Here’s today’s edition of what I’ve been reading/watching.
Tik Tok and YouTube feminist yv_edit has released her election take centered around the misogyny inherent in the Harris vote. Towards the end there’s some hunker down advice for women. Overall it’s a scathing indictment of white men. Her take on the white women who voted for Trump is coming, and I’m interested in what she’s going to say.
Michael Tomasky at TNR has a piece on the media environment and how it was essential in electing Trump:
This is a crisis. The Democratic brand is garbage in wide swaths of the country, and this is the reason. Consider this point. In Missouri on Tuesday, voters passed a pro-abortion rights initiative, and another that raised the minimum wage and mandated paid leave. These are all Democratic positions. But as far as electing someone to high office, the Man-Boy Love Party could probably come closer than the Democrats. Trump beat Harris there by 18 points, and Senator Josh Hawley beat Lucas Kunce, who ran a good race and pasted Hawley in their debate, by 14 points.
This is a long take by Ian Williams, who teaches college, based on post-election reactions of his students. Most of them voted for Harris, but even the Harris voters have great disdain for Democrats. They all get most of their news from podcasts. The celebrity endorsements (Tay-Tay, Beyonce, etc.) actually lessened the Harris’ voters respect for Harris. Really worth a look to understand just how damaged the Democrat’s brand has become.
Here’s a post-mortem on the horrible Merrick Garland.
I’ve written here that I think Harris ran a good campaign. But this piece makes some good points about mis-steps, and certainly about accountability for her campaign managers. First, on “headwinds”, there are countries where governments have survived the pandemic, including Taiwan, Spain and Mexico. (And if we’re talking about reaching voters who aren’t tuned in to “normal” media, is there a better example than Mexico?) Second, the whole Cheney / Cuban strategy to appeal to Haley voters certainly didn’t yield much, and that includes the kumbaya debate between Walz and Vance. Finally, while I think re-litigation of the fine points of the campaign isn’t especially helpful (there’s not one trick Harris could have used to win, in part because her campaign was so short), I’m not going to let Matt Yglesias and David Schor, idiot conveyers of “popularism”convince me that if we just ditched trans folk, everything would have been better. Fuck those guys.
Edited to add: Here are some ballot cure phone banks, a worthwhile thing to do.
lowtechcyclist
Frist.
Lobo
This: Stop the Votewashing
MagdaInBlack
I really should have skipped past the Nick Fuentes intro to that first Tik Tok. i’ll have to come back to that later. I was not fully prepared for what I saw.
The Truffle
This is the Democrats’ 2012. That is my theory.
Baud
Maybe constantly trashing Democrats actually influences people’s perception of Democrats.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: If we can’t even defend our own side, why would people expect us to defend them?
The Audacity of Krope
I’m re-registering soon as a Republican to run for Congress.
I’ve just about lost faith in Democrats to effect positive change. At this point, I want to see if I can build a coalition of independents and reform-minded Republicans and Democrats to improve the culture of the Republican Party in my little corner of Massachusetts.
First step, I think is to reach out to Rs and Socialist Parties to find possibilities for collaboration there.
The Audacity of Krope
That’s what I was saying five months ago when Dems were trashing themselves. Now the election’s over. Gloves off.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Omnes Omnibus: This is right.
Any self-criticism of Democrats is dwarfed by the waterfall/avalanche of daily hate from rightwing media, and also from mainstream media.
Our brand is tarnished. We need to accept that and do something to change it.
nickdag
I’m curious to hear more about this comment.
Huh? I don’t know anything about this and don’t get the reference at all. Can someone explain?
Layer8Problem
Merrick Garland failed us, and by extension Joe Biden. So guys, when’s the next election!? 😄
Layer8Problem
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Maybe we need a third party? We could call it Third Way.
Baud
@Layer8Problem:
It has been my admittedly speculative fear for a while now that the leftward move of the party peaked with Biden.
Bupalos
Oh good. That’s what we need. That should do it.
MattF
A good (rather long) read here from John Gruber at DaringFireball.
Also, Ms. Petri demonstrates she knows some set theory!
Bex
Oh great, more blame game. That’ll show ’em,
WereBear
@@mistermix.bsky.social: With utter seriousness, a game show.
Rename the Party. Here’s what we stand for. All the Democrats participate, at a distance, where it’s safe.
I swear, if we don’t address THIS branding issue, things will only get worse, and part of it is that Trump violence WORKS on our wobbly allies. Then they wobble.
Address it head on. Only Democrats tune in? So what, we need it. It can be on Youtube for all we care. Which is universally accessible.
Branding? Game show is not my game, but that one is. If we are to sell ourselves like detergent, let’s do it just like the commercials do.
A hundred years of influencers can’t be wrong.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
I moved to Florida in August because I was about to be homeless in NJ and my dad is helping me get back on my feet here. I know I’m back in a red state, but just how crazy is it here? I’m used to Texas’ crazy so maybe I’ll be all right here. I appreciate any pointers that Adam, Betty, and other Florida Juicers can give me.
BarcaChicago
@Baud: THANK YOU. Signed, lifelong Democrat who has always been driven insane by this. We weaken ourselves constantly. Sheesh.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bex: We do have to figure what went in order to fix it. FWIW, I think it is far too soon to figure it out. Ballots are still being counted. We should at least have the final numbers before we started. All we have now are increasingly stale hot takes.
jowriter
@Baud: Well, no kidding. Are Democrats destined to crap on each other after ever setback, eternally? I am purely sick of it. Aim your weapons at the enemy. Jeez.
Layer8Problem
One positive so far: a lot fewer clever couch-fucking jokes.
tobie
It doesn’t surprise me that college students are down on the Dems. They have no patience for the legislative grind that is the norm in a divided democracy. They’re pissed Joe Biden couldn’t cancel student debt or make abortion legal with the stroke of the pen. Maybe he could have if Sinema and Manchin hadn’t joined hands with the GOP in the Senate or if we didn’t have a conservative majority on SCOTUS. As Teri Kanefield kept on repeating (until she gave up): democracy is slow, autocracy is exciting, but it’s still better to have a rule-bound process that is fair and transparent. I dunno. Maybe we just want autocracy at this moment in history.
Omnes Omnibus
BTW it’s the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Baud
@BarcaChicago:
@jowriter:
As I’ve said before, the reason I’m here instead of at Kos is because of how that place trashed Obama over everything during the first two years of his term. I got sick of that toxic culture, which I enjoyed being part of when they were strong against Bush.
sab
@Layer8Problem: I did not know until recently (Adam Silverman’s Ukraine threads) that Merrick Garland is a Federalist Society member. Why didn’t we know and why was this okay with Biden?
I know Amy Klobuchar’s husband is, but he is a capital punishment opposition leader keeping an eye on the opposition. What is Garland’s excuse.
Baud
@sab:
Gotta link?
Baud
@tobie:
Very well could be. I’m not sure Dems can offer that.
New Deal democrat
Link
https://www.amazon.com/Vbestlife-Cheerleading-Cheerleader-Competition-Performance/dp/B07FDSCG8S
see you all later
WereBear
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun): My take, since I spent my formative years there, is that Texas crazy wears jeans and boots and and guns, and are easily riled.
But easily predictable.
While Florida crazy wears day glo shorts with flip-flops and there might be anything under the sun in that holster.
There’s just no telling where the crazy will go. That’s what makes Texas predictable like Westerns.
Florida is more like art house horror. You don’t know what will happen next. Because this is Southern Gothic.
Another Scott
@nickdag: A Jewish woman – Claudi Sheinbaum – was just elected president of Mexico.
I don’t know what MM is referring to beyond that (I didn’t pay attention to how she campaigned).
HTH a little.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Layer8Problem
@sab: Good question. Surprisingly this is brand new information I’ve never heard, and god knows it would have been thrashed by the anti-Garland crowd into a fine paste. Why are we just finding this out? Please tell me it was in the Garland Supreme Court nomination handout and I foolishly missed it.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab: I know Adam has said that he is a member, but I have seen no evidence of it. He has been on Federalist Society panels in the past, but so have many other liberal Democratic lawyers. I would avoid spreading that rumor if I were you.
WereBear
We’re not supporting the demographic that wants to drive fast and break things.
tobie
@sab: No, he’s not a member. He’s a contributor as is Laurence Tribe. Contributors are jurists who have given talks at the Fed Soc. I don’t know how many times this lie needs to be debunked.
Here from the Fed Soc webpage is the explanation of a contributor:
MattF
@New Deal democrat: But… only one pom-pom, according to the comments.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Adam started it.
ETA Tobie just corrected me, so I withdraw my comment about Garland
Hope I haven’t done too much damage, but I have had this bit of info in my mind for a couple of weeks so at least I learned (or unlearned) something today.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
@tobie:
Thank you.
Little disappointed. This is what MAGA do on X.
