It’s an overly simplistic way to look at it, but I’ve often thought Florida and California represent two models a diversifying United States could follow. In California, Republicans shot themselves in the groin with the nativist Prop 187 a generation ago. Now the CA GOP, springboard of the wrecking ball Reagan, is a rump party in that state’s government, and California is reliably blue in statewide federal elections.
In Florida, Republicans lionized Cuban immigrants (“exiles”) for decades, creating a loyal bloc of GOP voters who built powerful Spanish language right-wing radio and now social media networks. Maybe that, in addition to location, partially explains why the most right-leaning Latino groups (immigrating from Venezuela, Columbia, etc.) tend to end up here and wield powerful influence on other Spanish speakers.
When Republicans in Congress quit any pretense of good faith efforts to address immigration policy in favor of full-time demagoguery a decade or so ago, reaching an apogee of cynical bad faith and cruelty in the Trump I administration, I hoped their appalling rhetoric and shockingly inhumane actions would send the national GOP down the path trod by their cohort in California.
It was not to be. We don’t have all the data yet, but it’s clear a significant number of Hispanic voters swung hard right in this year’s election. In Florida, an emerging multiracial coalition has been all in on the extremist right-wing politics practiced by people like Trump, DeSantis and Rick Scott for several cycles. And now the 2024 results. What I hoped was a Florida problem is looking like a national issue.
***
So, where do we go from here? Fuck if I know. But I believe it’s critically important to recognize this new reality and understand its implications.
It appears Trump picked up voters across all demographics except the college educated. It looks like he made huge inroads with diverse non-college voters, not just in swing states but in blue states like New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. We can attribute this to global, pandemic-related anti-incumbent fervor, which has taken down governments across ideologies worldwide, and I think that’s a component.
But the slide with Latinos and working class voters started before that. We have to find a way to arrest it, or we are screwed. If analysis shows the GOP making massive gains with minority groups, particularly Hispanics, despite the party’s overtly racist rhetoric, maybe we need to reassess the salience of identity in politics (or how we talk about it) because it looks like voters have.
I don’t have any answers, but maybe it’s something to think about so we can effectively organize resistance to the incoming fascist regime.
***
And speaking of resistance, I’m not up for it just now. I’m sad and angry and exhausted. My impulse is to narrow my focus to my family and friend circle and to hell with goddamn fucking politics. If you feel that way too, I understand.
But as a citizen who has lived under a Hungary-style “soft autocracy” at the state level for a number of years, I also know that authoritarians count on us being too exhausted and demoralized to effectively oppose them. Florida’s Democratic Party is famously a basket case and has been a joke for the entirety of this century, and demoralized Democrats can’t seem to get their shit together to change that.
I don’t want the national Democratic Party to suffer that fate. So, I plan to lay low and lick my wounds for a while. But then I’m going to get back up and return to the fight. I have a love-hate relationship with my state AND my country, but ultimately, I believe both are worth fighting for.
Open thread.
mali muso
I think that until/unless we figure out a way to combat the media firehouse and tentacles of disinformation that is tailored to these groups, we will continue to be at a disadvantage.
trollhattan
Pretty much. I’ve shut everything news related right the hell off. Feel a little better, already.
PST
Floridized but not floridated.
K-Mo
Thanks BC. I’ll do the same.
People in my circle have been passing around this poem by Maya Angelou
https://louisianafirstfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Maya-Angelou-Continue.pdf
Central Planning
I don’t know where to look, but how did the Latino vote change from 2016 to 2020? If it went up, then yes, we’re screwed. If it went down, I suspect it’s because people realized what kind of person Trump is.
That change went up in 2024 for numerous reasons, but I bet one is they forgot how bad he was.
Central Planning
One other slight comfort: DJT stock has tanked since the election (insert Nelson’s “Ha ha!” here)
Archon
I was never a big fan of Gavin Newsom but his response to the election was brilliant and absolutely crystal clear. We are on the side of decency and the rule of law and will fight those that are opposed to that.
Until further notice Newsom is the leader of the new anti-Trump resistance/Democratic Party.
Baud
Agree. For lack of a better word, I think we’re sloppy when we talk about identity. Which isn’t to say we should never do that, because prejudice exists, but too much of it is trying to squeeze things into rigid categories.
Also, too, white people need to stop relying on high minority turnout and think hard about how to win back their white friends and family to the good side.
Philbert
I wonder, many of the Latin Americans are refugees from Castro and Chavez ‘socialism’, and are pretty much OK with a traditional strongman/caudillo.
syphonblue
@mali muso: Yeah, I think this is the real problem. The amount of outright lies and misinformation out there being spewed from the mouths of thousands of right wingers is insane, and the Dem party has not found a way to counter it. They need to get on the airwaves, TV, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube…an entire coordinated effort not just countering the lies and bullshit but calling out the liars and bullshit spewers as well. Take their asses down, stop letting them spew unfiltered bullshit with no clapback.
FDRLincoln
I have a unique position: I work for a law enforcement agency as a civilian administrator. One of my jobs is to teach classes to officers about Constitutional Law and the Bill of Rights.
Some of the cops I work with are pretty liberal; a few more are Trumpies, a few more are conservative but anti-Trump, usually due to his felony convictions; many, especially the younger ones, are apolitical.
I’ve begun asking people around me uncomfortable questions like “what if the Federal government asks our agency to participate in immigrant roundups?”
Our agency already does not cooperate with ICE and we don’t ask about the immigration status of people we come in contact with unless dealing with a serious crime.
I wonder how long we can retain that attitude if Federal pressure ramps up.
My therapist this morning advised me to keep thinking ahead, and to keep teaching about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. He says what I worry about may never come to pass, but to be ready to make the ethical decision if/when the time comes. God I hope he’s right that it never gets that far. I have a sick wife and a disabled kid and I need this job, the first good stable job I’ve ever had.
But I don’t want to be like the Cardassian file clerk in the Star Trek DS9 episode about the labor camp. I don’t want to be a cog in the machine.
God damn the people who voted this monster into power.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Turning left was not an electoral winner.
rikyrah
Found this on Twitter:
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
The ramifications of this election go well beyond what Trump will do. Rejecting a Black woman candidate and having Latino men and women, along with a majority of white women rejecting her, is going to destroy any trust
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
Black folks have for any other coalition needs. I can guarantee that Black people right now look at the election results and realize that we are now on our own. That means that all the coalition building that has occurred is out of the window. Trumpism exposed that.
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
So…you’re definitely gonna see that when the Democrats come running to us in the midterms talking about ‘we have to save democracy.’ that dog ain’t gonna hunt. Because we did that and everyone else said, ‘Fuck y’all democracy.’
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
So I’m guessing, and I know Black folks if I know anything, most Black people are gonna let y’all have whatever happens during the Trump administration.
If you’re mad about the Comstock Act, don’t turn to the Black community and say, “We” need to do something.
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
Please turn to the 53% of white women who had a chance but chose whiteness over their gender rights. Same with deportations. We’re gonna let the Latino community work that out.
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
It isn’t that we don’t care about these issues, but it’s been proven that for all of the marching, the pink hats, and the Si Se Puede chants, the only people who votes for democracy is the one demographic that democracy has tried to disempower since we came on these shores.
Lawrence Ross: An Ice Cold Alpha Man (@alpha1906) posted at 7:23 PM on Wed, Nov 06, 2024:
Y’all got this.
Let us know how it works out for you. Meanwhile, don’t ask Black folks for anything. Trump is your guy. And if he ain’t your guy, you better talk to your friends who made him your guy.
We good.
(https://x.com/alpha1906/status/1854333854070481286?t=phynHGwthsv276R6g86Gcg&s=03)
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
There are a lot of individual things that make up “turning left.” Some were better than others IMHO.
syphonblue
@Central Planning: Clinton won the Hispanic vote 66/28. Biden won the Hispanic vote 65/32. So a slight shift towards Republicans but not massive, mostly coming off less third-party votes. We’ll have to see what it ends up being Harris/Trump.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I liked a lot of those initiatives but Biden didn’t get credit for it and in general the public at large was ignorant or didn’t care.
Orange is the New Red
Ken White has a powerful essay at the Popehat Report.
Archon
@rikyrah: Here is the problem. What choice do we have? You know as well as I do that after they are done with Latinos, us black folks will be next on the list. Or do people think when Trump talked about “black jobs” he meant engineers and scientists?
rikyrah
uh huh
zizi2 (@zizii2) posted at 8:34 AM on Thu, Nov 07, 2024:
Good News to you Naturalized Americans who voted for trump. Guess what? right hand adviser, Stephen Miller, has announced that they will implement a “De-Naturalization Program” to strip people of their acquired American citizenship. What was that story about face-eating leopards?
(https://x.com/zizii2/status/1854532832934203427?t=jciwLQO7rRkoyXZ2iJ61XQ&s=03)
chopper
i feel that way too right now. mostly a trauma response, but it is what it is. i have to first figure out how to keep myself and my family safe through this storm. like when the plane goes down, you gotta put your own oxygen mask on first before you go helping others
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Agree. But that same dynamic may happen no matter what policies Biden had implemented – left, right, or center.
If you have a population that is only looking at your faults, your accomplishments aren’t going to get noticed.
trollhattan
@Archon: IMHO Newsom was a loyal foot soldier for the Dems nationally this campaign, especially going directly at DeSantis when he still seemed…okay, possible if not probable. Because he terms out in two years it makes sense he’ll run for president in ’28, at the least he’ll seriously test the waters.
Padilla’s senate seat comes up in ’28 and I presume he’ll run again, so there’s nothing else for Newsom to go after. He can continue to support the national party. They can use the energy.
mvr
FWIW, given that the big difference between 2024 and 2020 is that a lot of people stayed home, I’m not sure that shifts *to* anything is the primary explanation, unless it is shifts to apathy and distancing from the electoral process. Some not voting might be motivated not voting, by which I mean a kind of expressive abstention, but still that isn’t yet shifting toward Republicans or Trump.
This isn’t to offer any explanation myself. Just to point to an important factor that needs to be explained by any comprehensive explanation.
I see Citizen Dave make the same point immediately below.
Citizen Dave
I think the mis/disinformation issue is a huge issue (skimmed the Heather Cox Richardson email earlier and she was onto that.
#2 for me is the missing voters. Who are they? Why didn’t they show up? If 2020 82 million had occurred, we all wouldn’t be discussing Orange guy going higher on all demos (but smarter people). It’s a missing voter problem. Will never understand.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re right – next election, we need to get back to throwing women and minority groups under the bus. /s
Seriously, what did we turn left on that had any salience with voters, other than sticking up for minority groups and women’s bodily autonomy? I remember Kamala’s long term care proposal, but I doubt anybody voted against us on account of that.
Sheesh, Kamala even endorsed that right-wing border bill that the GOP authored, then sank at Trump’s behest. That’s probably the most notable difference between what Kamala ran on, and where the Democratic Party has been during the 2021-2023 period. And that was a right turn, not a left turn.
Trivia Man
@mali muso: yes
sane-washing trump absolutely took the edge off him and made him palatable
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I blame the media for how they reported on this administration. Ds should stop subscribing to the elite media publications. It was the NYT and other elite media looking for Biden’s faults not necessarily the citizenry. And add tankie publications like the Intercept to that.
cain
Some guy was posting about how the parents who voted for Trump in the FB autism book are suddenly concerned that the department of education is going to get gutted.
lol – these people. Now you’re worried about you autistic child? Chile, you’ve fucked your child’s future. Those tariffs are going to blow up the GDP, the health services are going to get gutted, and Elon plans to gut everything so your unemployment is going to skyrocket.
Never mind, they are going to spend money like water to kick out as many immigrants as they can creating a cheap worker shortage which they plan to replace likely with children who now that you don’t need schools can be cheap labor.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Do we have actual numbers on this. Naturalized citizens vote heavily Democratic.
Kelly
It’s been a weird week or so. Friday a letter arrived from the insurance company that covers Mom’s house and ours. They are canceling it effective Dec 1 because she died in July. I called the insurance agent July and you’re both on the policy so no problem. Called first thing Monday and discovered the company that has insure Mom for 34 years and us for 24 is shutting down due to losses from the 2020 Beachie Fire. Company took good care of us and several other people I know in the Beachie Fire aftermath. We’ve selected a new company but getting all the underwriting paperwork done on time is gonna be close. Last week we took out a home equity loan on Mom’s house to do some renovations so a lapse in coverage may mess that up. I spent today adding up Mom’s and our medical expenses for 2024 so far preparing for a tax appointment tomorrow. Planning to claim her as a dependant. If everything I think counts does count we spent 64% of our combined gross income on medical stuff this year. Harris’s Medicare will pay for home care would have made me feel a lot better about our impending old age. Then this fucking election. In 2016 I took a bit of comfort in Trump’s popular vote loss. There were a lot of assholes but we outnumbered the assholes. This time the assholes outnumbered us. Sorting out paperwork has kinda kept me distracted for the few days but now I’m just crushed.
rikyrah
@Archon:
No…we can take care of ourselves. No more being a mule for others.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
The bigger problem is that many Dem subscribers aren’t even aware of how media coverage bias makes things more difficult for us.
schrodingers_cat
We need to wait for California (and numbers from other western states) numbers before declaring fewer people have voted compared to 2020.
Mai Naem mobile
@rikyrah: so this round up will apply to Muskrat, Muskrat’s mommy, Muskrat’s brother, Peter Thiel, David Sachs Aileen Cannon+Ted Cruz right? right?
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Indeed. I think we need to make it very very clear that if you have a subscription to the NYT, washington post, LA Times etc – you’re funding disinformation.
I think as liberals we need to stop consuming their content – these asshole think it is christmas because they can report on the chaos, the backstabbings, the drama.. NO THANKS.
I’m going to be instead involved in resistance groups, and personal projects.
I suggest even bluesky is bad, stick with the community managed de-centralized networks.
Chief Oshkosh
@schrodingers_cat:
As has been shown many times, policies of the “left” are very popular when polled without labeling. And for the first time in a long time, a lot of those policies were enacted. And in many locales, the elected GOP critter took credit.
So, I don’t think that turning left was the problem. It’s that “the left” has been vilified since Nixon. That’s a long time.
I have no idea what to do about it.
Baud
The human mind will always choose false information over no information. It’s a difficult problem to overcome.
cain
@Archon:
After they finish with the Latinos it will be the other immigrant groups like the Indians and Africans. I’m SURE they have noticed that a lot of starts up are all run by Indians. That won’t fit in the white supremacy plan. Maybe JD will spare us because of his wife, but they definitely plan to go after naturalized citizens.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: We need better media.
thruppence
I feel that the country has just stabbed itself with a Morgul blade. The wound will never heal. We may survive, but as what?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
SC…..
I don’t have numbers for those who voted from Trump…
but, like so many folks who thought Trump was talking about THOSE PEOPLE…
they will realize that they are THOSE PEOPLE…..
They will be swept up with those that vote Democratic.
Suzanne
I know there’s a lot of griping about Ezra Klein around here, much of it warranted…. but his podcast today was really good and thought-provoking for me. Even the parts I didn’t agree with.
In short: the Obama coalition is done. We are at the end of a cycle. The Democratic Party — all of center-left — will have to evolve into something new.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I have little sympathy like you for those who vote for their own destruction. But as group naturalized American favor Ds and have in several election cycles by huge margins like 70-30 IIRC.
Baud
Via reddit
BigJimSlade
I think part of the issue is that we keep fighting for peoples’ rights. We should, of course. But we say “respect this group, that group, another group, also, don’t ruin the environment” and we come off like no-fun nags, telling people what they can and can’t do. We are much more than that of course, but how do we frame and get a message out that is positive. Not just a few months before an election, but how do we make it more normal for people to be excited by and proud of progressive values (even in red states) just as a normal state?
Let’s face it – people hate to be told what to do (even if that is just “be decent and responsible”), and they like being told to get whatever they want. The right is energized by having enemies, so they like media that tells them who the enemy is. Their media has been telling them for a couple of decades now that democrats are the enemy, and they should scoff at them and do whatever they want. They build up resentment to us and that is very powerful.
