I'm thinking a lot about my mom today. pic.twitter.com/aq2NiotgvG
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) November 7, 2024
Per Aaron Blake, at the Washington Post — “Trump’s mandate isn’t as ‘powerful’ as he suggests. Here’s why.” [gift link]:
When Donald Trump emerged victorious as president-elect in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he was characteristically hyperbolic about his and the Republican Party’s achievement…
… In fact, Democrats have since been declared the winners of the Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin, and they’ll likely win Nevada, too.
But what about Trump’s earlier and related claim — that his and the GOP’s mandate was “unprecedented and powerful?”
Unprecedented: Surely not.
Powerful: That’s more subjective. But it’s evidently not that powerful, historically speaking.
While Trump’s win was larger than many expected and every swing state swung in his favor, his level of support is relatively par for the course for a victor. And Republicans on the whole didn’t do as well as he did.
It’s all worth diving into, given the major questions about whether Trump and the GOP will actually pursue some of the extreme proposals he has pitched on the campaign trail — and given that his and his party’s mandate, both perceived and real, will play a role in what lies ahead.
As things stand, Trump probably will sweep the seven swing states, but he will do so with only marginally more electoral votes (probably 312) than he won in 2016 (304) and President Joe Biden won in 2020 (306).
That 312 total would also outpace both of George W. Bush’s elections, but it’s fewer than in any election involving Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. And the 58 percent of electoral votes Trump probably will win would rank 41st all-time…
The other key measure here is the popular vote, which has no bearing on who is actually elected but does say something about their support nationwide.
Trump is currently taking 50.9 percent of the popular vote and leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 3.3 points. That will shift as the remaining votes are counted, but it seems Trump will actually win the popular vote this time, which he didn’t do when he won the 2016 election.
At the same time, his popular-vote share probably will drop as the remaining (mostly western and largely Californian) votes are counted. It’s likely he’ll win a smaller percentage of the popular vote than any non-Trump president-elect since 2000, when George W. Bush won despite losing the popular vote. A big question is whether he could wind up shy of a popular majority…
Which brings us to the House and the Senate. Whatever mandate Trump won, the broader Republican Party’s mandate appears to be smaller.
That’s because, as those Senate results in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin reinforce, Republican Senate candidates generally ran behind Trump — more than three points behind him in the swing states.
The reason Republicans flipped the Senate majority owes largely to the fact that the map was so favorable to them, rather than that voters swung so hard toward the GOP. Their pickups so far are in a trio of red states: Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. And among the swing states Trump won, they’ll probably go 1 for 5 by flipping only Pennsylvania…
But beyond the practical is what it says about Americans’ willingness to give Trump and the GOP room to operate and do some of the big and probably controversial things (see: large tariffs, mass deportation, etc.) he has talked about.
Trump might believe he has just won a tremendous victory and feel emboldened to go places he didn’t before, particularly as he’s likely to surround himself with loyalists. But that doesn’t mean the American people will view themselves as having signed off on that.
And there’s a pretty compelling argument to be made that they didn’t.
Fulton County, thank you for trusting me with the honor of serving as your District Attorney and giving me four more years in this office. We will continue the work of getting justice for the people of Fulton County without fear or favor and keeping this community safe. pic.twitter.com/Pnfw43BW43
— Fani T. Willis (@FaniforDA) November 7, 2024
On The Road – SuzieC – Ireland 2024 Part 2
Kosh III
Open Thread? Here goes!
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/unacceptbale-paris-to-summon-israeli-ambassador-over-detention-of-french-guards-in-jerusalem/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGa7EVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHducWqvc-Jq45ri2jGS6Y5kxG1P-WlTgOT56jUgNr0qCNfE7E-pIFWLjpQ_aem_xyjY9w7QfjEhI_WfmZWmtQ
Israeli police thugs violate French diplomatic immunity-again.
Le Monde has the same facts as well.
And good morning y’all! Well as good as possible considering The Felon.
HinTN
Slim margins (and outright losses in the popular vote) never stopped the Rs from doing whatever they wanted before. This WaPo analysis ain’t worth the electrons that constitute its content.
Baud
@HinTN:
Tomorrow’s WaPo: Here’s why Dems should change everything about themselves.
MattF
I found this comment on the blog Not Even Wrong to be informative and helpful:
The blog is interesting too.
HinTN
@Baud: The WaPo Pitchbot arises.
Also too, you got that right.
John S.
So I guess we’re going to end up losing the House, too?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Anne Laurie
@Kosh III: Your link flagged by my security site (Avast) as ‘suspect’.
prostratedragon
I suppose that civil matters are not pardonable:
He has now been ordered to surrender the car and other property on Monday.
hrprogressive
Definitely disregarding all of the above type of analysis since it fash-washes what they have stated they wanted to do.
I’m not placing my hopes in any other GOPer “doing the right thing” because they had an entire prior Trump term to do that, and they fucking didn’t.
Being “so disorganized and incompetent they can’t get anything done” might be a nice silver lining but again, I’m not counting on it.
If they get their way, the collapse and disorder is functionally imminent.
We should behave accordingly.
caphilldcne
Well I’m back in DC. Considering how to move forward. I went from mildly optimistic to great disappointment in 3 hours on Tuesday. Things are going to change deeply and probably permanently. I’m relatively privileged but I feel terrible for the many people who are about to lose rights and freedoms. Anyway I will be doing some self care for a bit this weekend. More exercise, less alcohol and social media. Onward!
DianeB
Given the Lady Sekmet’s thirst, I hope they are stocking up on pom juice and beer.
Gin & Tonic
@HinTN: Nice thing about electrons is that they’re more recyclable than newsprint.
TBone
Whelp, I reckon I’ll just smoke another joint and wait six months, at the very least, before I take any pundit seriously on any of this.
caphilldcne
@HinTN: this is correct. There will be no guardrails.
lowtechcyclist
@HinTN:
That’s all too true. I remember Dubya and Cheney acting in 2001 as if they had a mandate, and nobody bothered to stand in their way.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Yesterday I remarked on the dire national security consequences of this election.
But looking at domestic issues, it’ll be equally dire. One of the (many, unheralded) things Biden did was adequately fund government agencies and get competent people to run them…after decades of drowning-in-the-bathtub-non-funding, shitty people put in charge, etc.
The most notable example of this is the IRS. It’s been strangled starting with the Bushies, Biden righted that ship. And now? It’s fucked.
Not to mention the Dep of Edumacation. Sure, I harp on Arne Duncan as awful but he’s no Betsy DeVoss. As somebody said yesterday, it’ll take us a generation to climb back out of the whole created by this election.
Speaking of which, so-called “school choice” measures failed nationally, here in CO (51.6%), KY (65%, Go Kentucky!) and in NE, voters repealed a $10m voucher program it’s wingnut legislature passed earlier in the year (57%). The sad thing is that two blood-red states mustered more opposition to that crap than so-called “blue” CO. When I say our blueness is a mile wide and an inch deep, voting results like that demonstrate why.
Good ole Jess Piper in Misery also pointed out that whenever so-called “school choice” issues are put on ballots, they lose. We have this crap because of captured electeds.
TBone
@rikyrah: thank you for the smiles.
New Deal democrat
I want to get a couple of things off my chest, and there probably won’t be a better time than now to do so:
1. Can we all now finally admit that the appointment of Merrick the Meek was a complete failure?
2. Along the same line of the abject failure of institutionalism, this statement yesterday made me want to scream:
WE ARE *NOT* GOING TO BE OK, YOU STUPID MF’ER!
It immediately reminded me of Biden’s tour of the NATO allies in Europe in October 2016, in which he solemnly reassured them that there was *”no chance”* that Trump would be elected President.
I am completely disgusted with institutionalists.
The Other Bob
I am hoping among all hope that he institutes huge tariff’s on day one. The resulting inflation will put him in the dog house faster than anything and result in Dems taking over in two years. I would rather see economic pain than have him unchecked for four years.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
No, I’m not blaming Democrats. I’ll leave that to the media and Republicans. And social media. If that’s what Balloon Juice wants to do, that’s y’all’s choice.
gene108
WaPo guy seems to think the basic way we operate as a country will not change. I find it unlikely. I think a level of attack on things we take for granted will happen that will help Republican consolidate power and limit political opposition.
Probably some kind of national voter suppression law, for example, is in the works. People don’t put out something like Project 2025 with the expectation it will be undone by the next presidential election.
Gin & Tonic
@caphilldcne:
Almost nothing is permanent in politics/governance. I may have relayed this before, but my grandfather strived for an independent Ukraine, and for his efforts was sent to the Gulag, where he vanished; his great-grandson is an MP in (for now) independent Ukraine. Things change. The effects of Trump II may be long-lasting, and recovery may be after my time on this Earth is done, but not “permanent.”
Mustang Bobby
“And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Oh, shut up, Scott.
On another note, today marks the 21st anniversary of the start of Bark Bark Woof Woof. Thanks for being a follower if you are. If not, now’s your chance.
RevRick
@Baud: Unfortunately, those sort of recriminations will reverberate in Democratic circles. The fact of the matter is that people don’t vote for policies; they vote for ratification or punishment, and then decide they will adopt what the winning side wants.
Exit polls showed that 54% of the voters agreed that Trump is too extreme, but 1/9 voted for him anyway.
Surveying the scene internationally, every incumbent party has lost since COVID-bred inflation. The only party that did slightly better than Harris was in Belgium. The key factors for voters were the before and after pictures of inflation and interest rates for Trump and Biden.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Once again, we are in violent agreement. ;)
AM in NC
After a bit of a break/recharge, I’m coming back with a focus on the media/propaganda environment. I’ve been feeling for years now that the disinformation machine built by GOP billionaires over decades is a serious problem, and now we see just how serious it has become, growing in parallel with foreign influence – ALL enabled by Citizens United to Fuck Over America.
So I will be doing reading, and thinking, and talking with people hopefully smarter and more deeply versed in these issues than I am to get some ideas about how we combat this information ecosystem that is killing our nation and the entire world.
TBone
I posted this thread yesterday about the narrative we’re gonna swallow (? not me, but it appears to be charging full steam ahead), and I believe it is worth reposting. It’s not too long but it’s one of those read the whole thing please, not merely my excerpt, or you’ll miss important stuff!
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1854249669653565702.html
oldgold
@New Deal democrat: 1. Can we all now finally admit that the appointment of Merrick the Meek was a complete failure?
I do not know if we all can, but I agree with you.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: You’ve seen that flowchart, right? No matter what, “fuck Democrats.”
And now that Black people are in senior leadership positions in the Democratic Party, that’s just one more reason for the majority demographic to hate them.
Another Scott
@hrprogressive: My view is that we should have learned from the previous term that just because they say they are going to do something does not mean that they will be able to do it.