Geminid
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, and we’ll find out even more in coming weeks as voter file information is released and analysed.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab: And he is wrong. I am suggesting that you don’t join him in being wrong. But do what you want.
PsiFighter37
Now that there’s been half a week from the results on Tuesday, my high-level takes are:
1) Joe Biden bears the vast majority of the blame for what occurred, on three counts. First, he should have never appointed Merrick Garland as AG. Sally Yates or Doug Jones would have been much more aggressive confronting and charging Trump for his crimes. He would have been behind bars already. Second, he should have announced he was not running for reelection the moment it was clear that Democrats did better in the midterms than expected. It had absolutely nothing to do with him and everything to do with backlash against Roe v. Wade. Third, his fiscal stimulus was far too large. The moral of the story is clear: people who are having a hard time getting by appear to be more forgiving if their personal circumstances are challenging but prices are low, versus those where prices go up a ton. In hindsight, it’s a blessing in disguise that Build Back Better did not get passed in full – it is quite possible things would have been substantially worse from an inflationary standpoint.
2) Democrats need to prioritize economic issues. Social extremism can be useful to highlight in certain races, but the ‘abortion is in danger’ issue absolutely has zero resonance in deep-blue states where the perception (rightly or wrongly) is that abortion is safeguarded. Democrats should have realized this after the 2022 midterm election in NY, where Hochul ran loads of ads about reproductive rights, only to win by 5 percentage points over an election denier. It’s also clear that the ‘democracy is in danger’ message simply did not resonate at all, even if I have very real fears about the upcoming consequences for the country’s ability to function as a corrupt kakistocracy. Immigration is definitely an economic issue as well, and Democrats’ inability to address this sooner – realizing way too late that they needed to shift right and capitulate on a number of items – was fatal. Imagine how much different the world would have been if they had passed the Murphy-Lankford bill in 2022, when they had a trifecta. At this point, congressional Democrats would be well-advised to push ahead with passing the bill as soon as possible so that immigration can be defanged as an agenda item and the focus can turn to what will inevitably be the Trump-Vance administration’s terrible treatment of people as they look to round up anybody who looks brown enough to ship out of the country without due process.
3) The principled conservatives who supported Harris and have been Never Trumpers are, at heart, people who have the best interests of the country at heart. But this election should put to rest that we need to pander to their interests. The fact that Democratic base turnout was so depressed suggests that the lack of focus on economic issues and immigration and instead highlighting how awesome Dick Cheney’s endorsement was probably hurt us a bit. This is the main quibble I have with how the Harris campaign was run, but I also don’t blame Kamala for it – to overhaul the entire Biden campaign infrastructure would have led to a stumble out of the gate that she simply did not have the time for. But I do place blame at the feet of Jen O’Malley Dillon and the rest of the senior campaign staff for closing out the campaign on a message that was structured for Joe Biden’s vision of what the election was about and not for Kamala Harris.
As things turn out, it looks like Democrats won’t end up worse than the number of seats they had in the House the last session and may pick up a couple. This will make the squeeze on Mike Johnson even worse; the House GOP caucus, outside of tax bills, is not MAGA-fied thoroughly enough to pass the most regressive stuff possible. In the Senate, especially if Bob Casey manages to pull off a miracle, you will have Murkowski and Collins (as much as we hate her, she is up for reelection in 2026 in what is likely going to be a backlash year against Republicans) acting as a brake against the extreme elements, and with McConnell still in the Senate, I highly suspect that the legislative filibuster will be going nowhere for at least the first 2 years of the administration. We are going to backslide a lot on the regulatory front; the government bureaucracy is going to be decimated if Elon Musk actually has any formal role, but much of this stuff is going to be fought in the courts for years to come. Unless our worse fears are realized and we start getting government by dictat, I suspect Democrats will still have the ability to throw sand in the gears. We have a deep bench that will only get deeper in 2026, when we should have a good opportunity to prove Democratic governance in big cities work again, particularly in SF and in NYC (Eric Adams is a dead man walking, but I also highly doubt you get a DSA-type in the running to win), that we can win the House and contest for the Senate (I hope that Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester take a swing in 2026, and we have good opportunities for pickups in North Carolina, if Roy Cooper runs, and in Maine, where I hope that Jared Golden takes the seat – even if he’s a bit insufferable). I’m done with the wine moms protesting emptily; it’s time to actually take real action and focus on getting shit done, as Big Gretch likes to say.
Layer8Problem
@sab: We’re off of the mirror and into the map!
narya
Okay, I’m gonna (only half-seriously) blame fast food for everything. Hear me out! There are many cooks among the jackaltariat, as well as people who are fed by cooks: one of the things that cooks and bakers know is that a good meal takes time and effort and a lot of the tasks are tedious AF–peeling and washing and chopping and waiting for the onions to caramelize (it takes more than five minutes, no matter what the recipe says). And sometimes, no matter how hard you worked, something doesn’t come out right, or it’s not what you hoped it would be, even if it’s edible. That’s what actual governing involves: lots of boring steps, sometimes with unintended consequences that then require some correction. And, meanwhile, you have to eat the not-what-you-hoped meal, because you can’t afford to just throw it out. “Fast-casual” dining, fast food, etc., have trained many people to expect food to just show up on the plate and it also hides the cost (low wages, ultra-processed food, factory-farmed animals and vegetables). I remember reading a review of a fancy-ass restaurant in Chicago (to which I treated myself a few times): it was clear that the “reviewer” had no idea that that sauce on the plate took three days to make, he just complained how expensive it was. If we want a functioning society, it takes boring, grinding work, not hot takes on social media–which we here know, but which is not obvious. /end half-serious rant
tobie
@Baud: I don’t want autocracy either. I wish democracy wasn’t always a slow grind but whether it’s Lieberman handicapping Obama or Manchin and Sinema handicapping Biden, it’s what we’ve had to deal with. I wish elected Democrats exercised some party discipline. All that said, I have no hesitation in saying that the Dem Pres, House and split Senate did do amazing work during Biden’s first two years. Maybe they failed to broadcast that effectively.
@mistermix.bsky.social
The Mexico reference was to the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, who succeeded AMLO this year. They’re both in the left wing populist party Morena. The media environment in Mexico is every bit as challenging as the US if not more. Corruption and cartels are still rampant. Yet she won.
WereBear
I’d never thought I’d get to star in Ionesco’s Rhinoceros… but here we are!
Let’s do our best to shorten the run.
dc
@Another Scott: I think to the media environment and misinformation saturation.
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: Well put!
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun): The brands of crazy you can encounter in the Mildew State are nearly infinite. We’re the nation’s junk drawer. The place where all the roads end. Also, it depends in part on where you are in the state. Swamp crazy where I live (Nature Coast) isn’t in the same universe as South Beach crazy.
Good luck! Do try the stone crabs!
Baud
@tobie:
Or maybe the public doesn’t want what we have to offer. Maybe the problem isn’t our messaging, but that many people have right wing values and interests.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: I edited my comment that Adam was wrong and I am wrong. But edited comments stay up top where nobody sees them.
Garland is not a Federalist Society member. He just occassionally appears on their panels to present another side.
ETA Baud also corrected me.
I am sorry I further spread misinformation but I am glad it has been cleared up by actual jackal lawyers because the original misinformation seriously shocked me.
narya
@WereBear: Hah! My high school sophomore English teacher assigned me to do a paper on theater of the absurd (I grew up in a small, working-class town, but he was a very good teacher).
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: @rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun):
Funny crime fiction, and learn a lot about Florida, with a favorite author, Carl Hiaasen.
It’s hard to choose a fave, but the one about the rigged bass fishing tournament had me laughing the entire way through.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab:
Thank you. It is important that we keep our criticism based on reality. Correcting the record when you were wrong is a bit part of that.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@WereBear: Thank you!
Caustictity.acerbity
Someone posted on bluesky the day after the election that there are roughly 262 million eligible voters in this country (not registered, but eligible) and Trump is going to wind up with somewhere around 75 million votes. That’s pretty damn close to our frequently commented on 27% crazification factor. I dont care about reaching the people watching right wing media or Joe Rogan podcasts. I want to figure out how to reach the 40% of eligible voters like the office manager at the firm my wife works at. This woman was crying on Wednesday. She didnt vote. But she thought Harris had it. Why? The kids had activities and then she had a hair appointment that she’d already rescheduled once. Why didn’t she partake in early voting? She didnt know she could. Why didnt she get on the permanent absentee voting roll that we authorized in MI and get a ballot automatically sent to her? She kept meaning to but you actually have to fill out an application for it and something always came up. She would have voted for our vision of the future. It just wasnt a priority to actually vote.
These are the people we have to somehow activate assuming there are free elections again. Not the extremely stupid or outright evil people who voted for Trump.
Baud
FWIW, I’m not sure I see another Obama on the horizon, someone who appeals to the “heartland” and coastal liberals. So are people in blue states willing to back someone less appealing in the hopes of helping out brand in other areas of the country?
