Jeff Tiedrich has a good run-down of the responses of blue state governors to the threat of Trumpism. Newsom, Hochul, Pritzker and Tierney have already come out and pre-non-complied. More of this, please. If DeathSantis can run Florida like his own personal fiefdom and ignore the feds, so can blue states.
Erik Loomis has a good, measured post-election analysis piece.
In Loomis’ piece, he mentions comments from one TPM reader who is a newspaper reporter in North Carolina:
I’ve been a reporter in North Carolina for 30 years, covering the coast and rural counties. For many months, and continuing to this day, there are millions and millions of dollars of Biden Infrastructure and IRA funds pouring into rural communities here for projects to address needs that have been neglected or ignored for decades: wastewater treatment system upgrades, removal of lead pipes in water systems; repairs of rotting boardwalks and docks in small waterfront and fishing communities; mitigation of saltwater intrusion in farm fields, flood resilience in low-elevations; etc, etc. They’re all necessities that will result in real honest-to-god improvements in people’s lives. Virtually none of the beneficiaries — fishers, farmers, residents in communities vulnerable to sea level rise— have any idea that Biden was the reason they have those improvements, or will be getting them soon (when Trump will no doubt take credit.) The Democrats and the administration should have been bragging constantly and everywhere about the funds and the economic recovery. Government subsidies have lifted a nascent renewables industry into a booming profitable job-creator. Again, the messaging to the public about all of these economic factors should have been short, sweet and constant. […]
This seems to be part of the Democratic DNA — we don’t need to repeat it because everyone knows it. We just lost an election to vibes voters who know almost nothing about politics. We need to hammer, hammer, hammer it home whenever we do something good.
Steve M’s explains the election in two charts, the amount of credit card debt and credit card interest rates.
Marcie Jones at Wonkette has a good piece on how an independent Baltimore newspaper was able to (probably) beat the Sun, which is now owned by Sinclair Media.
Why throwing trans folks under the bus wouldn’t help the Democratic party, nevermind that it is an incredibly horrible thing to do.
Finally, a programming note. John and Adam’s advice on personal security and how to respond to nazis is important, but it isn’t my wheelhouse. I won’t be posting about that, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize its importance.
trollhattan
Frist?
Baud
I agree with the advice about tooting our own horn, but putting on my alternate history hat, I really don’t think it would have made a difference this year.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Trump was baked in. We just didn’t know/accept it.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I’m thinking we likely would have lost to any Republican. If people were sour about us because of covid and inflation, then they were going to vote for change.
E.
That Loomis article is good. Thanks for linking it.
catclub
Steve M’s link goes to a login page
Old School
@catclub: Here’s the Steve M link.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Maybe not but the Biden administration should have been tooting it’s own horn *effectively* since Day 1. I talked about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill sign along I-70 east of Georgetown a couple of days ago and why it was basically a waste of time and money to put up.
As others said in previous threads, we should be pulling a page from FDR’s book on tooting our accomplishments literally 24/7.
At least that way going into the election, we would have had a couple of years, of being front and center.
Would that have countered all the disinformation? Probably not but it would not have hurt. It’s all about building the proverbial messaging infrastructure that doesn’t start during an election year. Again, something we Dems ain’t the best at.
Also too, Hunter at DK has a great piece up, “The Billionaires Coup”:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/6/2283505/-The-Billionaires-Coup
Elizabelle
It did not help to have Putz Sulzberger’s Vichy paper of record with The Felon plastered all over its website, day in and day out. It’s like he branded their publication.
We do need better media, and are slowly getting it. As discussed constantly, young people do not read newspapers that much, but the leading papers and networks do set the news agenda. Unfortunately.
It is tragic that Biden’s excellence was not recognized or rewarded during his term. History will be kind to him (and somewhere, someone will write an accurate history of our age, and not just propaganda).
jackmac
My governor (J.B. Pritzker) may have designs on running for the big chair in the Oval in 2028, but in the meantime he needs to run for a third term in Illinois not only to protect policies and gains he’s helped secure as well as continue to be a bad ass and taunt the Mango Menace.
Pritzker, Hochel, Newsom, Tierney as well as governors in Wisconsin (Evers), Michigan (Whitmer) and Pennsylvannia (Shapiro) form the core of a fearsome opposition).
And let’s not forget Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was an awesome force in the recent campaign as veep candidate.
trollhattan
@jackmac: Walz keeps his seat, yes?
catclub
@Old School: thanks!
E.
Something that universities, news media, libraries, and probably some other institutions face is the question of how much do you accommodate what the public wants and how much do you follow some other process. How much of your budget (and shelf space) do you spend on the latest Grisham novel versus replacing the Jane Austen? Do you make your students take a history class or a foreign language, even though they hate it?
Loomis’s point about meeting people where they are can be thought of this way. I personally don’t think there is any room to the right of Harris’s campaign to go before I stop wanting to be a part of it (I was a 100% supporter btw). So when Loomis says “If the economy sucks, then the economy sucks, and the truth doesn’t matter” I get what he is saying but I’m only willing to go so far there.
I think this is sort of what Baud keeps saying, we are what we are and if half the country doesn’t like that, the solution is not to change what we are offering, it’s to change what people want to have. We have to win them over, not let them win us over bit by aching bit.
ETA clarified something minor
catclub
my theory of the election is mail-in voting in 2020 by lazy people.
I refuse to let facts tell me differently.
Loomis mentions that all the people who are telling the Democrats they are doing it wrong, come to the same conclusion they started with:
Bernie Sander say we abandoned the working class
Third Way says we are too far left. I chuckled.
sab
@trollhattan: Apparently so.
Caustictity.acerbity
@jackmac: Whitmer is out in 2026 due to term limits. I love our lt governor Garland Gilchrist but in this environment I dont know that he can win the office. He’s never won an election of any type except as Whitmer’s running mate. And im not sure who else we have to take up Whitmer’s mantle.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
I’m inclined to agree based on my (admittedly anecdotal) experience over the last two years trying to explain to normies that inflation was produced by the COVID pandemic and not Joe Biden, that the president did not make the price of eggs or gas go up, and that “the economy” was recovering from the pandemic surprisingly well thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats in congress.
It was all a waste of my time and breath. It reminded me of trying to explain to my fellow teachers that we would not have such great health insurance benefits without a union that was willing to go on strike.
jackmac
@trollhattan: As far as I can tell his term continues to 2026. I don’t know if he’s term-limited.
