well short of 13 (14.4% of the vote compared to Tories’ 24% didn’t end up changing as many seats as you would expect).

  3. 3.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    It’s King Chuck’s chance to seize power and refuse to invite Starmer to form a government. Long live King Chuck and his Cow, I mean Cowmilla!

    “Look Mumsy, I’m king! Oh…”

  4. 4.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Liz Truss, the former prime minister, has lost her Norfolk South West seat to Labour.

    HA!

  6. 6.

    Msb

    Shalimar beat me to it; Reform is getting 4 seats, not 13. Well done, Labour (and the Lib Dems, Greens, Plaid Cymru)!
    While Charles “officially” invites the winner to form a government, he can’t do anything else. His mum, poor thing, had to invite Thatcher, Johnson and Truss (she lost her seat! Hee, hee!) to do so. That’s a straitjacket, not power.

    @Odie Hugh Manatee

    can you omit the sexist remarks?

  7. 7.

    Shalimar

    @clay: It seems like a weird insult for a boring centrist mostly known for not making mistakes when he speaks.  Kind of the opposite of a cult leader.

  8. 8.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Upper class twit Rees-Moog got kicked out

    HA!

  12. 12.

    Chet Murthy

    @Shalimar:  Gosh, maybe the Tories will start to think about proportional representation, multi-member constituencies ?  maybe ???

    Naw.  They’ll focus on making it harder for the non-rich to vote!

  15. 15.

    cain

    Hurrah.. took them 14 years to get rid of these blighters. But glad they are out.

    Not sure how things will be fixed going forward.

  17. 17.

    SpaceUnit

    US Supreme Court will want to weigh in on this so-called Labour victory in the UK.

  18. 18.

    Shalimar

    @Chet Murthy: I’m encouraged by the 35%, since it leaves a lot of room for Labour to consolidate power if they prove they can actually govern.  This election was more about the Conservatives being monumental fuckups for a decade and a half than it was people agreeing on an alternative.

  20. 20.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Tonight sees the Tories worst performance since 1832.

    — Barry Gardiner (@BarryGardiner) May 27, 2019

    Vote them back to the stone age

  24. 24.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Baud: it was lower, but I’ve heard for weeks that turnout would be lower because the outcome was considered so certain.

  25. 25.

    Splitting Image

    Tonight sees the Tories worst performance since 1832.

    For context, 1832 was when they passed the Reform Act which eliminated all of the “rotten boroughs” which the Tories had previously used to stash all of their idiot failsons in safe seats in the Commons.

  27. 27.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Sky News says Labour voters voted strategically for LibDem candidates in districts where they would do better than Labour candidates with the objective of unseating as many Torie seats as possible.

    I’m kind of proud of that practicality.

  31. 31.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I didn’t know Keir Starmer represented Camden. I love that place.

    Camden Town is famed for its market, a warren of fashion and curiosities by the Regent’s Canal. A haven of counter culture, the area is popular with tourists, teenagers and punks.

  33. 33.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Watching Rishi Sunak seethe as he shares a stage with @CountBinface and Sir Archibold Stanton is definitely a fun conclusion to the #GeneralElection

    #generalection2024
    — Main Bastard 🇬🇧 (@the_situat_IAN) July 5, 2024

    🚨 BREAKING: Niko Omilana holds an L behind Rishi Sunak after his victory in Richmond and Northallerton pic.twitter.com/lE1Xc4ifpN

    — Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) July 5, 2024

    The photo is hilarious (link)

  35. 35.

    Shalimar

    Liberal Democrats won 71 seats, so 10 above the exit polls.

    edit: Sinn Fein won Northern Ireland for the first time.

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    Looking forward to Tony Jay’s write-up. He loathes Starmer, but I reckon he’ll be giddy about the Torypocalypse!

  40. 40.

    TBone

    Meanwhile, in Europe…

    …on July 1, Orbán took over the rotating presidency of the European Union. He will be operating for six months in that position under a slogan taken from Trump and adapted to Europe: “Make Europe Great Again.” The day before taking that office, Orbán announced that his political party was forming a new alliance with far-right parties in Austria and the Czech Republic in order to launch a “new era of European politics.”

    Tomorrow, Orbán will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. On July 2, Orbán met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, where he urged Zelensky to accept a “ceasefire.”

    https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-4-2024

    Fuck.  Orban and Hungary finance ties to Project 2025 exposed at link.

    Pooty, go fuck yourself.

    In 2023, Roberts brought the Heritage Foundation into a formal partnership with Hungary’s Danube Institute, a think tank overseen by a foundation that is directly funded by the Hungarian government; as journalist Casey Michel reported, it is, “for all intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.” The Danube Institute has given grants to far-right figures in the U.S., and, Michel noted in March, “we have no idea how much funding may be flowing directly from Orbán’s regime to the Heritage Foundation.”

