Here are a couple of posts that struck me as making good points. First, just an overall acceptance of how fucked up our “fellow Americans” are by Barry Petchesky at Defector.
I agree with some of this post by Steve M, and not with other parts, but overall I think he’s really on point when he talks about the negative way that Democrats are perceived, including the great deal of self-hate embodied by some of our campaigns. He also says that Trump’s followers view him as some kind of angry Andy Kaufman. The anger part is important because it partially masks his mental decline (angry still seems “with it”).
Just to address the “Biden didn’t seem to care about high prices” part of Steve M’s post — this is the strength of Trumpism, and the weakness of politics based in rationality. Trump is going to fuck up the economy, but at the same time he and his myth-making machinery (Fox, X, etc.) will build up a story that denies that the economy is bad, explains how it isn’t Trump’s fault (“the Biden/Harris economy I inherited”) and then will provide myriad distractions to keep people’s minds on something else. You saw this a few months after Biden was elected, with the “I did that” stickers plastered on gas pumps in red states (and in some blue ones — I saw one on a “Black Lives Matter” poster in Denver).
Democrats just don’t have this in our DNA, from soup to nuts. We’d never print out these stickers and put them on gas pumps. We are pretty terrible at combating right-wing fables because we basically ignore them as stupid, and we think the smart thing to do is accentuate positive progress of our agenda. So, in hindsight, Biden missed an opportunity to address higher prices head-on, though I doubt any other person with Democratic DNA would have done better.
There is a god damned firehose of stupidity channeled through social media directly at persuadables. We must develop the talent of picking a few peanuts out of this shit and pushing it back at the people producing it — disrupting the deny, blame and distract cycle that’s so effective for Trump. Otherwise, it’s just death by a thousand cuts. We need our own media ecosystem, it’s been said forever, but, as Atrios points out, the money Democrats spend on elections generally doesn’t build us anything. (I specifically don’t mean B-J fundraising, which I think is quite good and helps build organizations.)
More on this to come.
Steve LaBonne
It also helps to remember that the rightward lurch is very much international. One thing that should put a damper on recriminations is that no US-centric explanation that ignores this can possibly be the whole truth.
Jeffro
One thing that would be helpful, since we don’t have our own Democratic Noise Machine at present and since our snooze media can’t seem to do their jobs: push hard for a reality-based economic ‘snapshot’, right now, and in the weeks leading up to Inauguration Day.
It’ll fade – America is really Amnesica – but let’s at least make SOMEONE acknowledge that trumpov is being handed low unemployment, low inflation, and growth projections that are the envy of the Western world. Joe Did That.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Steve LaBonne: Agreed. And I hope this post isn’t viewed as “recriminations” — I think Harris ran a great campaign. But we’re constantly being drowned out by the Republican noise machine, and we need to think about how to combat that.
lowtechcyclist
Seven new threads in <4.5 hours – is this a new record?
This is not a complaint, btw. I realize that the front-pagers have a few things to say today. It’s just an observation.
Jeffg166
@Steve LaBonne:
Some European countries rejected the right wing swing. I had hoped we would.
Steve LaBonne
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Social media are highly toxic to democracy everywhere. I wish I any idea how to tackle that problem.
Eolirin
This kind of analysis is fighting the last war. None of it’s going to be meaningful if election results don’t matter.
We need to be thinking about how we organize civil disobedience at scale without being rounded up, not how to win elections. That ship has sailed.
Kay
Women – please don’t provide free content for media about how you “feel”
They’re exploiting you for clicks and to fill their platforms without paying you.
Dont give them yourselves, your pain, your experiences. It’s a cynical, cheap ploy to keep liberal readers by exploiting liberal women.
If they want women to provide content they can pay you for it. I charge 200 an hour for work. I’m not giving myself to the NYTimes or the Washington Post. You shouldn’t either. Tell them to fuck off.
Steve LaBonne
@Jeffg166: The UK Tories had to fuck up spectacularly for 13 solid years in order for Labour to squeak in with a vote percentage in the low 30s. France and Germany haven’t even started their time in the tank yet.
trollhattan
Trump-Vance’s spewing of lies and nonsense actually works. We can ponder how, but interviews with voters in which they are “very concerned about those post-birth abortions” convinces me a successful campaign need not be anchored by policy articulation and appeal to people’s actual, not imagined needs. Evidently, they ARE eating the dogs, eating the cats. Who is “they?”
I have no idea how to counter this and shall now pivot to “thinking of the babies.”
Butch
I stopped reading No More Mr. Nice blog a long time ago and his pessimism reinforces my decision.
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
Seconded. We need to publicize the end-of-2024 economic benchmarks so that when Trumpov makes a hash of the economy, everyone knows the starting point we furnished him with.
sixthdoctor
Time to print out some Trump I DID THAT stickers for grocery and consumer prices once the tariffs start.
On a different note, I appreciate this community and all of the work and organization that you all put in. Thank you.
Belafon
That needs to be accessible to those outside of our circle. And until some billionaire buys a broadcast channel or a major newspaper or something, we’re going to have to figure out how to influence existing resources.
I know people don’t like what NPR has become, but it pretty directly tracks with decrease in donations. Donate to them, and don’t pull your donation when they suck, call in and write (e)mail.
Make MSNBC, your go-to news station, and call them and write them when they suck.
And then write MacKenzie Scott and ask her to buy the Washington Post.
TXG1112
I wonder how effective it would have been for the Biden Admin to take a few heads of companies and do a bunch of saber rattling over high prices in the post pandemic period. In my corporate life there has been a lot of “something has to be done” so something that will have no impact is done, so “at least it’s something”
Kay
@Eolirin:
I think we should plan how to protect the most vulnerable
Im not one of them so would be able to defend. I’ll organize around that, but I’m not doing election cycles anymore. I can’t deal with adults who are petulant toddlers. I have nothing in common with them.
Cervantes
It’s important to keep in mind that regions of the country are highly divergent. I’m in Connecticut, where Harris won handily and our entire congressional delegation remains D. Same for the region. Generally, the more affluent, more highly educated states are like CT politically. The map of red and blue states corresponds very closely to the map of low vs. high life expectancy, getting more money from the feds vs. sending more (yep, we subsidize the Republican states), level of education. . . .
New Deal democrat
@Steve LaBonne:
I have been mulling over writing a long post about the very important issue of mass migration. I will probably put it up at my own place sometime in the next week or so, but maybe I’ll be allowed to guest-post it here.
Eolirin
Also, to be clear, everything about this is because Democrats didn’t turn out to vote.
That’s why we lost. Harris is running substantially below Biden’s numbers for 2020. Trump is running behind his as well, just less so.
I’m not sure why people thought they could sit this out, but that’s as large of a problem as anything else.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Cervantes:
Yep, and sadly the quality of life in CT (and other blue states) is represented as akin to the deepest bowels of hell by rightwing media. Another piece of bullshit that could be combatted, but it’s hard to argue, “no, your home is the hellhole” and certainly Democrats have been (probably rightly) loathe to do that.
Mike E
This is a lot of on one hand/on the other hand prattle we have been hearing for, like, forever… face it, this shit was baked in far before any of us were cognizant/born where any meaningful counteraction’s failure wasn’t in the timing but in the scope. Also, white people are walking around without noses if you know what I mean and I think you do (yes, many colors of noses are missing from faces but we know who is The Great Nose Collector these days, and he/they speak with foreign accents).
In before raven with Fuck LBJ!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: Once we recover some, I’d appreciate concrete suggestions on how to be one of the helpers, the same way I appreciated suggestions on how to electioneer.
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: It’s the most logical explanation I can think of. And I too have no idea what to do about it.
Eolirin
@Kay: We aren’t going to have meaningful election cycles anyway, so there’s no real loss there.
All we can do is put our bodies in the way, and it probably won’t accomplish much at the macro level. We’re going to need to take the individual small victories, they’re all we’re likely to get for a long time.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I think the elephant in the room is income inequality and extreme concentration of wealth in our semi post-industrial society and how different groups respond to that reality emotionally.
Dems tend to look at this as a difficult but solvable problem. Given the right policies, and given enough time to apply them consistently, we think this is something that can be fixed, or at least mitigated.
I think many Americans are well aware of the broader aspect of wealth inequality, see themselves as suffering a poorer quality of life because of it, but do not see it as a fixable problem. To them, it just sucks, and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Proposals coming from our side strike them as being not much less achievable or realistic than creating a Mars colony where everybody will be rich.
And this creates not so much economic anxiety as a sort shrug of the shoulders despair and deep down slow burning anger. A feeling that they’ve been fucked, are being fucked, and in the future will get fucked. And that makes people want in terms of policy the one thing over which they do feel that they still have some agency over, some remaining power regarding, which is actually achievable in terms of what govt policy can accomplish in our society – which is to find some target group and to hurt them. Therapeutic anger, which is not expected to make things better, but at least provide a sense of emotional satisfaction at making somebody hurt, somebody that I do like.
Timothy Synder called this sado-populism, and I think the contrast between it and the older style of populism which promised people a better world for them or at least for their children lays in a high level of accepted and settled despair among the population that our society can get any better for them or that govt policy is a viable tool to achieve that outcome.
Our side looks at the promises Trump makes and thinks that people are gullible and stupid to fall for those promises. I think that misses the mark, people know those promises are empty, they know Trump is not going to solve their problems or make their lives better. They’ve accepted & normalized The Suck, and just want to hurt somebody in retaliation for it.
Sorry for the grim diagnosis.
VeniceRiley
I’m old enough to remember when Al Gore and some money bros tried to establish liberal media. Lots of hosts outrated Rush Limbaugh’s numbers. Didn’t matter. Money fascistocracy bought the out, or fired them, bankrupt it. You name it.
The civil war was never over. We lost during reconstruction, and will lose Earth. Cristofascist won. Hunker down and save your resources for the most vulnerable.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Eolirin:
I’m guessing part of this was because 2020 was the ideal election for Dems because it was primarily a mail-in/drop off ballot election, so our folks didn’t have to stand in line the way they needed to yesterday.
suzanne
@Kay:
Yes this.
Also, keep in mind that much of this country, probably a majority, is okay with you dying of a miscarriage to get cheaper eggs and bacon. Stop publicizing your stories in an effort to change minds.
different-church-lady
@suzanne: NARRATOR: “They didn’t get cheaper eggs and bacon.”
emmyelle
I’m starting to believe it is less about stupid and more about mean.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@suzanne:
I think this in particular might change once some R’s have their kids/grandkids die in ER parking lots. They only care when it’s someone related to them. They’re the tribal party.
cmorenc
One small post-election benefit is that my cell phone text stream won’t be blown up every day by dozens of political donation solicitations. But that would be the case if instead Harris had won.
UncleEbeneezer
That Defector piece is largely right but says “there is no Russian bogeyman this time.” I suspect that is jaw-droppingly naive and we will find out more about that in time. Not just in overt attempts like the bomb threats but I’m guessing we will find evidence of massive disinformation and grievance-stoking by GRU. We already know Musk’s Twitter has been a hot-bed of that shit for quite some time.
VeniceRiley
Make a plan to live off protein powder, algae, psyllium, and omega oils.
Click nothing and buy nothing. Go nowhere. Do not protest.
Let them find out.
Soprano2
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I noticed that Colbert wasn’t on last night. I don’t know if that was his choice or the network’s. I hope he doesn’t crawl into a bottle and stay there, because he just might.
Steve in the ATL
@Kay:
Ergo you are not a labor lawyer!
cmorenc
If you ask many of the less rabid folks who nonetheless voted for Trump, it’s stunning how most of them will reply along the lines of: “he’s a horrible person, but I agree with many of his policies”. As if these are disconnected phenomena.
Kay
@suzanne:
You’re under no obligation to open a goddamned vein in public to feed these douchebags “content”
Fuck them. Pay us. We’re no longer free labor for that industry.
WereBear
It’s not like I stopped by to be cheered up.
I haven’t been around because I’ve had to take long vacations from the the whole mess.
But I have never underestimated the mangled thought process that is encouraged in certain religions, and states.
And it’s not one that anyone goes to church about.
Chris
@Eolirin:
And this is, to beat a dead horse, the reason I blame the mainstream media above all.