We don’t want to watch shit like that every day. We’re more energized by justice and fighting abuses of power. But we would rather things be in good shape and we could go about having happy lives – not watch it on a news program every night, or listen to it on the radio/podcasts. I mean, some of us like that stuff, but… I think most of us fight for what is right because we have to, not because we think it’s a fun pastime.
Any ideas out there to renormalize progressive values throughout the country. Like, education is good and let’s take pride in it. Equality empowers us all. We can lead the world in green tech… we just have to find a way to spread our values in a positive, can-do spirit… somehow.
NobodySpecial
@cain: Papers are misinformation that’s targeted to boomers.
Young voters ignore papers. Papers don’t move opinions like you think they do, they don’t spread information like you think they do or they did LAST CENTURY. Papers are an artifact like DVD’s or VCR tapes. It’s irrelevant to an increasing percentage of the electorate. Fighting papers isn’t fighting the last war, it’s fighting two wars ago.
rikyrah
Another thing, when they start rounding up folks..
when they start denaturalizing folks…
when the Muslim ban starts…….
those who have GOP Congresscritters best understand that they won’t be lifting one finger for them in defense…the Democrats will actually fight for them…
But, the GOP ones will not ever take their call.
Baud
@Suzanne:
That makes sense. Part and parcel of political realignment.
Mai Naem mobile
I talked to a Mexican friend who’s got a green card. He thinks TFG is going to do an amnesty deal. He’s not.very well informed but he does keep with the gossip in his community here and his family in Mexico. I have no idea where this amnesty thing is coming from. He doesn’t either. It’s just in what people he knows are talking about. Even his immigration lawyer mentioned it to him.
trollhattan
@Chief Oshkosh: Childcare and support for the middle class are “left”? News to me.
Quinerly
Left this downstairs. Wondering if anyone is listening or has thoughts:
First 15 mins of “Deadline White House” very good. MSNBC.
In a nutshell, Biden’s approval rating going into the election was 40%. In elections past, an incumbent party’s approval rating going into an election is usually very close to the the vote share in election. (See Carter, GWB approval rating re McCain’s loss in 2016). Harris will end up around 48%. She overperformed her incumbent’s party by 8%. And she did that with only 3 months of work/campaigning.
****I see a few people saying here, 15 million people who voted for Biden didn’t vote and it’s b/c of bad feelings about Biden’s treatment in July. Does anyone have any actual data/research that backs up what they are saying? I really want to read it/hear it. Bring it! TY
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Which explains everything of why they will be targeted.
But, the 30 who think they are THE GOOD ONES…will be swept up with the 70….
Miller cares not.
wonkie
A big problem for the Democrats is our misunderstanding that voters care about issues. Largely they don’t. They care about branding. They care deeply about branding. Republicans ahave spent decades branding themselves as the party of good morals, responsible economics, and caring about people while Democrats are babykilling elitists who aren’t real Americans. Our response has been to talk about issues.
Let’s cut the crap and, while pursuing our issues, focus on branding. We are the normal sane party. They are the weirds and the billionaires.
Style also matters a lot. The voters favor people who are blunt to the point of rudeness. We do not need to be hatemongerers but our politicians need to stop the mushymouthness and be very blunt spoken. For example, when Rethugs say that they represent the working class, we say, “On what planet? What have Republicans ever done except cut taxes for rich people? We are the party of, by, and for working people and Republicans are the party of, by, and for the rich.” Etc.
We need to use the Republican tactic of never apologize, never explain, and always attack.
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile:
Don’t know. Trump is always looking for a “deal” though.
rikyrah
@Mai Naem mobile:
I want people to grasp..
George W Bush…
was able to lie us into not 1, but TWO WARS…
and, he was unable to get comprehensive immigration reform done…
in a far less hostile GOP environment. ..
AMNESTY?
They are that delusional?
The Orange Menace is no Reagan on immigration.
kindness
I don’t think immigration was the issue that drove Republican voters. It was in the mix though. To me, Republicans I know believed the bullhorn of bullshit Trump spouted. It was repeated by every elected Republican, every right wing crank with a soap box and especially the MSM (reporting both sides). They believe this economy is the worst ever. They believe immigrants are pouring over the border.
Until we are able to convince people what facts actually are and get them to understand Republicans (& the MSM) are lying about it all… we’re kinda screwed.
We were able to do that with Biden because Trump’s fuck ups were fresh in everyone’s mind in 2020. In 2024, people had forgotten it all. Blank fresh pieces of paper.
HeleninEire
Like you, I think I may just concentrate on my and my family’s lives, at least for a little while. I feel helpless, and that’s a new feeling for me.
One day at a time. I am on track to retire in March 2026. That’s 17 months away. By that time we will all have a better read on which way this country is going.
I am very lucky that I have options; retuning to Dublin being the most obvious. One thing I am doing now is slowly taking my money out of the market and moving it to a safe bank account. While I will forego any future gains I am OK with that. I’ve done well over the past 35 years and if I were to lose it all because of some crazy Trump scheme I will forever beat myself up.
So…onward. we have no clue what the future will bring but we have some time to prepare as best we can.
rikyrah
@Mai Naem mobile:
You feed your base an unending cycle of racism and hatred of immigration.
Got dumb azz muthaphuckas in Iowa talking about immigration is their #1 issue….
Only to turn around and offer amnesty?
When you have the likes of Stephen Miller in charge of your immigration policy?
wonkie
“I talked to a Mexican friend who’s got a green card. He thinks TFG is going to do an amnesty deal. He’s not.very well informed but he does keep with the gossip in his community here and his family in Mexico. I have no idea where this amnesty thing is coming from. He doesn’t either. It’s just in what people he knows are talking about. Even his immigration lawyer mentioned it to him.”
I believe it. I don’t believe Trump will expel millions of illegals. The illegals are needed by Republican businesses in red states for cheap labor. Many are evangelicals or fundamentalists or subjected to hours of rightwing propaganda in Spanish and are possible R voters. Why not given them legal status? It’s a win/win–Republicans gain a bunch of voters while retaining a lot of cheap labor.
Baud
There are certain issues that are tough for us, in that the popular position isn’t the one that will be popular with some part of our base. Immigration is the big one that’s like that.
lowtechcyclist
@NobodySpecial:
No, it’s still this war. You don’t think Boomers and Silents vote??
Baud
@wonkie:
Bush tried that and the GOP base turned on him. They’re even more rabid now. I know they regard Trump as a god, but that may be one thing that’s too far for them.
schrodingers_cat
Unpopular opinion: The Gaza protests on college campuses (especially Columbia) is one of the factors that may have galvanized the rightward shift in NYC. The horseshoe left is a political liability the sooner Ds recognize it the better.
Baud
@NobodySpecial:
They really don’t. At least not headlines. Those are circulated all over social media.
NobodySpecial
@Quinerly: No one knows, because it’s not like they were available for exit poll interviews.
Undoubtedly some of them did sit out because Good Ole Joe got ejected. I suspect it’s more like a third rather than all of them. Some others probably just didn’t want to vote for Harris. Undoubtedly some of them thought people wouldn’t be dumb enough to elect Trump again and didn’t feel compelled to go vote. And frankly, some of them probably died between 2022 and 2024.
syphonblue
I want to see raw vote numbers. Is it really true that the Latino vote lurched so far right, or is it more that the left-wing Latinos just didnt show up? Cause it looks like it’s gonna end up with only 140 million votes, vs 2020’s 155 million and Trump will end up with lower total votes at 73 million vs 74 million.
So now the question is why did so many people stay home?
To me this doesnt actually scream “WE NEED TO CHANGE EVERYTHING” but more, we need to figure out why so many people who voted Democrat stayed home this time.
zhena gogolia
@wonkie: I heard a lot of blunt talk from the Obamas and Walz. It doesn’t seem to have gotten through.
Old School
Assuming a massive deportation program does begin next year, it seems likely this group will at least know people affected by this and very well may be personally.
If they stick with Republicans after that, then I don’t think anything could be done to make them Democrats.
Mai Naem mobile
@mvr: we definitely need a really good robust LW ecosphere but I am really beginning to think 2020 was an outlier. COVID scared the shit out of the population and TFG was just so obviously out of his depth and looney tunes crazy and many many people were sitting at home making it easier to do vote by mail. You had big numbers and you had people who normally would never have voted for Biden who did. I remember being pleasantly surprised that Biden won AZ. Even Obama(yeah okay McCain but still) couldn’t win AZ.
Omnes Omnibus
@Archon: I would also note that in my view, AOC and Jasmine Crockett have not put a foot wrong this election season. Loyal to Biden, full throated support of Harris, and tough and not ready to give up since Tuesday.
mvr
@Quinerly: I don’t know if you mean to be referring to my comment above about explaining why people stayed home.
I’m only saying that the Dems lost a lot of votes and more than Trump did. Right now it stands at 12 million vs 1.5 million. But as someone up above noted, the number of voters is still going up so the differences may be smaller. I”m offering no theory as to why, though I am saying we need to explain why people stayed home (unless you think that Ds switched to Trump and the 2020 Trump voters stayed home, which strikes me as rather unlikely).
schrodingers_cat
I have seen a lot of blaming of Latinos here but nothing against the core Republican base.
Mai Naem mobile
@wonkie: i don’t see how the GOP keeps their RW MAGat white voters if they offer amnesty. I don’t see how you sell that to them.
Belafon
@rikyrah: As a white guy as far removed from them other than being super sympathetic to what they’re feeling saying, I’m struggling how far we let things go to make it painful to those who make stupid voting choices and not hurt those that don’t make stupid voting choices. But I also live in Texas, where I have yet to prevent stupid voting choices from hurting people that vote to make things right.
billcinsd
It appears Trump picked up voters across all demographics except the college educated.
This isn’t likely true as Trump did not get more votes than in 2020. He relatively picked up more votes, but not absolutely more votes
Kent
Half my extended family is Hispanic.
The notion that there is some sort of natural alliance of “people of color” or BIPOC to use an even worse term is the most naïve liberal nonsense. Maybe on college campuses but that is about it.
The fact of the matter is that working class Hispanics who are citizens (and therefore voters) are more or less the new “white working class”. And subject to the same conservative social ideas and the same sort of racism and sexism. In fact, Hispanics are often MORE racist. For example, no one is more biased against Haitians than Dominicans who share the same island with them.
Also the idea that Hispanics are have any sense of greater cultural affinity is nonsense as well. A 2nd or 3rd generation small business owner in Texas who has a Hispanic last name because their grandparents were from Mexico has no more affinity with recent undocumented immigrants from Venezuela than a wealthy white suburbanite from Seattle has with a white wheat farmer in Kansas or a white evangelical from Alabama.
I don’t have the answers. But I suspect they are along the lines of “its the economy stupid” from Clinton’s 1992 campaign.
Peale
@syphonblue: I think its also important to not go “Obama in 2008 won 75%” and draw conclusions from that. Obama won every demographic that year except the elderly. That was our high watermark probably, but then it probably was with every other group as well.
lowtechcyclist
@wonkie:
The only reason I don’t believe Trump will expel the Latinos he rounds up is that he’d need to fight a war with Mexico to be able to dump them on the other side of the border. They’ll be stuck in camps, and employers can hire people out of the camps, the way prison labor is hired out in some places.
NaijaGal
@schrodingers_cat:
As long as we lack a TV/newspaper/radio/social media operation with the distribution range of Fox/Newsmax/Sinclair/Wall Street Journal/ NY Post/WaPo/La Times/Newsweek/Twitter, etc., we are working at a considerable disadvantage. The Spanish speaking right wing media flies under the radar for most Dems.
@Philbert
For those fixated on Latino men, I’d like to point out that in at least one exit poll I’ve seen, 53% of Latinos voted for Harris when you combine the male and female vote. 60% of Latinas voted for Harris and made up 6% of the vote share. Latinos as a whole made up 10% of the vote share. 57% of white men and 51% of white women voted for Trump, for a combined 55% white vote for Trump. Whites made up 73% of the vote share. I think there’s a need to focus on why white supremacy trumps gender, class, the need for union protections, the need for social security, the need for affordable medications, or the need for health insurance, for so many. The current media landscape is a factor. It makes it so that Republicans never actually have to run on issues that matter to a voter’s pocketbook.
Then there’s the missing 9-10 million Dem voters. When Trump was in office, people who never paid attention to politics were incentivized to vote. The quiet competence of the Biden era has meant that many of those people went back to not paying attention to or caring about politics. With a sane media operation raising the alarm *and* pointing out that Biden had the best policies since FDR’s new deal, I think things might have played out differently.
Lobo
To message, keep it simple:For example: I will contrast freedom states from police states, see California versus Florida. Ask which would you rather live in?
As someone mentioned, if there is an issue bring it back to billionaires. He/Republicans/etc are doing it to serve the billionaires. For cultural issues like abortion, bring it back to the police state.
For racism and such, I don’t know how to message don’t be afraid with us
Phylllis
@Mai Naem mobile: Also Melania and her parents.
K-Mo
Low education people flocked to Trump.
Take that out and then what do the trends by race-ethnicity look like?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
SC,
Latino men are getting blame because, well, they should.
If Harris had kept the Biden Latino Men numbers.
In conjunction with her improving with White women
in those swing states..
She would have won.
I don’t expect anything from the MAGA base.
I do think that people who vote for a man who tell him that he’s going to round up them and their families…well…you understand my confusion…
p.a
Any numbers on youth vote as a) percentage of voting population, b) %age of registered youth vote?
Asking because I know historically youth vote has been unreliable, and there was all the talk of Swifties etc TikTok nation registering. IIRC the numbers were high for the make abortion legal votes, but what abt Tuesday? Not throwing stones at the utes, just trying to figure things out. Bitter pill if Rogan had more effect than Swift. (In honesty I have no idea of Rogan’s demographic. Could be 40somethings for all I know.)
Central Planning
@rikyrah: What would the results have looked like if we didn’t try to build coalitions? I suspect trying to build a coalition is better than saying “Fuck it”
rikyrah
@lowtechcyclist:
One of his biggest donors has been the private prison industry….
someone’s gonna fill those private prisons…
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
Well yeah. And your solution is….?
It’s not like the Democratic Party has any control over what these people do or say, and few of them claim to be Democrats.
trollhattan
Hey everybody, Wilbur Ross says hell no, tariffs aren’t inflationary. Remember, Wilbur was the guy who mocked us with the Campbell’s Soup can when they slapped on their huge steel tariff. “What’s this can going up?” Then proceeding to tell us we can make bridges and skyscrapers out of mud or something.
“Flamboyant.” That’s one description.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: not to mention Muslims in Dearborn. Welp, Palestinians will be paved over now.
Chris
This is an existential problem for the party.
If this is really the shape of things to come, we’re facing the same problem we did fifty years ago when large numbers of union and working-class voters started defecting to Nixon and Reagan even as they went all-in on union-busting. After fifty years of being the working-class party, the Democrats’ identity as that was over: if working-class voters themselves don’t care, then how in God’s name are the Democrats supposed to stand for them?
Same thing here. Democrats for the last fifty years have, if nothing else, identified as the refuge for voters targeted by racism and sexism. And yet even with the most racist president in a hundred years campaigning against a backdrop of abortion restrictions, the women vote didn’t budge, and the nonwhite vote actually shifted seriously away. If it really is a long-term trend and we can’t manage to reverse it, then we’re not only in very deep shit, we’re going to have to figure out what the party does – can – stand for.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: You make some good points.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: Trump improved his numbers with every demographic group except college-educated women.
Glyph2112
I keep hearing Gaza as a reason. Question, if she had come out and had some policy position on Gaza, wouldn’t she have possibly lost some jewish voters? I mean it wouldn’t have been a net plus.
As far as people blaming the economy, wait until their “economic anxiety” becomes economic reality.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: You make some good points. I am witholding my final analysis until after we get all the numbers. Especially California.
Suzanne
@p.a: The early exit poll data I have seen indicates that the 18-29 demo was 14% of the electorate, and they went for Harris 54/43. They were the smallest percentage, but the most blue.
Quinerly
@NobodySpecial:
Valid points. I do think there will be some data that will come out why this wasn’t the greatest election turnout ever as it was seemingly billed. I put my question out there hoping someone is finding something now. I have become a little bit of a broken record in 24 hrs and I know I need to stop obsessing. I loathe it here when one or 2 commenters populate several threads with their same old “observations”…..”hot takes.” I don’t want to be those people. Unproductive. A turn off.