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@Betty Cracker: Thank you! I’m in Pasco County not far from Tampa.
Layer8Problem
@sab: Echoing Omnes, thank you. Our folks own their mistakes and go forward, aspirationally at least. I try to do the same.
MattF
@WereBear: Double Whammy. Will read.
Chat Noir
@narya: As a home cook (chef?), I love this analogy! I think you are so correct.
prostratedragon
@Layer8Problem: Just wait.
Layer8Problem
@narya: You totally forgot washing the dishes, glassware, and silverware afterward. I’m hurt.
Ksmiami
@Caustictity.acerbity: blame everything on The GOP. And repeat repeat repeat. Then market the hell out of what we have accomplished. That was a critical error on the biden’s administration. If your belief system is about uplifting society thru passing big government programs, then you need to remind the population of the good you did every day. And no more bipartisanship. The GOP is our mortal enemy.
and of course, we have to build a new media ecosystem. That is critical
Steve LaBonne
@sab: Not in any way dumping on you personally, but we have a significant disinformation problem on our side. Some of the leftier than thous who spread it are definitely getting an assist from Russia. Promoting internal dissension on the Democratic side is an important subsidiary goal to spreading it in the general population.
CaseyL
I can’t participate in this firing squad. Two weeks ago we were crowing over the expected End of the GOP, and now we’re angrily saying it’s the Democratic Party that needs to end. And we went through the same damned thing in 2008, happily predicting the end of the GOP, which didn’t happen then either.
The Dems suck! No, it’s the MSM! No, it’s the voters! No it’s the educational system!
No: it’s entropy.
The US is an enormous and complicated country where the far-flung regions had very little to do with one another until the highway systems and radio/TV enabled easy travel, trade, and communication between them. That united things for a little while (as did WWII), but the inherent contradictions never went away – particularly the schisms revealed by the Civil War. Now those contradictions and schisms have up and snapped the last cords of imagined unity – of purpose, of values, even of economic systems.
I’ve decided that I’m going to focus on the local from now on. What can I do to protect the people and environment in my city, county, and state. I lack the resources and energy to look further than that.
I’ll still be around, mostly lurking. A lot of people here are important to me and I want to keep up on how they’re doing. But the political news and commentary no longer interests me. To be fair, I’m no longer interested in any political news and commentary anywhere – not the MSM, not on BJ, or BlueSky, or Mastodon, or anywhere else.
sab
@sab:tobie also corrected me.
WereBear
@Caustictity.acerbity:
Yes. We DO outnumber them. And we don’t have to BE them.
nickdag
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Ahhh, that makes sense. I did not know that about the information environment there and how it was such an achievement to elect her. Thanks
narya
@Layer8Problem: You’re absolutely right! Also: the shopping and hauling and cost, especially if you’re trying to source responsibly (farmers’ markets, CSA shares, non-factory-farmed meat and fish).
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Omnes Omnibus:
@sab:
Thank you both. Full-service blog, indeed!
tobie
@sab: Thanks for correcting and I’m sorry if I came at you hard. I’ve heard the claim before; it circulates a lot because people are rightly frustrated with the glacial pace of the judicial system.
sab
@Steve LaBonne: Adam isn’t exactly leftier than thou. I mostly know who the leftier than thous are and I don’t repeat their stuff. Many of them are already in the pie filter. He and I just got this very wrong.
trollhattan
This is kind of adorable, in a DeVos yacht-count sort of way.
You’re on notice, Trump!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Exactly. I typically brush off your usual TNR writers but lightning has struck the same place twice in one week (Gloomis’s piece being the other) in that article on the media. Worth bookmarking for further use.
One thing I don’t think anybody’s mentioned in all the discussions about media, etc., is how this is not unlike how TV changed politics. Social media (as one aspect of the online world) is changing it in the same significant way.
WereBear
@MattF: Yes! At Lunker Lakes!
Well, there’s another hobby for me. I’d rather re-read a good book for the upteenth time than discard a dozen bad ones by the end of Chapter 1.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Before anyone says Tim Walz, he is not very popular in his own state right now and the DFL is losing ground, because they went “too far too fast”. This is our perennial problem- we rightly try to do as much good as we can in the intervals when we have power, but there is always a backlash.
sab
@tobie: I had been defending Garland for years so I was shocked. I am very glad I was so wrong on this.
ETA You didn’t come on me hard. I deserved it. Thank you and Omnes and Baud for the correction. Garland deserved that.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab: It is the kind of thing that one could believe if one were, shall we say, predisposed to think negatively about him.
Steve LaBonne
@sab: Wasn’t dumping on him either. Disinformation of all kinds is insidious and always designed to turn people’s necessary and righteous anger in unproductive directions. We should never forget that we are not immune and need to guard ourselves.
WereBear
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yes, but television got us JFK and eventually the Civil Rights Act.
It showed the real Nixon in the famous debate. But when he came back he was showbizzed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve LaBonne:
We don’t need to identify that person right now. If there is one out there, they will emerge organically.
Starfish
@MagdaInBlack: I agree that sharing that is not particularly helpful.
We’ve just lost bodily autonomy, now look at what Nick Fuentes is saying really does not honor where women are right now.
I think more people want to hang out in real life and off the internet. The lady in the earlier thread who said “Hey, I have been here on Balloon Juice and reading Heather Cox Richardson, I think I am going to go crochet now” is more about where we are right now.
I really appreciated the way Adam said that he is going to link less X.
A lot of people are about having community and not being lectured by some joyless person on the internet.
Layer8Problem
@sab: No shame meant or wanted, but didn’t you pie me once? I’m just curious and I might have deserved it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Tiktok has been aflame since the election with people telling those who voted for Trump to unfollow them because they’re not welcome. This is a question of politics, the posters say. It’s a question of morals and of accepting responsibility for the harm you did others.
Other people protest that we can all still be friends, but at least among people I follow, that’s not taken well.
prostratedragon
@Baud:
Not sure we saw the Obama we had very far out either, so retain hope, and meanwhile I guess we should try to tackle what @Caustictity.acerbity refers to, promoting turnout, and civic engagement generally.
sab
@Layer8Problem: I don’t think so. Maybe for a day or so.
Steve LaBonne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I haven’t been friends with a fascist sympathizer for a long time. I am lucky not to have them in my family.
MagdaInBlack
@Starfish: I don’t mean to say it was not helpful. We do need to know these things are going on. I just wasn’t quite ready for it. It was vomit inducing
Eta: maybe instead of “helpful” i mean necessary?
TBone
WHY have the rotating tags disappeared for me? They flash across my screen for an instant before leaving me…
dc
@Baud: Jeff Jackson, newly elected AG for NC, about to be former Representative (was completely gerrymandered out of his seat by our evil state legislature, rubber stamped by our evil state supreme court), former state senator. Handsome, white, great communicator, strong Democrat who can talk to everyone without trying to hide his liberal principles.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: he would exit my vicinity sans teeth and possibly needing facial reconstruction surgery.
Layer8Problem
@sab: No worries.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Caustictity.acerbity:
This. And the other 13 million (or wtf the final number ends up, I realize not all the CA votes have been counted, it’ll still an awful drop in Biden-to-Harris votes) voters who didn’t come out this time.
Why? If enough of them had (for whatever reasons), we wouldn’t be passing along our increasingly stale hot takes on the election.
GOTV comes in many flavors, making sure our people can vote is one. Another is making sure people like the one you describe get to the polls or get an absentee ballot, etc.
It just dawned on me that one reason why the GOP might have been opposing vote-by-mail so strongly is precisely because of this. One hot take on Biden’s victory was the Covid-induced vote-by-mail. With that largely gone, here we are.
That being said, here in CO we have probably the most voter-friendly-easier-than-anything vote by mail or turn nationally and we had 69% turnout, down from 87% in 2020.
Tony G
Nobody is forcing people to watch/listen-to Fox News, OAN, etc. That is what people want to see and hear. Stupid people want stupid media.
TBone
@Omnes Omnibus: thank you.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: For me, he has a strong resemblance to Ramsey Bolton in Game Of Thrones. And we know how he ended up.
Another Scott
@Baud: My Virginia state senator, Scott Surovell, might be someone like that. He’s amazing.
There are lots of good people out there working for us every day.
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@WereBear: “showbizzed”
One would think that Americans of all people would glom onto this better. Sure as The Apprentice helped propel the unspeakable into the White House the first time, seems they don’t.
WereBear
@MagdaInBlack: Too bad, as liberals, we can’t come up with a similar theme.
I’d never starve a dog.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve decided the outcome of the elections is the fault of the voters. There could be many sources of that vote. Malice, lack of empathy, what the nuns used to call “vincible ignorance.” But on the whole, this is who the American voter is.
WereBear
@prostratedragon: That would shake their belief in fantasies, which is — so often — all they have in the way of comfort and joy.
