NBC News: "The first graders who survived Sandy Hook will vote in their first presidential election"
"They are hoping to turn the tide by electing Vice President Kamala Harris as president."
"It's a no-brainer for me," said survivor Lilly Wasilnak, 18.https://t.co/3DXztoZ0dp
— Ian Sams (@IanSams) September 15, 2024
It’s not just the Sandy Hook survivors; there’s a whole generation of kids who’ve been subjected to school shooter drills because the ‘adults’ in charge love their guns more than they love their children. Per NBC News, “The first graders who survived Sandy Hook will vote in their first presidential election”:
Grace Fischer survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School by staying quiet and huddled, as her first grade teacher softly read “The Nutcracker.”
Then she spent the rest of her childhood watching mostly from the sidelines as dozens of similar shootings shattered other schools across the country.
Now 18, Fischer will vote in her first presidential election in November. It’s a monumental moment, nearly 12 years after she endured one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, and it has given her and her peers hope that they can effect change…
Activists at the time hoped the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, would become a watershed moment and spark significant legislative action, said Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, the gun safety group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords — a shooting survivor.
“The country was forced to look at this issue in a visceral, terrible way,” Brown said. “The loss of all of those kids in their classroom was so inconceivable and so horrific that even the politicians and the folks who had been trying to act like this wasn’t a growing problem in this country were unable to deny it for the first time.”…
States have since passed hundreds of gun-safety laws, but major federal bills that have been proposed, including bans on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines, have failed…
Friday marked 20 years since the 1994 federal assault weapons ban expired. Meanwhile, mass shootings have become more frequent…
On Thursday, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions said guns were the leading cause of death among children and teens, killing more people ages 1 to 17 in the U.S. than car crashes and cancer, for the third year in a row.
“We were told this would be what turns everything around,” said Emma Ehrens, 18, who was next to the Sandy Hook gunman as he shot her classmates. “It really breaks your heart a little bit more every time.”
Ehrens, Fischer and two other first grade Sandy Hook survivors who spoke to NBC News said they are hoping to turn the tide by electing Vice President Kamala Harris as president.
“It’s a no-brainer for me,” said survivor Lilly Wasilnak, 18.
The teens first met Harris at the White House on National Gun Violence Awareness Day on June 6, as they were preparing to graduate high school. They shared their individual accounts of the shooting with Harris, who thanked them for their courage.
“None of you should have had the experience that you’ve had at all,” Harris told them, according to a video released by the White House. “Know that you guys are moving the needle.”
Harris has said keeping students safe from gun violence at schools is a top priority. Her plan, which the survivors support, includes banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and requiring universal background checks.
Harris also champions so-called red flag laws that allow a family member or law enforcement to seek a court order to temporarily confiscate guns if they feel a gun owner may cause harm…
Matt Holden, another survivor who turned 18 last month, said these plans differ from those of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, who received backlash last week after saying school shootings are a “fact of life.”…
At the rally, Vance said strict firearms restrictions are not the solution. Similarly, at a National Rifle Association event in May, Trump said he would roll back Biden administration executive orders designed to reduce gun violence…
Giffords spent $15 million to help Harris’ campaign as well as other House candidates who favor tougher gun laws, NBC News first reported.
Since Sandy Hook, states have passed more than 620 gun safety laws, Brown said. In 2022, President Joe Biden enacted the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun-safety law in nearly 30 years.
“The momentum is there, and the will is there,” Brown said.
This fall, when the survivors vote for the first time, Wasilnak and Holden said it will be in honor of their first grade classmates who will not get to experience this milestone, as well as the educators who died making sure they would.
“I’m casting a vote for the 26 who can’t,” Wasilnak said.
Back in the early 1960s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis years, we didn’t have ‘duck & cover’ drills in my parochial school because — according to the nuns — the Bronx would be obliterated before we had that much warning. (Therefore, it was important we remain in a state of grace at all times, least a mushroom cloud destroy our chance at repentence.)
It was consolation, of a sort, but the ever-present threat certainly influenced an entire generation… and we didn’t even have to witness an actual bombing, apart from some grainy ‘historical’ videos.
NotMax
I guess Bert the Turtle was an apostate.
;)
piratedan
I think this is part of the reason that Mark Kelly was under such serious consideration. He and Giffords have been doing a lot of work on Gun Safety and firearms controls and if Harris had chosen him as a running mate, it would likely have placed #2 on their topics to emphasize on the campaign.
IMHO, it wouldn’t have been a bad choice, I believe that behind Dobbs, this is another issue that has the most consensus associated regarding its support. Walz clicked with her better and I believe that he was the better choice because he’s just as effective a communicator as she is.
Gloria DryGarden
OT re scientific American, and their lovely endorsement of Kamala Harris. I googled with a better question and learned scientific anerican has a readership of 10 million world wide, through print, and digital and apps. wonderful. It’s a nice big influence.
HumboldtBlue
As mentioned in previous threads, Lawrence O’Donnell was spot on.
Baud
@piratedan:
Given the importance of PA, I’m a little less ticked off at the media pushing Shapiro. But Walz is a really good fit, and I think she made the right choice.
Baud
Via reddit, Hillary says thanks.
RamalamaG
Guns kill more children & teens than car crashes and cancer? As a young driver I had to pay a lot for insurance. And I wasn’t even a young male driver, who had to pay even more. What is the actual insurance companies’ stance on gun ownership for those people living with kids?
Edit: my iPad v.2 made me RamalamaG but I maintain that I am indeed the original Ramalama.
Nukular Biskits
Here’s yet another perfect example to shove down the throats of the idiots who claim there is no difference between the candidates or the political parties:
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
I’m not sure how widespread that sentiment still is, but we don’t talk enough about how that has been one of the most destructive lies in modern American history.