The MSM is read almost entirely by liberals. They can’t drop the mask and go full Republican; that would end the gig (although it’s beginning to look like they don’t care). But what they can do is flood the zone with a steady stream of doomerism and negativity, and it won’t turn most Democrats into Republicans, but it’ll be enough to depress turnout to where a Republican can get in. It happened in 2000, it happened in 2016, it happened in 2024.
Harris was right. When we vote, we win. The media ensures enough of us don’t vote.
Baud
@emmyelle:
Always has been.
WereBear
@UncleEbeneezer:
Russian efforts to interfere with U.S. elections reach a new level
The question isn’t whether Russia is targeting U.S. elections to help Donald Trump. It’s why.
different-church-lady
@WereBear: Is it alright to offer comfort instead of cheer?
Belafon
@cmorenc: Trump was the logical conclusion of a lot of Republican policies, he just got there way earlier than their plans. He’s the Paul Atreides of monied class, and he’s brining the zealots right along with him.
Kirk
I am in a dark place right now.
I think Trump and his team will try to fulfill all of project 2025, and all his campaign promises. I’ve read that document, and I’ve seen lists of some of the promises. Assuming it goes into effect, I’m expecting dark times for a lot of people, several of whom will be asking why the leopards are eating THEIR faces.
VeniceRiley
@Soprano2: Pfft. I was done with him when he did the kumbya rally in Washington with John Stewart. They aren’t vulnerable, never had skin in the game.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: It’s the most discouraging thing about this election. When we don’t vote, we lose. The angry meatheads always vote.
different-church-lady
@Chris: Seems accurate to me. I mean, it’s pretty much what this summer was all about.
Eolirin
@Steve in the ATL: I can’t imagine we’ll be having much use for those going forward.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Something I realized years ago was that Reagan’s biggest success wasn’t getting people to believe in the market. It was getting people to stop believing in the government. (Or the unions, or really “society” in any sense).
People believed in trickle-down economics for a little bit, then 2008 rolled around and that’s pretty much dead now. But they don’t believe the government or unions or political reformers or anything really can make things better. So attempts at reform run into a sea of apathy, much as they did in the late 1980s USSR.
coin operated
“Control the coinage and the courts…let the rabble have the rest”
Emperor Shadaam IV from Dune.
Well…they have the billionaires and the supremes, and they’ve been working for this result since Reagan.
All they needed was a rabble willing to tank democracy. The rabble don’t know it yet, but they’re rabble too.
Old School
@Soprano2:
I’m sure he wasn’t on because of the election coverage. He’s done election night shows on Showtime in past years, but didn’t this year.
He’s back on with a new show tonight.
narya
@WereBear: I’ve been dipping into Marcy Wheeler’s “Ball of Thread,” and just this morning someone said that R’s economy is actually pretty small, so P’s plan is to break up the western alliance, which then allows R to pick off European nations one by one. Not exactly a cheerful thought, but a useful perspective, I thought.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
I am glad you’re making these posts. No evidence of recriminations, just some open-eyed analysis of the day after.
Please keep them and the links coming.
From the first link:
Ramona
@lowtechcyclist: yes, yes, yes! Publish the end of 2024 economics news and release economic news every few months… With every employment news release.
Eolirin
@narya: Russia isn’t capable of actually conquering its neighbors in any sustainable way, even doing it like that. But it is potentially capable of destroying them, doing it like that
It’ll help when the US economy tanks and takes the rest of the world with it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chris: Bullshit. The mainstream media wasn’t great, but it was social media where there was a constant toxic drumbeat against every single little thing Biden did and said. Social media had the doctored videos of Biden seeming addled and incompetent and Kamala producing word salad. Social media downplayed his accomplishments and boosted the problems. Social media made up fake scandals and fake accusations again anyone with a D after their name.
The mainstream media did actually report on those things. The mainstream media did call out the fake stuff. This active campaign against news sources that are imperfect but more accurate than social media is destructive. Social media enabled foreign influencers to divide and conquer. THAT is why we are here.
tam1MI
And the reason why they didn’t will probably be key to the reason why we got shellacked.
Chris
@WereBear:
Because they want the West broken up into a bunch of balkanized hypernationalist states that are easy to manipulate and pose no real threat to them. Also what our own oligarchs, especially the “disrupter” types like Musk, want. Because really, they and the people in the Kremlin are the same people.
suzanne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I think otherwise. I think there’s a lot of people who are incredibly pissed that other people (who they consider undeserving or something) live good lives. I think Tom Nichols is right.
Belafon
@VeniceRiley: Technically neither does John or most white men, which includes me.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Chris:
Hardly. Neoliberal economics, aka trickle-down/market-uber-alles, is very much alive and well and pushed by tons of Democrats. It’s mainstreamed, those Dems won, Dems like me lost. One of the better recent pieces on this:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/22/2213332/-The-End-of-the-American-Dream
I deal with this constantly pushing back on “progressives” here along the Front Range. I’m losing at that too.
different-church-lady
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: You’re both right: MSM does behave as Chris described, but social media might have an even bigger impact.
Taken together, how the hell are we supposed to swim against this tsunami?
Mike E
@Kay: my youngest sister works at her election polls and she’s right where you are, we just chatted for the better part of an hour, her respected/respectable repub coworkers there certainly complain a lot but she is finished with them. Her father in-law (WWII veteran) is the focus of her household time/money or otherwise she’s helping others…Who knows, at age 65 this may be her last time doing that polling job whether by default or by design. Either way, time to get busy with all the tasks at hand.
Ramona
@VeniceRiley: beans and rice and community farm packages?
Omnes Omnibus
We lost this election. I am not accepting that we lost the country for good. People will need to do what they need to do to get through this. Leaving, retreating, whatever. I am not going to criticize. I, however, am not going to walk away from the people and principles that I believe this country should represent. IOW, I dissent.
WereBear
Some people fear making decisions about their own lives.
That part of them was successfully stunted by religion/culture/parents. They don’t feel qualified to make a regular decision, and they are asked to weigh in on the fate of so many? Avoidance, and later, denial.
There they are, drifting with the tide while trying to get stuck on a sandbar again.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Thanks for this. I’m gonna do more reading on it. Sada-populism.
suzanne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I think otherwise. I think there’s a lot of people who are incredibly pissed that other people (who they consider undeserving or something) live good lives. I think Tom Nichols is right.
This is why student loan forgiveness set so many people on fire. Seen as helping out people they hate.
different-church-lady
@suzanne: Sparrows and curtain rods all the way down.
WereBear
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Suicide by GOP.
OId Man Shadow
I’m numb and I feel like everything I’ve rebuilt my life on since deconstruction has been a lie and a cruel fucking joke designed to dash my heart against the rocks of reality over and over again.
So there’s that.
Quinerly
45% of the voters said they were worse off today than 4 years ago.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
https://twitter.com/HeathMayo/status/1854010015733936396
Chris
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Bullshit yourself. I saw the screaming for Biden to step down remain the front page topic of the major papers for an entire month until they’d gotten their pound of flesh, barely displaced for a day here and there by a Trump trial decision or a Supreme Court “when the president does it it’s not illegal” decision. I saw the major networks do the same thing in August of 2021 where longstanding consultants who supported the withdrawal couldn’t even get on the air. I saw them scream and scream about gas prices when they went up and completely clam up when they went right back down, I saw them screaming for four years straight that we were either in a recession or about to be, I saw them misreport a Biden administration cap on insulin prices as “pharmaceutical companies say they’ll cap insulin prices”… It’s been an extended, unprecedented, four-year-long hit job, and little things like the Washington Post being turned over to Rupert Murdoch employees and then declining to endorse were just the icing on the cake.
I have said over and over and over that social media is also a problem and that the fact that all currently existing media is a right-wing puke funnel is our biggest problem, but the MSM does not get a pass here. Especially when so much of what gets passed around on social media links back to them anyway.
VeniceRiley
Anyone who does not admit this ship has been happening since before the internet is not worth listening to, IMO.
THE only protest that works is economic. Don’t watch. Don’t buy a new car. Don’t go out. Don’t spend. Don’t buy into this bullshit for one more second. You will need this savings to replace you social security and Medicare. End them with your nonparticipation in the demise. Make them own it.
different-church-lady
[drums fingers]
So.
Emotional management.
Let’s share some tips on how to keep from collapsing while at the same time not completely withdrawing from the fight.
Me, I’d like to just push the whole thing away for my own mental health, but it’s impossible to ignore. It’s just going to hang there like toxic smog.
As much as I’d like to completely tune out for my own continued survival, that’s just giving up the fight before it’s over.
Any rate, I’m in a much more stable place than I was eight years ago.
Maybe we just make this a day to comfort each other and turn that into energy for the battles to come.
different-church-lady
@VeniceRiley: It did happen before the internet, but the internet has accelerated it, made it much more potent.
mapanghimagsik
@Quinerly:
I think that number will go up.
BritinChicago
It might contribute to decorum for posters not to refer to their readers as “motherfuckers”.
cain
@VeniceRiley: I agree. I’m going to be punishing the media. They are culpable.
I wouldn’t even trust Bluesky at this point.
cmorenc
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
For purposes of addressing income inequality and concentration of wealth, a crucial threshold question is: where exactly is the boundary where more income or more net worth is unjustly “too much”? $200k per year? $2 million in net worth? To pick a couple of arbitrary, but plausible figures.
Consider that in order to generate a 50k a year retirement income from conservatively invested assets @5% annual return rate, it would take a principal of $1,000,000. True, for most people the $50k would come from a combination of social security + saved & invested assets, there’s still the problem of where the capital to support the respective income streams comes from, and in what amounts. Someone still has to be making or contributing the principal from which that combined income stream comes.
The concrete question still remains: what amount of net worth and income is socially counterproductive enough to justify deliberately erosive taxes on income or assets above that amount? Consider that the number of folks who would answer the question: “wanna be a millionaire?” with “nope” is far smaller than the number who would answer “Hell, yes!”.
different-church-lady
@BritinChicago: That’s a term of endearment, silly.
Geminid
@Belafon: As the late M.D. Russ* put it:
* Russ, a retired Army Colonel and “Independent conservative,” wrote this in his June, 2020 article in Bearing Drift titled, “Trump is the Republican President.”
Butch
@Chris: Saw this earlier today:
Something doesn’t add up.
In 2020 Biden had 81 Million votes, Trump had 74 Million votes.
In 2024 Harris got 66 Million votes, Trump got 71 million votes.
15 Million Democrats decided to sit this one out? 3 Million MAGA decided to sit this one out?
Melancholy Jaques
@Kay:
I was thinking like this even a week ago when I was pretty confident that we were going to win. It’s hard to hear myself say such things because I’ve been politically engaged since I was a teenager and I always considered it a duty of a citizen in a democracy. But I look back at life time of never having any positive impact when it mattered most. 1980, 2000, & 2016 were all horrible moments, and while this one may not end up having the worst consequences, this one definitely feels the worst.
Yarrow
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: People wanted bankers’ heads on pikes after the 2008 great recession. That did not happen. No one at the top paid a price. Well, maybe one guy no one had heard of. People wanted perp walks and shaming and reform. They got none of it.
Dems missed a big chance then to show they were for the little guy. Biden has done a lot of good but it’s hidden under rightwing propaganda. Perp walks, court cases, prison time, shaming. Those kinds of things would go a long way to making people think there will be consequences for billionaires. But nope.
Instead we get this guy again who will pardon all the J6ers, probably pardon himself, jail anyone who dares take him to court and say he can under the immunity decree. Oh well. Here we are.
WereBear
@different-church-lady: Heck yeah, I need comfort!
And a Jedi mind hug back.
narya
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you. Even though, somehow, it’s your comment that finally made me cry. Thank you for being the helper I need today.
Chris
@suzanne:
Not even good lives, but anything at all.
We talk about people cooking sparrows on a curtain rod as long as the person next to them doesn’t even have a curtain rod, but that really undersells how petty it is. It’s more like “people in McMansions with three cars and a pickup truck are furious because the six-year-old immigrant in an ICE cage has a toothbrush.”
(Narrator: the immigrant does not, in fact, have a toothbrush. Volunteers tried to give him one at their own expense but were turned away by ICE officers. But damn it, the guy in the McMansion is now picturing the immigrant having his own toothbrush, when the guy in the McMansion doesn’t even have a private jet despite all his hard work, and it just makes him so mad. Don’t you try to tell him the story’s fake and the immigrant doesn’t have a toothbrush! Are you trying to take away his righteous indignation? Are you saying he’s stupid?)
different-church-lady
@WereBear: Yeah, well… my heart’s broken again too. But I’m getting used to it.