It reminds me of how the fire and brimstone churches of my youth slashed at every avenue of pleasure except potluck. One way or another, you had to come to them for any pleasure allowed.
VFX Lurker
She stated that white voters chose Trump in 2016 as a referendum on Barack Obama, and they voted for him again in 2024 as a referendum on women. As a white woman, I’m interested in her follow-up on complicit white women voters, too.
TBone
@narya: I admire your consommé effort.
tobie
@nickdag: @@mistermix.bsky.social: I’m not sure how rosy things are in Mexico. Sheinbaum’s trying to take over the courts so there will be no restraint on her power. Her gamut may work. She has Putin’s backing. She will work well with Trump, whom she wasted no time in congratulating on his victory. Her predecessor AMLO waited 6 weeks to congratulate Biden, so the rush had nothing to do with the US-Mexico trade relation. I see Sheinbaum’s victory mostly as an extension of BRICS.
Here’s an OpEd on Sheinbaum’s spat with the current (Biden appointed) US Ambassador in Mexico.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4942231-under-its-new-president-mexicos-foreign-policy-heads-down-dangerous-path/
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: steady diet of Russian (and other autocrat) propaganda didn’t help.
tobie
@sab: You are very kind.
Phylllis
I’m going to conditionally agree with this. Education received three pots of COVID response funds, ESSER I, II, and III with III being the largest amount. ESSER I & II met most folks needs and did a lot to help with education recovery. ESSER III was the biggest pot of money and we were still spending it through September of this year. I’ll be honest with you, many districts found themselves looking for ways to spend out the funds, because they didn’t want to get caught with a lot of ‘extra’ employees for whom there was no realistic path to getting picked up in the regular budget.
Baud
@sab:
I didn’t correct you. This is the first I heard of the rumor.
Ksmiami
@CaseyL: I actually agree with you on so many levels. It’s an unmanageable nation at the scale we are reaching.
Another Scott
@TBone: Google broke something in Chrome on Windows to cause that behavior. It doesn’t happen on Chrome on Linux and in some other browsers (FIrefox on Windows, I think).
Presumably they’ll fix it in a coming update.
HTH!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Phylllis:
Libs pushed that because they believed Obama went too small.
TBone
@Another Scott: thanks but does that apply to using Duck Duck Go on a Samsung dumbphone? I have no idea because I’m a true techno dinosaur. I think Duck Duck Go might be tied in with Google somehow but am not looking that up today…
I went outside to touch grass and noticed a crap ton of tiny wild strawberries…In November…In central Pennsylvania
ETA Your response DID help. I feel seen!
Geminid
@Another Scott: I’m hoping Rep. Don Beyer will retire after this term. That would hive Scott Surivel a chance to move up.
A very promising young politician is moving from the Virginia State Senate to Congress this year. That would be 37 year-old Suhas Subramanyam, who will take 10th CD Rep. Jennifer Wexton’s place.
Baud
@dc:
I’ve seen him speak. He’s a good communicator.
Baud
@Baud:
Libs also pushed for student loan relief, which created resentment but didn’t earn as much credit.
Geminid
@dc: I think Jeff Jackson was the first U.S. Representative I eversaw described as a “Thirst Trap.”
Citizen Alan
@MagdaInBlack: i don’t know what it’s going to take to get women to understand what’s at stake, when republican influencers like nick fuentes and elon musk are basically openly talking about raping women.
TBone
@Caustictity.acerbity: goddamn.
I don’t know how to say it any other way than I truly want to slap that woman silly.
I don’t know how to get through to Teh Stoopid, it burns!
TBone
@WereBear: 🎯
oldgold
@PsiFighter37: 1) “He should have never appointed Merrick Garland as AG.”
I agree. Like Mueller, he dithered. The coup trial should have occurred before the 22 election.
2) “His fiscal stimulus was far too large. ‘
Yes, but the Feds 20 -21 monetary policy was more to blame.
3) “Democrats need to prioritize economic issues.”
Absolutely! As I said earlier today, as much as anything, this election was lost in grocery checkout lanes. More generally, the fruit of our economy needs to be shared more equitably. This should be our emphasis.
4) “The principled conservatives who supported Harris and have been Never Trumpers are, at heart, people who have the best interests of the country at heart. But this election should put to rest that we need to pander to their interests.”
Yes, the pool was too shallow for the emphasis that was placed on it.
Melancholy Jaques
This may be a surprise to those of us who travel in Democratic circles – and I mean me more than anyone else. But if you talk to voters who are normie, not MAGA, and not really all that Republican, you definitely hear almost nothing good about Democrats or the Democratic Party. Some of this is not our fault, some of it is. We have to work harder on the part that is.
There is a right-wing media system that is much more than FOX, Sinclair, right-wing radio, and podcasts that spends all day every day blaming Democrats & liberals for everything that pisses anyone off. This includes not just things like taxes & inflation, but every discomfort or inconvenience from pushing 1 for English to child proof caps to not being able to say the N word, the R word, or other insults that apparently enriched their lives.
At the same time, Democrats do not have any media system; we spend most of our time talking to each other. Obviously, we need more Democratic billionaires who want to create a Democratic media empire. But failing that we need to develop some way of making sure that people understand the benefits that Democrats bring to society.
pajaro
I don’t like the job that Garland did, but the idea that, if he had only moved faster, Trump would be behind bars, is just fantasy. On the documents case, DOJ didn’t even have the case until Trump ignored the efforts of the National Archives, and the efforts to get Trump to voluntarily comply were necessary to make the prosecution an obstruction case. With a decent judge, the case would have been concluded well before the election.
As to the Jan. 6th prosecution, I agree fully that the delay was unjustifiable, but disagree completely that if he had moved a year sooner, that it would be over now. There are at least two more sets of appeals that the Supreme Court could have taken to delay things, which you must all know that would have been willing to do. And Garland is not responsible at all for the fact that the legal system in New York failed to pronounce a sentence months after the conviction of Trump, or that the state systems in Georgia and Michigan have moved so slowly with their election interference.
This was a system-wide failure, in which state political figures, state judges, federal judges, and Trump appointees deserve blame, as well as Garland.
RevRick
@Omnes Omnibus: My parents were in Berlin and witnessed it.
Quinerly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I purged people in my circle Thurs night who were Harris supporters but making excuses for their Trumpist friends and families. Granted a bottle of Costco red wine fueled my rage. I felt a little childish yesterday. Today, I am back to anger and am glad. Done with people who make excuses for these people. This is my nature and the wine had nothing to do with it.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@tobie: I’m not expert on Mexican politics but it is not hard to imagine why Sheinbaum would buck US foreign policy. Mexico is the mouse trying to keep from being squashed by the elephant. An editorial at The Hill needs to be viewed with extreme skepticism.
Juju
@MagdaInBlack: I didn’t know who that was, but he was awful. I wasn’t prepared either. My guess is he’s going to find it even more difficult to get a date. I wouldn’t let him near my dogs, let alone any female who dates men. He is the definition of repugnant or repulsive, or both. I’m glad I’m too old to be of interest, to the point of almost being completely invisible. I can continue to work for the rights of women and girls unnoticed.
Starfish
@Tony G: This is not aligned with reality. When the TV in your car dealership, your doctor’s office, and the bar are sitting on fox news, most people are not going to ask for that to be changed, especially if they think the people around them like it.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Starfish: The last part of her video was a long discussion of how women need to build community to protect themselves from Trumpism.
Starfish
@Another Scott: It is broken on Chrome on Mac too.
dc
@Geminid:
What is a thirst trap?
Quinerly
@Baud:
I am beginning to think Obama was a fluke. I don’t think he could win now. The landscape and the media has changed tremendously since 2008.
Baud
@Quinerly:
You could say anyone was a fluke. Every president is a product of their times.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Quinerly: I’m contemplating changing hairdressers because I know mine voted for Trump.
Lyrebird
@Baud: @Omnes Omnibus: @Bex:
Hear, hear.
About Missouri and that TNR snippet, is the author JUST NOW noticing that Democrats have to hide in many parts of this country? Did they keep wax in their ears for the past few administrations? Not sure what else I can say there, I will just get too angry.
I anticipate many bad things, and I am glad TNR person gave Kunce some credit, but I think we’ve gotta celebrate our wins, too! Did y’all notice that the MO Sen race was not called until FRIDAY? That’s a got dam miracle imo, Bersin would have a more informed opinion.
Quinerly
@Baud:
From what I am reading, the student loan relief earned us no credit and actually may have hurt us.
3Sice
@oldgold:
The market dynamics hitting the traditional grocery+pharmacy are those that took departments stores under. Market segmentation is squeezing the margins. For consumers that are locked in to those retailers by geography or habit, it’s going to get worse.
tobie
@@mistermix.bsky.social: The comments the US Ambassador made had nothing to do with US trade policy or foreign policy. It had to do with Sheinbaum’s autocratic move to take over the judiciary in Mexico a la Victor Orban. I will be watching what Sheinbaum does. Maybe my fears regarding her are unfounded, but her effort to take over the judiciary and her warm relations with Putin make me skeptical.
taumaturgo
@The Audacity of Krope:
Finally, some welcome honesty and a breakthrough of the bubble. Putting an end to the pretence of being a D to become a full fledge R.