But, I honestly want someone to provide data/research/news source/opinion other than their own how an incumbent gets re-elected with a 40% approval rating. There’s a ton of data coming out that people voted for Trump even though they disliked him. They were voting for change….they are mad about inflation, rent, money issues. That’s what is impt to them. They don’t care about dictator tendencies and probably don’t believe Dictator Trump could happen. They don’t think Bidenomics did shit for them.
Ksmiami
@Kent: to be honest, I think the combination of a Rt wing media ecosystem, the enshitification of so much of daily life in the US and general complexity of the world now has broken our societal compact. Even for rich people, life in the USA is difficult and harder than it should be relative to our European brethren.
Cheryl from Maryland
The NY Review is releasing multiple essays on where do we go from here. Here’s the first, from Irish author and critic Fintan O’Toole. The Irish know something about authoritarians.
Quinerly
@syphonblue:
THIS!!!!!!!!!!
Mai Naem mobile ¹
I wonder if the GOP went after the Haitians because they’re black and Puerto Ricans because they’re also mixed race black/hispanic/indigenous trying to create a split between different immigrant/Latino groups. TFG comes across as a buffoon but there are times when he’s cunning about stuff like that. I thought about his comment about Kamala only talking about being Asian and all of a sudden talking about being black. It was such a stupid comment. Really who cares? Shes mixed race.Ofcourse it was all BS but it brought attention to her being blackity blackity black and that was his goal.
Hamlet of Melnibone
@rikyrah:
Yeah, there is absolutely no way Trump is going to do anything even remotely like amnesty. Hating on brown immigrants, legal or otherwise, is fundamental to his beliefs and his appeal to his base.
I don’t see how anyone could even entertain the idea. It just fundamentally isn’t in his nature.
Dan B
@rikyrah: Black people, especially young black people, are getting messages (Facebook?) to report to brown vans where the executive slaves will take them to their assigned posts at the nearest plantation. I saw this on Joe.My.God. blog run by a white gay man. There are allies but much of Democratic Party leadership seems to only give lip service to the black community.
New Deal democrat
Two quick follow-ups on some graphs most people have already seen:
1. that graph that shows that 2024 was the first year all incumbent parties lost in all elections in the developed world? The author has elaborated that the data in support of that fact goes all the way back ***to 1905!!!***
2. The graph that shows how almost every county in the US swung right on Tuesday? The graphic shows that the most severe swing was in the rapidly developing areas of the Southeast, from NoVA through Jacksonville. I have no idea why, but it might be worth a deep dive.
Bonus factoid: the biggest inflation in the 20th century was 20%+ YoY inflation in the years immediately after WW2. For the first time since 1932, the GOP swept Dems out of control of Congress in 1946. There was even a shallow recession in 1948. And yet Truman won election in 1948 by running against the “do nothing” GOP Congress – a Congress whose non-productivity has only been rivaled by the present one.
FelonyGovt
I’m also inclined right now to tune out news and social media and worry about my family, my friends and myself. I need to worry about my retirement and figure out how to console my gay daughter, who’s upset and angry.
I’m 70 years old and I frankly don’t know if I’m going to want to be active again. The life of a normie seems really appealing.
KatKapCC
@Glyph2112: Unless Harris said something like “Fuck the Jews”, the only Jewish voters she might have lost ground with are Orthodox, who only make up I think around 10% of all American Jews and many of whom already vote GOP. The vast majority of us are Reform and solidly Democratic, and many of us — though some goyim refuse to believe it — actually care both about Israel and Palestine, and hate Bibi’s guts. I thought Harris did a good job of balancing the issue, noting that we needed the war to end and to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, but also that the hostages needed to be freed. Most Jews in this country would completely agree with all of that.
Quinerly
@mvr:
Nothing directed at you. I posted by reading from the bottom up.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
I think you are correct.
Suzanne
The educational polarization is monstrous. I made the comment some weeks back that that divide is now so significant, it’s like two completely different populations.
White women with college degrees voted for Harris 57/41. White women without college degrees went for Trump 63/35.
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, perhaps you should read all comments on all threads.
rikyrah
@Hamlet of Melnibone:
The last Republicans who would have credibly approached amnesty were McCain and maybe Willard, though I doubt it.
No. I think McCain was the last one.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
Race and Education.
How come Black people without college degrees voted for Biden and Harris?
Nettoyeur
In 1945, after Winston Churchill, who led Britain from the dark days of Dunkerque and going it alone against the Nazis to the victorious grand alliance with the US and the Soviet Union, was thrown out of office in a true (not sort of) landslide by the Labour Party led by Clement Attlee, whose campaign theme was basically Let’s Forget About the War that Churchill Did So Much to Win. Labour brought in the National Health Service, numerous progressive social programs, and nationalization of important industries. But by 1951 their themes got a bit stale, and there was Cold War tension to worry about, so Churchill and the Conservatives won the govt back. While many details are different, there is a lot of similarity in the US election situation. Many of Trump’s schemes will turn into real world failures, just as the border wall, “infrastructure week,” protectionism, “terrific substitute for Obsmacare, ” and so on did last time. And the Russians and climate driven weather will prove to be endlessly problematic.
Peale
@schrodingers_cat: I will say that if we fail to flip the house by 1 seat, it will be because the Democrats in NY-17 decided to run a progressive candidate in what they thought was a competitive district. The theory was we lost that district in 2022 because the “DLC hand picked a moderate when a progressive would have won!” Nope. There is a large Hasidic Jewish population in a district that used to be represented by Elliot Engel and Nita Lowey. Mike Lawler could run ads about how he stood up to the protestors and for Israel which Mondaire Jones could not do. This is not a white suburban district. Its probably one of the more ethnic diverse counties in the country. And do that not turn out for a “defund the police I get behind all progressive protests” candidate.
Quinerly
@NaijaGal:
Thoughtful analysis. TY.
Ksmiami
@Chris: I’d say leaning into freedom and trying to simplify and make life better in America would go a long way. Like a moonshot to allow people to vote via cell phone, or FAFSA apps that simplify the aid process. Between work, school, family life etc, people are too exhausted to engage in political life.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
they long for the days when all you had to be was White to get employment that would get you a middle class lifestyle.
I didn’t say White and educated.
Just White.
Nettoyeur
In 1945, Winston Churchill, who led Britain from the dark days of Dunkerque and going it alone against the Nazis to the victorious grand alliance with the US and the Soviet Union, was thrown out of office in a true (not sort of) landslide by the Labour Party led by Clement Attlee, whose campaign theme was basically Let’s Forget About the War that Churchill Did So Much to Win. Labour brought in the National Health Service, numerous progressive social programs, and nationalization of important industries. But by 1951 their themes got a bit stale, and there was Cold War tension to worry about, so Churchill and the Conservatives won the govt back. While many details are different, there is a lot of similarity in the US election situation. Many of Trump’s schemes will turn into real world failures, just as the border wall, “infrastructure week,” protectionism, “terrific substitute for Obamacare, ” and so on did last time. And the Russians and climate driven weather will prove to be endlessly problematic.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: on point.
Jeffro
truth
Dems must adopt better language and speak as if they’re speaking to individual voters’ concerns. Stop treating people like they’re mostly/solely part of a racial or ethnic group.
Dems can and should showcase the diversity of our party in all directions. But a) people already know that…we don’t have to make it a centerpiece of our arguments and b) in modern America, ‘diversity’ doesn’t just mean focusing on a particular non-white group. There’s a whole, wonderful range of diverse American backgrounds out there, and not only are Latinos the biggest non-white one, they’re incredibly diverse themselves.
When we talk about individuals and providing opportunity to all of them, we’re on a winning path.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
I blame every single person who was eligible to vote in the USA POTUS election and who did not vote for Kamala Harris.
Those who voted for Mr. Trump get a double share of blame.
New Deal democrat
@rikyrah:
This is one of those factoids where I think we need more in-depth information.
Because it is also true that men age 18-29 also swung big to the GOP. And demographically, I suspect there has been a huge % increase in the share of men ages 28-29 who are Hispanic.
There is likely a big overlap in the Venn diagram of those two demographics. So did Harris lose Hispanic men, or young men more of whom are Hispanic? I’d like to see a much deeper dive.
Chris
@Baud:
This. As I’ve said over and over, the biggest problem isn’t even media bias (that’s the second biggest problem), it’s that swing and even Democratic voters are largely totally unaware of said bias and believe the opposite about the media.
Incidentally, if we’re looking at why Republicans are improving among Latino voters, one reason is that they’ve been investing heavily in Spanish-language media that they’d previously disdained.
p.a
I can see amnesty since the Rs see the vote breakdowns. That’s what makes authoritarian voters authoritarian. If tRump shits in a cup & tells them it’s chocolate ice cream & Fox says eating it makes Ben & Jerry’s dick shrivel, they’ll tuck in.
Binky
@Kent: This exactly. Racism and classism within the Hispanic communities – and their countries of origin – are glossed over by treating them as a block. We make a large mistake by not realizing that White people and Hispanics are overlapping membership groups, and white supremacy is part of the worldview for some of them.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: I haven’t had the heart to look anyone up, but maybe I could stand listening to them.
mvr
@Quinerly: Thanks!
No problem either way but I want to be clear in what I was saying.
Quinerly
@Suzanne:
And we still lost suburban White women. The women we lost all voted for those abortion referendums in Red states like Missouri.
A large %of White woman are all in on Trump’s talk of “it going back to the states like everyone has wanted for 50 years.”
They bought the lie on 2 levels. The “everyone” part and they believe there will be no national abortion ban.
Tim in SF
Yesterday I read that post-pandemic societies always turn towards fascism for a time. It’s not a permanent swing. Things swing back. Eventually.
Stay strong.
Baud
My understanding is that the big shift in the Latino vote was in Texas and Florida. But we did well with them elsewhere. So that’s another thing to think about in not grouping them all in one bucket.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Archon:
I hope not.
Having said that, like you, never a fan of him but how he responded to the Tonya Harding Dems this past summer raised him a notch or three. I don’t care if it was sincere or not, he didn’t have to do that so big Newsom skeptic/critics like me have turned the knob down a bit.
And his post-election response *was* good.
Old School
From the Onion:
Dan B
@BigJimSlade: Much of what moves people are stories with few, if any, facts. That’s what right wing media does. It’s done it since FOX showed the way. Tim Walz is really good at telling stories, his and other people’s stories. He then brands the stories to moral choices and actions. Messaging also means “Who and Where” the story is told. It’s more than a catch phrase.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Citizen Dave:
I’ve seen a lot written about that over the last 36 hours.
I’m hoping a close examination of that and how to combat it in future elections will be one of our big “lessons learned” issues going forward.
zhena gogolia
I hope there are future elections.
p.a
@Baud: IIRC that’s been a source of concern since 2020 at least in Texas’ Rio Grande counties.
ETA: I’ve worked a bit with Hispanic folks and strangely enough they’re just people; the Mexicans badmouth the Guatemalans who badmouth the Hondurans…
Peale
@schrodingers_cat: I think before Trump lost in 2020, Millers denaturalization program had received 700,000 records of naturalized citizens to look for ways to denaturalize them. Now, at the very least, a citizen cannot be denaturalized without going to court, I BELIEVE. I don’t think they got through much of that before they left. I have no idea what they are looking for in those records. Like what violations that were “missed” during naturalization count?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Quinerly:
Nobody knows anything other than the raw numbers that you cite.
Chris
@Kent:
No one ever believed that nonwhites were some sort of natural coalition that loved each other. Not even Latinos. The belief was that they’d be in the same coalition politically because the other side was an existential threat to them.
Which is, historically, how it’s been. The Irish, Italian, and Jewish communities of a hundred years ago were all full of people who hated each other’s guts, but because Republicans were mostly balls-to-the-wall WASP supremacists, they all still usually voted Democrat at election time. And even more so for a generation or two after the great immigration hysteria of the 1920s. They eventually got into the idea of voting Republican, but only after Republicans had stopped being a threat.
If even an existential threat like Trump can’t do the same today, then politics no longer works like it used to, and we need to figure out what comes next.
Hamlet of Melnibone
@Baud:
My challenge here is that I no longer really have any Trumper friends or family. I’ve pretty much cut all those ties. I’ve got Trumper coworkers and casual acquaintances, but not ones I’m ever likely to talk politics with, since the only way I manage to not bludgeon them to death is to completely avoid those topics. I’m being hyperbolic, but just barely.
They’ve become awful people, and I have no idea how to play a part in changing that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Regarding the problem with media, information, and public perceptions – which many commenters here have already brought up, I think in the short run Dems are irretrievably fucked, with no way out.
The paradox of the Dems is that they support traditional American norms, values, and institutions (at least those which are constructive & benign, one hopes). And when adhered to those norms, values, and institutions are moderately effective at keeping the economy running, maintaining public peace & order, planning for the future, and generally keeping bad outcomes at bay, etc. But that very stability makes it easier for Americans to indulge themselves without consequences when it comes to consuming propaganda & BS. So, in an environment where the Right has weaponized lies on an industrial scale, competent Democratic governance is self-defeating – it creates a safe safe for people to consume even the vilest sort of absurdities. And the longer the period of stability, the broader and deeper the lies become.
The problem with being the Leopards Eating Faces Animal Control Dept (Saving Faces Every Day is our motto) is that the people being served normalize that it is just fine to live in a house filling up with more and more leopards. And they keep ordering more of them, and bigger, stronger & faster ones too. Leopards.com does a booming business selling dangerous wild animals to unsuspecting customers who little think that they make be the consumed rather than the consumer.
At this point I think all we can do in a practical sense is to hold tight to our values, preserve a memory of the norms & institutions and how they functioned before they were destroyed, and wait for GOP mis-governance to produce a catastrophe, one so large that even Fox News can’t conceal it or deflect the blame. Something on the scale of the 1930s Great Depression. The only thing which will break the back of the Right’s disinformation and propaganda machine is a set of facts so large and so unpalatable to the overwhelming majority of the population that they cannot be waved away and blame for them cannot be deflected. This is what happened in the 1932 election. I do not wish such a trajectory on the USA, but I think this is the trajectory which collectively we’ve chosen now.
rikyrah
I just did the math.
65% of Kamala’s vote in Illinois came from Cook County and the collar counties.
Not that I’m surprised, but, it still cracks me up.
Lyrebird
Thanks for posting this. Even within the college-educated white female group, there are massive divides. Mr. Ross (h/t @rikyrah: ) has every right to his take, but I have 3 words for everyone — including the amazing @Baud: — who says, oh sympathetic white women, you have to persuade those MAGA folks of something:
Christine Blasey Ford.
Her own PARENTS did not come to support her! Women like Mrs. Kavanaugh have an ability to see the Mark of Liberation or something on my face, I would get about as far as Prof. Blasey Ford did. I actually have a better chance of encouraging “own the libs” behavior than changing any MAGA minds to be more open.
ETA: that doesn’t mean I am giving up doing anything, it means I have way more belief that postcarding to open-minded listeners could help than my trying to convert confirmed MAGA minds.
rikyrah
@Peale:
Court? What kind of court? A Trump appointed judge?
KatKapCC
@Bill Arnold: Concur.
The Audacity of Krope
@Archon: Until further notice Newsom is the leader of the new anti-Trump resistance/Democratic Party.
He will be the primary beneficiary of Democrats impending 2028 commitment that we must nominate a straight, white man. That argument is coming and I’m already deeply unimpressed.
Baud
The whole conversation about “reaching out” to different identity groups is actually something that starts us off in the wrong direction. It artificially creates an “us” and a “them.” You would never say “Dems should reach out to Americans.” That sounds awkward. Saying Dems should reach out to any particular group of Americans is really just as awkward. We need to think instead about reaching out to interests. Sometimes that will be closely aligned with group identity, like the interest in equal treatment. But not always, and we should be aware of that distinction IMHO.
Lobo
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Free link anywhere?
Baud
@Lyrebird:
I didn’t say white women. I said white people. White people need to think about how to increase how to get more white voters to vote blue. Otherwise, you’re relying on maintaining an astronomically high minority vote.