  41. 41.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: The last King who pissed off Parliament was James II and he didn’t fare too well. His old man fared even worse.

    British monarchs are more aware of their limitations than certain aspiring presidents.

  42. 42.

    TBone

    The humidity is so fierce here today that my fine, straight hair has wound itself up into large, frizzy curls.  Of course, that could also be the result of paying attention to news first thing today after an unheard of two-day break.

  43. 43.

    JWR

    Interesting. Last night’s Colbert rerun mentioned a then-recent Newsweek poll that found 51% of respondents thought Trump should end his campaign because of his guilty verdict. I think I remember that one, but I know it didn’t eat up weeks of breathless “investigative” sniffing around from PBS and the rest.

    But srsly, when PBS’s Lisa Desjardins claims that there are “scores of House Democrats, not a handful, scores” who want the president to drop his bid for a second term, I really start to think this is more a huge ratf*cking op, driven in large part by enemies both foreign and domestic, than anything real. Maybe Biden should use his newly minted super powers to dig around a bit to find out.

  45. 45.

    TBone

    Humidity 94% dew point 72, this is unsustainable for those of us who enjoy breathing.  I don’t remember moving to the jungle 😭 and am contemplating going back to bed in the AC for the duration.  Maybe the storms headed my way will bring relief but for some reason, I doubt it.

  46. 46.

    R-Jud

    It is so very, very delightful to see that Jacob Rees-Mogg has lost his seat. He is now free to pursue his destiny: living inside a haunted mirror at Eton.

  49. 49.

    VeniceRiley

    Living here, I cannot express how much this short campaign and election is an amazing psychological relief. No voting day coverage by law either!

    Gotta thank Farage for royally fuxking the Tories though, after they did their best to fux themselves.

    I was up from 3am for this funeral, and it was glorious. Spousal unit’s pay rise has been on hold for this because she has a public service job.

  52. 52.

    TBone

    I bowed out for a bit and now the landscape looks quite different at my usual check-ins.  WTF.  Godel’s Loophole (constitutional conundrum noted by Einstein’s buddy), France possibly going to the dogs, staunch supporters of President Biden wavering and/or cliff diving…

    I’m unmoved.  I’m not gonna waver.  If this steamroller of MSM-based, absolute shit tries to crush me, I’ll just dig a pit, fill it with tar, and smother the motherfucker.  Gah.  C’mon my dudes!  I can usually count on certain authors.  Today it seems like they’re melting.  Me, to the authors:  GET WITH IT OR GET OUT.

  53. 53.

    Geo Wilcox

    Their election was on the 4th of July. Our election is on Guy Fawke’s Day, wtf…

  54. 54.

    Princess

    Everyone is happy about Labour this morning and good luck Starmer and all, but a closer look shows that, despite the thumping on the riding level, this was not a repudiation of the right. In ridings they newly won, often they didn’t increase their vote share by much, or even
    Lost vote share. What happened was Reform took a much bigger bite out of the conservatives. So this feels less like UK bucking the European hard right shift and more like them being one election cycle behind it. I think of how Reform in Canada destroyed the Progressive Conservatives, and how Farage has described Preston Manning as his model. It has not been a good thing for the country.

  55. 55.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Betty Cracker: I was just going to say that even though it’s late morning in London, the hangover may take a while to clear. It’s not entirely clear whether the Good Guys won, but it’s pretty clear that the Bad Guys got their voonerables kicked in. I just hope that the Republicans get hit with a similar shot to the fork come November.

  56. 56.

    TBone

    Thankgawd. I found one guy who is remaining steadfast, although this is from July 3.  Truth!  Where it’s at:

    https://crooksandliars.com/2024/07/everyone-needs-chill-out

    At the end of the day, we will all be voting on November 5th. If anyone starts on “Biden is too old…” or whatever, just stop them and say “I am voting Democrat up and down the ticket” and tell them to move on. Do not engage. Because honestly, it isn’t worth it. The disinfo has reached EPIC levels in the last few weeks and it is even too much for me! My anxiety, 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. I am taking a break from national news. For my sanity. And you can (and should) too.

    DEEP BREATHS.

    Much sanity (given prior to what I quoted) at the link. Separates truth from MSM lies. Good advice!

  57. 57.

    Chris Johnson

    @JWR: Well, shit, I’ve been saying it’s been a huge ratfucking op for a literal week. What can I say but, I concur?

    I think you’re absolutely right.

    Another thing: I think Biden’s administration knows 100% that this is all orchestrated, months earlier than intended, by Russian ops who in some cases straight-up control and run the media.

    As such there is no point to playing along with them at all. I think Biden’s people have actual receipts. I think they can show the Governors, etc. these receipts and say ‘do what you want but we are not rolling up these networks right now for political reasons. We suggest you ignore them too, because we think they’re going to be revealing themselves, and our polling suggests they’re wrecking their own credibility, and quite rightly so’.