I’m not good at optimism. Sometimes it’s just best to cry it out.
What probably helps the most is knowing you’re not alone.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: I appreciate all your comments.
Chris Johnson
@UncleEbeneezer: They were saying ‘there is no Russian bogeyman’ directly out of the guys who were being paid lots of money by Russians. On Reddit, on 4chan, they were mocking the Russiagate thing as they were praising and admiring Putin. It’s basically lie #1.
Without that lie, this is simply another battle in a war that’s gone best for them online and in committee and in politics. When they have to actually invade, they struggle so hard they’re trying to recruit North Koreans. But online and in politics, they’re still working those 2016 tactics.
I don’t think they’d have got there if not for Elon, which explains why he was so desperate for Trump to win.
And of course it’ll be interesting to see if the received pravda from as early as possible this morning, THAT Trump in fact won, holds up. ‘cos part of it is stating that as early as possible and defending it to the death. They’d have said that no matter what happened.
YY_Sima Qian
@Butch: Still a lot of ballots to be counted, but a lot of Biden supporters did not show up to vote for Harris.
cmorenc
@Yarrow:
Consider that most people want to be wealthy (or at least significantly more so than they are), and the frustration was over the harm these banksters did to that ambition, and not because of the structural inequality they represented. It was the irresponsible cheating by individual actors, not the fundamental structure that supported it that the resentment was most directed at.
Chris
@different-church-lady:
MSM + Social Media + right-wing (in the recognized sense, i.e. the NewsCorpVerse, which probably has the least impact of the three on swinging non-partisan voters, but keeps the Republican partisans energized).
That’s the unholy trinity.
dlwchico
I don’t understand how nearly 15 million Democrat voters that showed up in 2020 didn’t show up for this one.
I guess I am just baffled at that level of apathy or ignorance of what is happening.
karen marie
As a country, we’re finished. There will be no coming back from this given the enormity of the damage. It was nice while it lasted,
Jeffro
In addition to pushing for a true pre-trumpov II economic ‘snapshot’, we ought to figure out a way to get Jack Smith to just publicly release everything he has. Otherwise, it will never see the light of day.
I’m sure that goes 110% against his grain, but perhaps that is the only way to kneecap trumpov before he gets going again. Have the U.S., and the world, see just what he did (especially with the classified documents).
Yes, I know “his base won’t care”. (We need to drop that framing, it’s a given, we know they only care about white supremacy). I want it all out there anyway. If it makes our allies stop sharing intel with the U.S., then oh well. If it makes folks in the U.S. agencies stop sharing sensitive details with the White House, then oh well. He can’t be trusted and the vile creatures around him are even worse.
Melancholy Jaques
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
This is exactly how Trumpsters talk.
different-church-lady
@Jeffro: Trump passing it all to the Russians will probably stop our allies from sharing intel.
cmorenc
@Jeffro:
I am surprised the Harris campaign didn’t focus the spotlight more on the obvious grave callous irresponsibility of Trump’s criminal hoarding of crucial classified documents in such a grossly insecure location.
tam1MI
The 3 Million is easy to explain – they are Nikki Haley Republicans. It’s the 15 million Dems who voted for Biden but stayed home rather than vote for Harris that is the shocker.
It’s looking more and more like forcing out Joe Biden was a catastrophic mistake.
different-church-lady
@cmorenc: ”Oh come on, it’s not like he’s a woman named Hillary.” /s
narya
@Jeffro: I was thinking EXACTLY this on my run this morning.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Jeffro:
That national security repercussions of this electoral outcome are dire. I’m sure people like Liz Cheney realized that and why she was out there campaigning for Harris.
The (R) base doesn’t give a shit about that anymore.
President Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
We started building a nascent one during the Bush years with Air America radio and the all-liberal MSNBC prime-time lineup. They’re both defunct, with the exception of Rachel Maddow, for one simple reasons: Democrats just don’t stay angry and focused the same way Republicans do.
Republicans mainline their talk radio and Fox News bullshit. There’s never a moment when they aren’t angry, fearful, hateful and looking to have that perpetually re-enforced through their right-wing media talking heads. Even when Trump was in office, they were still raging and glued to their TVs and radios to hear about how Democrats were somehow destroying the country. Those right-wing media avenues are the ONLY ones they watch, listen to and trust.
Democrats simply aren’t wired like that. They weren’t brainwashed on the notion that you can only trust ONE type of media source, ergo they’ll never cluster to a liberal radio or TV station in large enough numbers to have their brains re-programmed en masse. And because we’re not hate-based, Democrats seem to get burned out by too much ranting at a time, whereas Republicans can’t get enough.
On top of that, bear in mind that even if someone wanted to build new traditional media outlets for liberals, they would need to rely on megacorporations focused only on the bottom dollar and not ideological advancement like Fox. After all, MSNBC abandoned most of the primetime liberal lineup for financial/political reasons.
Whatever we’re going to build in the future will of course have to be social-media-focused. But because it’s so endlessly fragmented, it’s hard to fathom the kind of titanic effort it would take to build a centralized hub that’s even remotely comparable to what something like the Rogan show or Libs of Tik Tok is for republicans. Again, republicans cling to their media outlets; Democrats, to our detriment, just sort of drift in and out of that kind of engagement.
p.a.
Here’s how, against incumbents, McConnell as an example: “When Mitch was first elected he was worth $xyz and Kentucky was 44th in education achievement, 40th in infant mortality, 47th in divorce (made up numbers). Now after 30 years Mitch is worth $xyzM, and Kentucky is still 46, 41, 38… Vote Joe Schmoe for Senate.
Just pick the bad numbers, the Red States got them out the ass, like they focus on whatev price happens to be up this month against Dems.
Mai Naem mobile
@Jeffro: i hope Biden and his team.were considering the possibility of TFG winning and made some plans. I hope Biden goes ignores his institutional bent and releases all kinds of stuff. He’s got the blessing from SCOTUs to do whatever he wants. I hope there is some vengeful angle to Harris that she’ll pull some stuff too. TFG is going to destroy the national security apparatus of the US anyway. What difference does it make at this point? Release everything at this point. Release everything on fElon.
different-church-lady
@President Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
Sociopath just ain’t how I roll.
geg6
@Eolirin:
This. I have had a bunch of former students DMing me, asking what do we do now. Told them that I am just as devastated as they are and that I don’t have an answer yet. But I told them we have to fight back, no matter what. I don’t know how yet, but that we should absorb this blow and get back up and be ready.
dc
My passport doesn’t expire until 2026. But I’m going to renew it now (you can renew as early as you like) so that 1) I have a Biden administration passport and 2) my passport will be good until 2034.
rikyrah
I resent people who say that Democrats live in a bubble.
I know that they’re not talking about me.
I am a Black woman over 40 in the United States of America.
I have never had the privilege of living in any kind of a bubble. Life was just never set up for me or my people that way.
Black people have survived in America for 400 years because we take White people at their word.
There is no whitesplaining to us. No sane washing. We take them at their word.
I do know who lives in the bubble.
Those who are not White male heterosexuals and they voted for Trump.
Because, in their delusions, they think he meant someone ‘ other than them’.
No, Dear, he meant EXACTLY YOU.
So, when he does what he said he would do…
Don’t whine.
Don’t complain.
Don’t even think that you have the right to ask for any sympathy.
No.
You don’t think fat meat is greasy.
You’re about to find out that it is.
And, don’t purse your phucking lips towards anyone Black, asking for their assistance, or even their sympathy.
My only response to you will be:
The Black woman wouldn’t have done that to you.
WereBear
@different-church-lady:
Crikey, I have five cats, six African violets with their own grow light, and a pet fountain with a steel flower on top to meditate by. Especially if a cat head appears.
For years now I’ve been treating my own autoimmune issues with cheap strategies like these.
Maybe they can work for others, too.
eemom
The bottom line is white supremacy and sexism. That is what did this, and that is “who we are” as a country and always have been.
Yarrow
@Jeffro:
Yet again the misogyny and sexism is left out. They care about that a lot too. They want women in their “rightful place” in the kitchen, bedroom, with no resources, dependent on husbands who can leave them, rape them, or beat them without consequences. And if a woman does work that money is his.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Yarrow:
Yes, I think 2008-2012 was a turning point in how people perceive wealth inequality in our society and the feasibility of doing anything to change it. I think now it is widely seen as simply baked in and impossible to change. I think popular despair at effecting any sort of large scale positive change thru govt policy (which I mentioned above) draws upon this economic reality for support.
It does not help that the Left too is infected with despair and nihilism in today’s culture. Look at how Climate Change is discussed for example. Doom, doom, doom.
FDR’s New Deal drew some of its optimism and emotional energy from a reservoir of positivism and faith in Progress which persisted in the USA after the latter faded in Europe in the wake of the First World War. Today we need some of that faith in a better tomorrow, but rebuilding it is a challenge in the age of doomscrolling.
Quinerly
On the Latino vote….exit polling:
“Many said they felt dismissed by the Democratic Party and had seldom been courted by Republicans — until recently.”
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/06/election-trump-latinos-gains
Quinerly
@rikyrah: thank you.
tam1MI
We won’t have to worry about the Latino vote any more.
dm
To busy/depressed to scan the threads, I apologize. But I thought I’d share this from Amanda Litman of Run for Something:
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Trump-Vance’s spewing of lies and nonsense actually works.
It doesn’t work – it gets votes.
People believe what they want to believe. They have their hero, they have been heard. The difference is that they will hurt regardless of who wins and they want everyone else to suffer. shitforbrains is going to do nothing for anyone else but himself. he is not good at anything but stirring up shit. Never has been. But his supporters are either the ones that will believe anything that wealth says, or the one’s that benefit from the wealthy. Not benefit well mind you, but they believe that it is better. The politics in this country are ridiculous – one side is built upon hate and one side upon best for the most people. And hate is an easier emotion to run with. Easier to hate than learn and work. Easier to believe you have been shit upon all your life than to learn and work. Easier to hate than to exist as an equal. They found their leader, shitforbrains.
Some days I hate waking up.
@trollhattan:
Hate is always an easier thing to believe than the possible. It supports bullshit far easier than the truth. And bullshit is always accepted by the people that accept the easy way out. Or the only way out. A large segment of humanity has never learned that better has to be built but worse is always just around the corner. And their current leader is and always has been about worse – himself.
geg6
@emmyelle:
Totally agree. The people who voted for this are just awful people. I will not make excuses for them and every Cletus safari of the past decade makes it clear. I live among these assholes and mean and angry is their default. There is no good among them. Every one of them are like another life form to me. I hate them with a white hot hate that will never burn out. This is what they’ve driven me to, completely against my will. I will fight against them with my dying breath.
Quinerly
@dlwchico:
Not doubting you. Do you have a link?
suzanne
@tam1MI: Data I am seeing indicates that Latino men voted for Trump at a higher percentage than white women did.
M I S O G Y N Y.
Chris
@President Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
If there’s an audience problem, I’d say it’s that Democrats, and particularly educated Democrats who consider themselves politically engaged, consider it the worst sin in the world to be “blindly” partisan and therefore will tune out from such a station pretty quickly.
NYT or WaPo type nonsense, on the other hand, they eat up. They constantly trash the politicians they vote for, thus “proving” that they’re tough minded objective news sources who are no politician’s lackey and aren’t afraid of going against their readers’ perception, thus reassuring said readers that they’re getting something honest.
I don’t quite know how to explain to them that just because somebody’s contradicting you doesn’t mean he’s right.
WereBear
@Chris Johnson:
One thing for sure, they are not any more competent, or any less arrogant, than they ever were.
Which is part of the anger. We’re so afraid of “looking like the bad guy” we don’t put the hammer down when it is our obligation, even duty to do so.
Can the judge send the future President to prison? And he’s not President yet.
Quinerly
@Butch:
Not doubting you. Do you have a link?
Yarrow
@suzanne: Yep. And the media just ignores it. As do a lot of people. It’s our unmentioned sin.
Quinerly
@mapanghimagsik:
Very well could. If that’s the case, seems pretty obvious no one connected to the last 4 years in the Dem Party could have beat Trump.
geg6
@suzanne:
Exactly. They hate us. That’s all there is to it.