Hoodie
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The thing about the disinformation is that it is constant and never ending. Therefore, you have to toot your own horn incessantly, keep repeating the simple message “Democrats gave (or will give) you XXX.” Those infrastructure projects should have had giant signs saying “Joe did this!” Dems seem to assume that people understand complex things or, in some cases, have time, attention span or information channel bandwidth to get anything more than the simplest messages or simply don’t want a bunch of brainiac stuff they suspect is bullshit. Dems seem to be trying to get people to vote for them by showing how smart they are (which would be fine if you were applying for a job as a lawyer, engineer, manager etc.), rather than conveying simple information and promises. Trump talks on a fucking 3rd grade level and says the same stuff over and over for hours on end. He simply tells them “I’m really smart” and then says he’ll deport or jail the people they’re afraid of, exempt their tips from taxes, etc. His campaign puts out simplistic signs (“Trump Lower Taxes/Kamala Higher Taxes”, “Trump Safety/Kamala Crime”).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I agree with a lot of what was written in those linked articles and is being said here. But I’d like to pump the brakes a little bit on the narrative that “FDR did it right, how could Biden (and before him Obama) be so stupid?”
Because the context in which legislation was passed is dramatically different. FDR had a HUGE congressional majority to work with after the 1932 election. In the 73rd Congress Dems had at different times between 58 and 60 Senators and 307-312 seats in the House.
There is nothing bipartisan about bills passed with those kinds of numbers.
Biden & Obama did have to get at least a bit of bipartisan support, especially so in the Senate. Sure, they could have plastered their names all over stuff and told the GOP to go piss up a rope if they didn’t like it, but that would have made it even more difficult to get later bills passed than it already was.
You can do things a bit differently when you can just ram bills thru Congress without even needing all of the votes from your own side.
Melancholy Jaques
@catclub:
Everything reminds me of Catch-22
Baud
@catclub:
Aw man, now you’re tempting me to actually read Loomis. Don’t do that.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
On the one hand, it is wholeheartedly a good thing that younger generations are not stuck on the New York Times and the Washington Post. On the other hand, there’s no sign that what they’re being replaced with is any better. It’s mostly social media which is every bit as much of a right-wing puke funnel in this day and age. There are multiple reason for spiking Incel politics among Zoomer men, but social media might just be the biggest.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: I think there not only is no doubt about that, but Harris running a very good campaign helped a lot of down-ticket races in swing states because she almost halved the rightward shift seen elsewhere.
Kent
@Baud: Yes.
The lesson everyone seems to be taking is that Bill Clinton, Obama and Biden were all men and all won. Whereas Hillary Clinton and Harris were women and both lost. Which is true. And this country is sexist and racist. But not the whole story. I think what is missed in recent post-mortems is the incumbency factor.
The alternative narrative is that Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden all ran as anti-incumbent CHANGE candidates against unpopular GOP incumbents.
Bill Clinton ran against the Bush recession “it’s the economy stupid”
Obama ran against the 2008 economic crisis, Iraq War fatigue, Katrina, and general GOP mismanagement of everything. He had the perfect storm of GOP incompetence to run against as did Biden.
Biden ran as the change candidate against Trump’s complete COVID disaster.
By contrast, both Hillary Clinton and Harris ran as the incumbent party candidate but without the actual advantages of incumbency. Which is a tricky thing to pull off. Harris, for example, couldn’t really campaign across the country by cutting ribbons at every infrastructure project because that was really Biden’s doing (even though she provided a tiebreaking vote). So she had a narrow window to navigate, defending Democrats but talking about change. Similarly, Hillary was OK but after 8 years of Obama she didn’t really have much new to offer and Trump was the change candidate.
Americans love them some “change”. Hopefully in 2028 we will have a fresh change candidate running to fix the disasters spawned by Trump and Vance will be in Harris’ position, trying to defend the incumbent party without the advantage of incumbency. Assuming he makes it through the primary.
Baud
Where was mail-in voting not available this year compared to 2020? It seems like it’s become pretty widespread.
catclub
@Melancholy Jaques: thanks!
Quinerly
@Baud:
https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox
Baud
@Kent:
I said before the election that, if it weren’t for the harm caused to innocents, we’d probably be in a better political position in 2028 after a Trump term than after a Harris term. I could be wrong, of course, but unfortunately we’ll get a chance to find out.
Quinerly
@Kent:
Excellent points
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: I don’t think there is much actual merit to the “woman can’t win” thing because it’s impossible to isolate it from the other factors you mention. It doesn’t matter though because party elites will believe it.
KatKapCC
From the Jeff T piece:
Thank you for directing me there, Mistermix, because I needed that chuckle.
Baud
@Quinerly:
I would add mainstream media into that.
Inflation and people’s struggles are real, but there’s a logical leap from that fact to the decision to refuse to vote for Dems or to affirmatively support Trump. Media tries to portray it as automatic when in fact they are influencing people to make that logical leap.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@catclub: @Old School:
Thanks, I fixed the link in the post.
Elizabelle
@Chris: Truth. Alas.
KatKapCC
@Steve LaBonne: My fear is that the first woman president we finally get will be a Republican. One who is still stuck in Cool Chick mode from high school, who thinks feminism is silly and is anti-abortion and who likes being cat-called, who will do whatever the men around her — including her male VP because it would absolutely be a man — want her to do. That’s the only kind of woman most people in this country are willing to let lead them — one who isn’t actually leading at all.
Steve LaBonne
@KatKapCC: I share that fear, or rather disgust.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chris:
On every level, its worse.
Sister Golden Bear
Both are true. Nonetheless, I fully expect a number of Dems will throw us under the bus. Won’t be the first time, I’m sure it won’t be the last.
Was on a Zoom call with a dozen trans friends. Discussion of how to get out of the country—and is anywhere else really safe—plus talking about how improve home security/defense ended up being the main topics.
Draw your own conclusions.