And even if they somehow are able to do something, that doesn’t mean that it will be completed.
And even if they are somehow able to do something to completion, that does not mean that it will be permanent.
We have to be clear eyed about what’s going on, but we cannot obey in advance.
Biden-Harris has 73 remaining days in office. They’ll be doing what they can.
There are more “Never Trumpers” now. (Maybe they’re squishy and performative, maybe they’re not.)
We still have courts – even if they do not always rule for us, they often do, and court challenges slow down processes. We still do not have a king. We still do not have filibuster-proof majorities on the other side. We still have GQPers who do not want to burn everything down – most of all, they want to get re-elected and they know that their interests do not mirror TCFFG’s.
Yes, watch very closely what they say. But watch what they do, and work with those who use the system and persuasion to resist the monsters.
Reagan wanted to kill the EPA and turn Interior into a land developer. W wanted to privatize Social Security. Tmurp wanted to kill ObamaCare. They all failed.
My $0.02.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@RevRick:
Yeah, this was likely unwinnable because of circumstances beyond our control. We liberals hope that people are better than they are, but they’re not.
mapanghimagsik
I have to admit, I’m saving up a few “Oh look the results of your actions” posts in a few corners of social media. I’ll probably point out how quickly the Palestinians were forgotten on Mastodon on day 1. The, oh so smart people on Mastodon all got played, I think, and both my followers will probably dump me. Fuck ’em.
The thing that bothers me about Mastodon is they think they’re safe because “there’s no algorithm”. My dudes, FIFO is an algorithm, and you message accordingly to exploit it.
p.a.
I noted this last night: after being screwed out of a USSC seat, he still acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. 🤬
Suzanne
I’m so disappointed in Pennsylvania. We lost Bob Casey to that absolute cretin Dave McCormick and two House seats flipped red. (However, my district kept Summer Lee and the district down the road kept Chris DeLuzio.) PA has much higher union membership than other states, and it appears that white union guys went for Trump and flipped the state. Obvs we will have hard data on that soon.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I never want to hear anyone complain about Dems abandoning labor ever again.
N
I agree. Seeing is believing. Trump’s admin will crash and burn fast because his policies are not popular.
I wish Democrats would learn that most voters outside the D base don’t vote for policies or issues as much as they vote for style. There’s a long, long history of Dems fixing problems and then being punished in the next election. There is a long history of Dems fixing problems while getting no credit from the people who benefit. Meanwhile, Republicans get elected when their major legislative agenda is to rig the tax code to benefit the rich.
We don’t need to change our policy positions. We do need to change our rhetoric. We need to learn to talk like Republicans, Not the lies and slander part. The never apologize, never explain, always attack part. We need all of our people to bluntly and persistently turn every conversation into an attack and a one sentence statement of our goals. For example:
When a Republican hyperventilates about open borders: “The Republican party has no interest in doing anything constructive about the border. Their only interest is to distract attention from their primary goal of cutting taxes for the rich. Democrats care about the border and we have solutions.”
When a R yammers about illegal voters or any other faux hysteria bs “The Republicans are ginning up another fake issue to get people upset so they won’t notice the real Republican agenda which is to use government to serve the wealthy elite and corporate power.” Then follow with a few examples.
When a Republican talks about Dems in any derogatory way, laugh and say, “Of course you need to say stuff like that because you can’t talk about Republican policies. YOu can’t talk about women dying because they can’t get medical treatment for a miscarriage. YOu can’t talk about high prescription drugs costs because you want the costs to stay high. Etc”
Outside the D base, people like clarity, simplicity, and perceived strength. When our politicians respond to Republican rhetoric with reason, they sound mushy, longwinded, and defensive.
We need to understand voters better but not in the sense of trying to find common ground no issues. Agt least as far as middle class and working class voters, we already understand the issues. What we consistently fail at is talking in a way that gets past the Noise Machine and speaks to people who are busy, tired, and only paying partial attention
Never apologize, never explain, always attack, bring every conversation quickly into an opportunity to state bluntly and simply the Dem position.
Style matters.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: 💪😍💙❤️🤍
🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
SFAW
@gene108:
That’s ridiculous. The newly-reconstituted SCOTUS, with new Justices Aileen Cannon, Matthew Kacsmaryk, and Justin Walker, will vote 9-0 to strike down that law.
Former Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown, being in Federal prison (awaiting trial for Treason), could not vote.
lowtechcyclist
@Gin & Tonic:
The effects of global warming were going to be permanent, the question was just at what level. If we’d won this election, there was still the possibility that we might act soon and substantially enough that they wouldn’t be ultimately be disastrous.
Those effects will be a lot worse as a result of this election, and that will be close enough to permanent as to make no difference. Who cares if the world starts cooling off in the year 9595?
Shakti
Mandate, schmandate, electoral college, popular vote. Do the Republicans have control of both houses of Congress?
Did DeSantis win by some stupid insane tenths of a percentage to be in office? Did that actually mean anything in a practical sense?
What actually will any of the Democrats do while they still have control of at least the Presidency and the White House? (I don’t say can, I say will because we know there’s a shitton they can do but won’t and a shitton the Republicans would do if the situations were reversed).
What fissures in the Republican coalition can be exploited?
I’m seeing insane things like Harris got 15 million less votes than Biden did in 2020. A candidate who got Beyonce to open for her and spent a 1 billion on her campaign? (unpaid, obviously) If this is combined with increased overall voter turnout, well, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell myself anything comforting about these results. And if if isn’t — like it’s the same or less? What was the major miscalculation that lead to this? And that’s all I want to say on any public forum.
I’m most upset about Amendment 4 failing.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
And until they stop taking money from Dem donors to build new beach houses (the Lincoln Project) and start doing things that actually affect voters, I’ll pay attention to them. Otherwise, they’re simply another element of ‘noise’ outside the Democratic Party that in the end, doesn’t deliver.
Kosh III
@oldgold:1. Can we all now finally admit that the appointment of Merrick the Meek was a complete failure?
Absofragginlutelydammit yes.
AND Biden failing to fix the Supremes.
gene108
@New Deal democrat:
1. The appointment of Garland has been a disaster. The lack of urgency in prosecuting the coup ringleaders means it will happen again.
2. A person who’s been office for close to 50 years, I think, Biden cannot accept how badly our institutions have been undermined by Republicans.
3. If Democrats ever get back in power, they need to understand the guardrails have come off. They need burn down any institution that operates on assumptions of unofficial traditions that both sides will treat with in goodwill and comity.
Codify everything to Democrats (and Americans) benefit.
narya
@Baud: Completely agree. Two things have stuck out to me: first, the R gains were significantly SMALLER in the swing states, i.e., the states where Harris campaigned the most (and where she had to campaign, given the short time allotted to her). That is, if she had had more than 100 days, we might be in a different place–and, most importantly, people who heard her message leaned more her way than people who did NOT hear her.
Second, I was actually heartened by this–Elizabeth Warren’s “how to go forward” plan, in Time. None of it was about “unity” or “moving to the right.”
New Deal democrat
@Baud:
Please show me where I blamed Democrats for 50%+ Americans’ eyes wide open embrace of Trump.
The myopia is with those who do not want to see what is right in front of their eyes: the abject failure of institutionalism.
caphilldcne
@Gin & Tonic: Nothing is permanent in the long run. Let’s just say this is a generational shift.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
That’s blaming Dems. I’m not going to participate in that.
hrprogressive
@Another Scott:
I don’t disagree with you, but they’ve had 4 years to plan their return to power, so.
Unless they really trip over each other a lot, and/or a lot of people who don’t have spines finally find some, I do think not a single worst-case-scenario can be discounted.
RevRick
@hrprogressive: Organizing is, by definition, a face-to-face action. And the reality is that means being/becoming a part of something that already exists.
Think of all the evanescent efforts of reform in days of yore, from the Knights of Labor to Occupy Wall Street. They enjoy an initial burst of enthusiasm, but when things get tough and they face “what’s next?”, they wither. To withstand the awful blast to come requires being a part of an institution that has lasted.
To claim otherwise is just handwaving in my view.
TBone
@Kosh III: just wanted to see this again, as it captures my mood
Absofragginlutelydammit
Damn, I broke the margin for a minute! 😆 Cannot block quote it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Yeah, let’s blame unions and not all those people who stayed home for any variety of reasons.
If there are unions and union leadership that are out-an-out right wing (like so many police unions have become), then absolutely, kick their sorry asses out of the Big Tent. But using them as some excuse to kick on unions and beat on the labor movement in general is the height of unserious thinking.
WereBear
@Mustang Bobby:
Faulkner on the South:
apocalipstick
@prostratedragon:
It’s also a state verdict which, by definition, is not a federal crime and thus not subject to the pardon power of the president.
SFAW
@N:
Bingo.
Too many good points to comment on separately, but style does matter to that non-serious majority of voters.
Well, that, plus racism, misogyny, authoritarianism, and hatred of The Other. But the style thing overcomes a lot of perceived deficiencies.
MCat
@Mustang Bobby: I have never heard of it. It looks great. I will start reading it. Thanks.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@narya:
Love Senator Warren.
New Deal democrat
@Baud:
No it is not.
Have a nice day.
TBone
I have to adult my way back into the dental chair and get needles in my gums again today.
Play nice! I want to stay in THIS boat today but teeth are important.
Ocotillo
@rikyrah: Nice to see your smile, good morning.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I said, I don’t want to hear people complain about Dems abandoning unions ever again. That has nothing to do with figuring out which union people are good and which are not.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This and also add to it, Trump isn’t about policy, Trump is about being praised. And a lot people rich powerful people Trump wants approval from stand to lose big time if a lot of stuff Project 2025 happens and have been lining up to kiss his ring. Take Elon Musk for example, all his business would be dead if they do the mass deportations Miller fantasies about.
hrprogressive
@New Deal democrat:
I fully agree on all of the above.
The Democratic Party has spent the last 15-20 years being willfully ignorant of what the GOP was becoming.
They have tried to “break bread” with them “in the name of bipartisanship” for way too long.
If this country is to emerge in a functional state, whatever remains of the Democratic Party has got to wake the fuck up and stop playing nice with the Fascist GOP.
If people don’t wanna hear those hard truths, they can pie me, I do not care.
I’m not going to attack anyone here, that’s not constructive.
But refusing to acknowledge the systemic rot within the Democratic Party – a different kind of rot than the Fascist Rot of the GOP – is counterproductive when we need to be waging Counter-Warfare now.
Leto
@Suzanne: we kept Chrissy Houlihan as our rep, but agreed, that fuck McCormick won, and watching the results of Berks County roll in that night was just… depressing. I definitely want to see the hard data break down.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: +1
Some warn about the dangers of “hopium”. But there are similar dangers in “doomium”.