Quinerly
@tam1MI: yep.
TBone
I’m gonna reread the Art of War.
cain
@President Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
Problem here is that Democrats did not show up. So, I don’t know how this analysis fits in with that reality.
Our people did not show up to vote. Because they did not want to vote for a black woman. So the problem is much more serious with our own side.
Chris Johnson
@Jeffro: Oh dear GOD damn straight our allies will have to stop sharing data. It’s going to be tricky as hell for all.
What’s gonna have to happen is Americans will have to be careful about feeding important info to Vance, or Thiel, or Musk etc etc. that will go directly to Putin, so long as HE lasts. Maybe some of these people think when all the old fascists die they can end up holding the bag and ruling the WORLD. Thiel sure would be planning that one.
It’s weird to consider that both Trump and Putin are really, really failing and coming apart in slow motion. Becomes interesting to ask who will seize actual power in that event. In some ways Vance is even more craven than Pence: Pence at least is a religious loon, but Vance is an empty shell.
What happens if Thiel and Musk fall out? This is definitely their biggest collaboration since Paypal, but woof, I don’t know how much of a future there is in whatever they’re doing.
Chris Johnson
@cain: Funny how there were all those huge packed rallies and all.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chris: The MSM follows the trends on social media. Its social media that leads them, not the other way around. Twitter is 100% the worst thing to happen to quality news. So yeah, bitch about another product of social media and call for its replacement with what exactly?!
WereBear
@geg6: Yes. Mingling in a small town will be awkward, I can already tell.
I usually have no problem controlling my temper but my brief outing this morning was riven with tension because I felt the same way.
Not that I’ve been under any illusions about them, but also why I built an adult life a thousand miles away from where I went to high school. With a very good university system.
But I could not stand that kind of red state culture. For one thing, it made dating, even socializing, and especially work… more difficult.
Colleeniem
@WereBear: Out canvassing this cycle for a local legislator, I heard a lot of, “I don’t vote, as I don’t think it will affect me” (including from a Boeing worker on strike!!!!wtf) did explain that the local elections are the most important elections. But in our blue state (and blue district) with easy mail-in voting, voting rates were lower this year. I don’t know how to persuade people against nihilism, because it’s a definite trend.
Mike E
@Chris: I appreciate your sober takes… there are too many One Weird Trick Saves The World takes being put out by Monday Morning Quarterbacks, everywhere.
AWOL
@Jeffg166: Other nations have multiple political parties, including strong left-of-center parties that are actually left-of-center and fight for left-of-center things. They’ve even had people left-of-center in power. Social Democracy is accepted in many industrialized nations.
We’ve been hamstrung, and our “Left” is in the tank for whatever is anti–Democratic Party (see Pacifica and Amy Goodman).
I’d rather be in Amsterdam or Rome now fighting rightist control than the US. There would be organization, direction, and alliances to build with other left-of-center parties.
And again, thanks to all the good souls here who fought nobly. Reach out. Form alliances. Don’t interact with fascists
It’s why I love hearing from folks like Sheila from Australia.
WereBear
@cain: Not enough of them voted for the white woman, either.
Quinerly
I am not buying that she lost because of her race and sex. This is deeper.
This isn’t about her. It’s about our country and Trump voters. 51% of this country want him and his policies. Cruelty is their point. They want a perceived strongman/dictator personality.
VeniceRiley
@dc: You’re smart! I didn’t know that, and it’s good to know!
Archon
Hate to be a damper on this already terrible day but the era of normal politics ended last night. We are in the age of protests, mass mobilizations, strikes, and civil unrest. Trump is gonna govern like 80 percent of people voted for fascism and it is clear the Democratic party wasn’t or couldn’t be the bulwark to stop him and his fascist movement.
lowtechcyclist
@WereBear:
They’d like a free hand in reclaiming their old empire (‘their’ meaning the near-continuum with current Russia, the USSR before that, and the Tsarist empire before that. Starting with Ukraine, obviously, and seeing how far they can take it from there.
Since we’re the main obstacle, other than the people of those former Soviet ‘Republics,’ of course they want us weakened, divided, and/or with leaders who are overtly on their side.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The other thing that’s striking when you go back and read about ordinary voters in the Great Depression era is that they wanted their President to succeed. Not that they were groupies, but their approach to the New Deal was largely “whatever it is, he’s trying to fix our problems, and we hope it works.”
I don’t even know how to relate that mindset to our world. The last time an overwhelming majority of the public wanted their President to succeed in his undertaking was, tragically, George W. Bush and his war on terror (which I’m just barely old enough to remember the beginning of). It took four long years before the public started turning on it and him. People really wanted to believe that he was honestly doing his best to handle a national crisis and wanted to be good citizens and have his back in return. They only turned against him once it became completely impossible to deny that he was fucking everything up and barely even trying not to.
That’s dead now. Obama tried briefly to appeal to a similar spirit of national unity in response to the 2008 recession and the Republican response, infamously, was “I hope he fails.” Biden’s gotten the same even worse and from more quarters. For obvious reasons, Democrats can no longer trust in the good faith of Republican presidents and therefore can’t hope for them to succeed, since they literally define “success” as “taking away all our rights if not killing us.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I don’t know if we’re there yet in terms of root causes for the under-voting compared to Biden’s numbers but it’s a useful observation to look at going forward.
Harris’s raw numbers are close to Clinton’s. I’ve said this in other threads, combining black and woman might have been too much, ie., we could have done one or the other but not both.
Lemme stress, this is not to say we shouldn’t have, we did, great candidate, no recriminations, we’re pushing the political culture envelope the best we can. But the baked in issues we’re talking about won’t go away in 4 years.
geg6
@Quinerly:
You and I have not agreed on much lately, but I couldn’t agree more about this.
Tazj
@dlwchico: I have been thinking about that too. Why didn’t more Democrats turn out to vote? Did they think she was going to win easily because she raised more money and had more endorsements ?Did they view Trump as ridiculous but not dangerous?Were they apathetic because of the economy? Is there a lot of regret now?
WereBear
Women stayed home and didn’t defend rights they had been turning out for.
That’s another thing I wonder about.
There’s also the fear. How many people worried they would vote D and get on a “target list”?
Time to be afraid of the children talking if they go back to school? Is it already happening? Did it happened more in red states, where they are always sure to know your business and don’t think about civic duty or anything silly like that.
And they know it.
Soprano2
@Old School: He was advertising that they were doing a live show last night.
RaflW
“We need our own media ecosystem, it’s been said forever, but, as Atrios points out, the money Democrats spend on elections generally doesn’t build us anything.”
I’m gonna hang onto the idea that ‘generally’ leaves room for us to look at orgs like WisDems. A good friend ran for State Assembly twice, first time she got beat pretty hard, but with redistricting — which happened in good part because WisDems (and the candidate, of course) fucking won the Protasiewicz state supremes race — my friend won last night.
On Halloween she told me in a very casual way, while describing a shitty op-ed battle in her local paper, the incredible support she got as a candidate. I’m gutted that WI voted for Trump. It’s f*ing awful. But I think WI would have been far, far worse, and the WI lege would be a gerrymandered utter piece of shit for decades to come, were it not for WisDems, Ben Wikler, and the many people running that shop.
Dems across the country should damn well take note.
UncleEbeneezer
@eemom: Yup. I would only add Xenophobia, to make it an unholy trinity. That’s a huge one, though definitely intimately related to (and usually rooted in Racism).
Melancholy Jaques
@cain:
I’m inclined to agree after seeing that drop from Biden to Harris.
Ruckus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Part of that early last century stuff was easy to sell because of the lack of information in society way back then. Now it is easier to sell miss-information, more commonly known as bullshit because a large segment of humanity believes bullshit above all else. They don’t trust anyone so everything looks bad. And so they go with the person that is pure bullshit. And no it doesn’t make sense in any way shape or form.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Since this is all the ‘social media’ I am exposed to, I gotta say: the MSM was pretty damn terrible. Social media may have been ten times worse, but if the MSM is the lesser of the two evils, no wonder we’re in bad shape.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Chris:
I had an acquaintance who was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. I had former work friends in the Pentagon (on the far side of where the plane hit) who evacuated. Another friend worked for the SEC, slept thru his subway stop by one, got out and was walking back to the Towers when the second plane hit. As he put it “I never want to see people jump out of a high rise ever again”. Thus, what happened was personal to a degree most of my (R) neighbors back in Central Misery couldn’t understand.
So in the immediate aftermath, even people like me who despised Dubya and everything he was trying to do even that early on in his (mal)administration wanted what you said, for him to succeed. Thing is, most of us knew from the gitgo that he was such an incompetent wastrel that he would screw things up like he had everything else in his life. Alas, he lived down to those expectations.
But, until that became more broadly apparent, yeah, we wanted the US to “succeed” and if that meant getting behind that idiot, so be it.
But (R) after the Obama election telegraphed what the party would do, as you say. And they’ve stuck to that script.
Quinerly
@geg6:
Thank you. We probably agree on more than you realize. When the dust clears and the “autopsy” is done I think the conclusion will be no one in the Dem Party as it is could have beat him. This is a reflection on the country and what a majority of voters truly want. Not a reflection on Harris, Biden or anyone else we could have run.
Ramona
@Chris: I don’t remember how the mainstream media reported on Trump during the run-up to the 2020 election but of course they didn’t have to report much given that the pandemic was in full blast and I remember his favorability measures going down day by day as he blathered on about the pandemic in daily briefings until he stopped.
I am curious as to how the MSM depressed Democratic turnout this time around though.
Granted, the MSM deceived about Afghanistan and inflation and sullied Biden but how did they depress turnout? Was it by weighting polls so that public opinion looked to favor Trump?
WereBear
@Ruckus: It’s the CONFIDENCE.
No one sells with their whole soul like a con artist. They become your dream opportunity.
So Trump lost in 2020 because he wasn’t dictator ENOUGH?
Butch
@Quinerly: The information was posted anonymously and was repeated at a site called New Day Cafe on Daily Kos. It’s in line with other information I’ve seen so I felt OK in posting it; I don’t have a link.
Belafon
@WereBear: And he gives people a way to blame someone else. Us Democrats keep talking about how we’re in this together. His way requires no introspection.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
Yes, that mindset seems as lost to us today as the uncritical Positivism of the Victorians seemed to the shell shocked survivors of the First World War. We missed some of that in the USA having been very late entrants to the Great War and more than half of US Army casualties in that period came not from enemy action but from the 1918 Flu.
I do not think nihilism is a permanent condition. In some respects I think it is a luxury more easily indulged in by people who are comfortable and safe than by those who face truly existential threats.
I was kind of hoping that in the USA we could shake off this bitter, cynical and paralyzing & self-disarming mood (which reminds me very much of a similar nihilistic burn-it-all-down mood in elite European culture as documented by Modris Eksteins The Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Moderan Age) without going thru a really bad existential threat on the scale of two world wars and the Great Depression.
But that sounds like a big ask at this point. I think we may have to do this the hard way, not the easy way.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ramona:
This site skews older and I really think there is a lack of understanding of just how many people are getting their news entirely from Facebook, X, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, and not the MSM. On those sites, there was a continuous and deeply, deeply dishonest effort to smear Biden and then Harris. So I think the answer is not much, because that isn’t where most people get their information. Real news consumers mostly DID vote for her. You can tell by that vote totals among the college educated. The only people I know who read the MSM are all college educated. The others only get their news from partisan outlets and social media.
Quinerly
@Butch: 👍
Soprano2
This is why I can’t listen to “Living on Earth”. All it seems to be is gloom and doom about how we’re doomed to destroy Earth.
Ramona
@WereBear: you might well be right. How do we find them and show them they can be part of a knowledgeable band of decision-makers?
Ramona
@Chris: thanks, you just answered the question I had which will appear further down. I agree with you completely! We on the left should continue to redirect our subscription money from WaPo and NYT to ProPublica!
JoyceH
We lost FIFTEEN MILLION votes? I’m finding that hard to believe. Yesterday it looked like a high turnout election and the early vote was breaking records. Where did they go?
Ruckus
Another issue is that some people will believe bullshit far faster and easier than the truth. Mostly they seem to be the people that have been fed bullshit their entire lives. In some it started with the stork delivers babies and blossomed from there. They sometimes find out the truth of how and where babies come from (often because they don’t seem to know) and then believe that everything they’ve ever heard is on that same level. Lies. And so they don’t know what to believe. In my 3/4 of a century I’ve been trying to understand why so many people cannot believe that telling the truth isn’t better. Telling the truth so that people can make actual decisions. Will they make more bad decisions? Or less? Humanity is fun isn’t it?