    That would be my guess. It is not simply that it’s ratfucking, it’s an extensive known campaign that can be predicted and planned for, and part of the defense against it is not playing into its clutches by taking its shit at face value.

    I absolutely am not taking the last week at face value. What I’ve been doing is trying to pay attention to exactly who’s shown their hand. It matters.

  58. 58.

    Princess

    @Baud: Just maybe he’s not a centrist. Just maybe having Tony Jay, whom we all love, being our sole voice on Uk politics is like having a hard core Bernie or Bust dude explain the 2016 election.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @Princess:

    Next election cycle for them is 4-5 years away.

    All that matters is seats won under their system.

    Republicans win under our system because of structural issues. We don’t treat them as weak when they do.

  62. 62.

    Princess

    @Chris Johnson: I saw a couple of guys post comments on Dahlia Lithwick’s page that were clear ratfucking of this kind. No one hates Biden as much as they do and votes Dem.

  64. 64.

    dm

    @Shalimar: well, they can pick up the millions of Corbyn voters who didn’t show up for Starmer, if nothing else. That “Corbyn copium” post caused me to go looking, and it’s like 9 million votes for Starmer this time to 12 million votes for Corbyn in one of the recent elections.

    It must have been really low turnout this time.

  65. 65.

    ColoradoGuy

    Congrats to the Brits sending the abominable Tories to the dustbin. 14 years of economically brutal Austerity, the idiotic Brexit, and then ripping apart the social compact has finally put the Mark of Cain on the Tory Party.

    Interesting the Tories are primarily focused on Class Warfare through mass impoverishment, while the Republicans in this country have their true calling in racism and hatred of any and all minorities. Austerity has never been popular in the USA, no matter who is in power, but racism is always, always there.

  67. 67.

    Lapassionara

    @Chris Johnson: Thank you. Last week, the Supreme Court essentially rewrote our Constitution, and that news stayed in the headlines for a mere millisecond, after which the press resumed its “Biden is old” feeding frenzy. Something or someone is orchestrating this.

  69. 69.

    Eyeroller

    @Lapassionara: For the press itself, one does not have to posit any orchestration. They are either known to be anti-Democrat or their bosses are, and they all follow the lead of the “prestige” media like the FTFNYT. There is very little original thought or deviation from the hive mind. A media feeding frenzy is self-reinforcing. But I do wonder whether the “engagement” they must be getting that continues to encourage it is at least in part coordinated.

  71. 71.

    TBone

    Any time someone says “complete immunity” all I can think is “nope.” That is a fear mongering gobshite.

    That person shall henceforth be ignored.

    I mean, partial is bad enough.  Let’s not spout doomerism about this being an invincibility.

  73. 73.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: ​Here in the good ole USA more people vote for Democrats but Republicans gain control, and yet somehow Republicans don’t get all torn up about it.

  74. 74.

    MagdaInBlack

    @JWR: I don’t understand the Gavin Newsom quote the PBS story highlighted. It has to be chopped up, because it makes no sense

    “…no one walked out of that and said we have got you back”

    What?

    ( i cannot seem to copy the whole quote to paste)

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    I saw that Bob Menendez’s defense team finished calling witnesses Wednesday without putting the Senator on the stand. The jury should begin deliberations by the end of next week, although I guess a plea agreement is still possible.

  79. 79.

    sab

    @Chris Johnson: Good point. I too am keeping track of who is showing their hand on ratfucking Biden. Carville, Axelrod, Tim Ryan.

    Yay for UK. Tony Blair redux is much better than Tories.

  82. 82.

    Chris Johnson

    @Eyeroller: The Executive Branch of the government of the United States of America is, without explanation, totally freezing out that ‘prestige media’, the New York Times. Hell, man, they used to talk to Fox News, they just made fun of them.

    I’m gonna say there’s a reason for this unprecedented treatment that has to do with the ability of the government, now no longer run by Donald Trump, to unlock sources and learn stuff about foreign influence operations… such as those that implanted Donald Trump, and laid the groundwork for the Jan 6 attempt at revolution.

    I’m gonna say more has been learned.

    Why do they not just run down there and arrest everyone? Because that’s not how Americans handle extensive criminality (we’re NOT Putin), and because that would show absolutely shitty political instincts.

    So it becomes a matter of planning normal, sane, legal reactions to a bunch of total bollocks and warfare, fully knowing the enemy’s capacities, intentions, and avenues for action.

    Part of this is understanding herd mentality and human panic faced with frightening imaginings. The enemy’s tactics quite explicitly involve frightening ALL of us until we flip out and start killing ourselves and not killing them. You cannot fight that by going all Dark Brandon and killing everyone, nor would Joe want to do that in the first place. He’s a civil servant. He represents the useful idiots and the traitors too. They have to face justice and fairness, not a terror campaign.