Thing are going to be much worse than we wanted and expected for a while. We’re disappointed and angry and upset – for good reason. We don’t understand how our fellow Americans could actually do this.
But they did and it’s done. The election is over. Pundits and “experts” are telling us what happened and why and how we should listen to them on how to “fix” it. Maybe they’re right, maybe not. Probably not.
I am very suspicious of easy answers – especially before all the numbers are in. Ultimately, every election is different. We have to do what we can with the candidates we have in the circumstances we have. There is no obvious, consequence-free, “If Only” door to pick. Counter-factuals aren’t reality.
Punching down, throwing people under the bus, giving up on the idea of progress and the need to keep working and fighting for it in the face of setbacks is not something I’m willing to do.
Biden-Harris has been a great administration, especially given the circumstances. Remember Sinema and Manchin, everyone??
Yes, be angry and upset and bewildered for a while. But be ready to keep pushing for progress everywhere we can come January.
Thanks.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Nelle
@HinTN: My first thoughts as well.
TBone
@narya: thank you for that!!! LFG Liz!
TBone
@caphilldcne: the only things that truly last in life are work, and dirt.
Zelma
@N: “Never apologize, never explain, always attack, bring every conversation quickly into an opportunity to state bluntly and simply the Dem position.”
I couldn’t agree with you more, with one exception. The language of your examples is way too moderate and reasonable. We have to scare the voters because that’s what works.
Baud
@narya:
I appreciate her, especially seeing what Bernie has unleashed.
Jeffg166
If a Republican wins by one vote, they have a mandate.
Kosh III
The case in New York: wasn’t the Felon supposed to be sentenced soon? I’d love to see him sent to prison straight from the courtroom with a sentence that ends Jan. 21.
Thor Heyerdahl
@N: I was thinking about rhetorical positioning, and that the Democrats should hire from WWE wrestling storyline writers. You can have your opinions of wrestling, but they do a very good job of building heroes and anti-heroes for their audience.
TBone
@Another Scott: 💙🏆
RevRick
@TBone: Thank you for the link to the thread.
p.a.
The Rs know their plan is to “enserf” the large majority of the population. The Rs know the one thing Americans act against is the party in power when conditions deteriorate (or are perceived to deteriorate.) I don’t believe they’ll depend on their media to convince Americans the shit they’re bringing is ice cream. They have historic examples of losing midterms because their program is shit. They will attempt to rig federal and state election laws before ’26 to ensure no accountability.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
What has Bernie the Scold done this time? I’ve not followed every major political figure’s hot take on Tuesday. I can probably guess.
narya
For those criticizing “the Democrats” or “the Democratic Party” or similar: one of the things I like about being a Democrat is that we are not a monolith. We have AOC and Jayapal and Tlaib, but also much more mainstream (even conservative) folks, at least two of whom blocked all kinds of progress (Sinemanchin). While this can be wildly frustrating at times, and there are times I’d like to see the institutionalists move more, I also believe that it’s our strength. One of the things about institutionalists is that they know where the buttons and levers (and doors and walls) are, and sometimes that’s the most useful knowledge you can have. I’ll spare you all the rest of my rant about this.
Suzanne
@Leto: I have been musing on something this morning, and it is very informed by what I am seeing here in PA. I live close to, but not in, Mt. Lebanon, which is overwhelmingly white, very upscale, picturesque. Great public schools, probably almost everyone goes to college. When we moved here, it was fairly evenly split between red and blue. But this cycle, Harris signs outnumbered Trump signs by probably 10:1.
But I am wondering if educational polarization has really divided white people into two cohorts that don’t mix much anymore. Like, white people have been going to college in significant number long enough that they’ve fully socially sorted. They live in different neighborhoods, work in different places, have different tastes and aesthetics, and they patently vote differently — by a lot. Upwards of 20 points.
In my own life, this is really true. I literally could not name one Trump voter among my family or close friends (only, uhhhhh, my ex-husband, and he is NEITHER). But….. almost everyone that I have anything more than an acquaintance relationship with went to college. And yet white people as a whole voted for him.
Shakti
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
why-not-both-girl- dot gif
apocalipstick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
How could Biden fix SCOTUS?
FDRLincoln
Ultimately, this is on the average American voter knowingly, consciously, with absolutely no excuse, choosing fascism over democracy because the price of eggs got too high during a global catastrophe.
Could the Dems have made better or different decisions? Sure. But not enough to change the outcome I don’t think. Harris ran a great campaign. We can criticize Joe Biden and Garland all we want, but it does not change this basic fact:
American voters, by a legitimate majority, preferred a fascist traitor that EVERYONE KNOWS is a fascist traitor because they saw him try to overthrow the government four years ago.
I won’t spend a pixel attacking the Dems on this. Direct all fire at the real culprits: the GOP, and the idiotic racist sexist voting majority that would rather see their daughters bleed out in a parking lot than vote for a black woman
At my age, my priority now is trying to protect my family and my vulnerable friends from the forces that have been unleashed. But Trump voters…they deserve what happens to them. They deserve it good and hard.
The Audacity of Krope
I’ll save this to read later. I’m still mad at her, among others, for the pageant of no confidence last July.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I am blaming those Democrats who did not stand by the most successful, pro labor President since LBJ and gave in to the pressure by the media because of one bad debate performance. That was an own goal. Fuck Nancy Pelosi for engineering that. And her minions like Schiff and Raskin for sticking the knives into Biden.
Many BJers were apopletic when I first suggested that it had to be NP judging from the Congresscritters besides red state Ds who were sticking their knives into Biden in the media. We soon got the proof when she was all over the news gloating about it after he stepped down.
WereBear
Reminds me of those anonymous opeds reassuring us that grownups were in charge of Trump and nothing really bad would happen.
We all see how that worked out. There are no grownups now.
Another Scott
@Kosh III:
November 26.
I’m terrible at predictions, but I figure he’ll get a 3-year (like Michael Cohen) but suspended sentence.
We’ll see.
Best wishes,
Scott.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I keep repeat posting this because it’s a useful data set to have around:
Voting by race/gender.
White Men (34% of electorate): 37% D, 60% R
White Women (37% of electorate): 45% D, 53% R
Black Men (5% of electorate): 77% D, 21% R
Black Women (7% of electorate): 91% D, 7% R
Latino Men (6% of electorate): 43% D, 55% R
Latino Women (6% of electorate): 60% D, 38% R
All other races (6% of electorate): 48% D, 46% R
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1854295895824802142/photo/2
Per many comments, the voting drop off from 2020, assuming we get decent info, might prove useful. Would be nice to get 13 million responses from those people that asks one question “Why didn’t you vote this time around?”
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It will be less than 13 million when CA votes are tallied.
TBone
@RevRick: 💜📣
I’m so glad you’re here.
SFAW
@Shakti:
I’ve seen numbers varying from 8 to 15 Mil. The current amount is 12 Mil, I have no idea how many are left to count.
But that decline/deficit leads me into tin-foil-hat territory.
Specifically, I would be interested whether any of the vote totals were fucked with by “outside actors.” Considering all the (supposed) enthusiasm — Swifties, Beyhive, This Group for Kamala, That Group for Kamala, anecdotal “evidence” of The Youngs being energized by her candidacy, the Dobbs backlash — that Harris’s candidacy (vs. Biden) had generated, it seems counterintuitive (to put it nicely) that she lost so much ground. Even factoring in the baked-in misogyny and racism. There’s certainly been fuckery in past elections, although it’s been more obvious (e.g., bogus purging of voter rolls).
But, because she already conceded, and because it seems unlikely that Biden will have the FBI/CIA/NSA/whoever do a forensic analysis, well, I guess we’ll never know.
No, I’m not going to adopt this as a holy cause. I just have a hard time believing 15 million Dems “stayed home” because Biden nuked Afghanistan (or whatever bullshit excuse the FTFTFNYT and WaPo will use).
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Do we have to follow the media rule that we can never blame the voters? I mean, none of this happens without their racism, misogyny, and willful ignorance. But we all have to act like the voters have no agency, no responsibilities for making a horrible choice.
Elizabelle
@FDRLincoln: Second this.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@WereBear:
Hell, there were no grownups then.
FDRLincoln
Put another way….I know people who were A) very upset about Roe being overturned; B) very concerned about climate change C) have criticized the GOP for being over-the-top with the culture war stuff and who nonetheless D) Voted for Trump.
Why? “Because he’s better for the economy.”
You can show them all the facts and figures you want disproving this and they still vote Trump, despite all the things they claim to disagree with that he did.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: If one remembers that Bernie is not a Democrat, then one can usually figure out what his latest “I told you so” pronouncement is.
Best wishes,
Scott.
caphilldcne
@Another Scott: this is true. And it’s what I’m advising my clients. Even in Trump I we had some policy wins so perhaps we’ll get a few in Trump II. I do worry about how much the electoral process is going to get undermined.
cmorenc
The sheer narrowness of Trump’s win in 2016 did not restrain him, only the narrowness of the GOP’s hold on the Senate and House did because there were still members like John McCain present and able to stand up to him. Likewise, the narrowness of George W Bush’s win in 2000 (and even 2004, which he won by similar margins to Trump in 2024) did not restrain him, again only the narrowness of the hold of the GOP on congress plus George W’s vastly less egregious nature (in comparison to Trump) did.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
After talking to normies the past few days it’s quite clear to me why it happened. Maybe try that…?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
Nonetheless, there will be a significant drop off. Will it drop to Carter’s 13% in 1980? Or less? Doesn’t matter, that drop off is eye opening.
We can attribute it to whatever, I know what you attribute it to (remember, I was a loud and proud pusher-backer against the Tonya Harding Dems Caucus), but what you’re attributing it to is no different than a ‘valued commenter’ bashing unions as the cause for what happened in a particular state. Neither has any basis in fact at the moment.
The Audacity of Krope
Don’t most sites perform routine audits? Those will be happening soon and someone will raise some alarms. If that occurs, things can move further up the accountability chain.
WereBear
I don’t see this as a moral issue. It’s a psychiatric one.
Individually, each one could sit for an evaluation and fail, some badly enough to prompt a scan for organic damage, but come up negative. It’s a mindset of conformist upbringing and fear, where they don’t have to think about anything. I do believe they don’t want to, they resent doing it at work, and they sure won’t do it with their leisure time, either.
Remember Trump saying, “Just vote once and you’ll never have to do it again.”
These people love no effort. That’s why they voted for Trump, so he could be cruel by proxy.
This IS madness, shared delusional disorder (SDD). How many would we have to diagnose and treat? When a guy with dark thoughts and a gun and parents with money still never gets mental health care.
Because that’s just normal in their belief system. Look at how they react to it. It’s their normal.