Nelle
Yesterday, I got a text from a woman, a farmer’s wife whom I’d met at a store a month ago. She’s married to a Trumper, lives among Trumpers, and yet, she’s a steadfast Democrat. She was fairly desperate. We sat on my porch for an hour or so. One thing she said is that her husband is alone for hours in the cab of his farm equipment, or on the road in his pick-up. And all that time, rightwing radio is pumping bilge into his ears. She doesn’t think Dems grasp the pervasive hold it has and has had for decades.
p.a
If 12+/- million Dems sat out THIS PARTICULAR ELECTION because they were too spoiled by 2020’s mail in voting TO GET OFF THEIR FUCKING ASSES…
Pls note the “If”
No Nym
I get the desire to understand why we got the result we did and to identify the group most to blame, but from my perspective, it doesn’t help. I am totally in “OK, now what?” mode. I am trying to simply be realistic about what I can do to protect myself. When I read about technology solutions for secure communications, it doesn’t help because who would I communicate with? I hardly ever talk to anyone now, and have been surprised by my own desire to pipe up here lately. What would I be saying that I don’t want anyone to see? Who is looking? The threat feels like it is in the culture itself. How do we hide from that?
sab
@Steve LaBonne: I so much agree with that. Locally in my county we won everything that mattered and almost everything else. Harris helped us do that.
Baud
@KatKapCC: At this point, that could happen. But Republicans won’t nominate a woman unless they fear that enough women are supporting Dems, and that seems to be a low risk for them right now. I don’t expect them to have a woman nominee in 2028.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Nelle: I’ve known it. Right wing radio radicalized my mother. I absolutely faulted Obama for not bringing back the Fairness doctrine. Liberals typically dismiss that concern.
Baud
@Nelle:
I don’t know what Dems grasp, but I’m not sure what can be done about it. We can’t go all Clockwork Orange on farmers and truckers to counteract the propaganda, and they won’t listen or believe what we have to say voluntarily.
p.a
@KatKapCC: Yes she’ll be a Stepford Wife Faux News clone blonde who loves Jebus, hunting, and her man.
Quinerly
@Nelle:
See link at #28
KatKapCC
@Sister Golden Bear: Someone in a thread yesterday said Dems needed to “deemphasize cultural issues” and refused to explain exactly what that included. Which to me is about as loud and clear as they could be that it’s about queer and trans rights, first and foremost. It’s abhorrent to me how easy it is for some supposed liberals to have zero problem telling marginalized people to shut up and go away.
No Nym
@KatKapCC: Agree, even though the whole picture you paint kind of makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.
chemiclord
@Caustictity.acerbity:
The mercy is that Michigan, as a rule, has not been terribly receptive for Trump Republicans who aren’t Trump, and that’s pretty much the entire Michigan GOP bench at this point.
KatKapCC
@Baud: My assumption is Trump will have croaked before 2028 and the GOP nominee will be Incumbent President Vance. Which makes me want to stuff myself into the dryer and go for a spin until my brain resembles scrambled eggs.
Baud
@KatKapCC: That’s a reasonable prediction.
chemiclord
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
The problem is that the Fairness Doctrine doesn’t apply to the Internet, and Facebook is generally where this information is spreading, not Fox News.
Ohio Mom
Words I never expected to see together: Eric Loomis and measured.
Not complaining, I like a pleasant surprise. I will certainly read it.
Jay
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2024/11/08/the-morning-stupid-5/
So, small MFGR in PA, (so Dolt 45 Voters mostly).
President calls a company wide meeting, to tell them there will be no Christmas Bonus this year, the Company needs the money to buy 2 years worth of materials.
Why? Tariffs.
And then he had to explain to everybody, that no, the other Countries don’t pay the tariffs, Americans do.
It’s teh Stupid folks.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Kent:
I agree with your point, and I think when the dust clears and deeper analysis is available it will turn out that Kamala Harris ran a remarkably effective campaign given the circumstances.
This to me does raise the issue: is the Vice Presidency a poisoned chalice in today’s environment?
Biden was able to get elected as a former VP but only by taking a cycle off and coming back running against the incumbent. But asking an incumbent VP to take on the mantle of the party in a bid to hold the WH is a very big ask, and we may be doing candidates, most especially female and minority candidates, a big disservice in picking them to be the VP. That position may be a graveyard rather than a stepping-stone, and I’d hate to see us wrecking the careers of some of our most promising up and coming leaders that way – and to do so consistently with female leaders specifically would be an unintended tragedy.
Kent
FYI, this is the EXACT SAME REASON why Teamsters are by far the most MAGA of all the unions, much more so than say the UAW which is equally blue collar.
It is because truckers spend all day every day alone in their cabs listening to toxic AM radio and podcasts whereas auto workers are side-by-side with colleagues in big factories, chatting over breaks, etc.
I don’t have an answer. I have a cousin who is an independent trucker but pretty smart and liberal-ish. He comments on it all the time. The truck driving life is toxic.
Baud
@KatKapCC:
Dems get it from both sides. People complain that the focus on social issues instead of bread and butter concerns and other people claim their squishy on social issues and uninspiring. People love to criticize.
New Deal democrat
Oh the irony: Canada braces for a deluge of illegal immigrants from the US:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-police-brace-worst-case-scenario-asylum-seekers-fleeing-trump-2024-11-08/
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
In this case, we’d be sending our best.
No Nym
I do think it will be fun to watch Trump and Vance standing by their immigrant wives talking about deporting immigrants, and I love that Melanoma has to stay married to that POS now. I don’t like that I am feeling like a petty, spiteful wench, but there it is.
Jay
https://www.wonkette.com/p/these-little-nazi-bitches-are-trying
Be Aware.
Kent
When it was Biden v. Trump I always thought 2028 was the more consequential election because it will probably be for the next 8 years. And that the losing party in 2024 was going to have the inside track in 2028.
I think the GOP made a strategic error in electing Trump because he is an instant lame duck and the 2028 campaign will be starting up within a year. Which means Congress will stop getting shit done and all the GOP leaders will be spending their time in Iowa and trying to carve out their own identities. And they will be running as the incumbent party candidates but without the power of incumbency. Just like Hillary Clinton and Harris did.
Jay
Another Scott
@Baud: +1
Biden and his administration reports every day on what he’s / they’re doing to make things better. It’s in press briefings and in freely available websites. Similarly with other elected Democrats.
The popular press doesn’t cover it.
I’m not sure what else the good guys are supposed to do with the current media environment and the silo-ing of reporting and trust.
There is no One Weird Trick. It’s going to continue to be a slog.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ohio Mom
@KatKapCC: I have long thought that too.