  84. 84.

    Eyeroller

    @sab: ​ Doggett, Grijalva (the latter is known to be a Berner, not sure about the former). The guy from Maine is really a Republican, used to work for Susan Collins as it turns out. The woman from Washington is a political neophyte in a Trumpy district.

  85. 85.

    Tony Jay

    @Princess:

    This is a very valid point, except I can explain that election. A nasty little alliance of the corporate media, establishment figures, foreign interests and spiteful elements within the losing candidate’s own party grouping came together to ensure the victory of the right-wing by creating and maintaining a narrative where the ‘good option’ was smeared in bullshit and negative press 24/7 and turned into a hate-figure that – just enough – voters were convinced they would be wrong to vote for, while simultaneously the ‘bad option’s’ many, many problems were downplayed and dismissed as ‘amusing foibles’.

    Am I talking about 2016 US or 2019 UK, though?

    Trick question. I’m talking about both.

    As to this election, I’m overjoyed the Tories are out, saddened it happened 5 to 7 years too late for the country, disappointed for the many people who think newnewlabourinc are going to stray too far from pre-Brexit Tory policies, resigned to seeing this version of the Labour Right plunge straight into an internal war between the ruling factions over just how Tory to be, and altogether pretty meh about the whole thing.

    The Tories were cruising to this kind of defeat the day after Brexit got rammed through and the corporate media no longer feared a Labour victory. It’s no surprise. Even the scale isn’t. The Tories were losing 20,000 majority seats they’d held forever two years ago. They’re hated by a lot of people who weren’t handed a ready made reason this time for why they couldn’t/shouldn’t vote for the only major alternative, and millions of their natural voters have decamped to Reform for a taste of that delicious unhinged racism.

    It’s going to be a long five years. And at the end of it I’m not too sure what’s going to keep the Unified Hard Right out.

  86. 86.

    sab

    @Eyeroller: It’s ironic that many of the Bernie Bros are still being Bernie Bros while Bernie himself is being quite dependable for Democrats although he is actually an independent.

  87. 87.

    sab

    @Tony Jay: As I remember JK Rowling was leading the pack in shouting “Corbyn is an anti-semite.”  In retrospect it explaims a lot.

  88. 88.

    different-church-lady

    @sab: ​It’s been like that all the while. Bernie himself is okay, but he lets his supporters run rampant and damaging and doesn’t do anything about it.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @sab:

    Unlike Nader, Bernie actually wants to do things and not just hear himself talk and he’s smart enough to know he needs Democrats to do them.

    A lot of the far left is a little disgruntled with AOC right now, for largely the same reasons, I think.

  90. 90.

    Another Scott

    @p.a.: I heard a bit of Starmer’s victory speech on the BBC yesterday.  Recognizing that editing is always deceptive, he said several times that they changed Labour and will keep changing it.  It was obvious, and excessive to my ears, digs at Corbyn.  He said that he campaigned on The Economy, Defence, and Securing the Border.  I didn’t hear anything about what a disaster the Tory policies were, but maybe I missed it.

    I think Tony Jay is right that Labour under him wants to be a new default right wing party.

    Maybe that’s what it takes to win there now.  Dunno.

    Starmer has to deliver for the country.  He won’t have any excuses if he doesn’t.

    It’s good the Tories are out.  Let’s see if his Labour can do the work to start fixing things…

    Fingers crossed!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Suzanne

    I enjoyed watching Sunak announce his resignation this morning. (I am trying very hard not to think about our own situation and want to focus on the UK and France this weekend.)

    A thought crossed my mind as I watched it….. I know that most of us here, of course, are deeply invested in every election. But, like, they’re also absolutely terrible and exhausting and it feels like they go on for-fucken-ever. I wonder if it would be saner if elections weren’t held on a regular schedule, if we called them randomly instead, probably more often. And when I say “saner”, I don’t just mean “better for my mental health because there would be fewer obnoxious ads”, but…. would it produce better outcomes? Would there be more or less stability?

    I know this is a just a thought experiment, but one of the biggest hurdles I ever encountered while canvassing and talking to people was when they were generally okay with the party line position on an issue, but were hung up on some aspect (real or perceived, genuinely doesn’t matter) about a specific candidate. I feel like our system has had the unintended effect of making every election too much about individuals.

  94. 94.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Yes, but it sure would be nice if Jeffries crushed a few of his shithead backbenchers (all white boys, as near as I can tell). Of course, I’m not sure what he can do, but a little party unity would be nice right about now.

  95. 95.

    Suzanne

    @sab: The good news about the dead-ender Bernie Bros is that they don’t matter. There’s relatively few of them and they’re not in positions of influence. My ex-husband and my brother-in-law would probably be classified as Bernie Bros by most people here. (And they both can be really annoying, absolutely granted.) But they did vote for Biden last time and both are planning to do so again. 