What can we do about that? I thought people leaving organized religion in a steady increasing stream was a good thing, but now I see they just went with QAnon and Trump worship on the TeeVee.
SUPER low effort. But the medieval mind craves a perfect Church.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think it was definitely a factor, I don’t know and no one knows all the reasons why at this moment.
The margins are lower in swing states so the truncated schedule worked to her disadvantage and we know why the campaign was short because we lost a month to bringing Joe Biden down.
SFAW
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
He threw the Biden admin under the bus for “abandoning” the working class. [Not an actual quote, but close enough.] This happened Wednesday, I think — not three years ago.
I’ve never been part of the “Fuck Bernie” crowd.
Until now.
Professor Bigfoot
@SFAW: I am with you on this.
The enthusiasm, the crowds, the vast numbers of volunteers and… what?
Fiction has to make sense, reality doesn’t give a shit, but… WTF?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
Well, I did say “I could guess”.
I did look it up and then saw the DNC reply:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4979136-dnc-chair-jamie-harrison-responds-bernie-sanders/
Most of what Bernie said is basically Horseshoe Left verbiage.
@SFAW:
I’ve always shrugged my shoulders with him. As I said, he’s a scold, not a doer. Thus, the shoulder shrug, let him rail as long as we get his Senate vote.
But yeah, that statement on Wed was a big eye-roller.
WereBear
@mapanghimagsik: The decentralized nature lets people pick and choose their server, and punish it for not following the rules.
I’ve seen bad faith players shut down that way.
Try that with X.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I think it was winnable if we had had Biden’s back right from the beginning when the MSM attacks started after Afghanistan. We need our own media infrastructure. The current one is Republican for all intents and purposes.
RevRick
The ancient Romans worshipped the goddess, Fortuna, who like Janus, the god of the new year, was a two-faced god. Good or ill fortune could befall anyone at anytime. And there was no reason for it. The only thing you could do was make an offering in Fortuna’s temple, either in thanks for the unmerited good luck or to beg that further bad luck not come your way.
The Romans understood that not everything could be explained as the simple result of what one did or failed to do.
We in the western world are so imbued with the notion that we are in control of our own destiny that it comes as a shock to discover events that overtake us and leave us bereft. Hence, we will find ourselves dealing with a tidal wave of recriminations regarding what Democrats did wrong. And the fact is Nothing. We held power at the worst possible time. The inflation that inevitably* follows shocks to the economy came roaring ferociously on our watch. *See oil shocks of 1973 & 1979, WW1 & WW2, the Civil War and the American Revolution for details. And every incumbent party around the world lost!
We suffered the ill-fortune of succeeding at the wrong time.
ArchTeryx
@Baud: They need to abandon white labor, absolutely. They want to be ruled by a fascist? Let them. Concentrate on the BiPOC working class instead. You might win some of those voters back because the ones that voted for TCFG voted out of pure misogyny, apparently.
Public sector unions, which vote overwhelmingly D, are going to be the first to come under attack. They want to ban them straight-up via executive order, to eliminate opposition to his plan to fire every federal civil service worker in the government. So he can replace them with Heritage Foundation apparatchiks. They are who need our help. They ARE the last line of defense against an outright fascist dictatorship.
White labor is lost. Let them deal with their own fate. We got other problems.
SFAW
@The Audacity of Krope:
Don’t know
Perhaps. Not getting my hopes up. [Even if they show that I’m completely effing worng, it would be better than not knowing.]
Yes, AG Garland would get right on it.
Leto
@Suzanne: interesting observations. I saw a similar sign ratio, with Berks also being a roughly 50-50 D-R split, though all of our reps are D. Including a number of Latino reps. The people who I know voted for him are the 19-20 year old white guys in my history class. Because they spoke about it before hand, going to his rallies here in Reading, as well as being all excited that he won.
Contrast that with my Transnational-Feminist class, 3 guys and 12 women, and it was a night day difference. Instead of covering the lesson, our professor basically let us vent. It was cathartic. One of the guys admitted that the girl he is seeing, he thought they were on the same wavelength about everything, turns out she’s a Trumper. Found that out Election Day, I believe. He looked really distraught because I think he really likes her.
I also hope that the 4B movement, aka Lysistrata, makes an impact. The class was talking about the “Your body, my choice” shit going around and… man, they have a very clear view of what’s going on.
WereBear
@p.a.:
I noted this last night: after being screwed out of a USSC seat, he still acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. 🤬
Conventional people are not used to adapting and evolving so Denial is their drug. That’s why they are conventional!
BlueGuitarist
@John S.:
House outcome still uncertain; 25 uncalled seats; 10 in California: 5 held by each party. Currently Rs leading in 6 (CA-47 Katie Porter’s old seat, and the 5 R-incumbent held seats:
CA-13 John Duarte; D Adam Gray
CA-22 David Valadao; D Rudy Salas
CA-27 Mike Garcia; D George Whitesides
CA-41 Ken Calvert; D Will Rollins
CA-45 Michelle Steel; D Derek Tran
do folks want more details?
schrodingers_cat
Marginalized people (black people, immigrants, Jewish people, LGBTQ etc) see the unvarnished truth because we live in your world we can’t afford to live in la la land of straight white liberals of vibes and feels our lives depend on being able to see the unvarnished truth. So listen to us once in a while instead of making us out to be villains because your precious fee-fees are hurt by the truth.
Anyway I should leave now there is work to be done.
The Audacity of Krope
Labor? As in people who work? That’s a big, diverse group.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
You’re probably right. But by Summer, 2024, it was probably too late to salvage his candidacy, because of what the Afghanistan “debacle” — not Biden’s handling, but the MSM’s handling — had catalyzed/morphed into.
p.a.
Most white America, even hyphenated white America, hasn’t had to struggle since WW2. That’s 4, 5 generations. A little blip and we (I’m in the demo) “waaahhhhhhh throw the bums out! Daddy daddy protect me! Ease is my birthright!” Exceptions- Jews (here): millennia of being kicked in the throat, and (unlike Talibangelicals) actually following their religious writings on the treatment of others, and GLBT for whom the struggle continues.
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat: HEAR, HEAR.
cmorenc
@SFAW:
…leads you into “election was stolen” territory of similar sort that MAGAs claimed in 2020, because are raising claims that amount to widespread actual tampering with the vote count, without any evidence to back that up, only conspiracy theories. Your claims amount to similar sorts of chicanery that Giuliani raised against the vote-handling and counting by Atlanta election workers, except that you are not being specific enough to libel anyone.
Not saying there’s no possibility your suspicions might be true, but rather that at the moment we have even less factual proof they are than MAGAs did in 2020, which was vanishingly little but conspiracy theory mirages.
NotMax
Looking at DJT stock price.
For reasons unknown, suddenly bloated from record lows prior to the election.
What’s happened in the days following the election? Dropped nearly a third from that elevated level. Down ~6% at close Wednesday, down another ~23% from that at close Thursday.
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope: If you want to blame Dems for abandoning labor (however defined), go ahead. I’m tuning such arguments out.
schrodingers_cat
@SFAW: It was an uphill battle for sure I still maintain it was our best shot. You don’t change horses midstream. It has never worked for our Presidential election has it? I mean ever?
It was tremendously unfair to both Biden and Harris they deserved better.
SFAW
@The Audacity of Krope:
A group which the Biden admin worked a goodly amount to improve their lot.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@ArchTeryx:
What would be some examples of “White Labor”? As I mentioned, pohleeees departments are integrated and increasingly (R), they don’t deserve our specific help.
I’m guessing “White Labor” would be trades unions. That’s still a bit broad brush to “abandon”. For example, the IBEW (I have several friends nationally who are in the IBEW) is 90% men, 65% white. They provided Harris with a resounding endorsement:
http://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/24Daily/2407/240722_VicePresidentKamalaHarris
Now, the issue is what the rank-and-file do but even if there are defections, it’s not a massive number electorally and the ground game, support benefit from many “white labor” unions isn’t something to casually toss.
Any union leadership that endorsed Trump? Screw them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@BlueGuitarist:
How will all of this affect the final makeup in the House? Even if we have a 1-vote majority, it’ll do.
The Audacity of Krope
I’m a big fan of intersectionality; but the way it’s being applied right now, everyone was brought to the intersection and the more bloodlusty among us are yelling “Fight, fight, fight!” Blindly raging at Latino folk or anyone else, as some here have been, will not improve our position.
Another Scott
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Sure.
Hindsight is easy.
But if it were so obvious, then we were doomed anyway. So, what’s the point in trying??
I don’t accept that reasoning.
I don’t think that any/many here expected that Tmurp would get roughly the same number of votes as 2020 and Harris would do ~ 10M less than Biden in 2020.
Polling said that it was close. It wasn’t especially close. There were surprises.
That is all.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Fine. Blame it on white men in unions, who appear to have let their race and gender identity overwhelm their union association.
And they did not. So why not? Why did so many union members vote for Trump? Wages of whiteness, maybe?
I read idiocy like this:
schrodingers_cat
We have had commenters here insisting that because young people cannot buy the house of their dreams the economy is bad. The left and the MSM has been shitting on the remarkable economic rebound after COVID for 4 years. The normies believed them and voted accordingly.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is life.“
Chris Johnson
@AM in NC: I’m of like mind on that.
One thing that occurs to me is: this machine is there to demonize others, but when its regime is in power, it has to also play a Pollyanna role and claim that all the promises are coming true and everything is great. Which you’ll be seeing, at length.
In order for it to work, people have to either not notice the promises being broken, or be unclear on what they even were. None of this was sold on the basis of ‘let’s burn everything and live in a hellscape! Let’s become a third world country!’.
It was sold on ‘we are the best and most comfortable, that is our birthright, you will be delivered unto heaven and all the bad people you don’t see but are told about, will be gone’.
It’s never ‘I’m gonna kill the asshole neighbor for you’. It’s always ‘the vicious thugs that burned all of Portland, it’s gone, you’re next! Oh hey we win, they’re gone now’.
That’s what this machine has to do. So its big vulnerability is, when the regime’s harebrained ideas do actually implode disastrously. We could see the dollar go poof, or get Argentina inflation, or see the car dealers and millionaires watch their bank accounts be obliterated from this goonery.
At that point, no media spin will help. Powerful formerly entitled people will be pissed, and armed, and well connected.
So there’s some things to watch out for…
BlueGuitarist
@Another Scott:
Biden is the most pro-labor president in US history.
Kamala got more votes than Bernie in Vermont.
Soprano2
I had to go on a news diet. No NPR at all, only music and podcasts. I can’t take so much of the news being about the Orange Menace. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll go back to it, but not today.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m still sort-of agnostic. I supported Biden, was pissed when the sharks started circling, but also saw — again, via anecdotal “evidence” — a vibe/enthusiasm change (in a pro-Dem direction) after Harris got the nom.