Ramona
@different-church-lady: we need each Other! I’m 60 years old, unemployed, an immigrant with no family here in the US. I’d like to meet up with fellow jackals before inauguration day. I am no good at organizing such things.
Geminid
This morning from Al Jazeera, “US election: Did Trump gain Hispanic voters despite ‘floating garbage’ jibe?”
So a majority of Hispanic Americans still vote Democratic, but there has been a dropoff.
Al Jazeera citing the civil rights group UnidosUS:
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: DM me on Twitter or email me. I left you my email address in another thread.
Mai Naem mobile
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: and FB, tiktok and Instagram don’t help. They show these fake filtered pic people with their fake lives and it takes a relatively long time for somebody new to FB+Insta to figure out that you’re looking at people on their best days not their average shitty mundane lives. Its just creating envy of a fake person. I have a friend who stopped going on social media cold turkey and one of the things she said was she just wanted to see somebody on social media living an average life having a shitty day with all the real negative stuff that goes with having a shitty day.
Baud
@Geminid:
Sounds like a Texas and Florida problem.
Do we have demo on who didn’t show up compared to 2020?
Ramona
@Butch: I was wondering that too but I think all of California has yet to be counted. Also much of Maine and Alaska. We’ll have to wait and see. I hope Kamala does not call him to concede but just speaks to us when we can be sure there have been no shenanigans. I’m suspicious of absentee ballots from Georgia and Pennsylvania being undelivered or returned when filled.
WereBear
@Belafon: Like calls to like.
Fools flock to the best one of themselves. Which is why they perhaps do not resonate with positive messages.
Their daily experience is that nothing improves. They heard Trump promise health care, and they still have it, and they don’t connect the two, even if they have health care now, and they did not, then.
They are seemingly helpless as cause and effect. Also, I think they believe what they hear the most.
Full stop.
It’s not anything they do not admit to, mind you. I bother them when I use my mind and present logical arguments. They gave that up in high school. That means — to so many of them — that they don’t have to do it anymore.
We can’t even go to the movies and escape, because they have ruined that too. Yes, it sucks, but it’s another economic engine the fascists are ruining, and blaming it on people who aren’t white men.
Ksmiami
@karen marie: exactly. Nil
Barry
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
“I think this in particular might change once some R’s have their kids/grandkids die in ER parking lots. They only care when it’s someone related to them. They’re the tribal party.”
IMHO, their closest relatives will care; the rest will happily step over their bodies.
Chris
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I was thirteen and living in DC, though thankfully no one I know died. I didn’t have a sense of politics much more complex than that of a classic WWII movie. But one thing I do remember a few years after the attack is going to visit a friend of my dad’s in the area (both of them liberal), and while my dad was doing the good-soldier we’re-all-Americans shtick, his friend was just going “oh Jesus, and now we’re going to have to go through all this with that fucking idiot at the helm. God help us all.” He dismissed everything my dad said about Bush’s efforts to calm down and rally the country, saying that with the country in the state it was in, a fucking tree stump could’ve given a speech and made it feel “resonant” and “reassuring.”
Naturally, I thought this was stupid, and that my father had the correct attitude. But looking back from a few years later, the cynic (to this day I don’t remember his name or even his face) was absolutely right.
Same thing happened to me in school on the day of (admittedly an international school with a lot of non-American kids), where one of the class clowns’ first reactions was “I bet this wouldn’t have happened if Gore were president.” The history teacher was appalled: “I can’t believe you’re getting partisan at a time like this!” Which naturally I agreed with, even though I knew my entire family had supported Gore. But again, you know what? That kid was right. We’d have had a better chance of dodging it if Al Gore were President, and even if we hadn’t our response wouldn’t have been such a fucking disaster.
Melancholy Jaques
@Ramona:
I despise the political media and I’m sure their sane-washing of Trump for the last nine years hurt in ways we cannot really measure. But I do not think they are the culprits to the extent they were in 2000 & 2016.
This comes down to people not wanting to vote for a woman of color for president. 15 million fewer votes? That’s got to be the focus right there.
What I fear is that in 2028, Democratic primary voters are going to insist upon something like a return to the DLC days. I cannot throw up enough.
Jackie
I woke up this morning thinking about my four young grandkiddos – two of each sex.
I thought about Project 2025 and the implications for their futures.
I am numb.
Trollhattan
Kinda miss my 10 Harris-Walz emails/hour.
Belafon
@JoyceH: Yeah, I’m still wondering that as well.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
My concern as well.
piratedan
when the price of eggs hits 5.49 (one dozen) four months after a bird flu epidemic ten months ago is a more potent economic driving point than saving the institution of Democracy itself, I think that the shallowness of our neighbors needs to be taken into account about just how incurious they are about how all this works. They want what they want, cheap groceries, access to stuff and bread and circuses on the TV. Apparently, everything else is simply noise.
Tazj
@Trollhattan: They started texting me again a few minutes ago. Will you answer an exit poll? Nope.
WereBear
@Ramona: They will tell you it sounds like too much work.
Their own lives don’t seem worth that much effort. In addition, they would lose family and friends.
In red states, that’s all you have. Boatrockers boat alone. No one else will show up to help them. (Whether that is true, or not.)
If they can’t grasp the bigger concept we are trying to sell, they will grasp nothing. And we will, at best, sound like nonsense to them.
They are not modern people. Which is why their culture and religion are the same thing.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: @Melancholy Jaques:
Provided its still an option in 3 years, the next Democratic candidate will be much less progressive than Biden or Harris, full-stop. I read an article in Vox that laid out the arguments for why that is likely to happen and it made the most sense to me.
Chris
@Melancholy Jaques:
That’s certainly what’s happened to the Labour Party in the U.K.
It’s not even clear that they’re wrong; a lot of it was bad media, but plenty of the whining about inflation suggests that there really is a big chunk of the population that would happily have recessions and high unemployment as long as they personally aren’t fired, because then things would cost a little bit less.
WereBear
@Ramona: Oh, I see your question in another light now, and agree. I have been telling people about Youtube channels like Glenn Kirshner and Brian Tyler Cohen, bringing real journalism to legal matters, for instance.
Mai Naem mobile
@Eolirin: it’s because new people have to learn this lesson every 20 years or so. You can’t sit elections out. Right now I’m done. I just don’t have the energy to try and elect another Dem to fix a broken country just to see the stupids in this country vote for the GOP to again break things. I’m done with this rinse and repeat cycle. I just have a horrible feeling this one’s going to be really really bad – like the Great Depression/WwIi level of bad.
Barry
@lowtechcyclist: “Social media may have been ten times worse, but if the MSM is the lesser of the two evils, no wonder we’re in bad shape.”
And if the MSM is mostly wrong, it wont’ help with social media lies.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WereBear:
Agree. The misogyny is deeply, deeply ingrained.
Ramona
@Jeffro: can the 11th circuit set up briefings for the dismissal of the documents case, rule that dismissal was wrong and then pause the case and toll the statute of limitations until Trump’s term is up?
Anyway
People/normies don’t seem to care about legislative accomplishments. But I am dispirited that cancelling student loans did not do much for the administration. It was the right thing to do and am glad it was done but they did not receive props for it.
Baud
@Anyway:
Not true. It hurt us with a lot of voters.
Anyway
@Baud: That’s even worse …I got nothing.
dc
@JoyceH:
The people who were excited and cared about democracy voted early or by mail. The others did not show up.
schrodingers_cat
If we want to win again we need to build our own media infrastructure. The current one is beyond redemption.
Kelly
I spent some time yesterday dealing with climate change. Our homeowners insurance company is shutting down do to losses from the 2020 Beachie Fire. Found another company and began the paperwork. Came home and followed the election. We’re not gonna get much fire line around climate change anytime soon. Like building fire lines around a wildfire everything we do can help keep the damage from getting worse. When we can cope with climate change again it will help but in the meantime much will be lost.
WereBear
As I keep saying, it’s the same Civil War, now waged by other means.
Confederates, cheat. The book by Edward H. Bonekemper III, The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won is the best book I’ve ever read on the subject.
His description of the way the Confederate states behaved in the runup to Fort Sumter is pure Trump.
No wonder modern Confederates embraced him.
Sure Lurkalot
@Quinerly: How much of this is the RW buying up radio stations and blasting their disdain for liberals, women, LGBTQIA in Spanish? There are many spaces the hate funnel infiltrated and built up with little to counter it.
Ramona
@Baud: I think
@Anyway: was agreeing with you…
Baud
@Ramona:
Ignore the ‘Not true’. The comment was edited after I said it.
Geminid
@Baud: I think analysts might take a while to develop solid data on who did not show up this time. As I recall from the 2021 McAuliffe/Youngkin race, Virginia election officials did not release voting roll data until two months after the election.
But I bet there are people out there who say they can tell me right now, and maybe they can.
Quinerly
@Sure Lurkalot: nailed it.
arrieve
@piratedan:
All of this. I happened to read something I wrote a couple of years ago, in the midst of COVID madness. We had vaccines, and it looked as though it was going to be possible to have some kind of life without constant fear of dying again. But what scared me most then was the economic fallout. I didn’t see how we could come out of that kind of worldwide disruption without major harm, if not a depression that would rival the 1930’s.
And as I read it I thought, we were so lucky–that didn’t happen. But now I think maybe it did happen, and that it played a role in the turn to the right that is going on in so many countries now. I’m not discounting racism, misogyny, transphobia and blatant assholery. We’ve all seen that ugliness in far more gleeful detail than I could ever have imagined. But Covid did break our economies–ours less than others because we were blessed to have Biden–but the supply chain issues, inflation, corporate greed, have all hurt regular people. And normies don’t know and don’t care that this was worldwide and that we were actually better off than most countries. They kept telling everyone who asked that the economy sucked. They think that the president can make prices go down again. They didn’t really listen to anything Kamala had to say about what she would do to make things better. They’re pissed off, and they think that Trump can take them back to the pre-pandemic world.
jayne
@Anyway: Most people don’t even know it happened. They don’t know that Biden has been working behind the scenes to address price gouging and monopolization of public services, or about capping drug prices, or anything else. The media was too busy trying to make this a “both sides are bad” race and the leftist pundits were too busy claiming that the the economy was already fixed to wonder if maybe they spread that news around to the folks eating store-brand spam in its newly smaller packaging and praying they make rent because wages are the only thing that haven’t tripled in price over the last 10 years.
different-church-lady
@Mai Naem mobile: Social media is about ego. Full stop.
Quinerly
@Anyway: there is exit polling that Biden’s canceling student loans actually HURT Harris with voters. I hope to find a link. It was being discussed on Morning Joe with a list of other things brought up in exit polling.
Baud
@Quinerly:
Is exit polling only election day voters? Seems not completely representative.
cain
@Mai Naem mobile:
A lot of people are going to suffer, many will die.
One of the things that is giving me palpitations is the kind of picks Trump will have for the various agencies. Fucking Kennedy in charge of health? JFC.. he will eliminate all vaccines. We are going to regress to the 40s with polio and other diseases coming back.
God knows what’s going to happen with education. This is their chance to really make systemic changes if project 2025 is any indication.
cain
@jayne:
Lot of speculation on reddit that a lot of Dems decided not to vote because of Palestine.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly:
YOUNGS: “You won’t do anything about student debt and we hate that you’re an old white dude.”
BIDEN: “OK, I’ll cancel your debt and step aside for a younger mixed woman.”
YOUNGS: “Thanks! We’ll stay home.”
different-church-lady
@cain: Congratulations! Now you’re gonna get even more death in Palestine!
Mike E
@cain: yeah, more dispiriting trollery. Easy to do in this situation, with this crowd. It’s bullshit but you already know that, disregard.
Baud
@Mike E:
Agree.
piratedan
@Quinerly: I heard Michael Steele point to this last night…. “regular” folks looked at that and said, great for “them” what about me? Completely forgot or ignored all the work keeping them fed and employed during the pandemic. Not even an acknowledgement that ever happened. Same with unions, they don’t belong to one, so no ponies there either. No recognition that businesses were gouging them, just that prices were higher, so that hurt. They didn’t care about the why, no curiosity about the why, just the IS. Trump tapped into that.