And not all white folks who don’t vote blue are MAGA.
Archon
I think whatever type of civic loyalty and good faith patriotism the American right had to the American left died when Obama got re-elected. I talked to some conservatives at the time, they grudgingly understood how and why Obama get elected in 2008 but they were genuinely shocked and completely bewildered he got re-elected. It went against their entire mythos Republicans had cocooned in their bubble.
Well, whatever civic loyalty and good faith patriotism I had with the American right died on November 5, 2024 and I’m sure I’m not alone. When Trump won in 2016 I could excuse it and mitigate why it happened but not now. The existential problem is I genuinely don’t know how the country moves forward from here when half the nation believes the other half has lost their marbles, but the fact remains I have absolutely nothing but contempt for anyone that voted for Donald Trump and I will for the rest of my life.
Quinerly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
TY. I try to base my comments on info I can find/dig up. Especially now…I don’t trust my feelings or gut instincts anymore. I was sure Harris would win. Can’t ever remember feeling so sure about an election. Because of that, I am very careful in my comments. My instincts are broken. Looking for data.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Lyrebird:
Exactly. I’m gonna trot out my favorite all time quote, this from the late, great Steve Gilliard, written long before the MAGAts came to roam our lands:
He wrote that in 2005 and it rings even more true today.
We should be aiming our message at open-minded listeners, or the squishables, brand appropriately, be more granular in our outreach that would include the “interests” that Baud alludes to.
But try reaching the hard core rwnj? Pointless.
Quinerly
@Baud:
THIS!!¡!!!!!!!!!!!!
West of the Rockies
I just read in The Atlantic that 6 in 10 American men under 30 are single. Not sure if that’s by choice, but if not, maybe develop a respectful, empathetic personality, guys.
What role women play in enabling male toxicity is an interesting issue, too.
HeleninEire
I just received a notification from CNN that Trump picked Suzie Wiles as his Chief of Staff.
I turned off my CNN notifications. My first act of disengagement.
The Audacity of Krope
My experience going through the world as a gay man, straight women are the primary enforcers of the gender norms followed very closely by high school boys.
pika
Folks might want to read Mike Madrid’s The Latino Century. Heck, I bet he’d do a Zoom
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@NaijaGal:
This is a very good question. My gut hunch answer is that ethnicity is roughly an order of magnitude simpler to talk about than those other topics. Simplicity of expression really matters if you are addressing a low attention audience who are doing their best to cope with a high information environment.
Our world today is very information dense, but that also means that most people have to learn to tune most of it out in order to deal with the flood of info and just get on with daily life. Ethnicity as an issue is very well adapted to this, the issues which Dems favor which focus on building institutions to serve the common good are not – they are too complicated, too diffuse, and too abstract.
Lyrebird
@Baud: Thanks for clarifying. (head in hands) Pretty demoralized, here, but not giving up. And fwiw I am probably at most two handshakes away from Prof. Blasey Ford and her alleged attacker, so that whole thing stung twice as hard. There is something like a caste system in the white circles that think S. Miller and B. Kavanaugh (sp?) are just fine. I am glad to be an out-cast or whatever, but yecch.
Definitely agreeing with your point about proportions. And I really appreciate all of what you said in and before this:
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: We have to do that without throwing anyone under the bus.
Ohio Mom
@cain: When those autistic kids grow up — and people with autism have generally have normal lifespans — and those parents realize their children will be adults for a lot longer than they were children, and that the sources of funding for their children will be Social Security and Medicaid Waivers, that’s where the money for group homes and day programs, and transportation and everything else comes from — well, I will enjoy their misery if those programs are shreddded, even though I am usually full of camraderie for my fellow travelers.
its not quite fair of me because when Ohio Son was very little I did not know or understand the structure of government support for disabled people. But I made it a point to find out and by the time he was in grade school I knew that it was Medicaid Waivers that paid for group homes, not some charity fairy.
Lyrebird
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: THANK YOU.
I miss Gilly’s posts and perspective so much!
And I very much agree about interests. Like [ETA equal enjoyment of] the bill of rights and the modern constitution.
And fighting disinformation as many here have said has got to be a piece of it.
danielx
@rikyrah:
They long for the mythical golden age of the 1950s, when all white men had good jobs for the asking and black people, brown people, women and children knew their place and by gawd kept to it, or else. And those are the ones who don’t want to go back to the 1850s.
I’m too old for this shit, and I probably won’t live to see things get better. It’s more than a little depressing.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Audacity of Krope: Oddly enough, I once had a female classmate in law school make fun of me for using the word “lovely.” To be fair, she still slept with me, so I am not sure what it proves.
Fair Economist
@Mai Naem mobile:
From the fact that nobody knows where it came from and that it benefits Republicans, I’d take 10:1 odds it’s from Republican-aligned disinfo, probably via targeted ads.
Nukular Biskits
I have a take that might not be popular here and probably won’t earn my many friends but it somewhat echoes what BettyC said.
While there may be some merit in the arguments that Harris didn’t do X, didn’t say Y, that Biden waited too long, was too old, ___________ <insert other theory here>, quite frankly, I honestly and fervently believe the two major reasons for us losing the White House were:
Of the former, there are two sub-categories: Ignorance due to just not being informed and ignorance due to a irrational refusal to accept any evidence your beliefs are wrong (what I call “belligerent ignorance” or “just fucking stupid”).
As for hatred, you certainly can make the argument that it arises from ignorance, and you’ll get no debate from me.
In either case, I have lost any and all patience with those who chose Trump, given Harris was the sane alternative. And, reprising what I had in my GBCW rant on Twitter last night when I left, I most certainly have nothing but contempt for those claiming “sincerely-held religious convictions” yet who still supported Trump.
I am at the point now where if any Trump supporter wants to make nice with me, I will forego all societal niceties and point them in a direction where they can fuck off.
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
Down state Illinois changed dramatically in my years in St. Louis. Those old union towns just over the Mighty Miss turned Red. I used to have court dockets in Madison, Monroe, and Saint Clair Counties. The latter and Jackson co are still Blue but that’s about it for my old stomping grounds. Also, lots of Armenian communities that started voting Red years ago. Madison Co….specifically…..Granite City. Old steel town. Automotive industry.
Suzanne
@rikyrah:
Well, white and male.
But other than that, you have not lied.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@lowtechcyclist: Leftward things that alienated the conservative leaning moderates that voted for Biden last time include: green new deal, student loan forgiveness, being helpful to immigrants, and other spending to help the poor. They were mad about it.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: What a lovely story.
Quinerly
@HeleninEire:
Now, now…she will be the adult in the room.
Or this time her boyfriend will change. She will change her boyfriend because deep down he really loves her.
Pick your metaphor.
bbleh
@Baud: @Baud: as to these and other comments on the same topic, Dems obviously can’t rely on a purely non-White electorate, but it’s also become GLARINGLY apparent that — Professional Politics Knower and Pundit opinion notwithstanding — we also can’t appeal to a BIG chunk of the White population, because we can NEVER offer them what they want.
For all the talk of “economic anxiety” and such, they do not reward Dems for the REALLY economically significant things we have done — eg the ACA, the American Recovery Act, educational loan forgiveness, workplace safety regulation, attempts to constrain credit card interest rates, etc. etc. etc. — and they are utterly unconcerned about Republican attempts to UNDO those things (repeal the ACA, repeal regulations, etc. etc). We’re NEVER going to be able successfully to “reach out” to them, even if — by some means TOTALLY UNKNOWN — Dems could change gas prices or apartment rents. (Funny how nobody expects Republicans to do that btw.)
And I’m somewhat sorry to have reached the conclusion that that a big chunk of White voters — I call them the White Grievance demographic — want what Lyndon Johnson long ago said they want: someone to look down on, which is something the party of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act will NEVER offer them.
Therefore, they effectively are lost to us. Like everyone, they still deserve clean air and water, and safe food and drugs and workplaces, and decent schools for their children and care for their elderly, but to try to tailor our approach to them, to “reorient” toward them, would be a fool’s errand. It’s like the formerly Southern Democrats after 1964. We just gotta figure out a majority with folks other than them.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Audacity of Krope: I thought so.
Kent
@Chris: The media information ecosystem is completely different today than what it was 100 years ago with partisan newspapers.
We live in a social media hellscape punctuated by FOX News and AM radio. That is how most Hispanics get their news. I don’t know how you penetrate it. But that’s where we need to start.
Waiting until actual campaigns to start messaging is far too little too late.
The answer is probably left-wing Joe Rogans who can do things like scream about how the corporations are fucking working people and do 3 hours of Rush Limbaugh style ranting about Comcast or whatever. That is the sort of thing that sinks in.
zhena gogolia
Petty thought: I hope Biden and Harris stay away from his inauguration. He didn’t attend theirs.
zhena gogolia
@Fair Economist: They’re also expecting the income tax to be rescinded.
Sure Lurkalot
@Lobo:
This link to Fintan O’Toole’s piece should work:
http://archive.today/2024.11.07-180447/https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/11/07/letting-it-all-hang-out-november-5-election-fintan-otoole/
zhena gogolia
@Nukular Biskits: Sounds pretty popular to me!
Baud
@bbleh:
Dems aren’t going to keep sky high minority votes forever. So if we’ll be a rump party pretty soon if you’re correct.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
I wouldn’t be surprised to find there was a lot of truth to this.
Central Planning
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: This makes me think of a bunch of questions:
Is white supremacy more prevalent where the percentage of white people is higher or lower?
Are people more white supremacists because it’s easier to tell if someone is white vs LGBTQ? You can’t see union membership, religion, medical issues (generally), so it’s not the most important thing to hate
I believe there are more non-white people in the US than white women. It’s easier to have your hatred reinforced if you see more of the people you’re supposed to hate.
Finally, who teaches hatred? Wtf is wrong with them.
Kent
To be more accurate. They were mad about the FOX News distortion filter of those things. You know, like how Border Czar Kamala Harris was personally flying asylum seeking gang members first class to NYC, giving them free cell phones and hotel vouchers to the Ritz so they could illegally vote for her and then rape women.
That sort of thing.
oldgold
To get back the middle and lower middle class the Democratic Party needs to focus on pocket book issues ( wages, housing, medical care, child care and equitable taxation ) and deemphasize the cultural issues.
KatKapCC
@Kent: The Dems really stepped up their game from the days of pizza-parlor child sex rings.
Fair Economist
@wonkie:
I like your phrasing.
KatKapCC
@oldgold: Oh, pray tell, what “cultural issues” would those be?
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: So who do you think we should throw under the bus?
The Audacity of Krope
Kindness and respect, broadly.
Smart money is on trans people.
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: You really need the word “white” in there.
New Deal democrat
@bbleh:
I am going to push back on this. When FDR got Social Security passed, there was a whole press event of the first recipient getting their first giant-sized check.
Where was that with the ACA?
Where were Biden and Dem Congresscritters at each and every groundbreaking for each new plant or road or other improvement under the IRA?
Where were the giant billboards next to said improvements with pictures of the (all-Dem) pols who made it possible?
Etc. Etc.
Trump made sure his signature was on every COVID stimulus check.
You want to win back (some of) the white working class? Make it impossible for them not to know who should get the credit.
Gloria DryGarden
Reposting from previous thread, because it may be urgent, and important to start thinking this way:
Some of us are afraid about money and assets. And income.
others are planning how to go into hiding to stay alive. People are in different boats.
I hope we can all think together about both these situations.
Keeping resources available is pretty helpful. Staying alive and not deported or into camps is apparently urgent and vivid, and some folks are already planning in a hurry, and disappearing from the blog.
lowtechcyclist
@p.a:
Are you trying to write a new verse of “National Brotherhood Week”? ;-)
Miki
@HeleninEire: Nepo baby rewarded. Need to start a bet on how long she’ll last, and what job her daughter gets.
TFG invites corruption and chaos, again and always.
Subsole
@rikyrah:
Oh lord, I was listening to someone lecture me before the election about how they were voting for Trump because the border. I mentioned how ridiculous our immigration system was, and they came back with how they had followed the rules and it wasn’t fair that those other folks got to cut in line. Just on and on and on. Became very clear they actually thought being naturalized meant they were safe.
All I could think was “Honey, if you get your way, you are going to learn some very hard, ugly, painful life lessons about white people.”
Fair Economist
@zhena gogolia:
That’s not crazy to believe if they’re ignorant about economics, because Trump *did* say he wanted to eliminate the income tax and replace it with tariffs. At a meeting with business leaders, who know that’s impossible and were extremely unimpressed. It can’t possibly happen, but there is some reason to believe it.
And, I would not be surprised *at all* if the RW bought ads to serve up that Trump quote to anybody complaining bitterly about taxes on FB or Xitter.
catothedog
I wrote last week that even if Harris won, it would be just a speed bump on the road to Fascism, because democrats won’t go to war with the Rethug party even if she won. And I got pilloried for it.
Democrats are here because they have been bringing knifes to gunfights. They did not realize that this was war.
The first problem is that majority of unengaged voters don’t understand how government works, or the consequences of their voting choices. The rightwing understands what they are voting for – screw the liberals, white privilege, racism and corporate giveaways – they know the impact of voting and timeframes to achieve results
A large part of the Dem coalition – what they call the Ariana Grande voters at LGM – do not. The more the rightwing breaks good government (as they are going to do now), the more this disengagement will be for considerable parts of the Dem coalition.
For eg: Even if the Rethugs destroy SS/Medicare/VA and the New Deal, the effect of this will be felt over time and by that time, Trump and the people who got it done would be gone. The kind of majority that built those programs won’t exist, and they won’t be able to put it back fast enough even if they get power. The Dem coalition who try to fix it will get blamed for not being able to do it fast enough and get voted out, and the party that broke it will get power again. This is what I call the DoorDash effect, – I need it now, and if you can’t deliver right now, you suck – and you can see this ACA, the infrastructure bill and Biden’s labor policy
This is a conundrum – because the poor and less privileged do not have the time to engage and understand political choices and long-term progress. But without expanding the committed voter base of the Dem coalition , there won’t be any progress. And that needs lot of money and also voter time
The second is the Democratic leadership not realizing that the last two decades has been war, including Obama and Biden. Chamberlain’s “peace in our times” leadership. They did nothing while the rightwing kneecapped the Democratic Party and Brough it to where Rethugs have complete power to Destroy the part completely. ( If you don’t get this, learn about what Orban did in Hungary, or ask @schrodingerscat about what Modi did to India’s media and plutocrats to starve the opposition from money and resources ). Trumps mistakes should have been tied around Republicans, but the Dems did not, other than when Biden had to run for election.
Dems are going to be powerless anyway and will be losing for decade or more. So work to build a blatantly partisan party and leaders, who will do the right thing ruthlessly when they do get power – i.e. Impeach all the judges, break the oligarchs and break the corporate media and reform the undemocratic EC, the House cap and The Senate and deliver immediate results.
Chasing right-leaning centrists and moderate voters will not build strong parties because they are fickle, and will result in similar kind of leaders who lack a spine.
The Democratic Party is dying now, because they don’t build lasting infrastructure to educate voters about the political process and build a committed base. Going back to local organizing, raising billions to fund that organizing work (instead of last minute election fundraising) and building the base is the only way out. Election fundraising and organizing that appears for a few months every 4 years will not suffice against a 365 day Republican war machine
I don’t have solutions, but not understanding the problem or prioritizing the wrong problems should come first. Worrying about some Asian Americans/Hispanics/Blacks moving to the right and trying to get them back by pointing out the racism of the Rethugs will definitely not get us anywhere.
When there are a significant number of voters thinking that Biden dismantled Roe v Wade, or the economy sucks, the problem is with the Dem party and its permanent voter infrastructure
bbleh
@Baud: I disagree. I don’t think the White Grievance demographic is even a majority of the White population (~3/4 of US), much less ALL of it. And I’d guess it includes pretty much the entirety of the usual revanchist / reactionary segment — typically 20-30% in industrialized countries, and I think we’re presently on the high side of that — none of whom would vote Dem anyway. That is, it’s maybe 35% out of the 75%, which means we gotta figure out how to get 50.1% out of the 65% or so left, and that’s entirely do-able (especially eg during times of serious distress caused by lunatic Republican economics).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@New Deal democrat:
And when trumpeting (sorry) those accomplishments, make it prominent.