Joey Maloney
The gun problem will never be fixed with this SCOTUS. Anyone who really wants to make major change in this generation has to have a plan to make major change to the Court.
I am An Old, as The Youngs say. I was in high school in the 1970s, long before Columbine. We all say “it’s the guns” and to a large extent it is but it’s not just the guns. My high school was on the edge of an urban area in the midwest where hunting culture was big. During hunting season many kids had their long guns in their cars in the school parking lot. No one ever brought one into the building that I know of and no one ever settled a fight with one, despite that there was just as much (if not more) bullying and – as far as I can tell – just as many kids walking around with a lot of pent up rage inside.
Something changed in 1999 and whatever it was it’s just been gathering momentum since.
Baud
@Joey Maloney:
How many of these crimes today done with traditional long guns? Seems like it’s either assault rifles or hand guns in most cases.
JoyceH
@Joey Maloney: What happened was that guns became a fetish item, thanks to the most destructively successful PR campaign in history, when the NRA ceased to be an organization for gun owners and became full time lobbyists for gun manufacturers. Today’s gun owner might claim they’re just following a family tradition, and it’s probably true that their fathers and grandfathers had guns, BUT. I’d bet money that their fathers and grandfathers didn’t have the entire family pose with guns for the family’s Christmas card.
Baud
@JoyceH:
The other thing that fit into it was Clinton’s win. We often remark about how Obama broke their minds, but Clinton did it first. The racists really thought the Republicans would control the presidency forever after Reagan.
JPL
@Baud: I try to stay off line after 6 pm and I saw the meet up post and pictures. All I can say is just damn.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Toni Morrison pointed out that stigmatizing language and behavior used toward Bill Clinton was similar to what a black President might expect.
p.a.
Guns are their real Moloch, not money. IIRC, there are fewer gun owners, and fewer hunters, as a % of the population, than ever. Hunters is understandable as rural areas depopulate. The fewer and fewer nuts just keep buying more & more guns. For Jeebus.
Baud
@JPL:
I’m dreading today but I’m dreading more that the post doesn’t go up today.
JPL
@Baud: 😢
prostratedragon
In 2 or 3 weeks it will be time to bless the pets and other animals again.
rikyrah
Just went to the NYC post..
Ozark?😪😪😪
Frankensteinbeck
I’ve been feeling that I should stop writing books that include modern schools, because school shootings have changed the experience so much I can’t believably write it anymore.
Matt McIrvin
@Joey Maloney: The thing that makes me think it’s not some very general societal rage issue is that violent crime in general, including murders and other homicides with guns, was far more widespread in the 1970s than it is today. 1999 was at a time when it was dropping rapidly in frequency.
Mass shootings have become more frequent while homicide in general becomes less frequent. I think the greater availability of the types of guns that are most useful for spree killings is the big thing, perhaps combined with a specific social contagion associated with the publicity around mass shootings.
(Also, it’s not something specifically about kids. Mass shooters actually skew older than most violent criminals. It’s just that we’re particularly horrified by school shootings for obvious reasons–we care about our children–and the ones that happen in schools have younger perpetrators.)
prostratedragon
“Someone made off with a knife from a crime scene in the aftermath of a weekend police shooting at a New York City subway station, police said Monday.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s overwhelmingly middle aged white men with a history of domestic abuse. They usually kill their romantic partner or former romantic partner first. I know as a boy growing up in the 80s I was inundated with the societal message that sexual success was the definition of my value as a man. Mind you, I haven’t killed anyone over it.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I was thinking a while back about how Zodiac- or Son of Sam-style serial killers seem far less common than they were in the 1970s and 80s. Maybe the police got better at catching them, but also I think maybe it is a kind of social contagion–the types of murders committed by people with the particular aspiration to be a famous murderer changed. Now they kill all their victims at once rather than over a drawn-out period.
Kay
Nate Silver will be sad:
Ken
@prostratedragon: Popehat’s take:
Baud
@Kay:
Hopefully the polls are still undercounting our turnout.
Ken
His bookie will be sadder. Maybe in a “very sad I have to do this to you” way, but still sad.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Isn’t it because they all went into Republican politics?
Kay
@Baud:
Six! What is ever enough for you people? :)
I went to a Dem meeting last night. Much whining about how Democrats have “deserted” Ohio. Please. He’s 8 points ahead here. We’re redder than Texas. No one should bother.
Kay
@Ken:
I wouldn’t mind at all if he just did poll averages but his editorials! Ugh. Anyhoo- he declared Harris’ popularity was a “sugar high” so now he needs to be jeered at.
Baud
@Kay:
I’d like coattails as well to discourage post election drama.
I’d also like to see more Americans be decent people.
Yeah, I’m done with people whining about being abandoned. All they’re doing is repeating Republican talking points.
Baud
@Kay:
“This wasn’t the outcome I
expectedbet on when my media colleagues and I piled on Biden.”Matt McIrvin
@Kay: If I were a Democrat in Ohio I would be particularly upset right now, regardless–with the state being actively harmed in the name of an apparently fruitless campaign to boost national Republican prospects, but it’s not moving the needle there.
Princess
@Ken: I did a little dive intoSilver’s polling site about a week ago. He’s using a lot of pretty low quality polls especially for state races, and drawing a lot of firm conclusions. The betting site he works for doesn’t make money from the bets themselves; it make money from transaction fees from the trades. People are encouraged to trade often, even daily as odds (based on what someone will pay you for your share) go up and down. Their clientele likely trends youngish, male, and Trumpy. I assume Silver needs to keep Trump looking good so they keep buying in and churning. As for his own bet I would guess he thinks Harris will win but wants to make Trump look good so he can make more money betting on the underdog. But who knows. In any case, it all feels super unethical and anyone who is guided by his advice to place bets on his site is a fool.
Once again, I cannot overstress the fly by night nature of some of the polls he’s using.