Quinerly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh, I would change in a heart beat. That’s my nature. I am very generous and try to do right by people. But I have a very mean streak thru me. I also am very tribal. And, I will cut my nose off to spite my face.
Right now I am snapping at a friend who is religious. Harris supporter. Very liberal. But she is doing all this praying. Lots of praying….immigrants, wildlife, our national parks, women, LGBT…..praying, praying, praying. Posting about it, texting me. Tripped my trigger when she said she was praying for her Trump friends to see the light. I am on the verge of telling her that it actually says something about her values and morals for having so many Trumpists in her life.
Yes, childish on my part. But these are NOT family members. She wants to be friends with everybody. Something like 3000 friends on FB. Never pushes back on Trump shit. I will say this…one of her best friends…lifelong friend…is Larry Hagman’s daughter. Yes, that Larry Hagman. The daughter pushes back with some righteous rants. I enjoy reading those.
Geminid
@dc: Someone really “easy on the eyes.” I think the expression was coined fairly recently.
I remember an evening thread here that featured some video of Rep. Jackson. At one point a commenter called Jackson a “thirst trap.” I think it may have been a woman.
I thought that was funny, but I could see see the attraction.
Kayla Rudbek
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m probably going to switch hair salons because I’m thinking that the owner may have voted for Trump
Quinerly
@Geminid:
My yard guy, Bogart, who looks like Pacino in Serpico is very easy on the eyes.
As I say in these situations, “I am not a cougar. I’m an ocelot.”
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: I think you should test some populist themes. Like how you intend to wrest control of the Cranberry Caucus from Katherine Clark.
Quinerly
@Baud:
Deep thoughts.
Chief Oshkosh
@PsiFighter37:
I know Sally Yates through friends of friends. Bumped into her at DC National one time. She told me point blank she wasn’t interested in the job at that point. I don’t know if she was offered and turned it down, but more likely she wasn’t offered it and was speaking hypothetically.
Melancholy Jaques
Two responsive comments.
The yv_edit video is very good. I think men, including liberal men who voted for Harris, need to give it a listen and careful consideration. This is something we men need to talk about between each other.
Michael Tomasky is correct that “The Democratic brand is garbage in wide swaths of the country,” but the Republican brand and especially MAGA is detested in swaths that may not be as wide, but they are densely populated. (Fuck the senate and the electoral college!) When Republicans lose, the entire political media doesn’t lecture them to stop being racist & misogynist, they lecture Democrats that they need to “reach out” to the people who hate them.
I am going to limit my post-election internet to this humble place because the know-it-alls and told-you-sos of the political media are just too much.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
It’s not Democrats that need trashing, per se (although there are some valid criticisms).
It’s the garbage people who elected Trump in spite of what they knew and/or or because they were too damned lazy to inform themselves.
Case in point:
That’s from the Now-Shitty-Site-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.
RevRick
@tobie:
@Baud: Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay on Ur-fascism observed that one of the hallmarks of fascism is a preference for action over thought. Disagreement is, in fascist regimes, considered heresy, which must be ruthlessly suppressed. Which is why all fascist regimes eventually resort to bulldozers and bullets.
Not surprisingly, fascist regimes celebrate a hypermasculine culture, with a corresponding contempt for the feminine, and cultivate a cult of the hero (a death cult).
We Democrats are cursed with an incessant need to dwell upon and chew over every nuance. And, as is always the case, every virtue becomes a vice when it’s pushed to the extreme. Hence, we beat ourselves up far too much.
After Romney’s defeat in 2012 the GOP under Michael Steele conducted an autopsy and promptly dumped its conclusions. Instead, they doubled down.
I would be the last to say let’s chuck healthy debate. But the pain is too immediate. We need to give ourselves a little grace.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Ya think?
Giving this one a big pass.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s another version of “Hillary was a Goldwater Girl!” Sure. I will once again point people to go read the work of Marcy Wheeler, Allison Gill, Barb McQuade, Joyce White Vance and others who at the time, documented all the problems with these fantasy notions that Trump could have easily been prosecuted and convicted before the election. There are major and obvious problems will all of these fantasy scenarios/moves. Problems that could have easily jeopardized any possibility of holding him accountable. All the short-cuts and alternate approaches Garland haters have taken as dogma, had downsides that would have opened up opportunities for him to get them all thrown out on appeal. There is no reason to believe they somehow would have magically gotten through the same legal labyrinth that includes MAGA Circuit/Appeals Courts and SCOTUS. If you believe that, you are a fucking idiot.
Ruckus
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Our brand is tarnished. We need to accept that and do something to change it.
Our brand is tarnished because the opposition tarnished it, not because we did. What we have to do is live through another shitforbrains debacle and learn to move on and not attempt to play their game of bullshit politics. We have to sell better. Our opposition sells bullshit about who and what they are. Because they have NOTHING ELSE.
We cannot take that road. That road turns us into them. What we did this go round was to just play the nice guys routine. We have to show a majority that what they are selling is bullshit, pure and simple. We tried to sell nice, we tried to be nice, while they played like going low was the best way. We have to show what they are selling is dragging history back a very long time to a very shitty era. And if we don’t do this we will not win, because they have the momentum. They will lose the shitforbrains momentum if he continues to dissolve, which he will because his is rapidly aging out. But they have worse (and younger) waiting in the wings.
Chief Oshkosh
@Tony G: This is true, but maybe not for the reasons we assume.
There was and is an awful lot of money, time, and effort devoted to understanding human psychology and behavior. For a long time, “Madison Avenue” paid top dollar to people who were expert in understanding both and in developing ways to use that understanding to attain their goals (e.g., selling more dish soap).
Along about 1974, a lot of bidness people, and rich people (not always the same) figured that they should steal a page from the ad boys, only now their goal was autocracy.
And here we are.
Never underestimate the power of having a lot of money and the power was wanting more power and money.
rikyrah
Will continue to say this..
. others have come to this country and WORKED
they have never had to FIGHT for anything in this country
Oh Well….😒😒
Chris Johnson
I’m listening to yv_edit’s take and WOOF. I haven’t got a damn thing to say by way of argument. Nothing I did was able to stop the Nick Fuentes of the world from grabbing a victory. It’s reductionist to the point of playing into the takes of an obvious troll… to the point where it’s hard to distinguish her from yet another troll working to wreck America with a thousand cuts and a thousand hot takes ping-ponging back and forth forever… and I still don’t have a damn thing to say.
If she’s planted there to further the disaster, she is calling out a REAL problem and the brush she tars men with is 100% descriptive of a significant chunk of ’em. Because the guy she highlights is absolutely a troll in his own right, and will not get better ever.
Woof. That was a lot.
steve g
Do people understand that the popular vote was 51% to 48%? That is like a basketball score of 102-96. It is a clear defeat, but it is not a wipe out.
In 1984 Reagan won the popular vote by 18%, and won every state except Minnesota. That is a wipe out. The Dems did manage to retain control of the House at the same time.
Citizen Alan
@Quinerly: i will go much further. I am now absolutely certain that Obama could not have won in 2008 nor been re-elected in 2012, if john mccain and/or mitt romney had been willing to embrace open and unabashed racism against him. I did not have much use for John McCain, but I will give him props for the way he gently but firmly told that woman, “no Barack Obama is not a Kenyan marxist terrorist. He is a good family man who I just disagree with about politics.” Mitt romney never had a moment like that, but except for some flirtations with birtherism, i never got the feeling that he wanted to actively appeal to the racist vote.
Trump adores racist and bigots, and that is why they adore him.
taumaturgo
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Not only did she win with over 36 millions vote, besting AMLO as the presidential candidate with the most votes ever. Speaking of AMLO, he is an example of pristine moral authority which for the complete trajectory of his political career his policies have been the same all along. No sticking a finger up in the air and adjusting your positions according. People knew where he stood in the past, where he was at the moment and where he wanted to lead the country. Can we honestly at any of our party leaders that fit the above description? I can’t.
Sheinbaum has been AMLO’s pupil and her election is a resounding approval of AMLO’s job as president, and a continuation of his political mantra, “for the good of all, the poor first.”
Betsy
I am still trying to find the YouTube or Tik-Tok or twitter feminist that one of the front pagers featured in a post a few months ago. She had several bits on how men are the submissive sex – in the sense of needing to understand who dominates who.
Was it you, mistermix, who featured her?