For a brief moment, it looked to me it would be Nikki Haley. Boy, was I relieved when that moment passed.
But as you point out, not matter who she is, she’ll be revolting.
Layer8Problem
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: My recollection is that the Fairness Doctrine came from an age of limited radio and television broadcast spectrum. With limited bandwidth you had limited numbers of stations, some being the only stations in the neighborhood. Satellite links, high-speed links over the telephone network, and finally cable gave us 500 channels and more so “every point of view can have an outlet”. Now we have the Internet, and Saint Petersburg can offer its opinion on the lowdown thanks to trolls and bots. I’ll leave it to the legal crowd here to opine but the current Supreme Court would probably regard a new Fairness Doctrine as government infringement of freedom of speech, which as we all know also equals money.
Steve LaBonne
@KatKapCC: These are the kind of “liberals” who caused me to leave my previous UU church. I once heard one of them bleating that he was “berated” for getting someone’s pronouns wrong, which I’m quite sure is bullshit.
Dave
@E.: LGM does so much better when the doom has arrived than when it’s only a potential.
To be fair this is all very clarifying so let it be clarified.
And in addition to the New Deal style propaganda we need to compete for the meatheads not by throwing any groups under the bus but by having Joe Rogan style meatheads who speak natural meathead.
moonbat
Dems are bad at messaging, blah, blah, blah.
I’m so tired of this when every day it is pointed out that the MSM has it in for Dems. Without the fourth estate reporting the news honestly, there’s no way the Dems can fill that gap without being in full blown campaign mode for four years. And, you know, they have governing to do on top of everything else, right?
How much news the public gets about what the administration does is at the discretion of a few large corporate owners. If they decide no good effects are going to be reported about Biden’s policies, your average Joe Schmoe ain’t going to know about it. All positive economic news got buried or simply wasn’t reported since 2020. While the world was marveling at our recovery all we got was three years of “Recession is Coming! Recession is Coming!”
It’s like when Biden had that sit down interview with Holt shortly before he dropped out. Holt had the temerity to ask him when he was going to do campaign events again. And he was like, “Where you been, man?” He’d been all over the battlegrounds in the days post debate, but no one was reporting on it to the extent that Holt thought he could get away with that question on national television.
If we really want to start a resistance movement, start with the MSM. As long as they soft pedal or sanewash Trump’s atrocities and blathering and misreport or don’t report the good that Dems do there isn’t going to be a coming back from this. Without a healthy press, we’re screwed. DougJ is doing God’s work in poking holes in the fallacy of the NYT being a legitimate news organization and exposing what it is: a shill for fascists. rant/
trollhattan
@KatKapCC:
Needs to add “ban…uh, shared a bed with Junior’s girlfriend before Junior, so wins the whole Alpha Male thing.”
Dave
@moonbat: It’s more Democrats need to get over the need for nuance and embrace simple constant in your face repetition. This is of course not ideal and I understand the concern that you become what you practice but as it stands the current environment does not allow the ideal.
Steve LaBonne
@Dave: Does Trae Crowder really reach any of the people we need to reach, or are all his fans people like us?
Anyway
I present to you Tulsi Gabbar (sp?) <barf!>
I bet she gets Deputy Defense Sec or some such high Pentagon/DOD appt to boost her resume
Kent
Mexican Americans in the US are NOT a representative subsample of Mexico writ large.
The tend to be from Northern Mexico which is the conservative “wild west” part of Mexico (their version of Texas). And they tend to be poorer rural folks. Educated middle class and professional class Mexicans almost never immigrate to the US.
So it would be like taking a subsampling of poor rural Americans heavily tilted towards Texas and the South and wondering why they don’t vote like America as a whole.
Splitting Image
@Kent:
We’ll have to see. Gaming out 2028 has to consider the fact that Trump is almost at death’s door and there is no telling how much of the next four years will see Vance as president.
Trump could indeed hang on for another four years but he is already closing to dribbling senility. He could also pop off next week.
There is also no way to make plans until we all have some idea of what the administration will actually do in January. Maybe they’ll content themselves with looting social security and deport a few thousand Latinos for show. Maybe they’ll crash the economy so that the billionaires can buy up the remainders but leave the constitution relatively intact (so the incoming Democrats can clean up the mess as usual). Maybe the U.S. has had its last election.
No one knows anything yet.
Chris
@E.:
The most ridiculous thing about all the upcoming “oh God, how do we change the party to appeal to the dumbest fucking people in politics?” hand-wringing is that if we were Republicans, we know exactly what we’d do: run the exact same campaign again in 2028. Then run it again in 2032. And again in 2036. Sure, we’ll lose for a couple election cycles, but sooner or later goldfish memories, voter fatigue, and everything-is-the-incumbent’s-fault will kick in, and the pendulum will swing right back to us. It’s what they did in 2016, 2020, and 2024. And it worked. It’ll work just fine if we do it, too.
(Spare me the “we won’t have elections in four/eight years!” We very well might not, but if we don’t, that’s not something we can message our way out of).
trollhattan
@Layer8Problem: Yeah, never applied to cable anyway, only attached to broadcast licenses. “We’ll put this hippie op-ed on at 1:00 a.m.”
Was never remotely on Obama’s radar–Limbaugh and Co. dredged it up as “things tyrant Obama is planning to unleash” and they solely kept in on one of many front burners. Whatever Obama might have done, would have needed to go through the FCC.
Now, we can well revisit Clinton and rolling back restrictions on broadcast license ownership. That had and has a real and far-reaching impact, handing the public airwaves over to the Sinclairs and Clear Channels and Newscorps. Tragic and unnecessary own goal.
prostratedragon
George Conway in The Atlantic (archive link): “This time the nation was on notice.”
I think any mistake the Dems might have made — and I don’t see how one could identify them definitively — are but curlicues on his stark conclusion. It’s a crisis of values and of culture in the broad sense, and there’s just no quick fix for it. We’ll have to survive the overreach with some saved remnants.
oldgold
@KatKapCC: This is precisely what I said:
“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.”
You claim that this “is about as loud and clear as they could be that it’s about queer and trans right...” And further, that I am “telling marginalized people to shut up and go away.”(emphasis supplied)
You are at a minimum a fabulist.
catothedog
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
We should not just be tooting our horns, but also tying the millstone around the neck of Rethugs.