The polls we’re seeing recently (Suffolk, ABC etc) are good polls.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
How many days have the bomb threats been happening? They didn’t start right after the debate. Ohio probably won’t move, but it’s a little early to tell.
Princess
Stupid hamsters who keep this site moving just ate my comment. I tried to repost it and was told it already had been posted. It was about Silver and you’ll just all have to imagine how brilliant it was.
Hoodie
@Kay: Kind of makes the obsession with Springfield seem a little misplaced. I get the racial angle with the Haitians, but there are other places in actual swing states that have immigrant populations for which they could have similarly made up stories. Makes me think making this their lead story was another of Vance’s stupid online right ideas. He’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Frankensteinbeck
@Princess:
I am already bowing down in awe. That was the greatest post I would have ever seen. Wow.
rikyrah
@Kay:
He is getting paid to do what to do by Thiel.
That it’s in front of the world…
Whyte male arrogance…
BritinChicago
@Joey Maloney: “The gun problem will never be fixed with this SCOTUS. Anyone who really wants to make major change in this generation has to have a plan to make major change to the Court.”
Yes. Roe V Wade led to a fifty year campaign by the crazy right, with control of SCOTUS at its heart. As far as I can tell, the sane left did not react in a similar way to the 2008 Heller decision, which was a major blow to gun control. Why not? I wish I knew. Perhaps sane people worry about a lot of things and don’t focus on a single issue so much?
doesn’t seem able to think in that long-term way
rikyrah
@Hoodie:
They (MAGA)are pushing the Venezuelan gangs hard in Colorado. Been reading about the fake claims on Twitter. A news guy pushing back.
Expletive Deleted
@Baud: I’ve always considered it’s use and spread a form of voter suppression.
rikyrah
Robbie Sherwood (@RobbieSherwood) posted at 10:54 AM on Mon, Sep 16, 2024:
I’m afraid I did not have Center for Arizona Policy founder Len Munsil’s Christian University football team participating in a human smuggling ring on my bingo card. https://t.co/2xlfRkJiED
(https://x.com/RobbieSherwood/status/1835708770082754633?t=6E6zdbF41-MgJs3WKcTjrA&s=03)
rikyrah
David Pepper (@DavidPepper) posted at 6:31 AM on Tue, Sep 17, 2024:
🚨
BREAKING: Lawlessness in Ohio:
A 🧵
In Ohio, voting Yes on Issue 1 will end partisan gerrymandering.
But last night, the partisan Ohio Sup Court approved ballot language that makes it seem as if voting Yes CREATES gerrymandering.
It’s an outrage. And what happens…
1/
(https://x.com/DavidPepper/status/1836005112885506239?t=GOvTjtY8pj3g8MvEuyE8_A&s=03)
lowtechcyclist
Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and remove all firearms restrictions from GOP conventions and meetings and offices at all levels. And demand that the NRA do the same.
Baud
@BritinChicago: Our side has always had less focus.
@Expletive Deleted: Agree.
Hoodie
@rikyrah: But they seem to want to make this stupid cats and dogs thing their hill to die on. Plus, they ain’t going to win Colorado. They’re running those dark “Kamala’s soft on crime” type ads here in NC but they’re not specific to anything going on here. Lots of stupid mailers going to solid Dem households. They’re flailing.
NotMax
@rikyrah
Skewing and/or obfuscating the language of ballot measures is far from a new thing.
Baud
@Hoodie:
They’re rerunning their historically successful playbook without adapting to current conditions. They really did expect to ride “Biden is old” all the way to victory.
Tony G
When the Sandy Hook massacre occurred, I was working at an IBM software support office in New York State. The office was only about 50 miles north of New York City, but a lot of my (otherwise intelligent) co-workers were “enthusiast supporters of the Second Amendment” who loved their AR-15’s. After Sandy Hook several of them loudly proclaimed that they were going go buy MORE guns and ammunition “before Obama starts his gun-grabbing”. The rot in this country is deep and wide. It long precedes Trump and it will persist long after Trump.
Baud
@Tony G:
Agreed. Trump really is a standard Republican when it comes to guns. There is nothing unique about him.
Ken
There was a certain inevitability to that, once Trump said “I saw it on TV”. If they back down, not only is he wrong, but he’s the sort of idiot who believes everything he sees on TV.
For me, one of the high points of this election will be Erick Erickson ranting “you idiots, you got the story into his head and now he’s repeating it”.
Argiope
@rikyrah: We’re in Ohio and my husband was listening live to the hearing where they did this. He started yelling first at the radio and then to some statehouse staffers by phone. It’s outrageous and they will likely get away with it because early voting starts in about 3 weeks so there is no time to fix it in the courts. We just have to try to get the word out to vote yes on 1.
Tony Jay
Urgh. Lady Jay and I have been invited to the reopening of a library/community hub in Liverpool that got burnt out by brainvoids during the recent White & Weird Riots. Happy to pop in, the person who invited us is the woman who spearheaded its initial transformation when she was a Labour councillor in the area, before she was booted out as a lefty undesirable by Der Starmerpartei’s local Thought Police.
Now I find out that Starmer himself wants to come down for a photo op. Presumably wearing a suit and a set of spiffy glasses donated by one of the millionaire donors he’s so eager to get limber and akimbo for.
Oh, that’s going to go splendidly.
catclub
@Ken: Polymarket betting site still has Trump and Harris tied. Also, Trump WAY up in Arizona and Georgia. Ahead yes, thats possible. WAY up??
I think it is Nate Silver rigging polls and volatility to get more betting at the site.
ETA: I think I have been misreading the numbers at polymarket.
60-40 is 60% chance of winning the state, NOT election result.
Harris is 98% in some blue states.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I repeated the 20k Haitian immigrants number here on BJ – relying on the mayor- and now come to find out that’s probably a lie too. The number of Haitian immigrants is probably closer to 3000 and it doesn’t seem like the school enrollment numbers have gone up at all.