    I think they are much more prominent on Xhitter than in real life. As always, I think our far bigger problem is our right-ier flank.

  97. 97.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    I agree.  The biggest problem with Bernie Bros aren’t their votes per se, but other voters who take them seriously instead of doing the right thing.

  98. 98.

    LanceThruster

    It’s still sad how some ran anti-Semitic smears against various Labour targets to neutralize them.

  99. 99.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: Yes, Grijalva is of Mexican descent. He’s an old-school progressive. Has been in Congress for over 20 years and has a local political career going back to the 70s. I wouldn’t call him a “Bernie Bro”, he’s been a bit of an old hippie long before Sanders came to national attention. His district includes parts of the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas and extends down to the border.

  100. 100.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: The thing that, like, really focuses my mind….. I know a lot of people who really like Bernie. Hell, the head of my LD when I lived in Arizona was a Bernie delegate in 2016. Every one of them, after he lost, said, “Welp, okay, moving on” and sucked it up. I just do not see any significant contingent of these people. I’m sure they exist (it’s a country of 330 million people, every kind of freak exists), but not in any sort of quantity that would result in any influence.

    I think it’s really critical to understand who your real enemies are.

  102. 102.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    I don’t know how to quantify their influence. I’m not really on social media and that seems to be their milieu. If they’re throwing talking points out there, people are going to respond.

  103. 103.

    pajaro

    Congrats to Labour, and to the British people.  Yes, if you combine the Tories and Farange’s party, they get to about 40%, but if you combine the center-left, you have about 60%.  Today, I really envy a country where everyone  who wanted to vote was able to do so, where the votes were all counted, district by district, during one night, where the loser promptly conceded, and where the transfer of power has already occurred.

  104. 104.

    Chris Johnson

    @Suzanne: Yeah, because he asked us to move on. In fact he asked us to vote for Hillary, and we did, and so did he.

    There’s a different group called ‘Bernie or Bust’. He doesn’t control them, Russia does. They were there the whole time and that’s a stain on him, but in 2015 or so we didn’t know any better. That other group are no good, and aren’t really interested in anything besides pushing Russian interests. In some cases some of ’em literally wrote for Russia Today. Not making that up.

  105. 105.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: You are correct, sir! I was just going by the ones that I’ve been seeing on the morning news programs.

  107. 107.

    Chris Johnson

    @Baud: If he outright sides with them he’s dead to me. But no, he’s ridin’ with Biden. And of course he can’t control them: they’re run out of Russia! Why would you think he could control that any more than Trump can control his Russian master. I’m happy each day they don’t control HIM.

  109. 109.

    Baud

    @TBone:

    Because two of the reps who want Biden to step down are in the left.

    ETA: Imagine if FDR were running, and that was a picture of a wheelchair.

  110. 110.

    Chris Johnson

    @TBone: Because it’s another point of division and a great deal of propaganda effort was put into establishing them, demonizing them, and then making people be scared of them. Does this not sound like a familiar playbook?

  111. 111.

    JWR

    @Chris Johnson: Another thing about the PBS transcript I posted up thread, (here it is again), is the talk about retribution if they support the president, or retribution if the shiv him. Democrats don’t do retribution, do they, or am I over-glorifying their basic decency? And I don’t have to talk about the way Repubs do retribution. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, as well as others I’m forgetting.

  112. 112.

    sab

    @Suzanne: I agree with you on local Bernie Bros now mostly being dependable Democratic votes. Where I keep an eye on them is in media. Vox, the Guardian, Chris Hayes. Always the first to jump off the Biden/Harris ship.

  114. 114.

    Baud

    @Chris Johnson:

    He can speak out forcefully against them, the way he speaks about billionaires.  He doesn’t, as far as I know.  That’s fine, I’m not going to worry about that.

  115. 115.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: I think there’s a lot of ways to judge their relative influence. How many progressive politicians get elected, with their help? How many of those elected politicians vote in alignment with the rest of the Dems? Do those people have strong relationships with or have the ear of any big influencers in the party? Do their talking points get picked up by mainstream media sources?

    I mean, what I see is that, by and large, the elected representatives from the progressive wing are pretty good team players. And the absolute dead-enders are in a little circle-jerk talking to themselves.

    Contrast that with, say, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who is on my shit list this week.

  116. 116.

    Mousebumples

    Good morning.

    Random thing I learned (and have not confirmed) this am –

    UK elections on the Fourth of July.

    US elections on Guy Fawkes Day.

  117. 117.

    TBone

    @Chris Johnson: why yes, it stinks to high heaven!  Like a dead ratfucker!