Dems haven’t learned about the 26/7/356 war the Rethugs are waging against them. They have done an extremely good job at destroying the Dem brand.
Just tooting about our good deeds is not enough. Trump and the Rethugs will do evil things. We need constant messaging to tie it to the Rethug brand
A permanent messaging infrastructure to disparage the Rethugs is an absolute must.
Think of the missed opportunities. Reps which voted against the infra bill went and took credit for it. They should have been drowned in their opposition to it. The voters may ignore it the first time – bit when this happens repeatedly, the brand will get discredited.
People will gloss over the details, but the branding sticks when it is relentless.
Advertising works, even if it is ignored and hated. This is proven.
Dave
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I think the Loomis piece was good about recognizing that the Harris campaign probably overperformed relative to the global backlash from inflation and COVID and that is very important to remember going forward.
Though I do suspect voters are going to be very gun-shy to nominate a woman for the near future which is unfortunate.
No Nym
@moonbat: Somehow I don’t foresee the MSM getting better any time soon, especially under the kinds of threats the press usually faces in dictatorships.
Dave
@Steve LaBonne: That I don’t know. I don’t in anyway think the meathead vote should be the focus but it would not hurt to have people laying the ground work and speaking meathead to them. Not a Crowder. It shouldn’t be formal stuff and is probably much harder to achieve than the simple “hey appeal to the meatheads” that might be the interpretation from my comment.
Ruckus
@KatKapCC:
he makes Donny seem like a misshapen garden gnome by comparison
He IS a misshapen garden gnome!
No working brain, an ego the defies any explanation, seemingly an IQ of zilch, and more stupid than that garden gnome.
Steve LaBonne
@oldgold: Dude, we’re all very familiar with the code words and we hear them in real life from people whose intentions are quite clear.
moonbat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: When FDR was messaging 24/7 the news outlets were newspapers and the radio to which he had access to fireside chat anytime he wanted. Today’s media-scape and 1930s media-scape are light years different.
Chris
@Jay:
I’ve said before that if Republicans were to change their abortion platform from “women should be prevented from having abortions, even if they want them” to “women should be forced to have abortions, even if they don’t want them,” they’d lose, at most, 1% of their current voter base. It really is all about anti-choice, not pro-life.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Layer8Problem:
Correct, but as I understand it the key thing is that the electromagnetic spectrum is public not private property, so the govt had a legal right to regulate its use which did not apply to private property. The cable networks were using private property as the delivery mechanism and so they could do what they wanted with it.
In a very broad sense I think you could make a case that the internet originated as a government project and later a public-private partnership, giving the govt some rights regarding how it is used. But good luck getting the current courts to buy that argument.
More broadly, I think we need to look back to the late 18th and 19th Centuries when there was no Fairness doctrine and we had a viciously partisan and extremely irresponsible press – but for both sides. Our problem today is that the Dems never developed a partisan press of any size or consequence, we are like Belgium trying to fight off the Germans in both world wars.
Miki
@jackmac: Not term limited, but Minnesotans, lately at least, tend towards throwing the incumbent party out after 2 terms.
Walz and the DFL are not popular right now (they’re seen as over-reaching). The DFL barely held on to the Senate, and the House is a tie (recount might change that). Most likely result is the tie will change to R and we’ll have divided government – again. That’s what a lot of Minnesotans think is best.
I can feel Minnesota slowly creeping right over the next several years.
To quote Kay, people want cheap food.
moonbat
@No Nym: They’re businesses like anything other. Driven by the dollar. When they aren’t towing the company line they’re filling their pages with crap punditry and poorly written AI bullshit.
Stop supporting them and support news outlets that do their job properly. The effects won’t be immediate, but we need to turn this thing around starting now. There are journalists, real journalists, out there now who are looking for ways to divorce themselves from their former bosses/institutions and do the work they were trained to do. We need to support those folks, like ProPublica, who do the work.
Sure Lurkalot
@Sister Golden Bear:
You are correct. Already more than a few commentaries on how “not speaking out against trans women in sports” cost Harris the election. The navel gazing of too many will affix on a marginalized, terrorized group that numbers less than 1/2% of the population, even less considering the vitriol is primarily focused on transgender women and not men. I would guess that a majority of people have never seen or met a transgender person and never will. I would also guess that a majority of people give fuckall about women’s sports.
HeleninEire
@No Nym: LOL. Thanks for the Melanoma reference. Good. Also…they are coming up on 20 years. I bet she had a pretty good clause in the pre-nup that vacated a lot of the bullshit if they made it to 20 years. She’ll have to wait another 4. So sad 😆 🤣
No Nym
@moonbat: Agree, already support ProPublica and Missouri Independent. I will not click on anything with Trump’s name in it. I’m not even on social media because I was so grossed out by it the last time we had this monster. People here should get off Xitter.
Chris
@Steve LaBonne:
Yeah, I’ll put money down on that one.
That’s the thing. It’s not that I’ve never met activists who were aggressively assholes about their politics, including on the “SJW” side of things. But virtually all of these people exist in hyper-politicized activist spaces where they spend almost all their time talking to each other. 90% of white men will go their entire lives without a single encounter like that.
Like the “hippies spit on the troops!” narrative from the Vietnam era (the post Vietnam era, most honestly), “I was verbally abused for an honest mistake with someone’s pronouns” is something “everybody knows” because they read about it in a chain email that originated six degrees of separation away from them (or whatever the equivalent in the seventies and eighties was), but never because they actually saw it happen or had it happen to them.
Kent
Which I dunno, could be worse. Because Vance is a unappealing billionaire chew toy affirmative action hire who would never make it through a rough and tumble GOP primary on his own. He has to be more beatable than if Trump had picked a more widely appealing (to moderates and independents) running mate like say Nikki Haley.
Jay
@Kent:
Operation Wet Back didn’t care if they were citizens or not. Did not care if they had lived in New Mexico, Texass, California or Arizona long before there was a USA.
BenInNM
@moonbat: I agree with this. I also don’t have any good ideas except one tiny, baby step I saw somewhere else, which is to refer to it as the corporate media. At least that starts to put forth the idea that they have an agenda that probably doesn’t line up with most people.