UncleEbeneezer
@sab: So how do you explain this?:
This DOJ has been leaning into stuff like this in a way that even Obama’s DOJ didn’t. Aggressively protecting Abortion Rights, Voting Rights, LGBTQ Rights, Workers’ Rights etc. You know, the complete fucking opposite of everything the Federalist Society believes in…
Also, Trump was indicted and was queued up to have a Federal, criminal trial that was supposed to start in March of this year. The only reason it never happened is because 1.) SCOTUS delayed and gave him partial immunity and 2.) American voters re-elected him.
People need to stop pointing fingers at DOJ and place the blame where it belongs; on us!
Citizen Alan
@Quinerly: Certainly, it did not help us. Given the fact that we were unable to achieve it because of republican intransigence, Manchester, and SCROTUS, our focus on the issue angered the people who wanted relief but couldn’t get it and infuriated the people there were resentful that they either paid off all their student loans or never went to college in the first place. My sister got a master’s degree in the 1980s, which she paid off herself, and she was spitting mad at the thought of student loan forgiveness.
PSpain
In Spain Sanchez survived the 2023 elections but came in second in the voting to the PP. 33.1% to 31.7% for the PSOE his party. It took 5 months after the July elections for him to form a new Government after the PP failed to form one. Not a great example of a post covid winner.
taumaturgo
@PSpain: In a way, Sanchez is Spain’s democrat. Campaigning as a lefty liberal and governing from the center as a DINO. This is a losing combination.
Quinerly
@Citizen Alan:
I think you are right.
dc
@Citizen Alan:
I do not understand that resentment, at all. The amount of the targeted loans had been repaid more than once over and lenders have made their profit. As I understand it, the loan forgiveness would include community college and trade education. It’s like resenting no fault divorce because it didn’t exist when you had to jump through a hundred legal hoops to get yours.
Baud
@dc:
1. They resent everything that they feel someone else is getting. A lot of Republicans resent cities because they’re constantly being told that cities get all their tax money, when it’s the other way around.
2. In fairness, a one-time debt forgiveness is not the same as permanently changing the rules of the game
ETA: The bigger political point is that Dems didn’t get apparent political credit or goodwill for their efforts.
Quinerly
@steve g:
3 pts….basically the margin of error in the polls.
She out performed Biden’s approval rating by 8 pts. I was reading the other day that incumbent parties pretty much land at their approval rating in an election. See Carter’s approval rating in 1980 vs what his vote percentage was. See Bush’s approval rating in 2008 vs what McCain’s vote percentage was.
JoyceH
For decades in the red states, voters have heard “Democrats are…” and the GOP slanderous characterization. And really nothing much else. Democrats need to rebuild from the county level up. In my red county in Virginia, the county Dems have an info booth at the Saturday farmers market, talking to people and letting them know what Democratic policies really are. And that’s the level to push back on Republican positions. It may sound sensible to say that parents should get to decide what their kids read – but in practice what has been happening is that the nuttiest parent in the school system and sometimes activists who don’t even live here are exercising veto power on what the kids read. How is that empowering parents? It’s empowering crackpots. For decades Republicans have slandered Democrats as extremists – and now their own extremists have the bit between their teeth. Push back on that.
Baud
@JoyceH:
That’s great. I think, if possible, we should not only explain our views but explain why people shouldn’t trust the misleading Republican criticism of us and our views. We need to arm people we clarify our views to how to think about the negative stuff they’re hearing from the other side.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: yep. And further they seem to no appreciation or understanding of the struggles of the 20th century America for freedom and equality. I’m over it. If the Hispanic men don’t understand what true solidarity is, they can cry when their families are deported. I’m so over it.
Phylllis
I got my college degree in the 80’s and paid off my student loans on my own. I was/am not spitting mad at the idea of others getting relief, because I know the system for student loans has changed from one that was predominantly government-based with very low interest rates to a privatized, predatory system. Also lucky enough to finish college before tuition went through the stratosphere. Fucking facts, how do they work?
Starfish
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I think we have already started with checking in on our communities.
But this time around, the communities will probably be smaller and hopefully more useful.
The “Women’s March” was a large organization that could not meaningfully ground itself in issues that were relevant to all parts of the US. There were all sorts of divisions, some created by the “look at these bozos dressed like vaginas” nonsense, that Republicans were doing. But some of it was focusing on issues that were not relevant to a place.
For example, Colorado has a tendency to break away from larger women’s organizations when they create circular firing squads around trans-rights. We tend to support trans-rights in a way that other places are not necessarily comfortable with.
JoyceH
@Baud: And I think a great response to people who say they support Trump because he said he’d do this or that thing is “he also said numerous times that children are undergoing sex change operations in their schools, against their will and without their parents permission or approval. Do you believe that? Do you believe your school where the teacher buys classroom supplies out of her own pocket has an operating room? Do you believe the same school that needs you to sign a permission slip for your child to play a sport would operate on that child without permission? No, of course nobody believed that, it’s Trump Being Trump. But if you don’t believe this thing that he said frequently, why do you believe anything else he says?”
Baud
@Phylllis:
You’re a better person than most, but we need a majority. That requires keeping resentment to a minimum or getting more voters to thank us for the good we do, or both.
JoyceH
@Phylllis: I too repaid my own student loans from the 1970s. It was $5k at 2%, deferred for four years because I joined the military. I paid it off in a few years and while I was paying it off, the monthly payment was a tiny fraction of my car payment and certainly didn’t prevent me from buying a house. Today’s students have incurred crushing debt so that they’re paying the equivalent of a good sized mortgage payment from the moment they enter the workforce. It’s NOTHING like our student loan experience.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Melancholy Jaques:
This is another infuriating example of deja vu all over again. I’ve been hearing this same crapola for the last 25 years.
We need to better reach out to the ‘gettables’ and that’s where we oftentimes step on the proverbial rake, like this time. If I had *the* answer to that, I’d be rich.
Baud
Of course, as Suzanne points out, it doesn’t help that many non-college educated whites really resent college educated people.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Baud:
It may have done real damage to the Dem brand, which I can attest to directly. At an intellectual level I understood and supported it. But at an emotional level, it enraged me and if I were not already a committed Dem it could easily have tipped me over into hating Democrats and wanting to see them destroyed.
This is because when my kids went thru college we had difficulty with the loan process and ending up getting nothing. I put all of my kids thru college paying for it in full, straight out of my weekly paycheck. We had to make some severe cutbacks in personal spending to do so, especially when some of those costs ballooned more than we had expected & planned for.
We cut back on almost everything to get thru the resulting financial squeeze, including food. At one point for a few months I was myself only eating one and a half meals per day (and very cheap ones at that) and experienced significant food insecurity & malnutrition while losing 30% of my body weight.
We did that to get thru a brief period of financial hardship while giving our kids the best education we could scrape up enough money to pay for.
So when student loan relief became a major issue with a lot of lobbying by the online left (including horseshoe left accelerationists and tankies), hearing comfortable upper middle class hipsters with very expensive educations (that we could not afford) and incomes now well above mine prattle on about it endlessly, was enraging. I could have cheerfully killed some of those people.
Again, if I had not already been solidly anchored in the Democratic Party and liberal causes, that would have been a breaking point for me, and one leaving a deep residue of bitterness & anger towards the people who lobbied for and got loan relief and the party which gave it to them.
That is only a single anecdotal data point from one family’s experience, so I don’t know if it should be extrapolated from. But it shows how even good policy choices by Dems can fall flat or even backfire with an electorate which broadly benefits from them.
I think the broader lesson here is that Dems need better branding, and then need to run on that brand rather than on the details of policies.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Phylllis:
Similar situation. Got out of grad school in 85 with some loans but nothing burdensome. But Reagan and the GOP laid the groundwork for what we’d see in terms of costs for higher ed even in 1985. And over the next generation, it sure as hell came to pass. I was pissed off about it in 1985.
And didn’t begrudge *any* college student’s loan forgiveness. People who experiences what we did but saw the writing on the wall early on who opposed cancelling student loan debt, well that’s just another painful example of IGMFY. And I have *zero* tolerance for those people.
Of course anybody with student loan debt who voted for Hair Furor this time around, I’d gladly put that loan ball and chain around their neck again.
AWOL
@Caustictity.acerbity: Stupidity = Evil. It’s what Evil relies upon.
Starfish
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: My impression of the college loan relief was it was designed to help the people who were still in poverty and possibly got education at the type of scam colleges that Democrats are trying to get rid of.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
I’d like to see more than just anecdotal comments on that subject.
I mean I saw that first hand in an indirect way when back in Central Misery, namely when my red, rurl neighbors would say “well, those experts don’t really know what they’re talking about”.
“Experts” were always college edumacated. The thing is, the people saying that, again anecdotal, were all older and I get the sense that when somebody trots out the “non-educated whites resent educated (read college) educated people” trope, they’re referring to a (white) cadre of much younger voters.
And were those much younger, white, non-college educated voters, influenced by whatever quality of K-12 edumacation they might have had? We always talk about the general ‘dumbing down’ of the ‘Mukin electorate, ie., an ignorant population is easier controllable, thus, I wonder if these references to “white resentment” aren’t a product of that. Combined with what we’ve talked about quite a bit since Tuesday, how/what media influences they fall under.