Various Dem pundits/analysts said that the down-ballot Dems would have gotten slaughtered by Biden staying in. Considering the current status, I’m wondering how much worse it would have been. [I actually think it could have been worse, but that’s based on zero evidence/analysis/wisdom.]
Professor Bigfoot
@cmorenc: Granted… but given the recent history of Trump and the GOP (assassination attempt with NO doctor or hospital reports?) even William of Ockham is starting to wonder.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shakti
@SFAW: I want to go into tinfoil hat territory too. I badly want to believe that people aren’t this fucking horrible and stupid in groups. I’ve been a misanthrope and a hater for a long time and this just crystallizes it further.
But holding on to your delusions and pretending what’s happening isn’t happening is what gets you killed in the horror movie. (Not that you wouldn’t get killed anyways. sad emoji.)
I, like you, assume crowds and enthusiasm at rallies, predict voting behavior. But what if they didn’t?
I, like you, assume that people who voted to protect abortion rights at the state level would vote for the Democrats at the national level? But what if they didn’t?
BlueGuitarist
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
A majority is possible. There’s a new post up from WaterGirl about what we can do about that (ballot curing)
Soprano2
@HinTN: People didn’t take Walz seriously when he said you don’t make a plan if you don’t intend to use it. Now they’re evidently all over right wing media saying “Project 2025 was the plan all along, hahah”. People didn’t want to believe it, I don’t know what you can do about that. I think they’re going to learn that they should have believed us when we said Project 2025 was what the Orange Menace wanted to do.
WereBear
Last night, talking with friends, I pointed out that we are IN the disaster movie now. Wishful thinking is what got us into this fine mess.
Now is the time to listen to science and logic. Events will scare voters soon enough:
They don’t know what they voted for. They didn’t look at the website. “Lefty hysteria” is routinely ignored, even after we are right.
We are opposed by people both incompetent and insane. They won’t STOP until they ARE stopped.
But so many people keep hoping sanity “will return” when it is not there now.
This is exactly the kind of mass movement that led to the Civil War. Look up all the confident assumptions they made in forming the Confederacy, and how every single one was wrong.
Hell with a morally correct ending? At this point that is a Best Case Scenario.
We’re in Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo.
The smart people did smart things but it only worked on people who were already smart.
Normies, most of whom stayed home, will learn some things now. But there will still be a lag, since they don’t believe it. And they will be exerting a great deal of their willpower to keep their brain that way,
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
Heh heh, that should be an ongoing thing.
The Audacity of Krope
@Baud: If you want to blame Dems for abandoning labor (however defined), go ahead. I’m tuning such arguments out.
I…don’t? Blaming “labor” as a group, however, is the height of foolishness. I’ve seen a lot of scapegoats in the last couple days. This is easily the dumbest. Looking for a group to blame that doesn’t self associate voluntarily is an unproductive practice as is. This particular group might as well be “everyone.”
Blaming everyone has more emotional validity than accurately reflecting reality.
snoey
@Professor Bigfoot: One of the bullets hit something that shattered and a piece cut his ear. Four other people on the platform were also treated for minor cuts per the local news.
Michael Bersin
“…I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!…” – Animal House (1978)
Yesterday I stood silently for an hour and a half in front of the flagpole (with a bronze First Amendment plaque at the base) on the quad on our campus holding my posterboard sign (with six-inch high Cyrillic letters) “Сделаем Америку великой снова” [Make America Great Again].
The irony escapes right wingnuts. Everyone else gets it.
As people walked past 99% ignored me. One administrator walked out from the administration building and asked what the sign said. I told him. He laughed.
One international student stopped and asked. When I translated the sign he replied, “Very good.”
Another student stopped to talk. He asked me about the sign. We engaged in a long conversation. It turned out that he had just become a naturalized citizen (but wasn’t able to vote in this election).
One person holding a sign can attract attention. A few people stopped in the distance to take cell phone photos.
The demographic of our student population trends to the right. I was struck by the incuriosity of the majority who passed by.
An old two-hundred-fifty-pound tall white guy wearing thick glasses can’t be that intimidating, right? Maybe until they try to engage on the righteousness of Donald Trump…
Baud
@The Audacity of Krope:
I didn’t blame labor as a group. I’m pushing back against the age old talking point against Dem labor policy not being good enough so that excuses workers who vote for fascists.
mapanghimagsik
@WereBear:
Comparisons to X are weak. We already know that’s a compromised platform.
Here’s the thing. Its not that its not a different algorithm, its that you can’t use X’s algorithm on Mastodon. What I read from some folks is that Mastodon is immune to all manipulation, which is patently false.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: How about blaming the white male Christian union members who voted for whiteness over union solidarity?
How about blaming the white women who once again gave over half their votes to the serial liar and adjudicated rapist?
White people choosing whiteness over solidarity; and forming the backlash against any kind of Black advancement, is just American history.
Leto
@Suzanne: Alex Wagner did a number of town halls that included a lot of white male labor members. Almost every single one of them, “wanted more information” or some variation of that. I don’t know if this data is available but the breakdown between what labor leaders endorsed v how their members actually voted. But I basically agree with you regarding whiteness.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@BlueGuitarist:
Thanks.
Here’s hoping voters in CA provide the last backstop to what will otherwise be a disaster of worldwide proportions.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: +1
I’ve been listening to WETA a lot in the car, and skip the hourly NPR News updates.
There’s much more to life than getting bombarded by doom-splaining. Self-care is vital.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
RevRick
@SFAW: The only thing that really mattered was inflation, inflation, inflation.
The Audacity of Krope
Young people can’t make rent on two jobs, if accuracy matters at all. It’s been that way for 20 years. Virtually everyone I know not relying on family for housing is in some form of group arrangement because it gets dicey on your own even if you cut your discretionary budget to the level you’d expect of an ascetic monk.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Maybe not, there has been a lot indications that “Inceal” is really code for “gay, in the closet” or “Mom, it’s girl’s fault I can’t meet anyone, they are just too stuck up, and I am going over to Steve’s to play games right now, I will be back late” and anyway, one can’t take away something the other person doesn’t have.
Baud
@Leto:
Same thing their bosses say when thinking about whether to pay them more.
Professor Bigfoot
@snoey: I’m not disputing that bullets were fired.
I’m questioning whether Trump was actually the target of the shooting.
We know his best buddy Putin isn’t above tossing people from 10th story windows, after all, and having someone die for him at his rally would feed into his massive ego, wouldn’t it? “See how they love me?”
Sure, it’s a conspiracy theory, but as a theory it does explain the phenomena as observed.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Professor Bigfoot:
Despite some people here trying to poop on fundamental elements of the Democratic Big Tent for not coming thru, I believe most everybody here will agree that America’s Incredible Whiteness Of Being is the issue and that it cuts across a lot of “interests” lines.
And misogyny.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Exactly! Visit any pediatric cancer ward and that truth hammers home.
Kosh III
I heard an informative story on SiriusXM (M. Signorile) yesterday.
A small union business in PA.
On Wednesday the boss had a meeting with all employees to say that there would be no XMas bonus because of the danger of tariffs.
The boss had to explain it like they were third graders; they didn’t understand the simple fact that it’s a tax on businesses that buy foreign products.
I have zero sympathy with those who can’t bother to pay attention.
Warren Senders
I mostly gave up on social media after the 2016 election, which brought home pretty forcefully that I was never going to be able to change anyone’s mind (arguments with hard-core Berners — sheesh).
Here in the United States of Amnesia I cannot imagine how to nurture an electorate in which careful thought and historical memory are valued. I remember a sign at an anti-Trump rally on Boston Common in 2017: “The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.” (a quote from Jacob Burckhardt).
Naturally the lady holding it was a history teacher. Another soon-to-be obsolete occupation, I imagine.
SFAW
@cmorenc:
Did I not say “tin-foil-hat territory”?
I would just like to have someone (with the capability of doing so) say “yeah, we checked extensively, and there wasn’t/was fuckery.” That’s a little different from Fuckhead and his minions being shown, extensively, and in multiple ways, that their claims in 2020 were bullshit — and still pushing their bullshit narrative.
As I said, it’s not going to become a holy cause. But having a modicum of investigation, just to check, would be nice. And Harris’s concession on Wednesday makes that a fairly heavy lift. [Yes, I realize it could also mean that she had people crunching the numbers all Tuesday, and determined that it was just bad effing news, not fuckery. But we’ll probably never know.]
Professor Bigfoot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Indeed; and I believe that’s a large part of the move of Latino men to Trump.
I KNOW straight misogyny drives that small percentage of Black men go Trump. <sigh>
Leto
@Baud: agreed.
Ok, time to resume reading on Why the New Deal Matters by Eric Rauchway for class. Play nice, everyone.
Professor Bigfoot
@SFAW: I believe that even William of Ockham would be giving this the side-eye.
Suzanne
@Leto:
Yeah, I heard a lot of that. I am looking forward to harder data than exit polls.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Audacity of Krope: Speaking of housing, here is a video discussing how blood red, drown the governments in the bathtub Texas has the high housing curse on it.
If they voted because think Orange Dumbass is going to wave a magic wand and roll back the housing prices across the county, when a GOP controlled state like Texas can’t do anything, then that is going to be a lot upset voters come next summer.
p.a.
@Leto: I heard that shit too. Do they know how to type? Do they know what the internet is? Fuck them: the Dem/Harris websites had enough info/policy to choke a horse. It’s what we do…
Then, if our pols actually talk policy: boring! Nerds! Uninspiring!
Bupalos
@Baud: I don’t think the circumstances were beyond our control. I think we failed to recognize what the circumstances actually were.
Biden to a kind of extreme – and then Harris to a lesser extent – played a cautious game as if they were preserving a lead. I think it’s understandable because you look at Trump and it’s really just hard to process that you’re losing to this guy, that you have to actually make a play to win. It feels like you just need to wait for him to self-destruct. Wait for normalcy to set back in. That’s the campaign they set Harris up to lose. In some ways she was hemmed in to this. Though I still can’t believe the answer to The View’s “what would you do differently than Biden?” question was “nothing comes to mind…and I was involved in all the decisions” with a segway into her passion for $35 insulin.
And campaigning with Cheney was, in retrospect, kinda nuts. And no one really mentioning Elon Musk being handed the keys to the storeroom.
I don’t blame Harris, I think she was awesome, grew day by day, and it’s clear we did much worse where she didn’t campaign. I think she was in an impossible position, but I don’t think we were.
gene108
@narya:
Institutionalism works when the parties involved in using the institution operate in good faith towards each other, and one party does not try to bend or break the institution solely to its advantage.
Republicans have not been acting in good faith for decades.