They just lie constantly. All of them. My fault for believing any of it.
Argiope
@NotMax: how about Opposite Day, though, where the ballot language is actually the opposite of what the proposed law says? This isn’t skewing or obfuscation—it’s lies. And it’s what a gerrymandered statehouse has wrought: no one can tell them no.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony G: This is the pattern after every high-profile mass shooting–there’s a rush to buy the gun that was used to commit the crime, ostensibly motivated by the fear that it will be banned, which never seems to happen (well, it happened once with some positive effect but the ban got lifted some years later). The industry that makes these weapons has an incentive to make sure the shootings keep happening, because so far they’ve been very good for them.
BritinChicago
@Baud: “Our side has always had less focus.”
Any speculation as to why?
Baud
@BritinChicago:
Lots of speculation. Too many and too disorganized to think about this early in the morning.
catclub
I saw 20,000 immigrants in Springfield when web searching. Is that 3000
Haitians and 17000 from other nations?
or just hugely wrong?
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: That’s a crypto-bro betting site, right? They’re a bunch of maroons. Some opportunities to make some cash if you dare.
Soprano2
@Kay: The latest poll shows TCFG up 11 in MO. There has been Republican control of the state government here for 20 years. Might as well ask why the Democratic Party doesn’t spend any money here. The two biggest cities in MO shrank, that’s why we turned Republican even though the rural areas are shrinking too.
Kay
National Democrats have been good to Ohio. Biden of course is the most obvious because of his investments in manufacturing and the revitalization of that entire sector for the northern part of the state, but the whole state also benefitted from Obama. Obama expanded Medicaid, which covers every low income person, including half of my very white, very rural county.
Ohioans have nothing to complain about re: national Democrats. It is not the fault of the Democratic Party that the state went far Right. We did that to ourselves. Harris/Walz should not invest campaign funds here. If they need a long shot invest in Texas. She’s w/in 5 there. There’s nothing noble about wasting money.
Starfish
@piratedan: I am just not sure how it gets done because the national Republicans are a death cult bought and paid for by the NRA. Even the NRA bankruptcy didn’t stop them. Even getting their own dumbasses shot in a random act of stochastic terrorism didn’t change their minds (Steve Scalise), and you know that Marjorie Taylor Green who was stalking David Hogg around is certainly not voting for it.
When we see the single-issue women’s medical freedom voters outnumber the single-issue gun death-cult voters OR when we see single-issue opposition to gun death-cult, then we will get it done.
Quinerly
@Kay:
I am not up to speed on the numbers. Am I to understand now only 3000 Haitians have settled in Springfield?
Honestly, I have been so upset over this story that I had to take a break from it for 5 days. Of all the shit Trump and Vance are pulling and lying about, the Springfield stuff might infuriate me the most.
AM in NC
@Hoodie: My 21-year old son, and registered Democrat, has received 10 of those Trump mailers so far. My friends’ kids (same approximate ages and all registered Dems) have also received multiple mailers. All sent out from the NC GOP. Let them waste their money, I say.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
And according to the story (I think that’ll get past the paywall), those good Christian football players are being let go without being charged.
archive.li/pbPMn
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: And quit giving speeches surrounded by bulletproof glass.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Mass shootings and gun sales:
https://law.stanford.edu/press/gun-sales-us-spike-mass-shootings/
I have a good number of friends back in Misery who own guns, don’t hunt, but do a lot of what I’d best characterize as “hobby activities” that involve guns. Shooting matches, drills, etc. One is a prosecutor whose county is red, rurl and in the north. He actually carries a gun because of the years he’s been followed home many times.
I’ve gone to a couple of these gun-related “hobby activities” with him over the years (I don’t own any guns but don’t have a knee-jerk aversion to them) and one thing, at least with that extended group of “gun enthusiasts” stood out: they are manic sticklers for safety. At every event, they go over the same safety things first. They’d done it a gazillion times but always do it. He’s told me they’ve booted many people over the years who wouldn’t follow the safety rules or sit thru the safety stuff that preceded any event.
So, they spend their hobby money on this. And yes, when there’s some big public mass shooting with the resultant “Dems are coming to take away YOUR GUNZZZZ!!!!!” messaging they all panic buy ammo.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Ohio and Missouri are both states with old longstanding reputations of being swing-state bellwethers. They’re not any more, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people still have a gut feeling that they should be.
Chris
@Joey Maloney:
The decade that things really started getting crazy is the same decade that the militia movement went mainstream, which strikes me as not a coincidence.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
You would think gun enthusiasts would appreciate the concept of a mark.
Soprano2
@Kay: Isn’t it funny that it took the press several days to verify the 20,000 number? At this point if a Republican said the sky was blue, I’d look outside just to make sure. I think we all repeated it without checking. It probably seemed like 20,000 to some of the white racists there.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Many liberal Dems have this self-hating thing where they blame the party for losing states to Republicans but refuse to acknowledge that we lost these states because we are too liberal.
Sanjeevs
https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/2024-presidential-election-polling
Losing ground on their best issues.
And there is a quarter or half point rate cut coming tomorrow
catclub
Yes on crypto-bros.
My understanding – not tested- is that polymarket betting is not actually allowed for US citizens/residents. So more daring is necessary to actually bet.
Baud
@Sanjeevs:
Let’s keep the sugar high going to November!
Chris
@JoyceH:
Their ancestors until about fifty years ago, including and especially in the Old West, would also have given a resounding “hell, yes” when asked about gun control. Of course there have to be restrictions on guns, otherwise there’d be a shootout every week. Yes, I own a six-shooter, but I either leave it at home or drop it at the sheriff’s office when I go to town, like it says in the bylaws. You’re telling me you people have guns that can hold up to a hundred bullets, things that can kill more people than a literal artillery piece, and not only can anyone have them, but you barely have any restrictions on where they can and can’t be carried? What the hell is wrong with you fucking people?