The other thing I haven’t seen a lot is the idea of voter suppression, mainly the time it can take to vote. When I’d see reports of long lines and 2-3 hours to vote, I just think that’s unacceptable. Especially when I’m sure voting times weren’t equally distributed. While not necessarily excusing the people who didn’t vote, I can imagine someone who isn’t thrilled with the current situation or is just lazy would see the lines and think they don’t have that time and also think their vote isn’t needed.
if we survive this and the Democrats ever get back into power, I think a solid VRA is critical.
Steve LaBonne
@Kent: And he is especially likely to have primary challengers if the midterms go as badly for them as we hope.
beckya57
Add Gov Inslee here in WA as well as CA as well to the “we’re not complying” list. Obeying Snyder’s “don’t obey in advance” maxim. Good for all of them. I sent a message to Inslee’s office this am thanking him, and I suggest other jackals living in states that have taken this position do the same.
Kent
Complete BS. I’m a HS teacher with 150 new students every year. A selection of whom have various non-cis pronouns which they can designate in their online Canvas profiles.
The thing is, it takes me ages to remember all their names much less pronouns. But in real life you NEVER actually use pronouns to someone you are talking to in person directly. You just use their name. The only time pronouns actually come up in real life is talking about someone in their absence. Like if I’m talking to a counselor about a specific student in their absence and the counselor refers to the student as “they”.
So in real life when navigating through hundreds of students, some of whom have preferred pronouns different from the conventional, it really doesn’t ever come up. You just treat students with respect and it all works out.
Chris
@moonbat:
Yeah. Biden tried ignoring the media and denying them any fuel. It didn’t work. Harris tried going around the media and, in fact, meeting people where they were on any number of platforms. It didn’t work.
“Democrats need to figure out how to message better” isn’t wrong exactly, but it tends to gloss over just how daunting the task is in a media environment that’s been spiraling downwards ever since the “become Dan Rather’s boss” campaign in the eighties, with the public remaining blissfully clueless about it at every step of the way. It’s like locking me in an underground labyrinth with no matches, lighter, flashlight, cell phone, or other light source, telling me to find the exit, and then getting mad when my first few attempts turn out to be dead ends. I’m trying, damn it. I am flying completely blind and literally doing the best that any person could under the circumstances. Unless you’re down here with me trying to figure the maze out, I don’t want to fucking hear it with the Monday-morning quarterback shit.
Slightly_peeved
@Baud:
no more for me. he’s a bully to his commentariat and bans people who point it out. He essentially told Cheryl to fuck off when she mildly criticised the other regular front pagers.
beckya57
@Baud: yes. I’ve believed all along Trump was the only GOP candidate we had a chance of beating, basically hoping his insanity would cancel out the anti-incumbent rage. I’m quite convinced Haley would have won easily.
dan
Hochul, hunh? Well tickle my balls and call me Mary!
Steve LaBonne
deleted
Steve LaBonne
@Slightly_peeved: It is honest to God a really good post, and I speak as someone he once banned.
Kent
And your point is?
Look, we live in a post-truth reality. It doesn’t matter what you or I think or what the truth is. The question is what does your average blue collar Hispanic voter think who probably drives a big pickup, works in construction or in a factory, surfs toxic social media, and listens to right-wing Spanish-language radio.
And who, if they are a voter that makes them a citizen who was almost certainly born here in the US since the last big amnesty that provided a pathway to citizenship happened during the Reagan Administration in 1986 which was 38 years ago. Any Hispanic voter under the age of say 50 was very likely born here. I don’t know the exact percentage, but it is likely to be very high.
KatKapCC
@Steve LaBonne: These people flip out if you misgender their damn dog, but they have zero issue doing it to a person.
Miki
@chemiclord: Holy fucking shit – what a low bar for good news.
Sigh ….
Chris
@Slightly_peeved:
The root problem of LGM is simply that it’s turned into a goddamn cesspool of liberals-shitting-on-other-liberals, and Loomis more than anyone led the way, in a fish-rots-from-the-head kind of way. It’s nice that he finally managed to post one thing about the election without being a giant turd blossom, but I’m going to need to see a hell of a lot more than that.
By the way, how much do you figure his sudden meekness is because after he spent all summer screaming at people to DUMP BIDEN, and then spent all fall screaming at people that OH MY GOD OF COURSE IT HAD TO BE KAMALA WE ALWAYS WANTED KAMALA IT COULD BE NO ONE BUT KAMALA, we went ahead and lost the election anyway, so now he’s got egg all over his face and, to coin a phrase, much to be modest about?
KatKapCC
@oldgold: You still have not said what those cultural issues are.
What are they?
Miki
@Baud: Ouch.
Truth hurts.
Gvg
@Steve LaBonne: There is definitely some women hating factors. They have shown what they are by not doing anything to mitigate women dying from the abortion ban. They got what they really wanted after years of pretending to be more reasonable and they aren’t budging because life of the mother doesn’t mean anything to them.
When faced with some backlash, they started to talk publicly in a few cases about they should have waited till after they had reversed a woman’s right to vote. That one isn’t very loud, but I have heard it more than once around elected GOP. Some of them really do hate us, and they certainly don’t think we are their equal. Not all, but enough. I can’t guess the percentage, but in a close election, it doesn’t need to be much. Some small number of “ours” also. It only takes a little.
Realworldrj
Americans want regulations at all levels and/ or socialism (albeit under a different name). They want rent controls, cheap mortgages (not tied to the “market”), they want cheap gas, and price controls on products. Dems answer to most is “its out of our control,” or something about government programs. People don’t care, they just want cheap stuff. The other guys promise it (“its alone can fix it”) and meanwhile Dems are caught responding to how they’ll pay for it or how it will work. Nobody cares.
Planetjanet
Biden was touting. If local media doesn’t report on it, how would people know. Biden shows up for an event, and there are pictures in the background while they talk about something Trump said.
TBone
@Jay: we need a national strike by all sane women and their allies. We will not lift a finger until this shit stops and our equality is codified.
Ruckus
@No Nym:
People here should get off Xitter.
Done the day it was bought by his uselessness.
Kent
@KatKapCC: I agree with oldgold sort of but he is also part wrong.
In politics you play both offense and defense. When you are on offense you pick the issues and subjects that are to your advantage. For Democrats that is kitchen table working class issues. Housing, jobs, the economy, education, health care, clean air and water, etc. In other words, real meaningful stuff.
The GOP doesn’t have much in the way of winning real issues. So they prefer to play offence on BS made-up topics like trans issues, boys on girls teams, immigrant criminal gangs, DEI, CRT, and all the other completely made up culture war issues. That is what they are good at.