Our institutions are corrupted or entirely broken.
Republicans have broken the federal courts, especially the SCOTUS, corrupted the Senate by operating solely in bad faith towards Democrats, and are now poised to break the federal government institutions that keep things running, if those agencies do anything Republicans disagree with.
The only thing Republican political actions have done in the past 20 to 25 years is cement their hold on power making them unaccountable to the electorate, such as SCOTUS gutting voting rights and campaign finance laws, voter suppression laws, and gerrymandering.
Our institutions need to be torn down a rebuilt to prevent the cracks Republicans have been using for the last couple of decades to erode those institutions.
WereBear
@Suzanne: I agree. We live in different worlds. Our jobs deal with logic and science and math and we are better able to figure things out as a result. So, we do.
We don’t want to hang with the people who hate us: my Southern high school is where the sorting happens. The bright white children were on the college track, and would come back to town to take advantage of the cultural network, where their parents already have a top spot, and the children are to keep it. The rest were taught skills.
I discovered that no matter how much trash they talked about the “crummy little town” they would never leave. Like when I went to “the big city” it was better. But still, essentially, the same thing. A real city isn’t a small town, but in some states, they still are.
As much as anything, it’s STILL the rural/town divide. They hate us for our accomplishments and lives, but they won’t join us. It would mean giving up the local kin network, and for many, they don’t think they have what it takes.
So they take what they can get. Big fish in that small pond.
Baud
@Bupalos:
We disagree. I think they were beyond our control.
Michael Bersin
@SFAW:
“…it could also mean that she had people crunching the numbers all Tuesday, and determined that it was just bad effing news…”
The election results confirmed my complete lack of faith in the majority of American voters.
Suzanne
@The Audacity of Krope: Also, a record-high percentage of Americans are officially rent-burdened.
snoey
@Professor Bigfoot: If that was the case she shooter would have either had a proper deer rifle or aimed at another part of the crowd. Spraying fire from something as inaccurate as an AR is too much of a risk.
taumaturgo
@Baud:
Running a campaign as a “better conservative” and pandering to the corporate check writers continues to be the downfall of the party.
This: This “white wave” electorate didn’t reject progressive ideas; they rejected the candidate who failed to advocate them for fear of alienating Big Tech execs and Wall Street financiers. Voters in both Alaska and Missouri approve increasing the minimum wage to $15. Voters approved paid sick leave in Alaska, Missouri and Nebraska. Voters in Oregon approved a measure protecting marijuana workers’ right to unionize. Alaska voters banned anti-union captive audience meetings. Arizona voters rejected a measure that lowered the minimum wage for tipped workers. Massachusetts approved the right of ride-share workers to organize for collective bargaining. New Orleans voters approved a Workers Bill of Rights. Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York approved measures granting a state constitutional right to abortion. Jeffrey St. Clair
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gene108:
Professor Michael E. Mann said this:
Sheesh, I’m all doomer this morning, probably because it’s cloudy.
Baud
@taumaturgo:
Nope. They rejected the progressive ideas. They want right wing economic and social policies.
ETA: They rejected you. And they will not love you because you hate Democrats as much as they do.
WereBear
@FDRLincoln:
And they will blame us.
Don’t you see what a foolproof system they have made of their own heads? The people who stayed home deserve it even more that the mentally ill Trumpers, because I’m assuming they were intimidated by Trump’s threats of violence on Election Day.
And they are supposedly on our side.
Another Scott
@gene108:
??
The national legislature cannot pass an annual budget on time. I don’t think that any agreement on remaking government institutions is on the horizon.
Sorry.
Best wishes,
Scott.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
mistermix posted a link to this yesterday or the day before and it bears reposting:
https://lbjvantagepoint.com/the-white-house-tapes/f/your-guide-to-survival-in-texas-because-you-live-there-now
Suzanne
@WereBear: It’s interesting, though. The educational polarization is incredibly high among white people. It is present but to a lesser degree among other racial groups.
It makes me wonder why that is so, and my best guess is that white people have been going to college for a longer period, and concentrating that outlook within their families and social circles has really bifurcated us.
Bugboy
@New Deal democrat: There’s plenty of arrows to be slinging at this point, and you are not helping direct the circular firing squad.
I would advise you to review Dr. Wheeler’s writings at Empty Wheel before folks (again) engage in second guessing Biden’s cabinet appointments.
Get a GD grip.
WereBear
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Small town.
Everyone knows their views. If they show up at the polling place on Election Day, they feel like a target.
So, they didn’t show.
jimmiraybob
“Trump’s mandate isn’t as ‘powerful’ as he suggests. Here’s why.”
I’m sure that someone has already pointed out the flaw here. The only one that matters is Trump and, as any triumphant emperor would realize, this is the hugest mandate ever in the history of mankind – nobody’s ever seen anything like it – and secures him the divine right to rule as he wants.
He’s for sure got the GOP, the Supreme Court, the senate, the billionaires, a good swath of the media landscape, and may well have the House at the end of the day. Whether he gets the House or not he will rule the way he wants and, like a 500-year flood, disaster response will be overwhelmed.
Alternatively, any day now he might recognize the solemnity and importance of his high office and start acting presidential.
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.
No Nym
@Suzanne: “But I am wondering if educational polarization has really divided white people into two cohorts that don’t mix much anymore.”
That is a big factor, I think. I was reflecting on my own experience of Nov. 2016, when I was working in a clinic the morning after the election. All the nurses, who were mostly white and were LPNs, not BSNs (college degree), were high-fiving each other and tickled as hell. One even said, “Trump just says what we all think.” The doctors I worked with, on the other hand (all white and highly educated), were as horrified as I was. I have seen that divide over and over, even in my own family, which split along lines of people who elected not to get an education past high school (if they even finished that) versus those of us who went on to get one or two degrees. It’s not the sole driver of America’s divisions, but it is real. Uneducated people resent what education represents or signifies to them. No idea what to do about that.
Michael Bersin
@taumaturgo:
“…Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York approved measures granting a state constitutional right to abortion…”
In Missouri, barely. The Amendment 3 campaign raised and spent over $30 million. It passed with 51.605 % of the vote. The forced-birth opposition was massively outspent.
TBone
I want to see the final report that will be issued by Jack Smith. Fervently!
https://truthout.org/articles/doj-special-counsel-jack-smith-is-shutting-down-his-work-on-trump-criminal-cases/
🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V5j8lz4oD4Q
sixthdoctor
@Kosh III: I imagine that we’ll be seeing a lot of buyer’s remorse articles from Trump supporters in the upcoming months, and my Jerry Seinfeld “that’s a shame” gif will be getting quite the workout.
New Deal democrat
@schrodingers_cat:
There is something called the “Housing Affordability Index” which has been kept for decades. In the last 2 years, it has been at its *worst* level in the past 40 years. This applies to people even trying to buy a starter house.
Click on the link to see the graph:
https://x.com/GeneSohoForum/status/1767951426364313715
New Deal democrat
@Bugboy: No.
For partisans there is never a right time to look at failures. For people who want to see clearly, right after the election is the best time.
“Get a GD grip???” How about you get some clear-eyed vision.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Michael Bersin:
It’s not unlike the bullshit so-called “rank choice” voting amendment here in CO (it was nothing like actual rank choiced voting).
$14.5m was spent to promote it while a measely $300K spent in opposition. And of course the big donors for it were telling: the CEO of DaVita, Chevron and others.
Professor Bigfoot
@snoey: to get that photo op?
I think it’s a risk Trump would be willing to take.
Chris Johnson
That jumped out for me as well. However, it’s teaching me something very different.
It’s impossible for all the Trump votes to not exist, but to a shocking extent they would not come see him. Why?
Because they’re voting for the pretend Trump. The one in their head like Jesus who they’re told about. On some level they know not to look at the real man for fear it’ll bust the bubble… and they didn’t look, didn’t go to any rallies, they stayed as cocooned as they possibly could.
That worked for the Trump side but it is also a massive vulnerability. Trump must continue to resemble the one in their heads. He can’t let them down now. He has to live up to the promises.
p.a.
@No Nym: There was, back in the 90s, maybe earlier, the thinking that the military draft/military service served as the great mixer of American society, exposing everyone to everyone else. No panacea of course, some prejudices simply reinforced, but a levelling, or leavening if you will, of sorts. College deferment bollixes that potential. Not arguing for a return to a draft, just noting the idea of its effects.
SFAW
@Professor Bigfoot:
For what I hope is the last time:
Yes, I am fucking aware of how it sounds, And I am not going to spend months/days/weeks or even hours obsessing about it. And it’s not a Tucker Carlson “hey, just asking questions” bullshit thing.
I see a result which does not comport with some of the “evidence” I’ve seen over the course of the campaign (stuff mentioned above, plus the alleged “enthusiasm” polling numbers — where Dems were more “enthusiastic” in the latter months of the Harris campaign, a switch from a number of previous elections). Is there a non-tin-foil explanation (such as, “yeah, 10-plus-million Dems really did stay home, because of reasons. Yeah, it sucks, but that’s what happened”)? Probably. But I’d just like to have someone actually check.
I’m an asshole, but I’m also rational.
ETA: And, to continue the “I’m an asshole” thing: frankly, your questioning whether Trump was that actual target is, shall we say, less grounded in reality than any of my musings
YY_Sima Qian
I guess John C. shouldn’t have unpinned his post so soon.
TBone
Real Men Wear Diapers© is not the winning slogan they thought it would be. I’m planning on making a few diaper cultists shit theirs.
Suzanne
@p.a.: People with military service voted for Trump 65/34, according to that exit poll data I linked above.
Another Scott
@No Nym: When I was in middle school in suburban Atlanta in the mid-70s, my favorite social studies teacher was someone who talked a lot about the dangers of government, how nefarious forces wanted to kill off old people and the powerless like unborn “children”. How important it was to limit government and always be on the look out for those who want to impose their views from the outside.
Quite persuasive to a young teenager!!
:-/
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
If you don’t have the opportunity to interact with people outside your little social circle, you won’t be forced to recognize different viewpoints, won’t need to question why things are the way they are, won’t be exposed to other persuasive arguments that make you think and decide for yourself.
It’s dangerous.
The world is too complex now, and change is coming too fast, for masses of the country to be so insular.
How to fix it, when lots of people depend on it not being fixed??
Dunno.
Free Community College would help a lot. Vastly increased support for public colleges and universities would help a lot. Pushing for everyone to take online classes throughout their lives to keep learning would help a lot. And that’s why many on the right fear it…
:-(
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@No Nym: The polarization data is staggering among white people.
Of white people who went to college:
Men went for Harris 50/47.
Women went for Harris 57/41.
Of white people who didn’t go to college:
Men went for Trump 69/29.
Women went for Trump 63/35.