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Oh yeah, Obama campaigned here in 2008 and almost won the state. We had a Democratic governor until 2016. I think it’s St. Louis and Kansas City shrinking that have made the state government Republican. Even though the rural areas are shrinking too, the cities shrank a lot. In the 1950’s St. Louis was around 800,000 – now it’s 319,000. Of course that doesn’t count all the surrounding towns, but they’re probably more conservative.
Starfish
@p.a.: Gratuitous link to the Garry Wills article.
Chris
@p.a.:
This is key to the problem, I think. Back when guns actually were tools that a large part of the population used as a normal part of their life, it wasn’t controversial that they should be regulated. It’s precisely as that lifestyle started to go extinct, and most people moved into lifestyles where there was never a need for a gun, that the guns started being treated as fetish objects rather than practical tools.
Baud
@Chris:
Kind of like pickups. Some people really need them, but it seems like most owners don’t.
Ken
Maybe they were counting the Poles, the Czechs, the Irish, and of course the (((rootless cosmopolitans))).
Starfish
@Baud: Democrats lose the states by not spending any money in the states to have an established party. They will burn a ton of money on a single race, but they will not make long term investments in a state or attempt to understand the issues that are important to it.
Baud
@Starfish:
So you’re one of the people I was talking about.
Quinerly
@catclub:
I am very confused. I found this. I used to read Drum on Washington Monthly. I found him reliable.
https://jabberwocking.com/how-many-haitian-immigrants-really-live-in-springfield-maybe-2000/
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It’s also an article of faith on the Jacobin-style left that Democrats lost Middle America because they are plutocrats, not because they turned against open bigotry and Middle America went all-in. Or, if they acknowledge the latter, they dismiss civil-rights movements as a bourgeois distraction.
Quinerly
@Starfish:
I don’t care for Tim Ryan. Blame him and his team for missing a lot of the oppo research on Vance. Last night he was on MSNBC. He couldn’t refrain from getting a dig in about the Dems pulling money out/not giving him enough to win in Ohio. He also got the facts wrong on Ryan Routh. Ryan said Routh fired a shot.
Chief Oshkosh
@BritinChicago: There’s a long history to the anti-abortion “movement.” TLDR: Rich conservatives figured out an additional approach to getting a bunch of
fucking moronspeople to vote against their interests without having to make much of an investment.Chris
@Kay:
Yeah, that’s one of the big reasons I haven’t argued with a Republican in over a decade. They, as you say, just lie constantly. It isn’t always their fault; at best, it’s an earnest guy who’s spent his entire life in the Fox bubble repeating a bunch of bullshit that he thinks is true. But the bottom line is that everything they throw at you is a lie, and while we may know that intellectually, we usually aren’t prepared for how relentlessly everything has to be fact-checked (case in point, when they say “the 20,000 immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs!” you focus on the obviously ridiculous “eating cats and dogs” part, which allows the equally fallacious “20,000 immigrants in Springfield” part to slip through unnoticed). And it’s hard to stop some of the bullshit from making it into your head, too.
Soprano2
@Baud: I would say that’s the other part of what happened in MO, but also Republicans got crazier and more conservative. Right now Josh Hawley is saying that Amendment 3, which will legalize abortion in this state, is actually about making transgender surgeries on children legal. *rolleyes* At least the stories about it are calling it a lie. They know they can’t win on the merits, so they’re literally making up stuff in the hopes of defeating the amendment. Transgender people are their latest boogeyman, so that’s what they’re using.
Fair Economist
@Kay: We should always bother, because abandoning areas is part of the reason some states are swinging so hard to Republicans. The main issue, IMO, is media concentration, but Democrats disappearing is part of it too.
rikyrah
@Kay:
There are only 5,000 Haitian immigrants in the entire state of Ohio
Fair Economist
@Soprano2: One of the problems we are dealing with, though, is the disconnection from reality that makes such blatant lies easier to pass around. My goto example on that is how there’s a general belief that the economy was better under Trump when Biden has had the most jobs created in a presidential term, ever. Trump even claimed it in the debate, to absolutely NO pushback.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Yesterday, the woman who runs the fitness center here told me that someone had disabled Fox on the TVs on the treadmills. She called tech support and they can’t figure out how to fix it.
I laughed and laughed.
satby
@Baud: it took 70 years, but the Birchers run the party now. Our side can barely focus for 6 months.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: There’s also a world filled with information available at fingertip access, and a lot of it is bullshit but you can easily find some to back up any claim you care to espouse, if that’s the direction in which you construct your worldview–start with the conviction and then gather the evidence for it.
This is hardly something unique to the right. But the right is very into it.
I’m thinking of an argument I had years ago with an extended-family member over global warming. He had receipts, impressive-sounding science behind his claim that global warming wasn’t real! It was from a guy I was already well-familiar with, a contrarian scientist who’d become a celebrity in right-wing political circles for these tendentious arguments. I explained that this scientist’s view wasn’t the consensus view and that there were good, well-supported reasons to think he was just wrong, but my relative started going on about Galileo vs. the authorities, how contrarians are often right in the face of the consensus, etc., etc. He was pretty good at relaying some slick arguments, and wouldn’t be bowed. So it goes.
Starfish
@Baud: Democrats outspent Republicans about seven times trying to get Elvis’s cousin elected as governor of Mississippi. He came shockingly close given where he was running.
But it takes ground work of building up parties, and in these southern states, the parties are currently split along a racial divide.
Fixing that, where the party can extend beyond it is going to take regular investment.
This is also why unionizing the south fails. Managers take advantage of the racial distrust and managers always win.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
LMAO, oh yes, every one of them thinks they’re Galileo.
The “remember how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, MINE are even WORSE!!!” argument.