I was driving back from the other side of the Eisenhower tunnel along I-70 yesterday and coming into someplace east of Georgetown, there was a sign that said something to the effect of “Brought to you by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill”, with the logos of 3 agencies (including DOT) very small underneath.
It looked like your standard, easily overlooked, highway green sign. Not big, not in-your-face, nothing.
Most people driving by probably thought “WTF is the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill”?
I can say that before I retired last year, Sec Pete did do a lot of ribbon cutting, public events at ground breaks, ribbon cuttings, etc., but I only knew that because I worked for DOT and got the emails.
Baud
@bbleh:
I never suggested we’re going to get all white people. We don’t have enough right now though.
oldgold
I am not suggesting throwing anyone under the bus.
You can’t do much for anyone when you are not in charge of any branch of the government.
Gloria DryGarden
I’m proposing lots of us have in person meet ups, or use snail mail, or encrypted text and email for more delicate conversations.
For example ( in case it’s delicate):
There are folks w land accepting guests for camping and conversation. There are folks w rooms in their homes, also accepting guests.
Fair Economist
@West of the Rockies:
Not in a relationship single or just not officially married single? If the latter that’s about what you’d expect just from the median age at marriage being 30.5.
My nephew didn’t start seriously looking for a relationship until he was 25 (he’d had one in college but it ended poorly) and he’s about as un-incel as you get.
Ohio Mom
@lowtechcyclist: I hadn’t thought of that scenario but it sounds right to me. Trump only has to put a portion of Hispanics in camps to prove to his base that he’s tough on immigration.
That still leaves plenty of others to continue their established work in the fields and slaughterhouses, to clean hotels, etc. That makes big business happy; even if any one business doesn’t get to hire people from the camps, they still have their old workforce.
As a plus, the still free workforce will be docile and easy to abuse because of the threat that they’ll end up in the camps.
Quite a Win-win.
Subsole
@cain:
Why on earth would he spare anyone because of his wife?
Lindsey Graham is gayer than gay. You ever seen him stand up for his fellow gays??
lowtechcyclist
@West of the Rockies:
Do they mean ‘single’ = ‘not married,’ or ‘single’ = ‘doesn’t have a significant other’?
If the former, well, most men under 30 shouldn’t be married. The vast majority of men under 25 simply aren’t really responsible yet, and aren’t emotionally ready for that commitment. So that wouldn’t really mean anything AFAIAC.
Captain C
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: And in addition to the signs saying ‘Brought to you by JOE BIDEN and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill’, there should be a PAC set up such that every time some knucklehead obstructionist Republican who voted against the bill claims credit, with in 24 hours there’s an ad up in his district (and also targeted via social media) saying “Congresscritter X claims to have brought you Y, but they voted against it. He also disparaged it. Watch them say this in their own words: (followed by footage of Congresscritter X denouncing the bill).”
If the Republicans cry over this, make a drink from their tears.
taumaturgo
@Baud:
Obama surrendered the high ground of the argument by going with “getting thought on the border,” as demanded by the republicans. The upshot was he became the deported in chief, kind of trowing an important segment of your base over the fence. No pun intended.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: yep. I’m sorry that the fierce urgency of now became with Garland… et Al the fierce urgency of well whenever. Time to rebrand, reprioritize and regroup. But I won’t shed any tears for my white brethren who get screwed. I’m out of fucks to give..
Captain C
@Central Planning:
Finally, who teaches hatred? Wtf is wrong with them.
Sociopaths who gain (or think they gain) from more hatred, at least pointed in the right direction for their purposes.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: Dear gawd you are right. That would be the box everyone would check.
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
I guess you saw my comment to you this AM, early, early. You are welcomed here outside of Santa Fe. 285 corridor. 4 bedrooms, plenty of alone space in my house, on my land and local hiking….Galisteo Basin Preserve. And drinks at my local watering hole in Lamy. Dirt roads and microbrews!
Captain C
@New Deal democrat: I really like this idea.
Ksmiami
@Ohio Mom: except Stephen Miller really hates Hispanic people so he might bend Trumps ear
Gloria DryGarden
Has anyone seen Yarrow in the blog today? Does anyone know her/them (not sure if pronouns) in real life?
Just wanting a wellness check in, based on a thread conversation last night.
Baud
@taumaturgo:
They were never a significant source of votes, not enough to counteract the voters who wanted tougher immigration laws.
The Audacity of Krope
The culture, broadly, in ways big and small.
bbleh
@Baud: no. I put a lot of stock in the misogyny-plus-some-racism factor — Trump won against two women but lost against a pretty normal White male pol — which btw applies in some non-White populations too. And I think a booming economy gets far less political credit (“I earned this raise! And I deserve a bigger truck!”) than a bad one gets blame — in that way, we’re kind of victims of our own success.
BUT I think there’s a big chunk of the White population — maybe 35% as I said — who are convinced that they are victims of a Democratic scheme to buy the votes of undeserving and inferior Others, and that this is why they’re paying huge interest charges on their credit cards and can’t afford a new truck. And they are encouraged and supported in this belief DAILY by both broadcast media and social media. And they’re so invested in it, and in their victim status, that even obvious benefits to them, like the ACA etc., are written off entirely or even considered inadequate.
I don’t think they’re reachable, certainly not at a reasonable cost. And that means focusing on the other 40% or so who are White and the 25% or so who are not. And I think that IS do-able.
Dan B
@Gloria DryGarden: Exactly. And for people like me, my partner, and most of our friends who are gay and living off Social Security we are looking into where to hide and how to afford food and housing. I’d thought about selling the house, which Seattle has made quite valuable, and moving to Canada but… if SS is cut off I won’t have enough income to emigrate.
The cultists are already howling to round up gays. They want gay men eliminated and lesbians as sex slaves.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Central Planning:
This is going to sound very misanthropic, but I don’t think hatred has to be taught. It comes very easily & naturally to people and is just an unfortunate part of human nature.
What has to be taught, and taught with great persistence & diligence, is non-hatred, tolerance, empathy & kindness extended to people beyond the small circle of one’s friends & family. That does not come very naturally to people and has to be socialized. That is one of the core principles of civic (as distinct from ethnic) nationalism at its best. But cultivating it is very long, hard work.
I think where we are today with that aspect of our political culture owes a lot to the aftermath of Obama’s election in 2008 & re-election in 2012. I think that broke the back of pride in America and loyalty & deference to American institutions for many whites – their reaction to it was: if that is America, then FUCK America.
Today they respect the norms & institutions which Trump is dedicated to tearing down and destroying about as much as white Southerners respected the institutions of the Yankee controlled US Government of the Union in 1861.
Whites today have mentally seceded from the Union and look forward to its destruction & downfall.
Pika
@lowtechcyclist: Rikyrah’s right: my deceased white father got a well-paying science job with no college and got a lot of other stuff as a result and STILL felt cheated
Jeffro
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I’d highly recommend reading Isabel Wilkerson’s CASTE when y’all have a chance. This country was founded on the idea that white supremacy comes first (and by extension, that Black people must always come last).
It’s not a new problem.
The Audacity of Krope
Do people want tougher immigration laws or do they want an accurate account of who crosses the border?
I suspect that for most people it is the latter. Democrats offer that, not Republicans. Republicans have been the biggest obstacle to making our border more efficient and secure. They’ve been running this con for decades, so it’s really voters’ fault for not seeing through it by now.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
They want fewer people crossing the border. Probably more mixed about legal immigration.
Agree that the Republicans would rather keep the issue alive than solve the problem.
CaseyL
We keep hearing, on the one hand, how we’re so polarized as a country that we don’t share any definitions for things like freedom, or justice, or equality.
We also keep hearing that we have more in common than we have differences (that may simply have been campaign-speak, but I hear it from people who aren’t politicians, too.)
Can both statements be correct?
Tim Walz’s catchphrase(s) were “None of your damn business,” and an underlying campaign message was “leave us alone.” That could mean diametrically opposed things to different groups of people.
“None of your damn business” – I know how the campaign meant it; I know how we here mean it.
How does someone not steeped in liberal politics mean it?
“It’s none of your damn business…” how I run my business, what kind of car I drive, whether I sort and recycle my trash. Stop policing every damn thing I do, every damn thing I say, every damn opinion I have!
I think that may be how. And I do think, in our eagerness to embrace the most expansive worldview, we do indeed come across as “policing every damn thing I do and say” when it comes to people who have not embraced such an expansive worldview.
And that is absolutely a turn-off. Got very little to do with the substance of an issue, and more to do with reminding people of those annoying snots in middle school who picked on them every time they opened their mouth, or that annoying cousin who does the same thing every time the family gets together. The tattle-tales, the social informers… all the brats who made us miserable as tweens and teens.
And if that’s how they see Democrats, or Democratic politics, that’s something we need to fix right away. Because if that’s how we’re coming across, we are not going to reach anyone who doesn’t already agree with us.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ohio Mom: i was in the thread late, after you and Geg and nelle and a few others responded to Yarrow. I wrote something, late, in the telomere end of that thread. (Of course I did.) I’m concerned. Has Yarrow been on here today?
zhena gogolia
@oldgold: Harris talked about those economic issues ad nauseam.
The Audacity of Krope
Well, that’s just terrible. I still think some combination of secure and efficient is the best way to reach non-bigots.
Jeffro
@bbleh:
two great points right there:
I’m shocked that they haven’t mandated into law that PepsiCo reinstate the ‘Aunt Jemina’ brand of pancake syrup, honestly. ‘Pearl Milling Co.’ just doesn’t have that same caste-reinforcing zip to it.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
It’s out of our hands now.
Jeffro
@zhena gogolia: I hope Biden stays away…because he has already resigned the presidency to Harris a week earlier, and therefore has no role in the proceedings. =)
The Audacity of Krope
One might even say they were the focus of her campaign. If people would rather be abused by massive-scale land owners than have their power to abuse diminished by having their assets broken up, all the whole building more houses, not a lot we can do about that.
Ksmiami
@Archon: well said. They need to be shunned
Gloria DryGarden
@Dan B: Eolirin wrote in to go silent on the blog, prepared for imminent hiding. A couple hours ago.
A jackal friend has land in Nw Georgia, and welcomes folks for camping and conversation. His daughter is trans.
zhena gogolia
@Gloria DryGarden: I haven’t seen him/her, but I haven’t been on all day. That said, Yarrow does come in and out. They were very upset by the Biden thing, for example, and disappeared for quite a while.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: I’m still planning on treating the election in two years like it matters.
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: Well, good for you! I hope you’re right.
Jeffro
From the things I’ve read (links not provided – sorry for being lazy!) white supremacist activity and a high level of racial antipathy result from one of two things:
whenever the non-white population of an area (especially a middle or upper-middle class area) shifts dramatically in a short period of time.
similar to #1, but slightly different: whenever the non-white percentage of the population gets above 15-20% (whether rapidly or not)
#1 is why we here in Virginia had some SERIOUSLY racist GOP candidates in Prince William County over the past decade or two, for example. The Hispanic population increased quite dramatically in a short period of time.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
Me too. Maybe if Dems have a good showing, Trump would actually “deal” on immigration. Who knows?
zhena gogolia
Let me just say, without Balloon Juice I would not be doing very well right now. I’m still not doing well, but you guys are helping.
Also, having my first glass of wine since Sunday helps.
Ohio Mom
@KatKapCC: Yes, too many people lump together Jewish voters and those Pro-Israel Evanglical loons. Or maybe I should say Prp-Likud Evangelical loons.
The Audacity of Krope
@zhena gogolia: I’m running. I had a Harris wins plan and a Trump wins plan. Unfortunately, looks like it will be the latter.
catothedog
@Jeffro:
This is a fools errand. They will never partner with you. They can only be defeated and contained, but organizing the other people around other common ideas. Which is why we should not try to dilute our core values to appeal to the rightwing factions of Hispanics, blacks and Asians.
TPM has a piece up about building permanent party messaging infrastructure. Worth reading ..here is a quote.
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: You’re running for office?
sanjeevs
One strategy the Republicans are running is peeling off 1% here, .5% there or .1% somewhere else by creating and pandering to, for want of a better category, internet rabbit holes.
I mean the Andrew Tate crowd, the antivaxxers and ‘crunchy’ types, the tradwife influencers etc.
And they really foregrounded this by having RFK Jr (antivaxxers), Rogan, Tulsi etc as prominent parts of their campaign.
These are long-term strategies played out over many years and presumably requiring lots of A/B testing and tons of money.
Jeffro
This is my understanding as well. Tribalism is hard-wired into us, for some very good evolutionary reasons. What we do with that impulse, though, is up to us.
Darkrose
@zhena gogolia: Glad you’ve stuck around. *hugs
Gloria DryGarden
@zhena gogolia: thanks. You might read the late night thread, find that conversation so at least you know what’s up.
The Audacity of Krope
@zhena gogolia: Congress. A bit of a stretch, but I’ll be promoting some coalition-oriented ideas where taking the lead from a more visible race may be important. I don’t intend to only uplift myself with this.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
Whoa. Nice.
West of the Rockies
@Fair Economist:
The article did not specify.
Quinerly
@zhena gogolia:
So wonderful this community is so helpful to so many.
I just cracked Costco’s Waterdog Portugal Red. I am a sucker for the really cute labeling. And the price. I am a known tightwad. Screw offs rock (at home)!!!!
New Deal democrat
O Lord O Lord O Lord,
I know people don’t click on links, but stop whatever you are doing right now and listen to this:
https://nitter.poast.org/RoseSensu/status/1854215333243949203#m
FDR to Henry Morgenthau (allegedly): “America is a White Protestant country. Everyone else is here on sufferance.”
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
FDR was no fan of non-whites. It is known.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: i would love to visit. It sounds wonderful.
I’m not, however,
on the verge of imminent hiding. You might email Eolirin, to invite them, though.
lashonharangue
I don’t see the point in engaging in much analysis until we get a lot more detailed voting data (probably a couple of weeks away). I still go back to my three basic beliefs about how politics works:
identity is more important than ideology
narrative is more important than facts
social status is defined much more by those below than those above
I suspect the last point is particularly relevant in regard to those commenting about the mistake of thinking of Latinos as a cohesive ethnic group.
hrprogressive
@The Audacity of Krope:
And everyone else talking about the immigration issue
I’ve never understood why Democrats didn’t ever try to gambit on this in a way that arguably could help a lot of people involved.
The way I see it, and I know I’m just one guy –
“You guys wanna secure the border? Close the border? Okay, great. Let’s do that. Let’s build a wall. Let’s build the biggest fucking wall anyone’s ever seen. 100′ high, 10′ thick, 25′ feet buried in the ground. Armed guards patrolling the top of it. Make it all but impossible to get in, except through a couple of select places, and only when done lawfully.
We’ll pay for it by taxing the shit out of the wealthy. We’ll raise the $1T or whatever it’ll cost over 10 years by taking 50% capital gains taxes, raising taxes on high net worth individuals to Eisenhower-levels that’ll sunset once it’s built.
Oh, and, let’s accelerate the status of people who have paid their taxes and stayed crime-free the entire time they’ve been here. All of ’em.”
And then,
When the Fascist GOP inevitably goes “No, Not Like That!” you get a campaign ad of your own you can hammer them on.
“Republicans refuse to close the border, letting in harmful drug traffickers, and burdening our already stressed infrastructure. Democrats want to Secure The Border and the American Dream for all law-abiding persons”
***
The thing is, I think a lot of people on the left have completely discounted the illegal immigration issue as “people simply being racist”.
I have been a participant of the legal immigration system, as a sponsor of someone not from this country. It blows.
And the idea that a country as big as this hasn’t done more to keep people – well-meaning people in many cases, I admit – from being able to cross without a lawful way of doing so?
The whole “No human is illegal” line is the kind of bleeding heart stuff that turns off moderate voters who think things like “national sovereign borders” and “maintaining a lawful system of immigration” are important.
Does that mean the Democrats should give in to all the “caravan” and “illegals coming to rape your pure white daughters and wives?”
Fuck No.
But it’s clear this is an issue that matters to people.