Saw a Trump ad directed to white women…. about its a secret on who you vote for…
they cited higher prices, immigration woes, higher crime and then casting a ballot for Trump.
all lies, all essentially bullshit. effective, possibly.
Grover Gardner
I jist finished reading Frederic Paxon’s “History of the American Frontier,” written in 1924. It’s an excellent book that charts not only the rise and fall of the American frontier, but also the persistence of “frontier values” in the collective American mind. (BTW, Paxon is no cheerleader–he casts a gimlet eye on the first century of America’s existence and growth. He’s even quite fair to Native Americans, despite some dated terminology.) IMO it explains a lot about America and is well worth reading. The overriding impression it leaves you with is that, from the end of Washington’s presidency onward, the Federal government has been regarded as useless unless and until it 1) gives me free land and grazing rights; 2) regulates things that cheat me, like railroad shipping rates; 3) steers the railroad my way; 4) stays the hell out of my life unless my mortgage/wheat prices/land acquisition etc. etc. are under threat; 5) keep the damn furriners out of my county/territory/state, unless they’ll do the grunt work for me at slave wages–and so on and so on. Oh, and banks are bad unless I need money, in which case I should be able to start my own bank, soak the investors, then skip town.
I think you get the idea. The American “frontier” mentality was and remains a clusterf*ck of contradictions, and it persists everywhere east/south of New York and west/north of Los Angeles. Fast forward to today and you can see the parallels in many voters’ reactions to inflation, prices, wages, immigration, etc.
The book also provides salient reminders that American politics have always been nasty and rife with greed, self-dealing and corruption. Trump may be taking these things to new heights (or depths), but the template is firmly in place.
Quinerly
@Baud: Excellent point.
suzanne
@different-church-lady: Youth turnout doesn’t appear to be down.
Student loan forgiveness activated a lot of people who think government help is only for them.
Quinerly
“DOJ Looking at How to Wind Down All Trump Cases Before Inauguration”
MSNBC reporting
Quinerly
@suzanne: yet first time voters broke for Trump.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly: We don’t know that first time voters are inherently youngs.
WereBear
@Grover Gardner:
There’s been some excellent analysis online, showing how the classic Little House series started as a wrenching memoir about luring people to the Western states with the dream of landowning.
Over and over.
Because subsistence farming is miserable until it fails, and people would move to town and gets jobs. With what passed at the time for actual healthcare, reliable schooling, professional security. Everyone loved it.
Except the father, who would get fired up about going at it again. They never made it. Were it not for her daughter who helped her turn the grim memoir into a children’s series, we wouldn’t have this glimpse into the truth. Because what generations still got was a myth.
And I still dwell among those for whom the distinction matters, because there are some people I won’t pointedly avoid but still will.
cain
@piratedan:
One thing that I learned when Reagan got elected was that Americans don’t give a fuck about why something is the way it is. They just want it fixed by any means necessary. Carter got fucked because he was talking about climate and what not. Reagan tapped into that and got us all cheap gas prices.
It’s super important to understand that the American voting public are extremely self centered and entitled. They expect to use our supremacy to fuck up the world so that they can continue to be as they are.
If there is one good thing out of this, we will no longer be a world power and won’t be able to bully anybody.
Quinerly
@different-church-lady:
Excellent points. I would love to see the data on that.
Chris
@Anyway:
@Baud:
@Anyway:
Student loan forgiveness is actually a perfect example of why economic policy is fucked in a society that has zero concept of solidarity.
The story is that people were upset at the thought of their hard-earned tax money going to bail out a niche special interest group that most people don’t belong to.
The unstated caveat: EVERY economic policy you can possibly think of is a gift to a niche special interest group that most people don’t belong to. Student loan forgiveness is bad, because most people aren’t college students with debt. But the ACA was bad, because most people weren’t (currently) people too poor or preexisting to buy insurance. And helping out homeowners would be bad, because most people haven’t lost their homes to predatory lenders. And supporting unions is bad, because most people aren’t in a union, and even those that are aren’t in that union. And paying for free childcare would be bad, because a lot of people don’t have kids, a lot of those that do have them all grown up already, and still others prefer to rely on family or whatever for childcare. And…
People whine that we need to focus on “bread and butter issues” that “help everyone” rather than “handouts” to small interest groups, but there basically is no “this thing will help everyone!” button. It’s all a bunch of policies, any individual one of which, when you break it down, can be demonized as “picking ordinary people’s pockets to help a small group of moochers!”
There may very well not be an answer to this. In a middle-class, atomized, individualist, consumer society like this one, let alone an Information Age society that’s constantly manufacturing one little scandal after another about random people we’ll never meet but get a thrill out of being outraged at (remember “oh my God this lady sued McDonalds because her coffee was too hot?” And that was before Twitter or Facebook!)… it may in fact be too much to ask that something as basic as “you’re spending money on new roads in Topeka? Well, are you also spending money on new schools in my city? Then I don’t care, have my vote” can ever get to 270 electoral votes. Which doesn’t bode well for the future.
Belafon
@cain: That last part isn’t going to happen anytime soon. It took Rome 500 years to stop being a major power, and, right now, we’re still the biggest gun and the biggest ship.
Quinerly
Well, Andrea Mitchell just redeemed herself in my eyes. She thinks Hunter Biden should be pardoned by his father “now.”
Baud
@Quinerly:
I agree. He shouldn’t be in a federal prison that Trump is in charge of.
cmorenc
The stock market reaction today is gangbusters for our portfolio – up 1.75% today. But let’s see what happens if Trump tries to follow through on his tariff plans – might not be sitting so pretty 6 months from now.
cain
@Mike E:
Apparently, Dearborn went to Trump and Jill Stein apparently got 18% of the vote because of Gaza.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/06/trump-wins-dearborn-and-makes-gains-in-hamtramck/76085841007/
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Good to see the Biden DOJ obeying in advance
Ohio Mom
@WereBear: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose was an early Libertarian.
After I learned this, I saw those books in a different light — and had loved them, and reread them so much I had parts memorized. They are propaganda.
I just went looking for a link to give you and now the hostage all about Rose being bi-polar, which is news to me, nevertheless she was a horrid person.
tam1MI
Because over the summer the Dem party told them that their votes didn’t matter, and they took that message to heart.
cain
@Belafon: Yes, that’s true. But Trump is going to shut down things like NATO and so on and do a shakedown, but eventually the other countries are going to take advantage of Trump specifically China and Russia. Europe will have to disengage with the U.S. at that point because they now have Russia as a threat with the U.S. helping. I’m not sure how much things will change in the next 4 years on this front but I think these are all real possibilities.
Chris
@Belafon:
Yeah, don’t underestimate how fast that can go downhill.
Quinerly
@piratedan: heard that segment too. I have been up since 4AM yesterday so a lot of stuff is running together like a crazy dream.
Maria Teresa Kumar was just telling a story about an ad being run in the Hispanic community that seemed to be effective….when Harris was in CA she had Hispanic parents arrested for the truancy of their kids. All a big fat lie, of course. I have no idea how we fight this kind of lies and misinformation.
Belafon
@Chris: No, you definitely have to balance it with the history of the Spanish Armada, but China isn’t quite ready.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cain:
I’m sure Trump will be so much better for the Palestinians /s
cmorenc
@Chris:
Social security was an example of “help everyone”. But even so, maybe it took the egregious example of the then-recent hard crash of unbridled laissez-faire capitalism in the Great Depression, when the economic pain was near-universal across society, to create the necessary favorable social conditions for its broad support.
PJ
The bottom line is that Harris got many fewer votes than Biden, despite him being supposedly much less popular than she was. As of now, Harris only has 67 million votes, versus 81 million for Biden in 2020. (Trump’s vote count right now is 72 million, down 2 million from 74 million in 2020). Her vote count will increase over the next few days, but it’s not going to go up by 14 million.
Harris’ campaign team was basically Biden’s, and I don’t think there was much she could have done better that would have made a difference. So I don’t think it was her campaign that’s at fault.
There are a lot of plausible explanations for why she got so many fewer votes, but these seem the most likely to me:
1) Democrats did not turn out to vote like they did in 2020. While turnout is lower in general, I find it hard to believe that the missing 14 million voters were all Independents and Never Trump Republicans in 2020;
2) This is a deeply racist and misogynistic country, and people are much more willing to vote for an old white guy than a black woman;
3) Non-Democrats (Independents and Never Trump Republicans) liked Joe Biden a lot more than Kamala Harris, probably because, despite being the most progressive President of the last 50 years, he has the reputation of a being a moderate.
In any event, big money Democratic donors and Nancy Pelosi got what they wanted, Biden stepped down, and we see the result.
WereBear
@Chris: It lends credence to the shortened attention spans that have spread like a mind virus.
And Q is still operational. Talk about outsourcing your thinking. It has been the app/community/chatbot these folks have been waiting for. Speaking of which, I keep up with the research and it seems one explanation goes that many people grabbed it as a “way of making sense of things” during the Pandemic.
Now, I’m not saying I can’t be lured into a cult, but it will be anti-science one. (If I ever make such statements, send kittens!)
Chris
@tam1MI:
I wonder. I don’t take it for granted that that was our biggest problem… but I fully expect that not a single media outlet will investigate the possibility, because all of them are 100% devoted to the narrative that Biden had 0% approval rating and that removing him was the best possible move for the Democrats.
By the way, you know who’s really going to make a comeback in our next electoral cycle? The chaos caucus fucks. “Well, Joe Biden obviously wasn’t an option, the coronation of Kamala didn’t pay off – clearly the solution is to go back to letting the candidates be picked by party bosses in smoke-filled rooms!” As if the prospect of a DLC comeback weren’t enough.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: Indeed! Recurring donations to ProPublica. They have proven they have the chops!
WereBear
@Ohio Mom: Friends with Ayn Rand. What a gruesome twosome.
Ramona
Ramona
NOVEMBER 6, 2024 AT 1:33 PM
My speculation of the variety Bad news/Good news: A recurrence of the Covid19 pandemic has most likely been prevented by the excellent Biden administration public health management which means that Trump/RFK will trigger a resurgence of at least a US epidemic. The good news is that hopefully Blue localities will vaccinate their people and we Dems will mask up and Trump won’t be able to avoid the blame.
WereBear
He still is avoiding it, because no one blamed him last time.
And he mowed through his own voters, worse than the damage intentionally inflicted on the blue states by the Trump Administration.
They will die before they admit it. Literally. Dying of Whiteness is a book and a syndrome.
Chris
@cmorenc:
Not really. If you introduced Social Security today, it would get eviscerated rhetorically for the same reasons: “but what about all the people who were responsible and saved instead of drinking all their money away and are not getting a bailout? This isn’t faaaair!” combined with “well, I’m not (currently) an Old, so this is just a burden on me not a benefit!”
(As with the ACA, nobody who’s currently healthy wants to think about the future).
cain
@WereBear: Literally made his people wait during his rallys and they didn’t care.
Mike E
dupe
Mike E
@cain: I can’t even begin to describe how stupid this reporter’s take is, it would be akin to explaining a really bad joke and then realizing that the joke is on me having to explain it… only Dems have agency, there’s your punchline
cain
@Mike E:
It is of course stupid, but apparently a lot of people are in fact that stupid.
ETA – lot of muslims will be going to the mosques a lot for even more rituals once Trump and Bibi start laying into the Palestinians. They get what they voted for.
Quinerly
Baldwin retains her WI Senate seat.
Chris
@WereBear:
I’ve been in a cult, if you consider a couple years as a Republican when I was a teenager hopped up on 9/11 zeitgeist and too many Tom Clancy novels.
I ultimately dropped out, and for several reasons, but probably the most emotionally resonant one is simply that after a while you realize that all it is is just being an asshole. And while there’s a time and place for being an asshole, it’s not something you can build a whole worldview on.
The Trump era is proof that a lot of people have that same realization, and instead of stepping back, embrace it.
tam1MI
Jill Stein was right there to pick up a protest vote on Palestine. She got nothing. It wasn’t Palestine that caused those 15 million Dems to stay home.
cain
@tam1MI:
A lot of retrospective needs to happen. But I can’t fault the Harris campaign on their ground game or their approach. She apparently was the wrong candidate for these assholes.