Ken
Yeah, it’s gone from “Trump assassination attempt” to “guy with a gun a quarter mile away from Trump” pretty fast. The only charges they’ve made are related to possession of the gun (he’s a felon, it had the serial number filed off).
I am getting a small chuckle that the guy prosecuting the case is a Haitian immigrant, though as someone said, that feels a lot like the writers pulling together all the threads for the season finale.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Well, except for the ones who think Galileo was wrong.
BR
@Kay:
I want another sugar high like August in October. Harris/Walz have it in them. Stadium rallies. Beyonce and Taylor Swift. The Obamas. Harris on Hot Ones and Walz on football and home improvement shows.
I am just so so tired of Trump/Vance, even more than before. I don’t want to hear anything more about them.
As for states, I want to win NC for an early election night decision.
Starfish
@Quinerly: This is a thing too!
In marginal districts, you apparently get a white dude whose boss was taken down for corruption. We get white dudes who were in the military. Maybe we could have candidates who did not taste like rice cakes, like we were unworthy of real human politicians.
Soprano2
@Fair Economist: When people say “the economy” what they mean is “prices”. When they say the economy was better under TCFG, what they mean is that prices were lower. I think that’s the totality of how most people think about it.
Ksmiami
Do t know if anyone is still reading this thread but Rick Wilson just sent his sub stack and I think it’s the perfect rejoinder to Trump’s whinefest/fake outrage:
here it is in it’s entirety:
pS our media is a joke.
”
The emerging MAGA conflation that every criticism of Donald Trump is a call for his assassination is a logical, moral, and political fallacy of the most sublimely stupid nature, a false equivalence so profoundly wrong in every dimension that only the people with a political death wish (and, perhaps, the American media) could buy it.
It is an argument made only by Trump’s most mendacious enablers and propagandists, believed only by fools, and embraced only by the damned and the doomed who would unilaterally disarm in the face of the most dangerous fascist leader to have ever cursed the American body politic.
They say calling Trump what he is — a pendant authoritarian, a convicted criminal, an enabler of the worst and most dangerous elements of our body politic — constitutes a death threat, not a description. Sorry, MAGA, but if the jackboot fits, wear it: he is an authoritarian, a statist, a racist, an aspiring fascist, a hateful, mendacious, corrupt traitor, a fool, mentally ill, and frankly evil.
I’ll spare you the irony of people who grunt about “much First Amendment rights” when they’re confronted with the rotten sickness of their online cruelty and conspiracy theories, now being the leaders of the most potent assault on political speech and expression in the last hundred years.
Americans broadly and properly reject political violence, but it seems lost on too many in the media that Donald Trump and his political allies are proven practitionersof political violence in the event you’ve forgotten his terrorist attack on the United States Capitol.
Trump has routinely called for the use of state and that of his cult’s power and violence against his critics, from his yokelspringa rallies to the Oval Office. He demanded that Federal forces shoot peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square Park and spoke of “Second Amendment people” taking out Hillary Clinton. Trump, J.D. Vance, and their allies are engaged in the rhetorical precursors to violence as I write this with their baseless attacks on legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Their contrived and histrionic outrage at critics calling him a threat to democracy and the Republic should be a tell, but too many people are missing the point. This is a fight to the political death, and Trump and his enablers want America to go into battle disarmed and mute.
Trump and MAGA want his opponents to engage in unilateral political disarmament; they’re demanding our silence.
And so, a few notes for Donald Trump and his political and media allies:
You claim that talking about Trump, Project 2025, his debate loss, his grotesque, sweaty relationship with 9/11 truther and madwoman Laura Loomer, his dementia, infirmity, and word-salad glossolalia are like shouting “fire” in the proverbial crowded theater.
You demand our silence. I refuse.
You say if we speak about his lavish corruption, his shameful, groveling obedience to Vladimir Putin, his dictator-curious anti-Americanism, his absurd war with Taylor Swift, and a thousand other ways, both grand and petty, that he dirties our lives, spirits, and politics that we’re practically and morally assassins.
You demand our silence. I refuse.
You screech and howl like maddened beasts that only Trump should be “taken literally but not seriously” and that his racist rants, his threats of mass deportation — a police action of a scale not seen in the world since Mao or Stalin — and his blood and soil assaults on immigrants to this nation for “poisoning the blood” should be seen as “firing up the base” and nothing more.
You demand silence. I refuse.
You insist that no matter how vile, low, cruel, and inflammatory Trump’s attacks are on his fellow Americans, he gets a free pass. You claim quoting Trump’s exact, literal threats, promises, and policies is too inflammatory for our delicate polity.
You demand silence. I refuse.
You insist Trump’s opponents sit silent, following our better angels while Trump and his amoral enablers run roughshod over the press, the law, the Constitution, and our elections.
You demand silence. I refuse.
You insist we greet the threats to imprison Trump’s political opposition with cheers and laughter, not disgust. You demand we look away from Trump’s allies calling for the execution of his opponents, even while those allies are boasting of sharing his bed.
You demand silence. I refuse.
You want us to behave as if Trump’s serial adultery, chronic abuse of women, sexual assault, pussy-grabbing, long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine (“I wish her well!”) Maxwell and his endless humiliations and insults to women can be laughed off as manly locker-room talk and proof of his alpha maledom.
You demand silence. I refuse.
You want a world where Trump’s contempt and hatred for women are manifested in law, reducing their liberties, rights, and freedoms to second-class citizenship, and where men like small, angry men like Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Mike Johnson demand legislation to force them to face death if a pregnancy goes wrong.
You demand our silence. I refuse.
You want us to treat his lies as truth, mutely nodding as a flood tide of mendacious twaddle, robust self-fellation, and the total denial of objective fact and reality (“All the polls say I won the debate! They’re killing the babies after they’re born!”) cheapens the meaning of facts.
You demand our silence. I refuse.