Call their bluff in a way that makes it easy to attack them.
“Build the fucking wall, with Musk and Thiel’s money, and legalize the DREAMERS already here. Let’s make a deal. oh you don’t want that? Sounds like you’re racist fuckwits and don’t care about immigration. See, Swing Voter? They don’t wanna do it. We do”
I understand what I’m proposing is going to bristle a lot of people, but I think there is a pragmatic way to say “We should address this issue in a way that does one very specific thing people say they want, but we should do it in a way that appeals to the way we would do things”.
It’ll never happen because the Democrats refuse to fucking learn anything, but yeah.
oldgold
@zhena gogolia: Yes, and very few heard her because of all the other noise.
cintibud
@Gloria DryGarden: Just checked past threads and he hasn’t posted since that thread last night.
West of the Rockies
I will note that when much turns to shit by 2026/28, a decent number of the uninformed voting group will choose blue because there are no other viable options. Oh, there will always be the Stein/RFK voters, but I think there will be some natural pendulum swing like in ’08 and ’20 back to Democrats.
New Deal democrat
@Baud: Just listen to the TikTok. Then pick your jaw up off the floor.
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
Cool. Will reach out. In my old life I was dubbed ” the keeper of the lost souls.” Looks like I could be back in bidness.
My door has always been open for 42 years. Reasons.
greengoblin
I’m always late to the conversation and have not read all the comments, but I want to push back on this idea of the Floridaization of America. Progressive initiatives won in many states, including deep red states like Kentucky. Washington state went bluer and our governor-elect and Governor Newsom are already pledging to fight for our rights.
There is a protest scheduled this weekend to support immigrants in Seattle. We are NOT Florida.
NaijaGal
@Jeffro:
I agree that Caste is a must-read (before reading it, I had no idea that many of Nazi Germany’s rules were modeled on the Jim Crow south).
Back to musing – what makes a Shawn Fain (UAW) back the Democrats while Sean O’Brien (Teamsters) backs the Republicans in spite of Republicans’ aversion to unions and fair/living wages? Is it the racial composition of their respective union members?
ETA: It might surprise some to learn that Sean O’Brien has some college education while Shawn Fain does not.
Dan B
@Gloria DryGarden: It’s not possible for me to hide in the US. My name is rare, as in I’m the only one in the USA with my name, so I’d need fake ID. My partner and I aren’t married but most of our friends, gay and straight, are so it’s easy to tell who’s gay.
Quinerly
@cintibud: could be taking a break. Do you think someone should reach out?
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
Who are those people?
Nothing in there was shocking to me, but I’m familiar with white nationalism.
Subsole
So I’ve been mulling the last couple days. Waiting for my head and heart to clear.
Honestly? This Democrat is about a half step from just checking out.
This country puts Republicans in charge, then expects Democrats to clean up when the bill for indulging their ignorant, petty, spiteful greed comes due.
I do not think this dynamic is tenable. This thing, where America votes to wreck itself, then turns to its despised social classes to actually repair everything and clean it all up, then wrecks it all again the instant things are running again? It don’t work. It can’t work.
Our compassion and decency has essentially shielded this nation from the consequences of its moral and intellectual failings. I think that has to stop.
I am honestly halfway to just saying we should disband the party and let our fellow citizens who (by ignorance, apathy, or malice) got us into this mess get us out. Maybe if they choke on their own blood long enough they’ll learn something.
I have been beating my head against my demographic as a white hetero male in a red state for 20 years and they not only never learn, they barely listen. Lost friends. Lost family. Had some glorious arguments. Took a lot of shit.
I don’t really have a personal life. I barely have a social life. I only just recently got a sliver of my family back because my old man finally saw these assholes for what they are after J6.
I am sick of trying to civilize people whose only response to asking them to stop being so mean is to get meaner. And chuckle at you while they do it. Or just shrug and sit on the couch because “both sides same” is apparently enlightened, or something.
So half of me says, I am done. This Libtard is gonna go live his life best he can. They can clean up their own fucking mess for once in my life. Or die in it. I don’t much care right now.
There is of course a small voice which says that’s just cutting and running. Which is the only thing that has me hesitating.
Maybe not very noble or mature. But kind of where I am.
Quinerly
@lashonharangue: thanks for this. Please keep commenting.
New Deal democrat
@hrprogressive:
A number of years ago I read a survey that indicated that 50% of the entire population of the Philippines (pop. 115.000.000) would emigrate to the US if they could.
Just one country.
More I saith not.
Gvg
@schrodingers_cat: We aren’t surprised by them anymore and have already discussed them in many past threads.
Not that I really understand them, but then, I am kind of afraid to. Stare into the abyss too long…
The Hispanic turn surprised us and some of the young males, although it was mentioned a bit towards the last. We don’t understand the Hispanic choice because we know many “white” voters and authorities are so racist that they really think anyone with slightly darker skin is an “illegal” including native born for generations. Indulging in anti other rhetoric is unleashing a wild force. No one controls it totally. But I went to college and read a lot of history books. Clearly I don’t know how to warn them in a way that will convince.
New Deal democrat
@Baud: Not sure. As the source I found it at (“Femi_sorry”, a UK activist) said, it’s not often they actually say the quiet part out loud.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
Well, not over a nice dinner anyway.
Jeffro
Honestly, that’s a really great question…to ask Shawn and Sean.
(I’m being totally serious).
So many variables in terms of their own lived experience (including home and neighborhood where they grew up, membership of their organizations, how they view their jobs, all of it). Everything else would just be speculation.
Jeffro
@Subsole: totally hear you…but we could use your help down the road. ;)
Take a good, healthy break and then please check back in!
Zelma
When one side plays by the Marquess of Queensbury rules and the other side goes no holds barred, guess who ends up bleeding on the floor?
Kirk
@WereBear: Remember the fuss about “FEMA camps” during the Bush/1st Obama years?
I almost figure it’s a given. Thing is, a lot of the jobs that are immigrant heavy aren’t going to work well with labor camps. Sure, 29% of construction labor is immigrants but that’s only about 12% of all immigrants. 1/3 of immigrants work in education/health services and professional/business services. (all following facts from usafacts.org.)
If the major deportation scheme actually happens, it’ll tank our economy while causing massive labor shortages in the places nobody’s looking. A lot of places immigrants work now will NOT want forced labor. Not without the government paying for the transportation, oversight, and security for sure and for many not even then. Anecdotal – I work in a warehouse where the majority of the people drive 4 ton forklifts. We have a decent safety rate and low loss to damage rate because those operators are careful because it matters. Put people in who are less invested and, well, safety and damages both go the wrong way.
Quinerly
@Subsole:
Where are you? If you want to chat, please feel free to get my email info from Betty Cracker. I’m a bit of an odd duck but a very good listener. True Story.😉
hrprogressive
@New Deal democrat:
Hadn’t heard that, and frankly, I’m more than happy to welcome people to this country.
If we’re going to be “a nation of immigrants”, two things can and should also be true:
1) There’s nothing wrong with securing the border. Not in the Ken Paxton way of tossing razor wire up or shooting people in the Rio Grande, or whatever. But making sure we’re not porous down there very clearly matters to enough swing voters, and Democrats have abdicated completely on the issue.
2) The lawful system should be modernized, well-funded, and speedy.
Republicans don’t want either of those things. Well, the white fascists don’t, but maybe some ‘moderates’ would.
Democrats might not ever get buy in from them on it, but dammit, stake the position, and show voters you give a shit. When the GOP reject it, HIT THEM WITH IT.
Clearly voters will listen to that. The GOP just got away with it.
KatKapCC
@Ohio Mom: Because they don’t know that evangelicals only care about Israel as far as its role in their end-times beliefs. They couldn’t give less of a damn about Jews aside from that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@zhena gogolia:
This is going to sound rather off key coming from somebody who is almost always a lurker rather than a participant here, addressed to a top tier frequent commenter and extremely respected participant. For that, I apologize profusely and with humility.
But on the small chance that my words may be of some comfort either to you or to anybody else reading them, I’ll share a few thoughts I had during a “circle the wagons” family get together we had last night with some friends & family who right now are feeling extremely shook up and very vulnerable.
First, on the political analysis side – I think liberals are overestimating Trump’s mandate with respect to policy, and specifically his mandate for the Project 2025 program. It looks to me like this election was decided on the margins, not by people paying attention to politics and familiar with policy, but rather by indifference & ignorance, both on the part of those who voted and even more so on the part of those who didn’t even bother to show up.
Which means that the disasters and horrors we are worried about have only very shallow support and that support may be brittle and not last very long. I think we who are politically tuned in & aware have a very hard time understanding how little much of the American populace as a whole knew about this election or understood what it really meant and how significant it was with respect to policies, institutions, and norms. It isn’t so much that Evil won the election, rather that way too many people did not realize what was on the menu.
That is very small and cold comfort to the potential victims of Trump & his people, but a better situation than we would be in if those policies were deeply rooted and enjoyed fanatical support from a large percentage of the population.
Second, it is not as if some sort of secular humanist Rapture happened this week. The good people who believe in kindness, diversity and tolerance are still here. We did not go away, we’ve just been outvoted by a small margin ( about 4%) in an election which many Americans simply tuned out and did not pay much attention to.
Which means there are many, many people of good will to whom you can look to for support & help. We discussed this in my family last night and collectively decided (it was not a hard decision) that if things get really bad and we have to shelter vulnerable friends, in extremis doing it Anne Frank in hiding style, then that’s what we will do regardless of the consequences. We aren’t going to let thugs drag away people without resistance.
So please take comfort. Best wishes and kind thoughts from this direction.
New Deal democrat
@hrprogressive: Yeah, I think Democrats should have tried to pass their own plan.
I have some ideas: I call it The Rule of Law + The Rule of Equity.
Some other time.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
Sounds like a plan, as long as you’re willing to do battle with activists who will scream Dems are compromising with themselves and selling them out.
Chris Johnson
@Fair Economist: Yeah, clearly. This is actually an achilles’ heel of MAGAs.
Whatever the source (I think a surprising amount of this is Russia getting really good at it), the MAGAs are able to get the right messaging to the right people, under ‘the Zone’ rules. Zone means, nothing is real and nothing actually matters or has to be consistent in any way. And so they get real granular and damn right they’re telling all the Mexicans that of course they’ll get amnesty. They’re special! Much like they were telling lefties they HAD to refrain from voting for anyone associated with Genocide Joe, on moral grounds.
When you’re the propagandist and you work to have a super-fine-grained picture of every little interest group, every demographic, you just lie to them all in whatever way will get them to do what you want. Doesn’t have to make sense or be consistent in ANY WAY. And rather than a coalition, you’re faking a landslide except everyone has been promised different contradictory things and they were all lies.
Thiel has a point about democracy showing weaknesses. You can derail it with enough effort.
The catch is, that is not a recipe for a governable regime. You can keep lying in every direction at once but you can’t govern. So then you have a societal collapse on your hands, and might not be able to scapegoat no matter how hard you lie your way out of it.
And Thiel might be bright enough to evilly govern a country in his royalist image, but he only has Vance as a loyalist. Musk is on drugs and totally batshit off ketamine, and Trump is decompensating: the refuge he gets from overwhelming relief isn’t going to last a week. They’re going to run amok and neither has any sense of how to run a country and have it actually work. I’m not even gonna get into what RFK Jr is gonna do. These people are all WAY too crazy to effectively scheme and conspire. Russian trolls and schemers did all the work, but Russia has no reason to want to see America do anything but collapse.
I wonder again what Thiel thinks of that. Trump’s subject to Putin, and Musk likes him, but is Thiel all that impressed? That’s a key man behind the throne and I’m not certain he’s that sold on Russia being so great. He might like American dominance. I don’t have a good read on Thiel because he doesn’t want people to have a good read on him.
yaaaaay, interesting times :P
Jeffro
OT but my local radio station just played Jason Isabel and Kathleen Edwards back-to-back (2 of my favorite songs of theirs, too!) and now all is right with the world. =)
People, always have some good music on in the background! World of difference.
Gvg
@Ksmiami: every time they simplify the FAFSA it’s a shitshow for at least 2 years. The current mess is my third time in 30 years and the worst yet. I don’t know if you were aware that they just implemented a simplification this year that is stupidly designed and not working. The department of ed is no longer even explains why.
Don’t ever ever suggest FAFSA simplification.
KatKapCC
@oldgold: So in contrast to your first comment, you admit Harris DID focus on those issues. In every speech, in every interview, in countless social media posts. So what the hell else do you think she should have done? Gone to every single home in every swing state and had a personal sit-down chit-chat with them? Showed them a Power Point? Laid out her policies via charades?
How is it her fault if this “noise” kept people from hearing her? What was she supposed to do other than everything she DID do?
And again, tell us, what “cultural” issues do you think Dems should ignore? I’d just like to know which marginalized groups you deem disposable.
Gloria DryGarden
PSA
Geminid
@NaijaGal: I suspect a few million of Biden’s voters showed up and voted for Trump. I’m thinking here of Biden/Trump Independents.
I recall two Wall Street Journal polls taken in 2929. One in the summer showed Independents almost evenly split, but the one taken in October showed them breaking for Biden. They could have broken for Trump this time around.
Political scientists research Independents, and I’ve seen studies showing that while many of them vote consistently for one party or the other even while rejecting the brand, upwards of a fifth of them are “true” swing voters. If a state’s electorate includes 30% Indies– and some like Arizona have more– that’s 5% of voters.
When I saw the 12% swing from Biden in 2020 to Youngkin in 2021, I figured a big chunk, maybe half, were Biden/Youngkin Independents.
Quinerly
JoJo las Orejas has snatched some sort of frozen bird. I think a Pinon Jay. Tried to bring it in from the snow. 13 inches of snow here.
Don’t let it get around. Would fuck up my rep……I will and have walked thru an inner city dark alley being fearless. Many times. Totally freak out with wet, dead wildlife. This is giving me flash backs from the DPRI. (Dead Pack Rat Incident).
Quinerly
@Jeffro: 💛
Nukular Biskits
No real post … just updating my “website” (part of shitcanning Twitter and moving to Bluesky)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Not applicable to any of our discussions vis a vis the election, so
Ever since this post went up, I’m in a constant visual Emily Litella moment in that I keep thinking it says:
The Flouridation of America.
Seeing that probably cuz of the prospect of the Orange Fart Cloud putting a whackadoodle like RFK Jr in charge of HHS and his comments on the evils of flouridized water.
Ohio Mom
@Gloria DryGarden: No, I have seen Yarrow today but I don’t read every thread and she (I think Y’s a she) isn’t around a lot on good days. I share your concern.
You will have to chose a front-pager to ask after her. Do you remember whose post that was?
Ksmiami
@Gvg: I meant build something smart and well tested
oldgold
@KatKapCC:
First, in my initial comment I said not one word about Harris.
Second, I do not think it was her fault that she was not heard.
Third, I did not say that the Democrats should ignore cultural issues. I said the Democratic Party should ” focus on pocket book issues (wages, housing, medical care, child care and equitable taxation”).
Fourth, I do not think any marginalized group is disposable.
NaijaGal
@Chris Johnson:
I honestly believe Russia’s goal is America’s collapse. They have gone about it the smartest way they can – no nation is going to take on the US military directly. Easier to follow the “divide and conquer” strategy that worked so well for the British Empire (until it didn’t) and have Americans dismantle the US themselves from all the infighting.
The fact that the individuals being empowered to run the US (in part due to the success of the various disinformation campaigns) should probably be in psychiatric treatment is a feature, not a bug.
zhena gogolia
@Darkrose: Thanks!
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: Good for you. I’m glad some people still have some hope.
zhena gogolia
@Quinerly: Kendall Jackson chardonnay is now a screw off.
Ohio Mom
@Dan B: Meanwhile, I have Seattle on my list of safe places to move to if Ohio starts to scare me (I have a smidgen of family there). Or Southern California, have people there as well.
zhena gogolia
@New Deal democrat: that’s a good video. I have no idea who these people are.