That doesn’t mean Democrats need to run away from culture war issues. The correct answer is the Tim Walz answer which is that we live in a free country and it is none of your damn business if your neighbor’s kid is trans. But it also means that Democrats should go on offense on Democratic issues and not spend their time on whatever made up culture war fantasy the GOP has invented this week.
2 years ago it was immigrant caravans full of MS-13 gangsters coming to rape your daughters. This year it was trans prisoners and boys on your daughter’s team. In 2026 they will have latched onto some new made-up culture war scandal. And since it will be entirely made up, who the hell knows what it will even be at this point.
Honestly, Democrats don’t actually run on or bring up these culture war issues because they are entirely GOP inventions. Actual democrats aren’t really running on those things and so it is buying into GOP framing to even act like they are.
YY_Sima Qian
Good piece by Loomis, I’ve thinking along similar lines. My two cents:
1. There is no one factor why Harris lost, there was a confluence of many factor. Just because no one factor was determinant does not mean these factors were not important. Campaigning w/ Liz Cheney late to chase Never Trumper votes carried opportunity costs since the time/resources was not spent on trying to win undecided low information voters or disaffected Biden voters or disengaged non-voters. Not breaking w/ Biden on Israel-Palestine sure mattered in Michigan (how to do that as the sitting VP is a delicate matter). This is Dems not doing everything they can to maximize their chances of winning. Harris lost by only a couple of hundred thousand votes in 3 states.
2. Dems do need a populist message to go along w/ populist policies to suit the current anti-Establishment moment in the U.S. & the world, w/ the eyes wide open on the dangers of populism. Technocratic competence appealing to the shrinking center will not do, the center has not held & will not hold, nor will moral sermonizing. Meet where voters are w/o compromising core principles, don’t preach to them what they should believe.
3. I too do not believe the U.S. is a right wing country, the number of committed Fascists is still a minority of the population, but they are some of the most energized. There are vast numbers of low information voters that voted for Trump, disaffected Biden voters that did not show up (for their varied reasons), & disengaged voters who rarely voted, all about to be brutalized and rudely awakened by the reality of the coming Fascist onslaught. They represent opportunities for the anti-Fascist coalition, we have to be ready to seize them, or most of them will resign themselves to the new order, as most people tend to do in such situations.
4. Loomis is still thinking along the lines of electoral politics, hence his vibe, but as Adam & John have maintained, the peril is far greater & the old order is gone. However, it’s still OK to think along electoral lines for the time being. An electoral coalition can form the basis for allied mass non-violent resistance (street protests, strikes, civil disobedience) when elections are no longer free & fair by any stretch of imagination, and they can form the basis for allied armed resistance if non-violent resistance is violently suppressed, should it come to that. Whatever the scenario, an anti-Fascist coalition has to be built & held together. We hang together or we hang separately.
5. A note on producerism. Dems, & indeed all of Western economic orthodoxy, still operate in the framework of consumption led growth, consumption driven economic activity, & still prioritizes capital accumulation. Their economic remedies for socio-economic ills (consumer/household focused stimulus, welfare targeting households, monetary easing at a massive scale) show this. So do their criticisms of Chinese economic management (accusations of “overcapacity”, even in green tech industries that will be crucial to alleviate AGW, where the true problem is insufficient global demand due to inadequate policy support in most countries). Who drives the greatest volume in consumption? Those w/ a lot of income & the need to spend it, the mass affluent (the upper middle class & white collar professionals). Who benefit from rising asset prices? Those w/ lots of assets (the mass affluent & the rich). Why did Harris win the well off but lost the working & middle classes? Maybe look in that direction.
6. Real economic growth can only come from creation of surplus value, which in turn can only come from increasing productivity. Then surplus value has to be equitably distributed across the population. IMHO the overfinancialization of the U.S. & to a lesser extent most Western economies has made creation of surplus value hard, especially in physical production of physical good that people consume, & even harder to measure. Fetishization of markets have caused perennial & structural scarcity in goods that are basic necessities (housing, health care, education to an extent). Any wonder working & middle class folks feel insecure? Fetishization of capital markets means any surplus value that have been created accrue disproportionally to the capital owners, meaning the rich & to a lesser extent the mass affluent. What are the signals that American elites (including establishment Dem politicians) point to for economic success? High profit margins, high stock valuations. Who benefits from high profits & high stock prices? Capital owners, certainly not the consumers that have to pay for highly priced goods. How are high profitability & high valuations achieved? Reduced competition, de facto monopolies & oligopolies, which describes most sectors of the American economy. Very little of the Dem economic program address these fundamental pathologies. Even as they have pivoted away from neoliberalism, they & everyone else are still trapped in neoliberal frameworks. That is why Dems have to take the Left’s economic message more seriously.
7. There have been progress under Biden. The IRA & CHIPS are attempts to rebuild US manufacturing in critical sectors. However, they are still inadequately funded piecemeal efforts that do not operate as a cohesive set of industrial & economic policy, because the economic mental model has not fundamentally changed. Worse, these efforts became subsumed into the Sino-US Great Power Competition, to achieve decoupling in these very sectors. The PRC is the dominant consumer of green tech & semiconductors, the dominant producer throughout every vertical of green tech value chain, & an increasingly important producer of semiconductors. When the PRC tried to industrialize from the 80s on, it invited collaboration w/ the then dominant producers, but in its terms. Biden tried to reindustrialize the U.S. but completely cutting out the current dominant producer, even as an investor in the US. That will make the effort much more time consuming & much more expensive, if not destined for failure altogether.
OT: Even from the purely Realist perspective, producer power matter more than consumption power in any kind of Great Power Competition. Why is the PRC modernizing its military at astonishing speed despite spending < 2% of a smaller nominal GDP, while the U.S.’ might MIC is struggling to supply Ukraine, despite spending > 3% of a larger nominal GDP? Producer power. In a great power war (heaven forbid, but no longer unthinkable w/ the reactionaries in charge), all that GDP from service industries & all that financialized fluff will not matter a damned bit to any war effort.
Darkrose
On Sunday that seems like a lifetime ago, I went to hear Brittney Griner speak. One thing she made very clear is that she wouldn’t have gone to play in Russia if she’d been able to earn close to what she’s worth playing in the WNBA.