You insist we stop the campaign of truth against Trump’s empire of lies and mutely cede this election to a man who is the worst monster to ever hold or seek the most elevated elected office in the land.
You demand silence. I refuse.
You threaten us, dox us, SWAT us, call us criminals, communists, pedophiles, and murderers, and demand we meekly accept your lies and slanders. You threaten our families and loved ones and demand we accept your terms.
And at that, and once more with feeling, I absolutely refuse.”
thank you!
Matt McIrvin
@BR: In both 2016 and 2020, there was this period right at the end when it seemed like Trump started acting slightly less like an ass and regained the mojo, and the race got tighter. In 2016 it was happening even before the Comey letter dropped.
I wouldn’t like that to happen a third time. Or if it does we need to be well prepared and ready to drown it out.
BR
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly. I think Harris/Walz have it in them to close strong in a way Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden didn’t. I hope the campaign team sees that.
Quinerly
@Ken:
Loved seeing Markenzy Lapointe yesterday.
Check out paragraph 5
https://www.commondreams.org/further/surreal-u-s-attorney-in-charge-of-trump-almost-shooting-is-haitian-american-and-we-are-here-for-it
Scout211
Rex Huppke with another opinion piece on USA Today well worth a read.
A few snippets:
Matt McIrvin
@BR: Part of what happens, I think, is that the “undecideds” who know Trump is kind of distasteful but were probably going to vote for him all along find their excuses and come home.
In the polling, we don’t have as much margin to lose right now as the last couple of times. That is worrying. But we might be able to run up the score.
jonas
Hope you don’t mind if I steal that one.
Ken
@Quinerly: Ah, so I can write “Haitian immigrant with more military service than Trump and Vance combined”.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I’m not sure people even know what they mean when they say “the economy”. Sometimes it’s prices, sometimes it’s specifically the price of gasoline; but when there’s high unemployment, it’s unemployment. And if it’s bougie media people, sometimes they’re talking about the stock market.
And if it’s Republicans, most of the time they’re really talking about “whether the President is a Republican”.
Wapiti
@Soprano2: Sometime past, like in the 1990s, a lot of Seattle zip codes were spawned off as separate towns/cities. Part of it was that Seattle couldn’t provide the services for places that were effective out in King County, and I think a lot of those places didn’t want to pay Seattle taxes.
So I’m wondering if part of the St. Louis and Kansas City shrinkage is because the city limits shifted?
Jeffro
By 1999, we’d had at least 5 years of Fox, Gingrich, and Limbaugh, right? (heck I think we’d had 10 years of Limbaugh by then).
They were already starting to spiral, even then.
Quinerly
@Ken: 💜🩵💙💚🧡
Matt McIrvin
@BR: …There was also the specific problem in 2020 that Democrats were trying to run a COVID-safe virtual campaign, and Republicans very weren’t.
Now almost nobody is trying to isolate (despite COVID still being out there–at least it’s not nearly as deadly as it was), so it’s not an issue.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Wapiti:
In both cases, no. They shrank because of white flight.
Quinerly
Here’s a great piece on Markenzy Lapointe. I think he is definitely worthy of a BJ front page down the road.
https://www.nbcmiami.com/discover-black-heritage/from-haiti-through-liberty-city-to-top-federal-prosecutor-in-south-florida-the-unlikely-story-of-markenzy-lapointe/2983482/
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: That’s why I wish reporters would drill down on it a little bit, because to most people “the economy” is an amorphous thing they don’t really understand.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Related: the way that “the deficit” or “the national debt” gets used as a vague synonym for “the economy” without people really knowing what that means either.
(That’s maybe less popular than it used to be, now that Democrats have started to sour on austerity as a positive value. But the prime example was that town hall debate in 1992 when a woman in the audience asked Bush and Clinton about how the national debt affected them, and if they understood how deeply concerned people were about it… and Bill Clinton’s answer was not about the national debt at all, but about jobs. Yeah, he understood her language.)
Anonymous At Work
I hate to give props to anything related to FOX but…a Fox reporter had interviewed the would-be assassin and described him like “Brad Pitt’s character from “Burn After Reading””. That’s an impressive insult.
Yarrow
This is a good article on Springfield about the response by churches.
(Bolding mine) What he did is so wrong.
BR
I’m realizing that Harris’s line “We’re Not Going Back” is so perfect for the moment. It wraps up all the things into one line. I was thinking this morning how much I am done hearing about Trump/Vance in all respects, and so: We’re Not Going Back.
TBone
Hubby just had me write a reply on Fascistbook to his brainwashed nephew who thinks VP Harris is too weak to lead the nation. I had to remain polite and not cuss or ridicule. I gave him the what for in as restrained a manner as I’m capable of. For hubby. Now I’m about to yell and cuss and the neighbors are gonna hear me and I feel dirty! I don’t do social media for a reason!
UGH
Tony Jay
@jonas:
Feel free, pal. Once they’re born they’re free use.
BR
@TBone:
Did he see the debate where Harris toyed with her opponent like he was a plaything?
Ken
@Anonymous At Work: Other things I’ve heard about the non-shooter is that he was interviewed by the NYT once as a Trump voter, and that he received a citation from a North Carolina police agency for some sort of “citizen patrol”* work. Both seen on bluesky, and both had quotes or pictures, so possibly reliable? As reliable as any other media.
* “Citizen patrols — none of the training, all of the legal liability!”
Quinerly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Definitely White flight. With St. Louis, South City Whites moved to South County. North City Whites moved to North County and St. Charles County.
Inner city neighborhoods have been going through revitalization since the late 1970’s. Still just in “pockets.” I was fortunate to contribute to some of that with purchasing derelict properties in South City, rehabbing them, and selling them. A side/hobby business that I would take any day over the practice of law. St. Louis now has a thriving Bosnian community in South City to add to the large Vietnamese, Mexican, Serbian populations.