    I’m a Bernie Bro.  I do not play Russian roulette and neither does he.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Eyeroller: I was breaking down the ~30 Democratic members of the House Class of 2022, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez presented a question as to classification. Most members had served in elective office: mayor, state legislator etc. I think there were at least 5 who had not: Reps. Sorenson, Jackson and Budzinski of Illinois, Frost of Florida and Goldman of New York..

    But Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez served on her local Soil and Water Conservation Board, an elective but part time position.

    I’ll be very interested in that race election night. It’s a sizeable district geographically, but in terms of population its center of gravity is Clark County across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. It might be characterized as “suburban/exurban.”

    Republican Jaime Herrera Butler had a firm hold on the district until she voted to impeach Trump and lost in the 2022 primary. If Democrats can win again this time I think we’ll hold the district through the decade at least.

  120. 120.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Part of the problem is the problem we saw over the last week of Dem panic mode.

    Nader in 2000 and the Bros in 2016 helped turn a critical and close election against us, so Dems are panicked about it happening again, even though the larger threat is elsewhere.

  121. 121.

    Suzanne

    @sab: No, the first to jump off the Biden/Harris ship, or the Dem ship, are the pieces of shit like Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, the aforementioned Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, those fuckers who run as Democrats and then vote as Republicans (that dude from New Jersey whose name I can’t remember). Many of them then actually leave the party, after using Party resources to get elected.

    And it’s part of the unavoidable grossness of coalition politics that we have to suck up to those voters.

  123. 123.

    Chris Johnson

    And I keep saying, this Russian-abetted ‘let’s you and him fight’ is very familiar territory by now.

    You can’t take ‘everybody says everybody is panicking, are you?’ at face value. You absolutely can’t.

    It’s also super important to distinguish between spectres, operatives, fools and people. Some stuff is pretty much made up. Some people are the ones making it up. And some people are not at all good at standing athwart the flow of bullshit, and tend to cave to social pressure very easily, real or imagined.

    These are the times when I enjoy the Lincoln Project people and would love the chance to openly fight about our real differences in more normal times. I deeply dislike a bunch of their axioms. But once they’re committed, such as recognizing that Trump’s dirty as fuck and a traitor to America, they’re goddamned immune to dirty tricks and propaganda. They DO that stuff! They’re not impressed by it.

  124. 124.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: You are probably trying to think of Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. I will point out that Gottheimer voted with Speaker Pelosi throughout the last Congress and with Rep. Jeffries throughout this one. He did not get elected as a Democrat and vote as a Republican.

    Ed. And/or you are trying to think of Rep. Jeff Van Drew. He flipped his south Jersey district in the 2018 Blue Wave and turned Republican a some months later.

  125. 125.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: To me, the fail in 2016 really came down to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and the failure to turn out of the party’s more right flank in those states, not the left. Or those swingier voters turned out for Trump instead, because they don’t really have political principles besides fucking-shit-up. There was a significant amount of Obama-to-Trump voting in those states, as I recall.

    That’s the dynamic that has me fucken freaked out this time. There is definitely a contingent on the left that sucks, but I think they’re totally outnumbered. I am hoping that negative partisanship works in our favor this time.

  126. 126.

    Ken

    @Shalimar: Labour with 35% of the vote, the lowest ever for a majority party.

    Yesterday Youtube suggested the LBC livestream of the election results, so I dropped in there a couple of times. They seemed to be emphasizing the low overall Labour percentage, and were IMO a bit excited over Reform’s showing in the exit polls. Also, at least during the bit I watched, they had a sitting Conservative MP at the table giving commentary.

    Anyone want to chime in on what leanings, if any, LBC has?

  128. 128.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    You’re assuming left wing message doesn’t influence centrist normies, as well as impressionable young liberals.

    If we’re going to say centrists are the key to winning, then we’re going to have to urge the party to take a different tack. And unfortunately I think that will happen if we lose this year.

  129. 129.

    Suzanne

    @Geminid: I’m also thinking back to the hours of canvassing I did on behalf of Rodney Glassman one year, trying to get a Democrat to replace John McCain. We were, uhhhhh, unsuccessful that year. And Glassman is such a principle-free, careerist piece of trash that he changed his party registration to Republican and is now running for Attorney General with this bit of hysteria on his website:

    I am 100% committed to stopping the Biden/Harris administration from inflicting their Big Government power grab on the citizens of Arizona. No more shutdowns, no more mandates, no more government orders that kill jobs and destroy our businesses. My job as Attorney General is to protect you from the government.

     
    God.
    There was a long fucken time that it sucked to be a Democrat in Arizona.

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: I was confused by your description of Reps. Golden and Gluesnkamp Perez as running as Democrats then voting like Republicans. They are both Blue Dogs like Gottheimer, in fact they vote like Democrats.

  132. 132.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    As someone who watched a conservative county in Ohio go from 45% voting for Obama in 2012 to 25% voting for Clinton, I think you have the better theory. It wasn’t the Left flank we lost – there is no “Left flank” in this county. Obama was our left-most boundary.