She wrote in her book about being harassed and having security called on her in women’s bathrooms because people thought she was trans. I would bet real, actual money that the same people insisting that it’s just about “fairness in women’s sports” are the same ones calling security on women like Griner.
KatKapCC
@Kent: One cannot agree nor disagree with them until they actually tell us what they meant by “cultural issues”. And I will stick to my belief that their continued refusal to do so makes it very clear what they meant. If they want to call me a “fabulist” then they could solve that issue by actually answering my question. They don’t want to because they know I’m right. They can get in the fucking bin for all I care.
Kent
All true. But Dems are out of power for the next for years. So every chance I get I’m going to be screaming about how it is TRUMP’s fault that the rent is too damn high. And that it is TRUMP’s fault that health care costs are too high. And it will be every bit as true as the claim that Harris was responsible for the high cost of eggs. In fact, more so.
Hang every single American problem on Trump and the GOP. That is exactly what they would do. And then run as the change candidate who will fix all that stuff in 2028.
Darkrose
@Slightly_peeved: Yeah. I thought about going back, but fuck that. He was an asshole to me directly multiple times, and I think maybe one person said anything to him about it. Fuck him.
Kent
@KatKapCC: Let me clarify.
I agree that Dems should be running on real tangible issues like the economy, health care, the environment, education, etc.
I disagree with the frame that Democrats are even ever running on culture issues. For the most part they aren’t. That is a FOX news stereotype of Democrats that doesn’t exist in real life.
That said, the GOP is always going to invent some new culture war issue to run on. It needs to be answered. But don’t let them change the subject to whatever ground they think wins for them. Always turn back to the issues YOU want to play offense on.
Buttigieg is the master of doing this. He knows how to answer/dismiss whatever culture issue the GOP has invented and in the same breath pivot back to what he wants to go on offense about. All Democrats should study him.
lowtechcyclist
@Slightly_peeved:
You’re talking about Cheryl Rofer, right? I can’t speak for John, obviously, but it’s hard for me to imagine that she wouldn’t be welcome back here.
Steve LaBonne
@Darkrose: Oh, just because I appreciated that one post doesn’t mean that I would ever consider commenting there again. I check in enough to know that the signal / noise still sucks.
lowtechcyclist
That “independent Baltimore newspaper” would be the Baltimore Banner. Thanks to frosty talking it up earlier this year, I subscribed, and I’ll keep on subscribing – they’re great!
While I rarely have reason to go up to Baltimore, so their coverage of the city itself doesn’t mean that much to me, they cover state-level issues which do affect me, and they also cover Annapolis (as a town, not just as the state capital) which I appreciate because I get up to Annapolis fairly often.
Sister Golden Bear
@Sure Lurkalot:
The odds are quite high they’ve seen and/or met a trans person before, they just didn’t realize it. We live in pretty much all parts of the country.
They don’t.
@Darkrose:
They absolutely are. And they never gave a shit about women’s sports before, nor did they follow women’s sports.
@Kent:
See that’s the infuriating thing about “Kamala shouldn’t have been defending trans women in sports.” Both she and Walz essentially said: “Trans people just want to live their lives, they’re not hurting anyone. This is America, we live and let live. Next question. I.e. a very Buttigieg response.
But there’s definitely socially tolerant liberals who ain’t so tolerant when it comes to us.
Anyway, I need to step away again and touch more grass. I’m glad people are able to have these discussions here, but it’s still far too raw for me at the moment.
Darkrose
@Sister Golden Bear: Do what you need to do, and please take care of yourself.
Ruckus
@Sister Golden Bear:
I had a gay sister who had friends in so many sides of not traditional sexual orientation that I honestly believe I’ve met people of all the known sexual orientations. They all seemed rather human to me. Some of them I was friends with longer than my sister. And I’m about as straight as it gets. Good, funny, smart people, every damn one of them. It’s none of my damn business who lives/sleeps/has sex with whom. It doesn’t rub off, it doesn’t hurt you, but it does make the world a bit more interesting.
Darkrose
@Steve LaBonne: I followed the link to Scott’s post yesterday, and I thought about maybe logging in, but then I said nah. Overall, it’s just so toxic, and the tone really comes from the dudes on the front page–and that’s a choice. Erik is a smart guy, but wow, has he chosen to be an asshole.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
I mentioned this before. Mayor Pete has some really good videos of him at different places pumping up what the infrastructure act was doing. Some was on Twitter but I believe the rest are on YouTube. The Dems could have easliy picked 10 seconds from each and run a 60 sec ad. He was everywhere Maine/Louisiana/the Carolinas/Vegas/LA/AZ/Mississippi/Minnesota/Indiana/Michigan/Wisconsin. Bridges/roads/waterways/ports…it would have been more effective than the some of the negative on TFG ads.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Sister Golden Bear: i was looking of the total UZ population of transgender folks. The 2022 number was 1.3 million. That’s it. In round numbers its about 1 in 300 people. I don’t know how much people remember about HS but the vast majority of HS’rs are pretty private about their sex lives especially if it’s something out of the norm. I’m betting the number of transgender males in female sports is way less than 500 and competitive less than a 100. It’s just a scapegoat issue. Like the gay marriage one in 04. Chris LaCivita will have a special place in hell waiting for him. I hope the $20M+ he got from the TFG campaign gives him some cold comfort when he’s burning in hell.
RevRick
@TBone: I have a different suggestion. On January 21st, we take a “we won’t buy shit” pledge. Outside of spending on food and shelter and transportation to work, we cease discretionary spending. No new clothes. No new patio furniture. No Caribbean cruises. No dining out. No new iPhones.
It only took about 4% of all mortgages to tank in 2008 to crash the world financial markets.
Back in the 1980s leaders of the anti apartheid movement urged the U.S. and Europe to boycott South Africa. They knew that their own people would suffer, but breaking the power and support of the regime was more important.
All it requires is doing nothing.
We need to relearn the skills of passive nonviolent resistance. And instead of taking to the streets, we just stay home and blob.
klokanek
Please could someone put together a list of local newspapers worthy of subscriptions? I am motivated to support by subscribing to these–not just the Baltimore Banner–in keeping with Oliver Willis’s list of appropriate media (which isn’t local-focused)
sab
@RevRick: I am very much on board for that. I cannot even see how it might hurt my family.