No Nym
@WereBear: “These people love no effort. That’s why they voted for Trump, so he could be cruel by proxy.”
Excellent point, and from what I have seen here in Misery, absolutely accurate. Having to work for something requires initiative, self-discipline, and doing hard things. It’s very revealing that they are driven to avenge other people “getting things for free.”
Bupalos
@p.a.: Voters saying they don’t know your policies is almost code. Voters never are in to policy. But the 3 or 4 policy priorities the candidate always talks about create the political persona. Trump literally has no policy in the technical sense but voters know his policy in the electoral sense and thus ‘know who he is.’. Anti-immigration, economic nationalism, military isolationism. And this isn’t “policy” so much as just continually displayed personality, but a willingness and eagerness to destroy things and people and use violence to keep order.
Harris had one ‘electoral’ policy that broke through to defining her, and that was reproductive rights. She partly embraced law and order, but she seemed to be talking mostly about enforcing the law against Trump rather than general social disorder and crime. I don’t think she really had enough time to even develop her campaign and persona. And she was shackled to Biden.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The data on military voting patterns is interesting and basically follows the general racial makeup of the US military:
68% white
31% some kind of racial minority
82% are men
17.5% are women
https://news.usni.org/2023/11/29/department-of-defense-2022-demographic-profile
snoey
@Professor Bigfoot: Not an unnecessary risk. Have someone with an accurate weapon blow away the guy next to him.
narya
To me, that sounds like an argument for tearing down a house as winter approaches, without having any place to live and without any real plan for what the new house will look like, how it will be built, who can help with the building, etc. I’m not disagreeing with the notion that some changes are vital, but without a plan for WHAT changes, and HOW to make them, you’re leaving the field open for corporate oligarchy: let’s let the MARKET run everything! or for rampant chaos.
Bugboy
@New Deal democrat: Failure? I guarantee you there is no superman in this reality that could have done better or different than Garland did, at least if you take Dr. Wheeler’s word for it.
And “done better” is defined as what? A results-oriented solution that puts Trump before a firing squad for being the traitor that he is? If you are going straight to “lock him up” you are no better than the fascists.
We have a nation of laws. Just because our enemies disagree with that basic premise doesn’t mean we have to. Garland is not the enemy here, nor is Biden.
The Audacity of Krope
Along these same lines, this is why they like the simple “solutions” Republicans provide, this way you don’t need to think through the consequences of actions and just do what you feel will make things better. If it doesn’t work, you just didn’t do it hard enough.
No Nym
@p.a.: That used to be the theory of public education, too–the great leveler.
Peale
@The Audacity of Krope: Maybe for a brief period in the 1960s it was true that you could make rent on one income as a single young adult at the start of your career. But I think that was unusual. You either had one person with a large income, or there were other incomes in the house. That would include, say, the boarder who had his or her own job or was supported by someone else.
I didn’t have the income to go out on my own until I was in my mid 30s. Prior to that, I needed the income of roommates. Usually somewhere between 2-3 other working adults to rent. And with that, we were taking advantage of the fact that we had moved into housing within the city that had been abandoned by the middle class or lower income families. I was at the tail end of the great decline of the American City and the Rise of the Suburb, so rent was “depressed” in a sense, but still unaffordable. If I had moved to the city 30 years earlier, I would have been staying in a hotel, dormitory or living with a family that had a room to let.
One of the consequences of the revival of the cities in some places is that those former middle class and family spaces that my generation could still fill in and afford to rent on three incomes are now taken up by people of my generation who didn’t leave. A lot of us just eventually made enough money to get rid of the roommates and not replace them when they left.
Anyway, I’m not sure what the solution is to this problem, but yeah, there is an expectation gap. No one would at this point consider new construction of rooming houses, those are long gone. And at the same time, there’s very little interest in building anything but 4 bedroom homes in the suburbs and luxury apartments in the cities.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bugboy: This Garland’s fecklessness has become an article of faith for many. You won’t convince them otherwise.
Suzanne
@Peale:
There’s been a lot of interest in building a more modern version of boarding houses, which are essentially college dorms for adults. Each rental unit has a bedroom, some have private bathrooms, and then there are shared living and kitchen spaces. Lots of municipalities don’t allow them and have minimum required area per unit.
The Audacity of Krope
Well, I’m in my 40s, in my first stable living situation that wasn’t being provided to me by friends or family, at just about the peak of my lifetime earning rate, and still put almost every penny into rent with two roommates; the three of us in a two bedroom.
Soprano2
@N: Maybe Mayor Pete needs to hold classes, because he’s really good at that. I agree, people don’t vote for policies even when they say they do.
WereBear
@Chris Johnson:
I am in love with this insight. You can’t build a cult of personality on Vance. Since he lacks the essential ingredient.
AM in NC
@N: Yes, style matters, but many rightwing disinformation outlets never even let Democrats on to express those positions.
In parallel with what you suggest Democrats do, we need to be disrupting these rightwing lie-networks. I think crowdfunding a legal movement to sue the living fuck out of them every time they libel or slander someone. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Bankrupt the outlets or force them to stop the lies.
No Nym
@The Audacity of Krope: Well, also, a lot of them are primed by their churches and families to accept patriarchal, authoritarian framing of everything: “God will fix it” or “Daddy will punish you/them.” If they really looked at the facts of their lives, none of that would add up. Rather than doing that hard exercise of really seeing their lives and themselves, they coast along on a sea of beliefs and impressions, which are easily manipulated and very fluid.
Bugboy
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank, OO, I get a little tired of quoting Pogo all the time: “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us”…
This entire experience has only confirmed my terminal case of misanthropy.
No Nym
@Suzanne: “There’s been a lot of interest in building a more modern version of boarding houses, which are essentially college dorms for adults. ”
If Social Security takes a hit, they should build them for retirees!
The Audacity of Krope
@No Nym: God, ain’t that the truth?
WereBear
@p.a.: This was the “good side” of the giant mobilization for WWII. Men and women from all walks of life. A vast democratization chamber and shared goal.
Which is why the Vietnam draft had a totally different effect.
UncleEbeneezer
@Bugboy: I also wonder how exactly trying the Leaders/Organizers of 1/6 doesn’t also get shut down when SCOTUS rules that any evidence tied to Trump can’t be used?
I’ve also heard very good arguments that trying to prosecute Trump AND others, would have made the process exponentially slower because now you have a dozen defendants who can appeal, not just one. Almost every legal mind I follow said that it was either try Trump OR the other co-conspirators, but trying them together would pretty much guarantee no verdict (or even trials) before the election. Prosecuting only Trump, was really the only way to even have a chance of trial before the Election. I have yet to see anyone explain away the complexity challenges that would go with trying leaders and Trump concurrently. And even if DOJ did, there’s still SCOTUS waiting there to push everything past the election, or kill it entirely.
The chance of holding Trump legally accountable was put on permanent (Republican controlled) life-support the moment he won in 2016. And this Tuesday WE THE VOTERS decided to let them unplug even that. This is on the American Electorate, not Garland/DOJ.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s up there with (and a variation of) Dems could’ve stopped X, if only they tried. It’s turning into a god-damn Commandment at this point.
The Audacity of Krope
Dems could have stopped themselves from trashing the Presidential ticket, if only they tried.
Bupalos
@Baud: Well essentially no one was talking that way before we ran the campaign we ran, and lost.
It’s interesting that things reverse now. Early and almost all along I was among the few saying the election was Trump’s to lose. Which put me on the side of bold and bolder – withdraw Biden and have a freak-show primary. Which was considered (by many) dumb and (by everyone here) dumber because of the risk. I put a much lower emphasis on that risk because I though circumstances were in fact very very bad. I think Pelosi and Obama shared that.
Peale
@The Audacity of Krope: That I’ll agree with. Now, I do think Harris did do better than Biden would have. But still, we have a lot of supposedly knowledgeable people who when Harris would make a proposal that might benefit the working classes, will immediately go “Democrats never deliver that anyway because she won’t have congress and the supreme court will just strike it down” who then wonder why no one knows what Harris stands for! Well, if most Democrats go “she won’t be able to do anything even if she’s elected” why vote for her?
Another Scott
@Peale: After my parents divorced in the early ’60s, my mom was a secretary/assistant in Atlanta. She could only afford a broken down Rambler as a car, when she had one. Gas was cheap. Food was cheap. We had an apartment in some converted old WWII Army barracks (no AC).
Medical and dental care was a luxury.
It was a tough life.
But she could afford to fly to Ohio with us once or twice a year to see her parents. She could afford, for a while, to hire a housekeeper to come in and tidy up once a week (and watch us when she had to work weekends). Willie had it tougher than we did (she had kids of her own and lived in public housing). :-(
It was a different time/country, for lots of reasons.
I don’t think she looked back on those times with fondness, even with all the things that were seemingly “better” in some ways.
I’ve told the story of my MIL moving from small-town Minnesota to DC in 1940 to get a job as a secretary. She and her friends lived in a boarding house on P Street for many months. (The building is still there – condos or something now).
One of my working summers in college had me living at the YMCA in Dayton for a couple of months because it was all I could afford. Breakfast cost $0.70 (toast and jelly) at the local diner. I rode a friend’s bike to work.
Expectations matter a lot. Telling and showing kids how the world works – rather than filling them with ideas of unicorns and gumdrops and the world is theirs, only to be crushed later – is important. Realistic expectations, and explaining how to make things better through effort, is important.
Struggle is important and useful, when positive results happen enough as a result of that struggle.
But the system has to be fair to people. People need to be able to afford to live reasonably close to where they work. People need to be able to see that things will get better after some (shortish) period of struggle. Letting land speculators and real estate developers do whatever they want, or with requirements for token amounts of “affordable housing”, isn’t working.
[/soapbox]
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Bupalos: That’s the benefit of hindsight. It provides more data.
New Deal democrat
@Bugboy:
Excuse me, have you read Trump v. U.S.?
Neither Garland nor Biden are the enemy. In fact, in my opening comment I said that I liked Biden.
But those who Genuflected before Institutions, including the Institution of the Supreme Court, have failed us.
Bupalos
As electorally and coalitionally fucked as we are, you know who is even further out in the wilderness than Dems? Nevertrumper Republicans like Tim Miller.
WereBear
Because, most of the time, their entire culture, upbringing, and social environment is bent on stopping them from figuring out the con being perpetrated on them. By those who create these delusional and stunted versions of human kind. Whose best subject is unthinking obedience and learned helplessness.
I am not being harsh on them… I FEEL for them. They do not know a fraction of the joy the enlightened even now enjoy, in this dire hour.
Which is why they long for death and hope for the apocalyptic end of the world. Freud lived in a similar oppressive environment. So, perhaps he is right about the death wish… but did not realize it was a cultural phenomenon.