The more I ponder on this, the more I come back to Cole’s take on this: white people voted tribal and in more numbers this time.
eemom
@UncleEbeneezer:
FFS, none of that is any excuse for Garland not doing his fucking job, promptly, in the first instance.
His job was to pursue justice, and the fact that there are systemic obstacles to obtaining justice has fuck all to do with the fact that he did NOT do his job. The reason for that was that he’s a chickenshit coward, plain and simple.
My heart aches for Jack Smith, who gave it his all.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The only data I have is the drastic split in the white vote in this election between Harris and Trump based on voter education level.
TBone
A great wonkette read for the stout of heart about the court cases of Donold.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ugh-i-guess-we-should-talk-about
Baud
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I’ve heard similar things said about legal immigrants who are trying to bring family over and asylum seekers who are allowed to enter.
You’re a good soul.
AWOL
@Steve LaBonne:
I’d also argue that everyone must fact-check before posting and how important clear language is.
Most new people who come across this blog know what “Trump” means. “TFG” or “TTIFG” or “Two Scoops” is confusing, and no one is going to consult a BJ glossary—they’ll just go for input elsewhere. Saying “Shicklegruber” instead of “Hitler” didn’t save an innocent soul. If you can’t name your enemies, you can’t fight them.
No one knows what “antifa” is; my father went to Europe to vacation from 1942-1946 to be an anti-fascist in the the US Army-Air Forces, who were engaged in battling two-thirds of the Axis, led by Hitler.
Orwell’s writings on language and its usage are still relevant, and he always insisted on clarity.
Not tone policing, nor stepping on some clever toes. Instead, it’s obvious no one’s receiving, so we need to speak LOUDER and c-l-e-a-r-e-r.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@PsiFighter37: Obama got punished for people not feeling good enough in 2010 because they went with a smaller stimulus. I know the situations aren’t exactly the same(COVID,ACA) but it doesn’t seem like you can make people happy.
I don’t think any of this matters. People on the left have been screaming about having a LW media ecosphere for twenty years. Reid Hoffman is a billionaire but he can’t spare some pocket change for LW radio and teevee. George Clooney is a billionaire as well but can’t spare a million for LW podcasts and news websites. The Salesforce guy(name escapes me) is another billionaire but against can’t spare a million for cheap LW media training/media websites. All while, the Kochs alone spend 100s of million dollars on maintaining a RW ecosphere. Muskrar spent $44B on twitter. The Uleins, Paul Singer, Thiel spend a shitload of money for this stuff.
Meanwhile the RW dominates radio. I mentioned this before and i saw a couple of responses that Air America failed and the lefties don’t listen to radio. That’s not the point. The point is there are thousands of people who driving is part of their job and they listen to radio every day where they can have 4-5 RW radio stations and 3-4 religious RW stations and absolutely zero LW radio to respond to the misinformation pumped out by the RW channels. Do you really think listening to this poison several hours 5×week doesn’t affect people’s political opinions?
Van Buren
Looking forward to the advice we’ll be getting in 2028 not to throw it in people’s faces what a disaster the last 4 years have been because that would be divisive.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
This. The pain is too immediate, and once we’re through the worst of the pain, we’ve got to figure out what we’ll need to do and how to do it in this very different timeline than the one we expected to find ourselves in.
We’ll have plenty of time to do post-mortems on this election before the next election. A year from now would be plenty soon enough, and we’ll have battles to fight in the meantime.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Starfish:
Yes, the policy as actually implemented did a good job of that I think.
But what was for me at a purely emotional level a dangerous potential tipping point, was the lobbying for loan relief prior to it being implemented as policy. And that, especially on Twitter, was spearheaded by some very comfortable upper middle class young people who obviously had gotten Ivy League or equivalent educations and now had well paying jobs.
In terms of branding, this was the “Limousine Liberal” problem from the 1970s all over again. If you have people lobbying for a policy that are obviously very well off, it can be hard to brand that policy as something for the working class & the poor regardless of the actual details of that policy. Because whoever is yelling most loudly in favor of that policy, their class background will rub off on the policy.
That is fundamentally stupid and I recognized at the time that my own emotional reaction was irrational & inappropriate. But irrationality is important in politics and Dems are I think really bad at recognizing that and following thru on the implications of it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/interactive-how-key-groups-of-americans-voted-in-2024-according-to-ap-votecast
Okay, that one doesn’t break down “college educated whites” per se, it simply breaks down along “college vs non-college” and if you look at 20 and 24, there is essentially little difference.
If you look at that data sort from the race side, again, there’s little difference between 20 and 24.
This site looks at 24 from a gender/education combo:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2024/11/08/men-and-white-people-vote-differently-based-education
And the differences are, as many have noted, stark. But what I always go back to is how is that any different than in 2020?
And this piece highlights exactly that:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/the-biggest-predictor-of-how-someone-will-vote/index.html
And that always at least at this early stage, always leads me back to the drop off numbers Biden/Harris.
Gretchen
I met some Trumpers last weekend who were unbelievably ignorant. My friend kept bringing up terrible things Trump had said and done, and they were all “really? Are you sure? I haven’t heard that”. The woman vaguely thought that that our young, female Congressional rep used to be a bartender, obviously confusing her with some Fox News slam of AOC. The professional knowers of things think we hurt ourselves having AOC speak at the convention, while this bozo doesn’t even know that AOC isn’t her own representative. She has watched every episode of Golden Bachelor, though, and knows how that turned out. I have no idea how you combat that.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Instgram and Threads are on fire right now with pe who apparently voted for Trump getting hurt or angry about people / authors they follow discussing how bad Trumps election is and the Trump voters saying thing like “can’t we keep politics out of our book discussions and make this a safe space for all opinions “ umm yeah no. Also love the ones who say there’s no political messages in books. What the actual fuck
Aussie Sheila
@oldgold:
Agree. The appetite for fiscally conservative, socially liberal policies is close to zero everywhere.
FWIW, I think inflation plus the terrible media environment at the moment plus Garland’s inexcusable dithering came together in a perfect storm.
It has been a defeat, but looking more closely, not really the wipeout that people have been saying.
I’m confident that people will rally once they have recovered from the crazy work of the last six months, and I’m also confident that the trump team won’t be able to half of what they promised. The deportation boast is just that imo. Will they go after illegal immigrants who are arrested and parade them in front of the cameras?
Of course.
And if people think Biden juiced the economy too much, wait till trumps team get on the job. It’s going to be soaring asset prices toot sweet for his real backers and supporters.
A determined opposition and a clearer view of what went wrong after all the dust settles will help.
Above all I would caution against ‘Democrats were too socially liberal’ takes. Social liberalism doesn’t really bother people too much if they feel personally economically ok. When they don’t, the number of scapegoats rise and rise until everyone loses track of them.
The anti trans scapegoating has been terrible. It was tried here in 2022 and went nowhere, because people sensibly understood that the government was a Conservative, male dominated government with no trans people whatsoever in the Cabinet.
Cheers
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
Not only that, they spend craptons of money that’s developed a system modeled after Big Tobacco and the opioid ‘industry’ to promote many neoliberal economic issues that are, unfortunately, pushed by many nominally progressive voters.
Geminid
@oldgold: Biden and his first Congress did some very good work on “economic issues” when they passed the Infrastructure bill, the CHIPS+ act, and the IRA bill. I thought they laid the foundation for a strong national economy for the rest of this decade and into the next.
There was a political problem, though: Americans have only begun to see the effects. The CHIPS and IRA bills in particlar were complex pieces of legislation. With the CHIPS, bill it took the Commerce Department over a year to write specifications for proposals, evaluate them and award funding.
These federal grants are expected to stimulate over $2 trillion in private investment and create scores of thousands of well paid jobs. But the bill was passed in July of 2022 and they only started breaking ground for these chip factories this year, the second half I think. There are construction jobs right now but the permanent workers won’t be drawing paychecks until next year at the earliest.
I’m not faulting anyone for this because like I said, this was complex legislation with a lot riding on it, and it had to be implemented carefully and deliberately.
The process was not much faster with the IRA bill passed a month later, August of 2022. Battery, hydrolyzer and other factories encouraged by the IRA are finally operating now, but there will many more operating two years from now.
Congress passed the Infrastructure bill in November of 2021, three years ago. Congress could have passed the bill six months sooner, but that’s a long story best not told at this particular time. Anyway, plenty of Infrastructure bill projects have started now and some have been completed, but many of them are multi-year projects.
For instance, there’s a rail tunnel underneath the Hudson River that’s getting $10 billion of Infrastructure bill funding, but the money gets spread out over 10 years because it will take that long to build the tunnel.