Jeffro
@Quinerly:
@zhena gogolia:
screw-off wine caps, like canned beer, are actually better for keeping the ‘product’ fresher
everything lowbrow is highbrow now ;)
Geminid
@Glyph2112: Yeah, if Harris had separated from Biden on this war she would have lost some supporters of Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
Absent a ceasefire agreement for Gaza–and looking back I think that the last chance for one passed in early May– this was going to be a zero-sum game electorally. And Harris just wasn’t going to separate from Biden on his war policy, and there were several good reasons for that.
But one thing I keep in mind about the argument that Harris’s Gaza policy did her in, is that the people pushing it the hardest were hostile to the Democratic party to begin with. I don’t think some of them actually care about the destruction and suffering this war has caused except insofar as they can weaponize it for a broader political agenda.
Bupalos
@Central Planning: no he’s marginally added Hispanics and blacks since he came down the escalator. Biggest jump was this cycle.
he’s also added <$50k voters every time.
Steve in the ATL
@NaijaGal:
I answered this question a few weeks ago!
zhena gogolia
@New Deal democrat: Somebody in the comments says the white guy is Jared Taylor, a white supremacist.
Subsole
@wonkie:
That is all very logical. It also expects a degree of logic fanatical racists and short-sighted mobeymen may not be capable of deploying.
Chris Johnson
@NaijaGal: Yes, and this is also their great weakness.
It’s sold to MAGA as being about making America GREAT. They’re being promised a lot. The oligarchs are being promised a lot, too. Musk and Thiel are on the inside. Seems they’re hot for crypto.
How many American billionaires will completely lose their shit when the Trump regime’s shenanigans wreck the US dollar, or when it becomes obvious that you can indeed convert it all to TrumpCoin, but that means a mad king can push a button and make it all disappear if he doesn’t like your face that day?
I guess we could all convert to yuan. I just feel a great risk that the Trump regime is going to impoverish, not just the populace, but a large number of vengeful former billionaires with resources and connections. They cannot all prosper when Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, plus is competing with Musk for who can pretend to be the first private trillionaire. They’re petty and mad and impossibly bad for business and behind a mask of pravda praise they’re going to be pissing off a lot of important people who think they should be getting more respect. But there is no respect for the subjects of King Don. That’s a quick way to get a battle between your security forces and his secret police. And if your guys win, you’ve just pissed him off more.
Subsole
@schrodingers_cat:
The issue there is even when we jettison them (Biden and Harris were pretty solid in supporting Israel) we still get tied to them by mass media.
Not sure what to do there.
Bupalos
@Geminid: I don’t know what the math is or what needle she needed to thread. But just in general “I don’t believe the voters care about the thing they’re saying they care about” is a really bad electoral stance to take. Sometimes a translation is required, but when voters speak, you should listen.
the stein number is absolutely ungodly. And “well too bad, that kind of voter might as well be a rock” is how you yourself ossify.
if I were to do the translation I might try “I’m disturbed that the language of morality is no longer present in our politics” or something like that. Bill Clinton was a master of hearing a thing and answering in what sounded like a non sequiteur… because he answered what he thought the question was REALLY about.
zhena gogolia
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Thanks!
The Golux
I think the most mind-blowing statistic from this election is the fact that 15 million fewer voters cast ballots this year than in 2020. “Most important election of our lifetimes?” Feh.
Quinerly
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t do Whites anymore. Keep them around for guests so thanks for the tip. White wine is like battery acid to my system. Reds, beer, Bullet Rye, and Middleton’s in the Winter. G&T with Peychaud’s, beer, and my soon to be world famous Sangria in the Summer. And a Mojito now and then. Quinerly’s deep thoughts….anything with Vodka is evil.
Year round for Sunday Brunches….GIN Bloody Mary’s….extra horseradish.
zhena gogolia
@Chris Johnson:
Yeah, unlike indoor plumbing or taking care of old people.
Quinerly
@The Golux:
I want answers. Data.
Dan B
@Ohio Mom: Seattle went farther left this election but there are big swaths outside of Puget Sound and Portland adjacent areas that are bright red.
New Deal democrat
@zhena gogolia: The White guy is Jared Taylor, a known White nationalist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Taylor
Haven’t found out who the kid is.
Btw, check out the comments – full of White nationalists as well.
E.T.A. I see you got there first.
E.T.A. 2: The young guy is Edwyn Charles Huang. Per Wikipedia, he is an American author, chef, restaurateur, food personality, producer, and former attorney. He was a co-owner of BaoHaus, a gua bao restaurant in the East Village of Lower Manhattan.
Geminid
@Geminid: Actually, those two Wall Steet Journal polls were taken in 2020, not 2929.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Nukular Biskits: Come sit by me {hugs}
Omnes Omnibus
@The Golux: Let’s wait until all of the votes are counted, shall we?
Geminid
@Bupalos: Not sure how anything you say here applies to my comment as written.
Ed. For one thing, I can’t tell if you are putting words in my mouth or in Kamala Harris’s.
Gloria DryGarden
@lashonharangue: I too am awaiting voter totals, analysis, and perhaps an investigation into “states tossing away ballots” stated by a jackal a few days back.
Meanwhile, just absorbing your take:
Narrative> ideology
Identity
Social status, esp who/ how many are “below ” you.
Sheesh. It’s not how I go about things, it’s weird to think that’s how messaging and branding need to go out.
Ohio Mom
@Jeffro: A million years ago (the early 1990s),I took a city planning class. I may not remember the numbers absolutely correctly, but the figures presented were something like, Black people think they live in a well-inegrated community when the split is 50% white and 50% Black.
White peoples think they live in an well-integrated community when the split is 85-90% percent white and 10-15% Black. That is, a Black person in that neighborhood would describe themselves as living in a white neighborhood, even as their white neighbors would consider it nicely mixed.
Thinking about this now, it occurs to me to be something like the one drop of blood rule.
Bupalos
@Chris Johnson: you are getting straight up conspiratorial.
The. Americans. Chose. Trump.
It’s super fucked up but we need to deal with the reality of that and not figure out some way to other it. Not defend our psyches by pretending Putin is a god. Or that the children Republicans are farming for adenachrome in the basement of a pizza parlor were forced to vote.
Russia interfered in this election in their usual pitiful way. It has nothing to do with the outcome.
Quinerly
@Jeffro:
I’ll drink to that!
We all have our own little peculiarities. PBR must be in a can. Preferably a tall boy. Miller (not Lite) must be in a bottle, after all it is the Champagne of Beers. Bud in a bottle, Busch in a can. That delightful Hamm’s I stumbled on in that bar in Bisbee in February….a can. I looked at the bartender like she had lost her mind when she wanted to pour it in a glass.
I prefer my G&Ts with Peychaud’s in an antique pewter mint julep cup. Nice feel.
Chris Johnson
@zhena gogolia: You’ve met them! :D
I always go back to LazerPig. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBAnt_w8vvY
It’s all quite consistent and explains everything about how they work. They’re so good at the lies and conspiracy and scheming because it’s how THEIR system works, top to bottom. Putin thinks it’s the ultimate weapon. I’d say two elections indicate he has a point (don’t know what happened in 2020), but the problem is that the system can’t even keep HIS country doing reasonably well, much less an enemy country that he actually wants to fail.
And when your promises and chaos just lead to disaster and humiliation, people get testy. I bet that’s what happened in 2020. Implying that Kamala Harris could have obliterated Trump… if he was the incumbent!
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I thought that too. Had to read it a few times.
Bupalos
@Ohio Mom: it’s a tough thing to really grasp by this kind of number, since nationwide blacks make up something between 10-20% of the population. A 15% black neighborhood is in fact ideally integrated.
But yes, people are so used to segregated spaces that white people will start to get nervous when a distribution isn’t specifically segregated.
Ohio Mom
@New Deal democrat: Oh yeah, I remember that.
Don’t know anything about the context of that heartwarming remark, that might be interesting to know. But it tracks with leaving Black workers out of Social Security and being slow about rescuing Jews.
And still, I think FDR was great president. He saved our country.
Dan B
@Ohio Mom: Our neighborhood is 15% white but 30 years ago was 70% black. Now it’s 70% Asian. Our next door neighbors on three sides were black Now they’re Mexican, Filipino, and Chinese not American born.
Jeffro
@Ohio Mom: this sounds about right. anything above that 10-15% non-white and whites start thinking they’re outnumbered in the neighborhood. it’s just THAT ingrained.
And some folks want to pretend that that it isn’t a real thing…
There are a LOT of unwritten racial rules in America, and they all point in the same direction: whites on top, regardless of what we’re talking about.
NaijaGal
@Steve in the ATL: Enlighten me, please. I know you are a labor lawyer but I don’t always get a chance to read BJ posts so I definitely missed that.
P.S. Why do I have a feeling that this is the set up for one of your jokes?
Chris
@hrprogressive:
Oh my God.
WE’VE. DONE. THIS!!!
Over and over and over and over and over again!!!
No later than this year, Biden and the Democrats sat down and agreed to a ludicrously harsh border bill, which Republicans dutifully spiked on Trump’s orders, with the news even being leaked that Trump was doing it specifically because he didn’t want anyone but him getting the credit. The Democrats then tried to make political hay out of this by saying that it proved Republicans weren’t serious about the border. You know who cared? Nobody!
Obama during his administration adopted a much more proactive version of this, explicitly making himself the Enforcement President, deporting thousands, telling ICE to specifically concentrate their attention on the dangerous criminals that we were hearing all those hysterics about, in exchange for a path to immigration for people who’d been here a while but only if they were squeaky clean.
Nobody cared. Nobody noticed. Nobody even remembers that it happened. In 2016, despite everything Obama had done to ramp up border security, Trump was able to run on exactly the same claim as anti-immigrant politicians a decade earlier: that the border was open, that no one was policing immigrants, and that we needed to give them more resources.
Obama wasn’t the first one to do it either. We’ve been militarizing the border and cramming resources down ICE’s throat since the nineties at least in order to alleviate people’s moral panics, with the war on terror turbocharging the process. And it does absolutely nothing. Every morning, people’s brains reset, everything that’s already been done is forgotten, and they go back to clamoring that The Border Is Open and If Only The Democrats Would DO SOMETHING.
And this, by the way, is why these people get dinged as racists. If people concerned about immigration really do care about border security and restricting the entry of people into our country, we’ve tried to meet them where they are, so, so, so many goddamn times. We’ve spent thirty or forty years throwing mountains of border security measures at them, totally ignoring the colossal waste of money, the absence of any meaningful threat, and the humanitarian cost, because we really really wanted to show them that we took their concerns seriously. And what’s their response? They don’t care!
Because the concern about the border is 150% about prejudice and sadism, not border security or violent crime, and that’s the one thing they know the Republicans can be trusted to deliver and the Democrats can’t. If it was about border security or violent crime, we’d know, because they would actually respond when parties act on these things! They don’t. They don’t care. The children in concentration camps are, to them, the whole point.
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia:
I’m glad we’re making a difference. I’d hate to see you disappear from here.
Saw that, and thought, “I wouldn’t mind a drink too.” So now I’m having one.
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I thought that too. Had to read it a few times.
@Ohio Mom: it was late last night, but an evening thread. My comment back to her might be the last one, hours after dead- thread. It’s been 8-12 threads a day this week. One an hour in the daylight, it seems. After I go bundle up and shovel, I can look.
Chris
@NaijaGal:
Oh, absolutely.
The Russian ruling class has resigned itself to the fact that it’s never going to climb to the top of the world order, and truthfully, it doesn’t want to – the kind of functioning and semi-healthy society that’s required to surpass America or even China isn’t something they want, they want to continue having a mafia state that they can pillage and rule however they want.
On the other hand, they don’t want everyone else being more powerful than them either. So they want to bring them all crashing down to their level.
Russia wants the entire West to experience its own version of the post-Soviet collapse in the 1990s.
Lyrebird
@Ohio Mom: @Gloria DryGarden:
FWIW yesterday I did ask a front pager, who indeed did try to contact Yarrow, and I also did search today’s threads – did not see any posts.
They of course have every right to take a break from any blog, but yeah obvs I am in the group concerned about Y’s well-being.
If you are reading this Yarrow,
lots of us are still rooting for you!
Gloria DryGarden
@Chris: good God!
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat: Who are the two people in that discussion? How do I know this isn’t staged by a few lefties?
Bupalos
Harris was awesome. We had no business to expect her to be as good as she was doing the job of being a candidate. Which she was thrust in to, in ridiculous and maybe impossible circumstances.
Someone needed to figure out that the main thing about switching candidates (because your incumbent was so compromised) was creating separation for her and giving her room.
The moment of death here (in retrospect, but I felt it strongly at the time and said so) is the clip on The View where she’s asked what she would have done differently than Biden, and the answer was the most transparently phoney, constrained, awkward nonsense where she ceases to be the real, warm, kickass person she is, and disappears under the waves.
and that was that.
again, an impossible situation she was put in. “Be the new candidate for change, because everyone is done with JaBiden, but do not under any circumstances deviate from embracing JaBiden.”
KatKapCC
@oldgold: You said “the Democratic Party” and considering she was just the nominee for said party and our side lost, that clearly implies her, specifically. Nice rhetorical weaseling.
You also said they should “deemphasize the cultural issues”, which, fine, does not necessarily mean ignore, but in practice it would. Because how do you “deemphasize” something without talking about it less, without paying less attention to it? Without leaving the people impacted by those “cultural issues” out of the conversations?
And again: WHAT ISSUES? Tell us. Use your damn words. What “issues” do you think are only “cultural” and thus deserving of being “deemphasized”? I will keep asking you until you answer.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: The problem is that most of the people I’ve ever known who say they just don’t like the way we talk about identity clearly just want us not to talk about it at all. They want the sort of race/gender-neutral approach that perpetuates all the systemic unfairness that we want to address. And I suspect that any change in language that we propose will also be rejected by them.
New Deal democrat
@lowtechcyclist: I answered that in comment #315.
Hope that helps.
And omg read the comments ….
Subsole
@Kirk:
Yeah.
I really don’t think most folks realize how many of their doctors and nurses are immigrants.
And I am not thrilled at the prospect of being operated on by a conscript-surgeon…
@Jeffro: Will do so. Like I said, it’s been…a lot…to go through the last couple days. And thanks.
Steve in the ATL
@NaijaGal: short version (and this is directly from O’Brien): roughly half of the members of IBT are trumpers (and this tracks with my personal experience negotiating contracts with them the last decade or so) thus there was no appetite for endorsing a democrat, so O’Brien calculated that by being the one union that didn’t endorse the democrat that, if Trump won, his call would be the only union call that Trump would take.
He may be correct given what a needy shitbag Trump is, but I think he’s incorrect because it won’t matter if Trump takes his call. The republicans are still going to continue their multi-decade campaign to gut unions and there will be no IBT exception.
Subsole
@Quinerly:
Thanks. If need be, I will reach out. Very much appreciated.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@New Deal democrat: the first statement is empirically true in the sense that European voluntary immigration to the English colonies that became America essentially stopped with the American revolution and only black slave labor continued to be imported. All other voluntary immigration followed the civil war. So for approximately 250 years the power structure was truly and exclusively white and Protestant.
Geminid
@Dan B: Looks like Rep. Marie Gluesnkamp Perez will win WA03 across the Columbia River from Portland.
Amtho Villeneuve talked about that and other Washington races in his article titled:
The article is published by the Northwest Progressive Policy Institute and its media site The Cascadia Advocate. Villaneuve is a good, efficient writer.
I tried linking to this article on an earlier thread. When it didn’t work Timill was good enough to give a good link.
But I believe I found my error, so I’ll try again:
https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2024/11/a-tale-of-two-elections-washington-and-oregon-get-more-democratic-as-battleground-states-swing-to-donald-trum
It works! I may buy a lottery ticket tomorrow.
lowtechcyclist
@KatKapCC:
But given that the End Times aren’t a thing anywhere outside the imagination of evangelicals, that doesn’t really matter. As long as they continue to believe the End Times might be just around the corner (or at least in their generation), they’ll be Israel’s biggest political backers.
NaijaGal
@lowtechcyclist:
I used to watch Eddie Huang‘s food related show on Vice. He’s in conversation with Jared Taylor.
ETA: That video has been making the rounds of all the Nigerian WhatsApp groups I belong to.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Thks for your kind words, but look, this was still the election that elected Hitler, and the leopards are still going to eat them.