I do. It was inflicted on them. And now, this trap contains their only source of comfort. Which we threaten by our very existence.
The Audacity of Krope
This is one of the reasons I was actually excited for a Biden/Trump rematch. I was hoping to use the opportunity of no one being excited about the old men to get more people to notice that there are people besides the President elected to the government.
Democrats, instead, decided they wanted to kneecap Biden AND Harris because their fearful emotional state told them it might give us a better chance. And tactics and winning are all that matters, aren’t they?
No Nym
@Another Scott: “Expectations matter a lot. Telling and showing kids how the world works – rather than filling them with ideas of unicorns and gumdrops and the world is theirs, only to be crushed later – is important. Realistic expectations, and explaining how to make things better through effort, is important.”
This is why Trump looks like a god to them–he gets so much with so little effort! Our culture reinforces expectations about what life should look like (worshipping extreme wealth and so forth). In my town, college freshman live more opulent lives than I do, and I have a healthy income as I near retirement! They have grown up feeling entitled to ALL the toys and comforts of wealth beyond what they actually earn. It all looks so easy from the vantage point of childhood, and then they find out it isn’t, and they are pissed.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: FWIW, I agreed with you. I was not feeling confident that Biden was in a good position, because I kept hearing from my kid and his friends and my younger coworkers that they just were thoroughly unimpressed and unmotivated. Meanwhile, Trump’s people are, like, psycho for him. I was hoping that he would announce fairly early that he would not run again and we could have had a normal primary.
But I am feeling right now that no Democrat could have won in this environment, the anti-incumbent sentiment is too strong.
Bugboy
@UncleEbeneezer: Oh, don’t get me started on McConnell’s slick “Oh, we should let the courts decide!” dodge for declining to convict Trump during his impeachment(s?), then the court obligingly saying it can’t decide, because it’s a “political issue”.
It’s the same MO that GOP always uses to fleece the voters, because they know they don’t pay attention. See also: GOP flying veterans to National Parks facilities during their very own government shutdown, then complaining how veterans are being disrespected by National Parks facilities being closed…
AM in NC
@Chris Johnson: And I think we all need to give a real-world assist when those inevitabilities arrive.
By this, I mean we all need to be doing things like ordering hundreds of stickers with Trump’s ugly orange head and “I did this!” to stick on gas pumps and all around Walmart and Target and grocery stores when inflation goes higher.
Xeroxing dozens of copies of every story of a woman dying in pregnancy/childbirth, writing “Another mom killed by Republican politicians” across the top and taping them to boxes of formula, diapers, and in women’s bathrooms across the country.
Every climate disaster, every shooting – same thing. “More deaths thanks to Republican politicians” – taped up and plastered EVERYWHERE.
Republicans and normies don’t see reality – WE must force it on them in their daily lives where they cannot ignore it.
In addition to thinking about what to do about big media, these are small-bore, guerrilla tactics that every one of us can use in our own neighborhoods to push reality on the cultists.
Bugboy
@New Deal democrat: “But those who Genuflected before Institutions, including the Institution of the Supreme Court, have failed us.”
And who would that be? Weird how you capitalize “Genuflected”?
Bupalos
@N: It also matters to have a personification of what you’re attacking. The Obama coalition technocrats have a kind of bloodless style that attacks problems but has to treat them like a machine that’s slightly off kilter. It’s a style of politics that works when people believe the natural course of things is just to get better and better. Tweak here, tweak there, keep the machine running, maybe keep hooligans from throwing wrenches in there, but basically just run the machine well.
That era is over. It lost twice to Trump, who people really don’t like.
Bupalos
@The Audacity of Krope: I admire the consistency. But I don’t know how there can be a question that the switch to Harris improved things. Just not enough.
The polls were (as always) correct in terms of movement, and appear to have been accurate within 1-2% as well. The story they told about erosion in our minority coalition that everyone said was crazy appears to be correct.
There is no reason to think that Biden wasn’t as unpopular as the data says. There’s no reason to think Harris didn’t better our chances as the data says she did. If anything, we under-reacted to how unpopular this administration was.
Peale
@No Nym: I do think one of the issues is that has enabled this idea that the olds had it easier and that everyone just got a union job and moved into a split level house with a wife and 2 kids after graduating from high school is that those of us who didn’t do that also have forgotten that we didn’t do that. So its easy for me to pick on the younger people and their expectations without acknowledging that my experience was also privileged. I have never been wealthy, but the options I had for housing myself when I was young aren’t there now. I would have been living at the Y instead of in a 2BR apartment with 3 roommates if it weren’t for the abandonment of the city by people who used to live there. And a 3 story row house with 4 roommates is definitely a step up from a bed at the Y.
WereBear
The pie filters that I didn’t take down still work! Whaddya know.
No Nym
@Peale: I don’t think we had it easier or harder, but maybe our expectations were not as high. As a gay kid kicked out at 17, I started at “just survive” and only incrementally improved from there. I rented rooms in other people’s houses, did the shit jobs–not because I wanted to, but because I had to. When I became a teacher, asking kids to read a page of text outside of class was too big an ask and their parents were outraged. Something changed.
AM in NC
@Michael Bersin: Yep. Individual acts like this matter. When tens of millions of us all do this, it really matters.
taumaturgo
@Baud:
Are you saying the voters while rejecting Harris on the same ballot approved these right wing social policies?
“Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York approved measures granting a state constitutional right to abortion.”
The Audacity of Krope
Underbussing Biden hurt Harris. Because of people like you, she did not and now will never be given a fair shot at the Presidency.
It’s really telling that I haven’t seen one single person on team Dump Biden even question whether it was worth it. All still act like it was so obvious and the outcome was inevitable.
You sold your soul for magic beans that yielded rotten orange fruit and still insist it was a great investment. You were so obsessed with what you think might provide any marginal advantage you abandoned morals. People saw and 20 million fewer people showed up to vote.
japa21
Chiming in with my comments after reading the entire thread.
SFAW
@UncleEbeneezer:
Being a cynical bastard, I think it started much earlier — when Cyrus Vance Jr declined to go after Trump in any serious way. Had it been Eliot Spitzer (as a prosecutor, not attempted guv) or similar, things might have been different.
Another Scott
@SFAW: +1
Impunity breeds impunity. It’s hard to come back from when it gets deep enough.
Spitzer was a gut punch.
☹️
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@p.a.: Oh I disagree, did you live through the ’70’s and early ’80’s? Double digit unemployment to go along with double digit inflation. The gas price shock from the Arab oil embargo hit every sector of the economy. Imagine the price of fuel doubling in less than a year, what would that do to our economy now? They were even more dependent on it than we are.
Dougboy
@N: This^^^^
Rs are notoriously bad at responding to those who challenge them, so keep them on the back foot, always trying to explain, because when they have to explain (or try to do so), they look like the abject morons they are.
Soprano2
Sarah Longwell said that whenever she did focus groups and asked about things that are in Project 2025, she had to soft pedal it because if she presented what is actually in there no one believed it. They didn’t think anyone would do things that extreme. If you’ve seen or heard many TCFG voters, they are the same way – they don’t believe he’s going to do a lot of the extreme things he’s talked about (except on immigration). They say it over and over, and we should believe them. I think some of them are going to be shocked at what happens.
Anonymous At Work
End of Day, we faced this in 2016-2018. Most of what the GOP wants, the GOP can get without breaking filibuster and only needs bare majority in either/both chambers. Grabbing Speaker of House will be key, but won’t solve everything.
WereBear
@taumaturgo: Yes. There were ballots where that was the only vote.
They turned out for the emergency, and thought that would protect them, so they didn’t have to touch liberal cooties.
But they won’t put any of that together. Which is why they are always on the cusp of tantrums.
“Non-sentient, baffled, and confused is no way to go through life…”
WereBear
@japa21: The people who stayed home, based on my small town hints and social media… were people whose liberal leanings were known, or feared their vote wouldn’t be private with known Trumpers at the polling place, and what if we are there when a nut blows up the building…
but fear of their neighbors kept them away. And now they will get bullied for it.
If they’d all been brave… but they were not. And not bright enough to vote early, I might add. But then, vague fears and family disharmony ARE stronger than logic or sense.
WereBear
I hope all of them are.
The Audacity of Krope
Fear not, though they may be shocked, they’ll definitely find a way to rationalize why none of it was their fault.
ChrisSherbak
@MattF: OMFG – String Theory and Politics of a Post Truth world? 67 year old talking about growing up in the 70’s? OPEN A VEIN AND SHOOT THAT SH_T UP! Thank you for the pointer… I may even have the background (BA Math UCLA ’79) for his Strings/Groups book.
As to the OP – ya I never understood “having a mandate” unless it just meant you had a talking (shouting?) point with your detractors. It all comes down to power, and with a (mostly) supine electorate that only gets engaged when the price of gas is higher than they vaguely remember co-inciding with a chance to vent aka vote… once you are past the post you can pretty much do whatever the h-ll you want, ESPECIALLY if you have the entire government at your beck and call
p.s. my man-crush on JB continues unabated and even more enflamed. He had me when his staff posted pictures of him, thru the years, walking at Chicago Pride, making fun of his suburban Dad cargo shorts and vaguely colorful shirts but clearly CLEARLY having the time of his life. He cemented his place in our hearts long ago and I’m happy there are some cis white straight male Dems showing up what it means to be a Good Guy. (cf Tim Walz, et al.)
ErikaF
@Another Scott: Thank you! I’m trying to walk myself back from the ledge, and this reminds me that it will not be an easy task for him to do everything he promised (and those around him promised to do) immediately. They cannot simply proclaim that the US structures no longer work and set up their own – not in months. Too many competing interests will cripple them. Remember, there is one overriding interest to all the right-wing powerbrokers/oligarchs/wannabe oligarchs/wannabe powerbrokers/pathetic hangerson – GREED. And greed, by its nature, doesn’t play well with others.
Bob in PA
the Post may be wrong, and we can’t afford a circular firing squad, but we should rethink some things. Those who were in the Dump Joe, Pick Kamala camp were just as wrong as those in the Keep Joe camp. The fact is that the USA will not elect a liberal woman for a least 100 years. It ain’t right, but it’s true. Sure, people will say that they support such a candidate, but then the polls will be disastrously wrong. A Margaret Thatcher-type could get elected, but that would be a disaster. We Democrats unfortunately deluded ourselves again into believing a liberal woman can win, and that won’t happen without major societal change.
dww44
@The Audacity of Krope: Long ago figured out that all Republican voters around me (the great majority of family and friends) will always figure out a way to vote for the R and with this election they surpassed themselves. I cannot forgive them for re-electing a former President who tried to overthrow our democracy. I keep being reminded of Obama ‘s tan suit and his feet on his Oval Office Desk.