    Right leaning Democratic voters in 2012 went to Trump in 2016. That’s what happened. And it happened all over the state.

  133. 133.

    Suzanne

    @Geminid: I didn’t say anything about Golden. Gluesenkamp Perez has pissed me off in recent days for her co-sponsorship (with a Republican) of the Preserving Woodworking Traditions and Blocking Government-Mandated Monopolies Act, which is just a perfect encapsulation of using substance-free rhetoric about “free markets” and “protecting consumer choice”, but really puts workers’ health at the mercy of the capriciousness of their cheap-ass bosses. This is a perfect example of winning power, using party resources, and then acting like a fucking asshole with it.

    I feel somewhat strongly about this incredibly niche issue for a couple of reasons. One, I have a family member who chopped his fingers off on a table saw and needed to get them reattached. Two, in the course of my working life and my interaction with tradespeople, I have seen a truly staggering number of missing fingers. It seems like a basic-ass safety regulation is exactly the kind of thing good government was made for. Keeping people from getting their fingers chopped off should be a nonpartisan issue.

  134. 134.

    Suzanne

    @Geminid: I had to go back and look this up. Glassman ran against McCain in 2010. He faded away for a while and then changed party registration sometime in the middle of the 2010s, then started running for lower offices as a Republican. His run for AG was in the last cycle.

  135. 135.

    Suzanne

    @Kay: Right?! Like, the people who voted for Senator Professor Warren are not the ones who deserted you! AOC’s voters and Summer Lee’s voters and Ro Khanna’s voters hung in there!

  136. 136.

    Geminid

    @Suzanne: I worked several years in a woodshop and have used table saws since then so I also know about these problems. If the Congresswoman wins reelection she may face a primary challenger who will bring this up along with a few other issues. Some Democrats really dislike her.

  137. 137.

    Suzanne

    @Geminid: Working for candidates who lost, like, 80% of the time has made me incredibly clear-eyed about half-loaf politics. She pisses me off, but it’s ultimately okay. I’m a reliable Democratic voter. It is an unavoidable reality that we have to appeal to unreliable Democratic voters, and if that means we have to put up with some assholes, oh well, it is what it is.

    I have preferences, sure, but ultimately, winners make policy and losers go home.

    I just think much of the Dem cohort (including commenters here) has this totally skewed view of where the real obstacles are. And that leads to being unstrategic. That, to me, is, like, a mortal sin. LOL.

  138. 138.

    VOR

    Nigel Farage appears to have won a seat in Parliament. I was so hoping he would be told to fuck off and never heard from again. But maybe life as an MP, with actual responsibilities, might not be so much fun. People on Twitter were encouraging residents of his new constituency to bring all their local concerns to his office. Make him work. My understanding is at the EU Parliament he had a horrible attendance record, maybe the media could focus on that. Not holding my breath. Someone else suggested MPs would face scrutiny of their finances which would be troublesome for Farage. No idea if that’s true – sure doesn’t seem like a big deal for US representatives. I once thought the financial disclosure would keep Trump out, but turns out that was simply a norm and not actually required.

  141. 141.

    kalakal

    @VOR: He was a terrible MEP. He’ll be a terrible local MP. He’s a serial grifter who’ll now be under the microscope.

    Reform is going to be a shitshow, I’m hoping for the first time in his life he doesn’t get to dance away when the shambles unfolds. On the left George Galloway got away with this for years, after leaving Labour he would turn up with a new party, win a bye election, then move on when the locals wised up. His latest incarnation ‘The Workers Party’ got stuffed last night and he’s now unemployed.

  142. 142.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    Sadly, it does.

    OTOH, back then it was compulsory for anyone in the world of British ‘culture’ to attack Corbyn if they wanted a career. I recall watching with open jaw as the supposedly ‘leftie’ Channel 4 put out a ‘comedy light-entertainment’ programme just before the last election featuring celebrities having dinner together and playing party games to see who paid the bill, and decided it was A-OK to have as guests Nigel ‘son of a Tory supremo’ Havers and some posh blonde who was on record as finding Rees-Mogg ‘sexy’ and one of the rounds was “what do you think of Jeremy Corbyn”.

    Not ‘the political leaders’. Just Corbyn. And Havers had already been on a show saying how much he hated Corbyn. It was his shtick. They laid into him, and I’ll never forget the look of panic and terror on the American comedian’s face as she stammered “I uh, I kinda… I don’t like him? I don’t know why, but I don’t like him, yeah?” while Havers nodded and smirked.

    Channel fucking 4. Just before an election. Still makes me seethe.