When the tunnel is completed we’ll have eliminated a major bottlenack in East Cost rail transportation, and the resulting efficiencies will benefit the U.S. economy and people for decades to come. Just not now though, and that is the political problem with these bills generally. They will benefit Americans greatly in the medium and long term, but they haven’t so much in short term.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gretchen:
You can’t and we shouldn’t try. We have that still-indeterminate millions who decided to sit at home last Tuesday for whatever reasons. That’s a block of voters that was gettable four years ago for whatever reasons. We need to find out those reasons and act on em.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: It absolutely did. It didn’t have to. No leftward move was unpunished by the leftists for not being far enough.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
COVID scared the shit out of them.
Same thing with the 2008 housing market collapse & financial crisis
Going back further, the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Low information sporadic voters get motivated to pay attention during an acute crisis. A slow moving crisis does not do it, and the threat which Trumps poses to American prosperity, security & freedom is at least for now of the latter kind.
trollhattan
@Gretchen: It’s gruesomely obvious folks either do not follow politics, policy, governance at all, or do so by choosing to be spoonfed it in a fashion that both makes them feel kitteny happy with the chosen saviors and mad-angry at those “responsible” for every bad thing they see and feel.
Facts schmacts, that wall can not be broken through.
Another Scott
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: i think Biden understood from the beginning the importance of the issues of fairness in federal student loan forgiveness. Schumer and Warren and a few others were pushing for a $50,000 cap, or no cap at all, and Biden kept saying No Way.
He was a moderating voice, always explained why this batch of forgiveness was approved (scam colleges; people in public service jobs who were in a program that promised their loans would be forgiven; need-based; etc.), how it wasn’t a blanket raiding of the Treasury.
He got little credit for it in the courts or the press, even though it was a lifesaver for many, many normal people.
I think most of the outrage was the usual Rovian “hit them on their strengths” stuff. Recognizing reality that the loans weren’t going to be paid off, or that the US Government was breaking its word by not doing so, or that the benefits of forgiveness were far, far greater than the cost to the Treasury, and it might make Biden more popular, meant that they had to attack it as some giant payoff to all the children of oligarchs… :-/
I understand the resentment of those who had to struggle to pay off giant loans, and recognize (but don’t agree with) Kay’s arguments that 1) it’s better for people to simply be able to declare bankruptcy on student loans (I disagree because bankruptcy is hugely disruptive for real people and generational fairness means that people shouldn’t be forced to do that for unaffordable education costs); 2) one-time forgiveness doesn’t do anything for those who come later (sure, but that’s a different issue, and forgiveness can help light a fire to address that issue sooner rather than later – but doing something good when possible is a good thing).
Fixing systems is always, in principle, better than tinkering. But fixing systems is very, very hard…
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: If Jim Webb hadn’t knocked Virginia Senator George Allen out in 2006, Allen could very possibly have been the Republican nominee in 2008. George Allen wouldn’t have been at all reluctant to embrace open and abashed racism against Obama.
That was pretty much Allen’s brand already. Had he not gotten tripped up by the reaction to Bush’s stupid Iraq war, Allen might have put together the reactionary coalition that Trump consolidated in 2016.
lowtechcyclist
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
I’m sure it does. That they’re willingly listening to hours of that crap and not listening to music of some sort instead tells me they’re well into unreachable territory. I doubt they’d spend 30 seconds listening to LW radio if such a thing existed.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Probably right. OTOH, lots of libs hate watch Fox.
Sally
@Baud: I don’t think this is correct, though I tremble to disagree with Baud! I think polls, referenda, social media and even media, clearly tell us that most Americans do agree with Democratic policies. It’s just that no one is interested in policy. Neither Republican policy, such as it is, nor Democratic policy. And people are stupid. People love the ACA, even at the same time hating ObamaCare. People don’t want their undocumented relatives or friends deported, just “others”. People want roads and bridges repaired, airlines sorted, manufacturing in the US, medicare, women’s health care, food stamps, social security, on and on. All Democratic policies and things Democrats have acted on throughout Biden’s term. As we, here, well know. And all policies Republicans routinely advocate dismantling. Too many voters seem to want to vote for hate and image more than the policies they want, and/or they operate under the delusion that those things won’t disappear under Republican regimes. Voters want these policies for themselves. Not for the people they hate. They aren’t sure how to engineer that, so they just vote for hate, and damn the torpedoes aimed at their heads and pocket books.
The media has focused relentlessly on the “Biden Crime Family”, without a word, a word, about trump family ties to the Saudis, Qataris, and what that means for foreign policy and national security. And Russia – how the entire Giuliani Hunter witch hunt was based on the Russian spy (now charged) Smirnoff (can’t make this up). Corrupt all his life Barr has been whitewashed. Not to mention “where are the missing files!!!” Which are hardly ever mentioned. I could go on, but won’t!
satby
@lowtechcyclist: Ok, since I have very recent experience of driving for 9 hours each day delivering cats to new homes, let’s talk about radio listening options. For large stretches of rural America it’s a limited, paltry selection of right wing religious twaddle, right wing talk, country music on right leaning stations (Lee Greenburg, not Beyonce, The Chicks, or Willie Jones), automated classic rock on Clear Channel stations, or static.
There’s no real “willing” about it if your options are that limited. And that goes for any local TV too. Assuming their church allows them to watch such frivolity. Isolation and propaganda work.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well, ah yep. That is a problem when our own side is demanding our politicians must be flawless saints or they will deny them their precious approval.
Maybe educating our own voters that is “the policy you want stupid, not your feelings”?
Gretchen
@Phylllis: I went to U-Michigan in the 70s and it was affordable enough that I could pay tuition with earnings from my summer job. My daughters went to U-Kansas 15 years ago and had $20,000 in loans despite summer and school-year jobs.
I got my master’s with free tuition and a stipend to live on, because the government wanted more scientists trained.
My daughter had over $100K in loans after getting an MPH. They were just forgiven after more than 10 years working in public interest jobs, because the Biden admin cleaned up the process so the forgiveness promised when she started was finally actually functional. I think she may have owed more after 10 years of paying than she did at start. The undergrad loans accrued interest the whole time she was in grad school. The idea of the promised forgiveness was that we as a society benefit from having people trained in public health, and science.
Like you say, facts, how do they work?
AM in NC
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I would change and tell her why. I can’t associate with someone who’s harming my family and every living thing on Earth. Sorry, but that’s a consequence of the choice you made. My choice is to take my business elsewhere.
These folks only feel penalty from the right. They need to know decent people won’t just turn a blind eye to their choices any more.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@UncleEbeneezer: The fact that he escaped justice for 4 years is an absolute indictment of our current judicial system.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Sally:
We only know about these things because of reporting by the media.
Steve LaBonne
@lowtechcyclist: Almost none of the finger-pointing is or will be relevant to the actual behavior of voters, and thus it will be useless, really worse than useless because demoralizing and divisive. But people will carry on regardless.
YY_Sima Qian
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Taiwan’s DPP government survived this Jan.‘s election only because the opposition split. There is strongly disillusionment w/ its economic policies not delivering enough material improvement for the working/middle class, too much of the wealth concentrated in the capital owning class, high housing prices, poor prospects for young new entrants in the job market, similar as everywhere else. There is increasing disenchantment w/ all of the political parties, especially among the young.
As I have mentioned in a couple other threads, Spains’s Left Wing government address Led COVID inflation at its root – “greedflation” by instituting price controls& heavily taxing profits, & so tamped down inflation w/o damaging rate hikes or fiscal retrenchment, & thus no recession. There are policy lessons there for the rest of the industrialized West.
slightly_peeved
@lowtechcyclist:
Also, the people presenting most of these takes are the same people surprised by the result.
If someone got the result wrong, why trust their immediate post-mortem as to why the result was wrong? They’re probably wrong on that too.
Wait, and think, and investigate, and then work out what to do next.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@slightly_peeved: this!
But honestly I think everyone can just take a break and let the new regime kill itself. They’re already fighting, because the capitalists need interest rates high as long as there is the spectre of inflation and the fascists want them cut because, hey, that’s how they won the election. Once Trump takes office, the combination of retrenchment in government spending plus the inflationary tariffs is going to create stagflation, and everything is going to spiral down from there.
so let’s take some time off. Cut the fascists out of your life, and stop feeling responsible. We just got outvoted by a lot of bad people. It’s horrible, but it’s not the fault of all the good everyone here has tried to do.
suffragette city
New Gingrich’s wet dream finally came true.
always thought he was a toxic human , and now we have Bannon
The Truffle
@Baud: maybe people should offer solutions. Like Tomasky. Any idea on how to use social media to our advantage?
Elections in NC show they now have a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, and AG. All positive signs even if…well, you know. Don’t count out any swing states even when they swing the wrong way.
Given the current results in Texas, I think we can finally abandon the fantasy that the state is “trending blue.”
The Truffle
@The Audacity of Krope: Minnesota and Michigan’s state government were able to make positive changes. Maybe your state Dems are different?