Quinerly
Leaving this here.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/us-elections-2020/cnn-exit-poll-bidens-approval-rating-underwater-as-voters-voice-discontent/3385210
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: This is a good read on Rose Wilder:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/wilder-women
AM in NC
@different-church-lady: Yep, this has been my worry for about a decade now. I don’t see how anything gets better until we deal with our information ecosystem and how disinformation is just allowed to be pushed into the system with ZERO accountability.
I think this is the great challenge of all of us not on the authoritarian right – how are we going to disrupt this?
tam1MI
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m sure Trump will be so much better for the Palestinians
It wasn’t about the Palestinians. It was about a power play in the Democratic party. Problem is, Rashida Tlaib and her fellows are now going to be left in the dust as the Democratic party rushes to the right in order to survive.
Anyway
Apologies for the bad edit. I was squeezing in some comments during a quick work break and didn’t indicate the edit explicitly.
Like everyone else here I’m in a funk :-(
Anyway
@Quinerly: What happened to Casey?
(I haven’t left the Jackal bubble since I got back from my poll worker shift at 11 pm last night. The vibes were so bad I decided not to check any other media. Your overnight comments clued me in to the extent of the disaster …)
cain
@Quinerly: So they didn’t like Biden either. Looks like no Dem would have been good enough.
The Audacity of Krope
There could be a few reasons, but I’d say the generalized sense that Democrats only stand up for what’s right when it’s politically convenient is both accurate and had a few salient examples this year.
Quinerly
@Anyway: hasn’t been called. He was down a point or 2 an hour so ago.
Quinerly
@cain: sensible and coherent people will understand that. At least I do. I suspect you do too.
Maybe we should be framing any criticism of Harris not winning around the fact her hands were tied to a 107 day race. And tied to the deeply unpopular policies of the administration she was serving in.
Melancholy Jaques
@Ruckus:
And then cling to it like grim death.
tam1MI
And now we can all see how well Dems panicking and backstabbing their own leader worked out for them and us. They cut and run when they should have stood and fought. We will pay for their cowardice dearly.
The Audacity of Krope
@Quinerly: Maybe we should be framing any criticism of Harris not winning around the fact her hands were tied to a 107 day race. And tied to the deeply unpopular policies of the administration she was serving in.
And the fact that rather than challenge the reasons for that lack of popularity, we accepted, provided it enough additional life to do major damage.
And I don’t want to hear about the tactical considerations, who had a better chance.
Wrong is wrong is wrong. Some of y’all sold your souls for a bag of magic beans that turned out to grow rotten oranges, from the top of the party down to the rank and file.
I keep coming back to the spike in Google searches by people who just learned yesterday that Biden wasn’t running.
PJ
@Quinerly:
Exit polls don’t account for the people who don’t go to the polls. What people are unhappy about is not Biden’s policies, but inflation (which, of course, is the lowest in the developed world, not that you’d know it from the media.) But those people who are unhappy didn’t just switch their vote to Trump – he is down in the popular vote from 2020, too. 14 million people just decided to stay home.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Quinerly:
Some of it was unpopular policies. Some of it was circumstances Biden had a limited ability to change, like pandemic caused inflation. A lot of it is the information environment. When there are no trusted gatekeepers of information, people don’t know who to believe so they believe what they want to. I am well aware that the old gatekeepers didn’t just shut down disinformation, but also the voices of POCs and other minorities. However, I do believe they kept the fascists at bay. There are no effective guardrails now. We are seeing the consequences of that.
PJ
@tam1MI: Biden did a great job as President with the hand he was dealt, and the party elites and big money donors just abandoned him. He was arguably the most effective Democratic President of my lifetime, and the party dropped him like a hot potato. What does that say to independents and fair-weather Democrats about what the party stands for? If the party won’t fight for their President, who will they fight for?
Ohio Mom
@Omnes Omnibus: I always appreciate your viewpoint: optimistic while clear-eyed, pragmatic and unfaltering, and grounded in a deeply ethical place. Ultimately, very patriotic
The Audacity of Krope
Suddenly regretting quitting Percocets a few years ago as my resulting eventual death by heroin would likely have transpired by now.
ETA: I keep seeing that about 14 million people didn’t show up for the general election compared to last year. Amusing coincidence that is how many people voted in the Democrats’ voided primary.
Quinerly
@PJ: realize what you are saying.
But for my entire life every election I know of is autopsied by exit polls. How else do you find out what issues were impt to a voter? Also, all approval polling I have seen re Biden has had him under 40% for a lot of his term. If that isn’t an indicator of unpopular policies/right track/wrong track, I don’t know what is.
What are your options for how to post mortem this election?
WereBear
@PJ: That’s what I’m talking about. The reflexive action of the Negative Info Voter, the one with all the wrong information. Who gets confused with facts.
Makes them testy and impatient because it is complicated and a lot of people tune out even if they get Civics.
The people who fell for Q didn’t all go blood simple, but I suspect most of them did. By the time they got mired in it and the lunacy began, they had lost all perspective, and often, other friends and family.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I have been a big Biden supporter. As I have said many times, very late to the idea of Biden stepping aside train. Anyone can check my first comments after the debate. I did think he did horribly in that debate. I just don’t see how he could have done better in this election than Trump with a 40% approval rating. And I am not saying I am against his policies. It does seem pretty obvious that most of the country didn’t like them though and thought we were on the wrong track. I am very open to reading and understanding the contrary if someone has different data/research. This isn’t about loyalty to Biden. This is about what the majority of voters believe….even if their beliefs are wrong and not based in fact.
Melancholy Jaques
A theory that occurred to me on last evening’s rehab walk: the reason ordinary people feel like they were better off four years ago is that they got free money in 2020 and in 2021.
For people who were unencumbered by debt or family obligations (like me) it was a big bonus. I said at the time I didn’t really need. Bought a couple guitars and saved the rest. But for people who did have debt and family obligations, they suddenly felt better off. Made payments without stress. Bought some extras they usually did not. And so on.
Anyway, that’s my theory for why so many people were constantly saying they were struggling when things were actually not that bad. They forgot the free money was never going to be repeated.
Quinerly
@The Audacity of Krope: how does a president that barely broke 40% approval ratings win re election?
WereBear
@Quinerly: We are not the delusional ones in this environment.
I think we should admit we have what amounts to widespread madness among the population. If we brought in the belligerent uncle to a psychiatric hospital because he kept shooting himself in the foot and burning his money in the oven, they’d take him.
Now, I’m supposed to get a handle on the people who stayed home?
We need a DSM 17, STAT.
Quinerly
@tam1MI: not sure how you get that from the link. But you do you and carry on.
Here’s a question for you…..how does a president win re election with an approval rating that never hit 50%? I think he was under 45% for most of his presidency.
tam1MI
@Quinerly: I have been checking out the comments sections of other left-leaning blogs, and I realize that anecdote is not data, but they are chockablock with comments to the effect of, “We didn’t choose that unvetted, untested, and unqualified b*tch, she was inflicted on us”. That doesn’t strike me as “they disliked her because of Biden’s policies”.
The Audacity of Krope
@Quinerly: For years, years I’ve been tired of people acting like polls are immutable facts of nature.
I’ve seen incumbents go from 15 percent approval to a handy 20 point win within the same year. It helps when the entire party doesn’t coordinate to shit on the incumbent candidate.
Every time the media threw out some make believe version of “Biden is awful,” a clutch of Democrats always came forward to say “you’re right. How can we debase ourselves to make it better for you?”
Everyone who did that or hinted at it or feinted towards it is responsible for last night.
ETA: And literally none of you thinking that was the right move can get past the tactical considerations. It was wrong for moral reasons.
Endorsing what happened is endorsing an attack on democracy. I would be more at peace now if we had a steeper loss with Biden.
Democrats should maybe, at some point in the last 40 years, stood up for the right thing just for being right, rather than politically easy. People might believe Democrats actually had real values if they did.
Quinerly
@WereBear: no argument from me. It seems obvious that no one in the current Dem Party, including Biden could have beaten Trump.
I am open to someone explaining how. I feel like a Biden vs Trump match up would truly have been a bloodbath.
And, keep in mind I like Biden and have faired well under his policies.
cain
@Quinerly: I had no idea that Biden’s policies were unpopular. I guess Harris didn’t either.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Quinerly: I know you were a big Biden supporter. Watching the debate unnerved me, because it reinforced the stuff I was seeing online from Trumpers. I wasn’t on the Dump Biden train, but I was definitely uncomfortable. Looking at things today, I don’t think we could have won this. The GOP said for years that if we increase the minimum wage and help the poor, it will lead to inflation. The fact that pandemic inspired inflation coincided with more generous policies toward the poor and wage increases actually gave them credibility. They said Democratic environmental policies would lead to higher energy costs. It doesn’t matter that gas prices went up because wildcatters went under during the pandemic. They just see another GOP prediction come true. That makes it easier for them to believe the absolute onslaught of lies Trump, the GOP, and foreign influencers are telling. I don’t know how we fix this, but we have to figure something out. Ditching the MSM for a completely post-truth world isn’t the answer.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@tam1MI: No, that strikes me as they disliked her because she was a woman, which is why they refused to believe the clear evidence she was qualified.
The Audacity of Krope
The post-truth world series from the MSM. They find the seeds, nurture them until they are far more effective lies than they ever would have been if they hadn’t moved off 4chan.
The Audacity of Krope
Democrats won’t even stand up for themselves in the face of fascism. Obviously people chose fascism.
rationalman
@Belafon: That last part isn’t going to happen anytime soon. It took Rome 500 years to stop being a major power, and, right now, we’re still the biggest gun and the biggest ship.@Belafon:
In Roman times it would have taken couple years to make a trip around the world. Today it can be done in less than 48 hours.
The Trump tariffs will make the USA weaker and China even stronger.
Trump’s action will accelerate China becoming most powerful country in world.
Geminid
@Quinerly: I think exit polls still provide useful information. They’re just not as good as they were in say, 2008 because of the decline in Election Day voting. I still take the findings seriously but I’m more tentative about any conclusions I draw. So I tend to rely on more knowledgeable people like Tom Bonior for guidance.
Mike E
@tam1MI: yeah, Joe should have staved off the obvious effects of aging and this would have been avoided .. I kid! Any crack in his edifice would have been exploited by all of his enemies (foreign, domestic, Dem) and this result would still be the same.
And I adore Joe Biden btw, but sadly realize we were fucked going waaay back
cain
@tam1MI:
Are people really saying that about Harris? She did really well I thought. I don’t know what these people are thinking. They are just angry. Kamala ran a good campaign given the circumstances.
tam1MI
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: They disliked her because she was a woman, but it was the “inflicted on us” aspect that gave their argument legs.
And it’s not even a bad argument – the party that was supposed to stand for democracy installed her as a nominee through a brazenly undemocratic process. None of it was her fault, but because she was the beneficiary of the process, she took the hit.
The Audacity of Krope
Four years ago, per the MSM, we absolutely had to nominate Joe Biden because the electorate wouldn’t tolerate a female candidate.
This year we absolutely had to drop Biden because the electorate wouldn’t tolerate an old candidate. (Checks results) Well, clearly that’s wrong.
Maybe, if it’s not too late, we should stop taking advice from elite talking heads. They aren’t on your side, even if they’re nominally on your team.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope:
So standing up for gay rights, abortion, healthcare, Ukraine, student loan relief, etc. EVEN WHEN WE PAID FOR IT AT THE BALLOT BOX wasn’t standing up for the right thing? Wasn’t displaying values? Please. I’m so tired of hearing that crap. Some people will never be satisfied. I learned that when a leftist friend who benefited from her partner’s student loan relief bashed Biden for not magically being able to help her with her loans. Apparently, that little bit of relief way too much for other people and convinced them not to vote for Biden.
Quinerly
@Geminid: thanks! Has Tom started his post mortem? You looked at any info? Guide me thru some stuff/links. Much appreciated.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Thanks!
The Audacity of Krope
They waited until it was convenient. Boy, did they wait.
ETA: Question, do you think Obama was sincerely against gay marriage in 2008?
Tore themselves to shreds doing the bare minimum and almost called it off.
Without Trump, would have been a bipartisan no-brainer.
Too little, didn’t reach a lot of people, including those with private loan balances. Was a meager nod to a major problem.
Quinerly
@cain:
Our electorate is so fucked up that there are many out there blame Biden for Dobbs since the decision came down in 2022.