I for one will be cheering in the leopards
Ohio Mom
@New Deal democrat: If you wade through the comments, the older white man is Jared Taylor (don’t know who the Asian man interviewing him is). Googling him, I see he is an Ivy League-educated self-appointed leader of the white supremacist movement.
He reminds me a little of William Buckley in his style and of course his racism.
Baud
@Quinerly:
For a minute, I thought you were still talking about race.
NaijaGal
@Steve in the ATL:
Got it. Thank you for that explanation. Hope he saw how excited Trump was when talking to Musk about how Musk fired people.
He might take O’Brien’s call but you’ve pointed out what’s most likely to happen afterwards.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Chris Johnson: the billionaires will be fine. The Magats, not so much. And the Hispanics? Who’s going to object to deporting them now? They voted for this.
Captain C
@Chris Johnson:
When you’re the propagandist and you work to have a super-fine-grained picture of every little interest group, every demographic, you just lie to them all in whatever way will get them to do what you want.
Basically micro-targeted bullshitting in the Harry G. Frankfurt sense.
Fair Economist
@Subsole: You *should* live your own life. You deserve a social life and fun. That doesn’t require the Democratic party disbanding or even that you abandon it. Do self-care – do fun things and find good people to do them with. We are everywhere, even in the reddest towns.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Chris: they may get their wish
New Deal democrat
@Ohio Mom: I answered as to who both were in #315.
Hope that helps.
lowtechcyclist
@NaijaGal:
Definitely. At the deepest level of causality, this is what this election was about. This is the only means by which Putin can defeat America. And for the time being, he’s succeeded in taking us off the board.
Bobby Thomson
Race is still salient. It’s just salient sometimes in ways that Democrats haven’t wanted to admit. Case in point – no one hates undocumented immigrants more than native born and documented Latinx Americans. I have no doubt that the Haitian crap also played very well with them. That’s not a dynamic unique to Latinos or the United States, either.
Reagan started things on the right track for Republicans with being almost as militantly anti-Communist as Nixon and declaring amnesty, which was just fine when a Republican did it. Karl Rove and Junior also hit all the right notes.
In the 80s and 90s, Democrats’ approach to immigration was almost exclusively based on economics, balancing the need for labor with accommodating unions by not going overboard. In the last 20 years or so, that has shifted to emphasizing consideration of human rights and humane treatment, which plays really well with certain Democratic constituencies, but not at all with the people who Democrats think it does.
The melting pot with tired, poor, and huddled is part of our shared mythology. The United States has always had a strong nativist component that has reacted violently to waves of immigration, even back when by default, it was legal. “Isn’t that hypocritical of people living on stolen land,” you might say? Why, yes, it is. Hypocrisy is America’s favorite pastime, and established immigrants have always eagerly “pulled up the ladder,” “pulled the other crabs down into the bucket,” pick your metaphor..
FelonyGovt
@Chris Johnson: Yes. When we expected Harris to win, many of us thought the Republican Party was in its death throes. I think it still is. It is a cult of personality centered around a decaying, capricious individual. When he goes, or even before, there’s a good chance that all the competing factions- racists, evangelicals, incels, billionaires, crypto dudes- will pull it apart for good.
Ohio Mom
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Comic relief is always welcomed.
Nevermind.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I kinda guessed that, but it did give me a moment of singing, “in the year 2929” to scare the cats away.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud:
We’re not going back! (Too soon?)
Ohio Mom
@Steve in the ATL: We don’t read every thread. Not that I don’t hang on every one of your words in the threads I do read.
Bobby Thomson
@Mai Naem mobile: It would be a brilliant play, which means TFG will fuck it up.
Omnes Omnibus
You can’t be that drunk and still type.
The Truffle
@catothedog: Dems won’t be “losing for a decade or more.” Come on.
I’m sorry, but the 2026 map is good for us and bad for the GOP.
And I remember the Dems of 2004. The party is better now, believe me. We have a decent bench.
There are cycles where one party is whooped in the ballot box and deemed to be dying. And they come back. I am sick of it too. But Jon Stewart said it best: this is not the end.
The Pale Scot
White people be crazy yo….
That’s all I got
Melancholy Jaques
I admit that my experience is anecdotal, but I have been living and working with Mexican American citizens and people from Mexico and Central America who don’t have papers for about 20 years and I have never detected any such hatred. I have heard – over and over – that nobody except academics and activists liked Latinx.
And we Democrats should probably lead the way and stop referring to everyone whose first language is Spanish or whose families come from Spanish speaking countries as Latino or Hispanic. It suggests membership in a cohesive group that does not exist.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Pale Scot:
That’s enough to be going on with.
Omnes Omnibus
@Melancholy Jaques: God knows Americans, Canadians, and Australians all have exactly the same culture and norms.
Darkrose
@Chris: If we had a like button I would be pounding it right now.
Ohio Mom
@Lyrebird: Thank you for following through on trying to get Yarrow contacted. We’ve done what we can do, other than hold them in the light. Shining your way, Yarrow.
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
Over the years, students have consistently told me “Latinos is what white people call us.”
The Truffle
Guys? When you are ready, check out http://weareworthfightingfor.org, which is having a conference call today right now with Reps. Jaypal and Raskin and others. So people aren’t taking this lying down. The Dem party needs to just learn from this and move on.
Ohio Mom
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: That is interesting. I don’t claim to be much of a historian but was the U.S. really much of anything until the great influx of immigrants that started in the late 1800’s?
As far as I remember, until then we weren’t much of a world power, a center of scholarship or the arts or technical advancement — my impression is that we were something of a backwater. What exactly does Jared Taylor think his ancestors were accomplishing before they got overrun by foreigners?
Steve in the ATL
@Ohio Mom: what about my Insta?
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
If I had to read all the comments before responding to any one of them, I’d forget what I’d wanted to say or ask along the way.
I do in fact read the comments. Sequentially. After I read your comment #250, I checked ahead a ways to see if my question had been answered. #315 was a bit further than I checked, obviously. So here’s my question popping up a couple dozen comments after it’s been answered. Sorry about that, but absent threaded comments, which there’s strong sentiment against here, that sort of thing is just going to happen.
But thanks for answering.
Ohio Mom
@Steve in the ATL: I saw your recap, thanks. I’m guessing O’Brien won’t succeed in ever contacting Trump or convincing him of anything, but he will succeed in keeping his job as head of the union.
I have never figured out Instagram.
Ohio Mom
@lowtechcyclist: That is something like my system. Sometimes it works but not on long, busy threads like this one.
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Melancholy Jaques:
We can add a genuine Pew research study to your anecdotes!
Hat tipped to agraybee whatever else he is calling himself these days.
catothedog
@The Truffle:
And that would be a fleeting victory. Not discounting it, but it won’t be enough to overcome Rethugs from gumming up the works – the Senate blocking things and the Supreme Court ruling Dem policies unconstitutional. The media will not call the Rethugs out, and their messaging infrastructure does relentless messaging 365 days every year, election year or not. The Rethugs will come back the next election – because of the Ariana Grande voter
The Rethugs can block progress and push atrocious things with lesser majorities, because their base is committed. They and their voters understand how politics works.
For Dems to do such things with small majorities, they need to get brutal with the use of power and break the Rethug party and ecosystem whenever they can get it- which needs strong leaders and a committed voter base. Without a expanding to a more committed base, Dems will be seen as ineffective, and the slide into full fledged fascism will continue with minor road bumps on the way.
65% of the voters have a poor opinion of the Supreme Court, and Biden did nothing to take advantage of it. Yes, it wouldn’t have passed the House, but unless you put up a fight – even if you will lose – most voters won’t know what you stand for.
Merrick Garland was another example of bringing a knife to a gunfight. I am not saying that he should have thrown everything out the window. But he could have cut some corners and put Trump and his cronies in jail, and the world would be very different today.
Committed base -> strong leaders -> unabashed use of power to achieve results
You don’t want to chase your base voters just before the election. They should be your campaign arm, trying to convince others.
What Ballon Juice is doing is exceptional, but we need to replicate Ballon Juice a million times over, all over the country.
lowtechcyclist
@catothedog:
There aren’t enough people in America to do that, even if they were all like us.
RevRick
@syphonblue: Why did Trump get a larger share of the Hispanic vote?
My take: because Trump insisted on having his name signed on the COVID relief checks. Even though Pelosi and Congressional Democrats insisted on doling out money to everyone below a certain income level, Trump branded that money as coming from HIM.
Chris
@Ohio Mom:
I don’t claim to know the numbers, but it’s not true that European voluntary immigration basically stopped between the Revolution and the Civil War. Irish immigrants arrived in large numbers after the potato famine in the 1830s, and Central European (especially German) immigrants arrived in large numbers after the failed revolutions of 1848, though in both cases they weren’t exactly the first of their kind to come to America.
There’s a reason there are so many German and Swedish names floating around the Midwest and Great Plains. Westward expansion, in the Northern half of the country, was done to quite an extent by people of that heritage. (The small town in Blazing Saddles where everyone’s last name is “Johnson” is satirizing this).
pajaro
I don’t know what caused us to lose, but I know some of the things that didn’t. Jews going away from the Dems. isn’t one of them, because they didn’t. I was on a webinar that contained a report of an exit poll of Jewish American voters that is conducted after each Presidential election. Over 70% of Jewish Americans voted for Harris, and the one part of the community that didn’t, Orthodox Jews, is the community that has never supported democrats. I also went online to look at whether the effort to get Arab Americans to vote for Jill Stein might have made a difference–so I checked out Michigan, where the largest Arab-and Muslim American community resides–members of the community were attempting to get voters to vote for Stein as a protest. Well, if every Jill Stein voter had voted for Harris, she still would have lost by a lot. I also noticed that Elissa Slotkin, who is not only Jewish by was a strong supporter of Biden’s policy, was elected as Senator in Michigan, so I doubt it was all about Gaza for either Jews or Muslim/Arab Americans.
As to her prioritizing identity politics over kitchen-table issues, I can only assume those who were saying we did too much on identity politics didn’t listen to a thing she said for most of the campaign, starting with her convention speech and ending with her speech on Monday. And Harris lost to someone who offered the working class nothing, zilch, zero, nada, except grievance. Finally, on immigration, DEMOCRATS AGREED TO THE BORDER BILL PROPOSED BY REPUBLICANS. I didn’t agree with her, but that’s what the Democratic position was. Trump had no proposals, except lies and cruelty.
Again, I don’t have any answers. But I know we had a good candidate who ran an uplifting campaign. That our country may have preferred what Trump dished out at his Nazi Madison Square Garden event to Harris’ promise of a multiracial democracy that valued all of us is pretty scary to me, but that’s a far better guess about why he won than a lot of what I’ve been reading here.
PJ
@Quinerly:
DJT’s approval rating was 36% in 2016, and about par with Harris’ in 2024. It’s a meaningless statistic as far as voting goes.
Ksmiami
@Ohio Mom: we became more of a world power after WW1 and then after WW2. In fact the America that is actually great is the postwar order
PJ
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
This is factually incorrect. Large numbers of British, Irish, and Germans immigrated prior to 1850.
Bupalos
@Chris: this makes it sound like Trumpian bitterness that motivates them. I don’t think so. I think they want the West to collapse so that they have a free hand basically raping and pillaging undefended territories. It’s much less psychological and much more physical. Much less 21st century and much more 17th.
Those Russian soldiers carrying washing machines and tellivisions, where we were like “that’s weird… that lack of discipline is not going to achieve their military objectives…ultimately THAT IS THEIR MILITARY OBJECTIVE.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I don’t watch or listen to the news very often. It’s money spent looking for a batch of consistent watchers that they can sell commercial time for and who feel they need to know everything going on in their city and the nation. And for the most part it’s the same basic information every day.
Any disaster gets a Special News Announcement on TV, radio, your cell phone and computer. Besides I don’t get/watch commercial TV. I watch Netflix or movies or am on the computer like we are now. When I moved where I live now, about 8-9 yrs ago I got one of those flat wall mount antennas for something like $10, pointed it at the LA TV towers and took it down 2 days later and threw it away. I haven’t missed anything. Oh wait I’ve missed commercials…… OK I haven’t missed anything. Other than a desire to throw something at my TV.
Ruckus
@Central Planning:
That’s djt. He doesn’t deserve capitalization. In any way, shape or form.
Bupalos
True but I see the word “voluntary” in there, and there was a whole lot of forced emigration out of the areas that became Ireland and Germany (worth noting that neither actually really existed as the entities we now call Germany and The Republic of Ireland/ Northern Ireland at this time.)
@PJ:
George
@Nukular Biskits:
Yep, ignorance and hatred are the twin pillars of most Trump supporters. And I am with you on not making nice with any MAGA types. They effed up my country. Screw ’em.
Bupalos
@PJ: It’s not meaningless at all for a president at the end of their term. It’s the most solid predictive stat there is on retaining the presidency. I believe no one has ever lost it above 48 and no one has ever retained it below 42.
as always with presidential predictors, we only have a double-handful of cases to test though.
Bupalos
@Quinerly: aye aye Harris performed beautifully as a candidate.
the weird, lightning process and confusion over whether she was running her own campaign or someone else’s was a severe handicap. She’s one in a million, she rose to the occasion, I’ll miss her radiance, and I’m so sad we wasted such a hardworking committed talent.
ya done fucked up, J’Biden..
LAC
@rikyrah: amen. And pass around all the Maya angelou poems you want but please do not call us for another “shake your fist angrily” march. Whole lot of US are tired.
Chris
@Bupalos:
It’s both.
Russia is still burning from national humiliation over the fall of the USSR, the loss of their colonial empire, and the entire decade-long shit-show that was the 1990s, and Putin in particular is all about that feeling. It’s very much like the kind of sentiment Germany was infested with after the loss in WWI, even before 1933.
On the other hand, nobody hates a chance to steal a new washing machine or refrigerator.
StringOnAStick
Should we be tryi.g to raise $ for ballot during in NV and for the House races left to call? The texts I’m getting from the Rosen campaign are growing more desperate and I’m maxed out. Is there really any hope there?
Lily
@The Audacity of Krope: Exactly. One way to look at it right now: Two years. Like millions in other countries, we’ll be living in a country whose repressive govt allows oligarchs to drain its wealth leaving the poor unprotected. Just as generations of certain USAmericans have plundered other countries. Several years ago the US became that target.
Two years at a time, trying to get both houses of Congress, finding issues that could redirect voter anger toward the ruling familly.
Chris
@Bupalos:
I assumed “voluntary” was in contrast to the black slave labor mentioned in the same sentence.
As far as I know, the Irish came here so they wouldn’t starve to death in the potato famine, and the Germans came here to flee the monarchist crackdowns post 1848. Which makes them pretty much the same as most of the migration waves we’ve gotten since the Civil War. They either come here to flee economic disaster, or political repression.
Chris
@Darkrose:
Love you too!
Steve in the ATL
@Ohio Mom:
Bingo
KatKapCC
@KatKapCC:
I see no answer to this. Which honestly is all the answer I need.
Darkrose
@Lyrebird: I use Hispanic or Latino in general situations. I use Latinx (or Chicanx) when I’m at work. Why? Because I work at a university in California, and that’s the term that all of the student organizations for people of Latin American descent have chosen to use for themselves. OTOH, we just became an Hispanic-Serving Institution, which is a federal designation (for now).
It’s the same way that a recent conference on campus was focused on African Diaspora student success, even though most of the folks in the room call ourselves Black. When I wrote an article for an academic journal, I used the term URM–underrepresented minorities, which is another federal designation.
Everything depends on context.
KRK
Apologies, but taking advantage of the open thread to send up a signal for YUTSANO. I need help figuring out how to prove a negative to the IRS for a former employee where I work. IRS says we reported income for him that he failed to claim, but we didn’t. Wrote a letter but am told it’s not sufficient.
Steve in the ATL
@Darkrose:
Is the “H” silent?
Ohio Mom
@KRK: Ask a front pager for help with the Bat Signal. You are going to have to search around for the “Contact Us” tab. They can forward your request to Yutsano.
Good luck!
UncleEbeneezer
^^That part^^^
KRK
@Ohio Mom:
Thank you. Great suggestion. Will do.