Would love to see the North Side brought back. The “Urban Pioneer” types have tried for many years. 2 steps forward, 3 steps back mostly. Beautiful 1800’s housing stock that rivals our historic neighborhoods on the South Side. I never had the guts to invest north. Hyde Park neighborhood could be gorgeous. Oops, need to catch myself with the use of “our.” Been a little homesick lately for St. Louis and city life.
TBone
@BR: I doubt it and that was the very first thing I brought up! These absolute morons are from my hubby’s ex side of the family so we won’t ever meet IRL – they are all intellectualy challenged in my opinion. Which is good because it would be hard for me to not laugh at them right up in their faces. Long and loudly.
SatanicPanic
Diddy got arrested. I’m curious what they’ll charge him with- there’s plenty to work with.
BR
@TBone:
I think there was a Walz interview after the debate where he made the point explicitly, saying something like “VP Harris baited him and he fell for it over and over. You don’t think Putin or Xi do that to him as well?”
sixthdoctor
New Emerson MD Senate poll has Alsobrooks up by 7 over Hogan (49-42). Hogan running waaaaaaay ahead of Trump (Harris 65-33) .
I don’t have cable but on streaming I’ve seen about a 50-50 mix of Alsobrooks and Hogan super PAC ads; the ones for Hogan hit Alsobrooks for being “weak on crime”, while the Alsobrooks one hits Hogan for being anti-abortion. I’ve seen another on ESPN while watching a football game in a restaurant that emphasizes Senate control and a vote for Hogan will be a vote for Leader Rick Scott, Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsay Graham, and (can’t remember but something important) Ted Cruz…
Soprano2
@Yarrow: They reached out to the wrong Ohio senator and paid a price for it.
TBone
@BR: I would love to send that (and much, much more) to the piece of shit youngster but I will not participate on social media ever unless my hubby requests the assistance of my acid tongue cloaked in sugar. He rarely asks me to step in anywhere so I knew he was too angry to speak for himself and it was my job today. Time for a hot shower to wash that off!
Baud
@sixthdoctor:
Idiot cross over voters.
Anonymous At Work
@Ken: If you’ve seen the movie, he’s a great Coen Brothers’ character: a personal trainer always moving and exercising in place, with exactly 0 intelligence or common sense, and the goofiness only the Coen Brothers do well.
So, it was an amazing insult. And yes, this was someone off his rocker that wanted to do something EPIC.
TBone
@Anonymous At Work: that’s a perfect description of hubby’s ex side of the family 😆 now I’m gonna rewatch that movie soon. The whole thing will be cathartic, they only call him if they want money. Stupidity AND greed!
catclub
@Quinerly: Thanks!
Ramalama
@BR:
Me too.
catclub
I still view a larger rate cut as panic by the FED that the economy is actually bad.
PST
@Kay:
Ohio broke our hearts eight years ago when my wife and I took a little time off from work in November to return to our childhood home in Toledo to knock on doors and then drive voters (her) or poll watch (me). We may nevertheless go back this year, but only because we worry about Senator Brown and Representative Kaptur. We’re not needed here in Illinois, except to vote early and once. On a fun note, we’re going to Toledo this weekend for my wife’s fiftieth high school reunion. I wonder if anyone has gained weight or acquired wrinkles.
Anyway
Phew! I’ve had mild anxiety about this race …
Chris
@Ken:
TBF, the training police officers have rarely seems to add up to much more than “no training,” and then they just ignore it anyway.
PST
@Baud: As happy as I am with the Morning Consult +6 national poll, I’m even happier with Suffolk/USA TODAY +3 in Pennsylvania. There was a dearth of post-debate polling in the very place that could be the whole ball game.
Chris
@Anyway:
Same. I remember canvassing and getting all these unsolicited opinions of “well, I’m a Democrat and I’d never vote for Trump, but I really like Larry Hogan!”
That was eight years ago and he was governor at the time, not senator, but man, still way too close for comfort. I’ll be incredibly pissed off at my state if the difference between losing and winning the Senate ends up being too many idiots choosing this moment to indulge their nostalgia for the days of Rockefeller Republicans.
PST
@catclub: As of this morning, Harris’s odds are pulling slightly ahead of her opponent’s on Polymarket.
JML
@sixthdoctor: I heard from friends in the DMV that Hogan is running an “I don’t hate women & I’m not a racist because I have an asian wife and daughters!” ad. It’s reportedly exceptionally cringe.
Manyakitty
@Baud: do you really think it’s because we’re too liberal? I’d go with terrible messaging. Then again, I live in Ohio and we put a guy up for governor once who didn’t have a driver’s license and nobody found out until it was too late to replace him. Pitiful.
rikyrah
@Starfish:
I will never not believe that he didn’t win that race.
The deliberate voter suppression in the most populous county in the State was obvious.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
I’m a bit older but the drills we had in school – hiding under our desks were because of the atomic bomb. And I at least wondered what the hell difference it made hiding under a desk if an atomic bomb went off within miles of that school. I’d bet I wasn’t the only one. The drills were mostly performative art, even if not intended that way.
Emily B.
@Kay: The Downballot has looked at multiple sources of data (Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, employment stats, school district stats, health department stats, Medicaid) and estimates the Haitian population of Springfield at 10,000. (“All the Estimates of Springfield’s Haitian Population are Wrong.“)
The article also debunks claims that Haitian immigrants are driving up rents, taking jobs from longer-established residents, or signing up en masse for welfare.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: The first I ever became conscious of the existence of nuclear weapons was in the second grade when we were doing a tornado drill. My teacher mentioned off hand “when I was in school, we did air-raid drills, but the nuclear weapons got so powerful that they don’t bother any more; there’s no point.” That would have been around 1975-76. The school was under the approach pattern for Dulles Airport and if the Big One came, surely they’d have a few warheads specifically targeting the airfield, so, yeah, no point.