All that aside, if you have a moment take a look at Biden’s approval ratings and right track vs wrong track polling. Biden has been unpopular pretty much since his term began.
Quinerly
How does an incumbent overcome this?
https://www.newsweek.com/cnn-exit-poll-joe-biden-approval-rating-wisconsin-worst-swing-states-1980948
Chris
@The Audacity of Krope:
I had an enormous sense of dread over the panic last summer in the “are we just finished as a party?” sense, simply because of the total lack of resilience, solidarity, fighting spirit, or, well, identity, that the entire Dump Biden debacle illustrated. To quote an anti-war blogger from twenty years ago, the Democrats may be a party of themselves, but there is no evidence that they’re a party for themselves.
Because really, if we’re this incapable of rallying around the flag and going to bat for our candidates when they get attacked like this, what the fuck will we go to bat for?
The Audacity of Krope
How does the head of a team overcome anything? They need their team all pushing the same direction.
The Audacity of Krope
Bears repeating. That question was probably on a lot of minds. Even ones that ultimately voted D.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope:
That just isn’t true. They have absolutely called out Trumpian dishonesty and called out disinformation coming from social media channels, including pointing out the inaccuracies of faked videos and conspiracy theories. The people here get the maddest at opinion pieces, not news pieces. You’ve been on the dump the MSM and social media is better train for a while but everything I have seen suggests the opposite is true. The most deluded people I know on the left only get their news from social media and other partisan sources. The deluded people on the right get their news from both social media AND partisan sources.
Quinerly
Oct
Tracking Biden’s Approval Rating in All 50 States
Biden’s net approval rating is underwater in 46 states: This marks a major shift from the start of his tenure, when voters in just 18 states were more likely to disapprove than approve of his job performance. The Biden administration’s messy withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 — punctuating a summer of rising prices and COVID-19 cases after the vaccine rollout — precipitated much of the decline in the president’s popularity from which he has yet to recover.
Biden’s best states: More voters approve of Biden’s job performance than disapprove in Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts and California.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/joe-biden-approval-rating-by-state
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Truth
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope: Proving my point. What Democrats can realistically get done is not enough for you. Taking stand and pushing those through is not and will never be enough. You will never be satisfied.
Quinerly
How popular is Joe Biden? (NOV 4)
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
The Audacity of Krope
And I suppose the term “sanewashing” just manifested from nowhere?
False. I’m advocating for primary sources and other media literacy related concepts.
Quinerly
https://news.gallup.com/poll/329384/presidential-approval-ratings-joe-biden.aspx
tam1MI
Really, all the Coup d’Etat Caucus needed to do to justify their actions was win. They not only didn’t win, they led us to an absolutely catastrophic defeat. The country and the party may never come back from what they did.
Quinerly
Slotkin takes MI.
Another split ticket. Dem takes a senate seat yet Harris loses the state.
In other news, Rubio is pushing for confirmation of RFK, Jr. Says Trump has a “mandate.”
tam1MI
@Quinerly: Slotkin takes MI.
Did she manage to make it out of the recount zone?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope:
I’m not an idiot. ‘Primary sources’ means YouTube videos that you trust because it aligns with pre-existing beliefs but may well be faked because we don’t really know where they come from, who is generating them, and what their REAL agenda is. Some of the fact free conspiracy theory are coming from the left and are based on things they incorrectly think are ‘primary sources’. I agree with media literacy, but media literacy requires being able to differentiate between opinion and news. The sane-washing criticism is valid, though part of it is them trying to summarize what they’ve think they’ve heard at his rallies. Criticism of specific media pieces is valid. That does not justify jettisoning real news for social media garbage.
Quinerly
@tam1MI:
I suggest you look it up on your own. While you are at it, check out how deeply unpopular Biden has been for most of his tenure. Some links have been provided.
The Audacity of Krope
Again, not what I’m saying. Did I imagine the Democrats consistently, slowly negotiating the gay population’s rights and portraying themselves as heroes for slowing the even more extreme Republicans?
A hearty embrace of the gay community in the 90s or earlier may have cost an election or two when the stakes were less existential, but it might also have changed a few minds earlier and set us on a better course for today.
Sometimes speaking up matters more than the most immediate results. Democrats give a real sense that their efforts are contingent on at least a 45 percent baseline of public support.
Leaders are there to lead, not follow.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Looks like you got this. I’m going to drink a beer to hopefully kill my headache from lack of sleep. Waiting for our girl to speak at Howard shortly.
The Audacity of Krope
I’m certainly going to challenge at least that second assertion.
Primary sources mean the text of a document like a law. Original transcripts and video documented live of the event in question, say a Congressional hearing.
I didn’t watch bobbleheads tell me about Michael Cohen testifying to Congress, for example, I watched his sworn testimony exactly as it occurred.
tam1MI
I took your suggestion. She is not out of the recount zone, and in fact won by the slimmest margin in Michigan history. Hopefully she will hold on to her seat.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope:
As a young lesbian just coming out then, I doubt that very seriously. I don’t doubt the part about losing elections. I doubt the part about it making a difference. The only thing that actually made people change their minds about gay rights was coming out. There were people who tried to lead on the issue. It helped people like me feel less alone, but it did not change minds. If anything, it gave the right wing specific targets to fear monger about and mock. If you are going to make things better by even small amounts, you have to win elections. If you are too far ahead of the public, you don’t win elections.
I think there is some serious denial on the left with just how socially conservative and right wing most people in the US really are. It seems like every time the right wins, they believe it MUST be the Democrats fault (if only they’d done X). It can’t possibly be that a minority of voters hold very left wing views! Unpossible!
tam1MI
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: A poster on another thread here said that Biden moved too far to the left and got punished for it by both the left and the right, and Harris also moved to the left and lost the election in a rout.
I have no doubt that Dems are, as we speak, debating on which group they need to throw under the bus in order to win back voters.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope: I’ll grant you that for legal documents and televised hearings, primary sources do mean what you say. I’d like to point out that its the MSM that is mostly televising those hearings. When the local MSM dies in a community, magically, sometimes government meetings stop being officially recorded. It was the MSM that sent reporters on the ground in the aftermath of the hurricanes and debunked the conspiracy theories and misleading videos that were proliferating across social media. They WERE the official primary source of information. Without that, we would have absolutely no way of knowing what was happening, because nothing on social media could be trusted unless you personally knew someone giving an eyewitness account.
Quinerly
@tam1MI:
I guess you also found the link that I didn’t post about 75% of voters think we are on the wrong track with Biden.
Even though I have been a strong Biden supporter since the 1980’s, I am beginning to think Harris not distancing herself from such a deeply unpopular president cost us a lot. He probably should have announced in 2022 he wasn’t running. We could have had a true primary and not initially coronated him out of deference.
Just some thoughts. Toodles!
The Audacity of Krope
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Local outlets like you describe aren’t as uniformly terrible as the broadcast 24 hour networks or the national papers of note. Some are quite good. It is the national media I criticize.
These organizations rarely cover events live in this manner without interspersing their “analysis,” a negative value add by my estimation. If they do, they’re the sponsors of the event.
They’re also too poll driven. They always tell the most salable story in the most marketable way. They never bother to educate.
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: And if you’re suggesting here that people can be easily led to hate but can’t be led to accept at anything other than their own speed; that may well be true, but it might make the now- imminent fall of human civilization a blessing.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@tam1MI: Biden absolutely lost the middle and the left never really rallied behind him or Harris. Their support always seemed kind of grudging. At the end of the day, if you make it into office, there is a limited set of issues you can make progress on. If prioritizing one set of issues doesn’t get you elected or re-elected, you prioritize a different set. You can call that throwing people under the bus if you want to, but I think that’s a bit dramatic. A politician can sincerely believe that climate change is real, but understand that he can’t do anything about fossil fuel consumption and get re-elected. If that politician focuses their energies instead on what they can do, improving access to life saving medication, for example, I don’t see how that means they have no values or are ‘throwing environmentalists under the bus’. I think people have really unrealistic ideas about what leaders can do.
Geminid
@tam1MI: Well, some people here sure are itching to throw Hispanic Americans under the bus!
Ed. I’m sure they can find more ungrateful minoririty groups to reject also.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope: Again, you are criticizing the opinion part of the MSM. Getting rid of the MSM gets rid of the actual news, not just the talking heads. I don’t like their vapid commentary either. I value the news part of the MSM, and the social media environment has NOTHING that adequately replaces that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope:
I am suggesting that. However, the fall of human civilization will not be a blessing. It would be much, much worse. Some people will survive ecologic disaster, but without civilization to restrain them, the monsters tend to dominate.
Geminid
@Quinerly: I’m glad of that. I’ve followed Elissa Slotkin ever since she flipped he House seat in 2018.
That was a talented class. Slotkin will join 2018 classmate Andy Kim in the Senate, along with fellow Representatives Lisa Blunt Rochester, Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego.
tam1MI
As his V.P., Harris was as responsible for those policies as he was. She couldn’t distance herself if she wanted to.
And yes, the time to have eased Biden out was before or during the primaries. If he was as massively unpopular as your links suggest, it would have been an easy task.
If he was that unpopular.
And yet, someone did stand against Biden in the primary, and did make the exact argument the Coup d’Etat Caucus made to force Biden out as justification for his run. If Biden was so massively unpopular, how come that fellow’s run went nowhere?
People didn’t vote for Biden because they were forced to, they did so because they wanted to. He got some quite healthy numbers for a guy running virtually unopposed.
But do keep telling me about how elected Dems had no other choice but to force him out on the most humiliating and public way possible, dither away weeks of campaigning time the party could ill afford to lose, and – here’s the kicker, folks – hand Donald Trump 270 electoral votes on a silver platter.
Quinerly
@Geminid: 💙
Archon
@Quinerly: I thought Biden did a good job, but “Bidenism” as a political project turned out to be an unprecedented disaster for the Democratic Party.
The Audacity of Krope
But think of all the non-humans that stand to benefit from our disappearance.
The Audacity of Krope
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Again, you are criticizing the opinion part of the MSM. Getting rid of the MSM gets rid of the actual news,
Like they don’t mix these two together like a cocktail from hell. Even the framing and choice of what to discuss matter.
During the debates the media wasn’t even supposed to fact check per their rules. What are they there for if not to discern facts?
PJ
@tam1MI: This.
Quinerly
@tam1MI: it appears his ego and his inability to debate, campaign rigorously and even discuss women’s healthcare got in the way of his stepping aside without a push from the adults. It took him awhile to see the writing on the wall. Timely stepping aside….maybe a different outcome for his VP and his Dem Party. You asked. I answered.
JaySinWA
@Baud:
Most pollsters have some process for early voters.
From US News (link)
Quinerly
This belongs here. Old White Man felt disrespected by Black Woman.
“Philadelphia Democratic Chair Bob Brady blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for what looked like the lowest performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in the city in the last two decades and said he felt no responsibility for the red wave that descended on the state.
‘They never dealt with us. They didn’t show us any respect. I never talked to the lady, and she’s the candidate,”’Brady said of Harris.
He said he thought President Joe Biden should probably have remained the candidate.
He argued Gov. Josh Shapiro should have been Harris’ vice presidential pick. He said Democrats needed a ‘better candidate,’ referencing Harris.
And he said ward leaders in the city felt disrespected, implying that could have impacted how hard they worked for her in the city.”
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/live/2024-election-pennsylvania-results-updates-news-20241106.html/card-168196327
All we need is one of Trump’s songs from his pilfered playlist. “It’s a Man’s, Man’s Man’s World.” Cue James Brown.
Chris
@The Audacity of Krope:
The biggest problem with the MSM is neither news nor opinion. It’s headlines. You put a year’s worth of “Troubling Questions About Hillary’s Email Account” headlines on your front page, a whole bunch of people who never do more than skim are already convinced she’s done something shady. The people who don’t really follow politics but buy the paper for other sections, nevertheless notice the front page and file away in a part of their heads that something’s up with Hillary Clinton. And even the minority that does read all those articles, by the end of the year, won’t remember what any one of them specifically concluded. They’ll just remember she’s been under investigation all year.
That, of course, is just print media. On TV and radio? They may not have headlines, but on the other hand the distinction between news and opinion gets even blurrier.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Audacity of Krope: AND the alternative is what? Social fucking media?