  143. 143.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: It’s King Chuck’s chance to seize power and refuse to invite Starmer to form a government

    As Rishi slinks off, the King’s Own Men hold Starmer incommunicado in an anteroom until Mr Hanover Windsor signs the necessary orders. Once admitted, Starmer begins to speak but is cut off by HRH:

    Just shut up and listen for once.

    We have just ordered the forces of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in conjunction with the combined military of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to initiate activities that will destroy or disable every nuclear weapon under the direct or indirect control of the Russian Federation before any can be launched.

    We have also, in conjunction with our NATO allies, invited all forces of the Russian Federation to leave the territory of Ukraine forthwith.

    We have also invited the Russian Federation to send representatives to Geneva by xx/yy/2024 to confer with NATO to determine the future status of their nation, contingent upon (1) cesssation of all military operations against the nation of Ukraine and (2) the physical remand for trial of all members of the current Russian government under indictment by the International Court of Justice.

    Now deal with that, Stammer!

    (sigh) A fella can dream…

  145. 145.

    RevRick

    @Baud: It’s how Parliamentary democracies work with first-passed-the-post elections. The agony for the Tories is that Reform is thoroughly MAGA, and if they embrace it, they risk bleeding moderates to either Labour or Liberal Democrats, and still end up losing. The alternative is to run national slates with proportional share representation, in which case, Tory+Reform would have a bigger share than Labour+Lib Dem, but with Greens holding the balance of power. In other words, a shaky coalition at best.

  146. 146.

    Freemark

    @different-church-lady: ‘Let’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Bernie has no control of them. They are more like Korean megafans of K-pop which the artists would like to have some control over but don’t. Also like evangelicals who obsess over Jesus but really don’t care about what Jesus would actually want. The only good news is that BBs are much louder than they are actually numerous.

  147. 147.

    Eolirin

    @Baud: There’s a pretty good chance there will never be another meaningful election if we lose this year.

  148. 148.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: I saw this at Chris Grey’s Brexit&Beyond blog and thought you might enjoy:

    We know, roughly, what it means to talk about the Thatcher, or Thatcher-Major, period, or about the Blair, or Blair-Brown, period.  And we can grasp something of what we have just lived through simply by the length of describing it in that way: the Cameron-May-Johnson-Truss-Sunak period. It discloses the churn, the instability, the failure; the lack, in fact, of conservatism in its most general sense.

    But it gets far worse if we consider each individual element. Cameron, entitled, patrician, casually corrupt and yet, possibly, the least awful of them. May, stiff, unimaginative, perhaps dutiful, but that duty spotted though with cruelty and spite and yet, possibly, the least immoral of them. Johnson, depraved, venal, priapic, lazy, dishonest in every conceivable respect and yet, possibly, the most imaginative of them. Truss, woefully incompetent, vain, ideologically rigid and yet at least the most short-lived of them. And Sunak, whose plastic surface concealed only more plastic, an emptiness inhabited only by an ambition to be ambitious and yet, in inconsistent flashes, perhaps the most pragmatic of them.

  149. 149.

    Ken

    @Uncle Cosmo: I think the British kings gave up on saying things like that around the time of Canute. Or Cnut, as historians now prefer, though I always type that very carefully.

  150. 150.

    OGLiberal

    I don’t follow UK politics – although probably more closely than most folks – and this shocks me.  The Labour Party has been a shit show for so long.

    Can the Israeli Labour Party follow suit?  I doubt it

    ETA: Not so much Labour winning but the numbers.  More than a landslide.

  151. 151.

    Yutsano

    @Suzanne: it’s a country of 330 million people, every kind of freak exists

    Nominated !

  152. 152.

    Msb

    @ Odie Hugh Manatee

    Not how I take it, how it arrived. I don’t care how you feel about Chuck and Cams; I object to you using bigoted language about one of them (the woman).

  153. 153.

    Yutsano

    @Msb: ​How about this then?

    That homewrecker should have never been named queen. Charles broke a promise to his mother Queen Elizabeth II that he wouldn’t name her queen. Camille couldn’t be happy with Queen Consort, oh no, she was all going Game of Thrones and convinced Charles to give her that title. I personally think Charles is sick as revenge from Diana from beyond the grave, but YMMV there. But I’ve seen some pictures and he is definitely not well. Giving more responsibilities to William is also a big tell.

  154. 154.

    Chris T.

    @p.a.:

    How did those busloads of illegals get across the pond to vote?!?!

    Tesla buses. They swim like submarines you know. Until the powerful batteries and sharks get you, that is.

  155. 155.

    Msb

    @ Yutsano

    oh, that’s not sexism, that’s the cult of St Diana.

    “Homewrecker”? Why stop there? Harpy and hussy are also alliterative, available, anntiquated and sexist.

    (Was I the only person who watched the “fairytale wedding” in 1981 and thought, what will they talk about?  Diana has been dead for nearly 27 years, poor thing. I wish people would let her rest.)

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