AP Race Call: Democrat Ruben Gallego has been elected Arizona's first Latino U.S. senator. pic.twitter.com/vmUrR5KKcw
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 12, 2024
Per the Washington Post:
… Gallego’s win reflects the steady rise of Democrats in a state that was reliably Republican until 2016. Although Trump is projected to have carried the swing state this election, Arizonans have rejected Trump-backed candidates in every statewide election since 2016…
Gallego, a Marine who saw combat in the Iraq War, joins Sen. Mark Kelly (D), another military veteran, as Arizona’s representatives in the Senate.
The Phoenix area congressman focused much of his campaign on his background as the son of a single immigrant mom, who grew up working class, attended Harvard, then served in the military. He will become the state’s first Latino senator.
Throughout the campaign, he positioned himself as a moderate in a state where longtime Republican Sen. John McCain was beloved for his reputation as a “maverick.” He has at times admonished the left for failing to connect with working class families and challenged them on issues such as military spending. He also called out Democrats for not doing enough to court Latino voters across the country.
Gallego all but declared victory on the night of the election as votes were still being counted, but he had a sizable lead. “While we’re still waiting for results to come in, I believe that when all those ballots are counted … a poor Latino boy who grew up sleeping on the floor, will be headed to the floor of the United States Senate,” he said.
Gallego’s win marks the end of a heated campaign against Lake, a polarizing hard-right candidate. Lake relentlessly attacked Gallego, baselessly speculating about the circumstances around his divorce and spotlighting the criminal past of Gallego’s long-estranged father. Republicans also sought to portray Gallego as a left-wing extremist, because he is a past member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has championed some more left-leaning policies.
Gallego attacked Lake for her previous support for a Civil War-era abortion law and emphasized that her position on abortion and on other issues was out of step with Arizonans. Arizona last week passed a proposition that will enshrine abortion access in the state…
Downballot Democrats performing just fine in swing states/districts suggests that people like Democrats and blame the president for inflation (like they keep telling us.)
— Shadow Of The Nerdtree (@agraybee) November 12, 2024
Democratic wins:
• Flipped KY Supreme Ct
• Kept MI, MT Supreme Ct
• Broke NC supermajority
• Defeated vouchers in NE & KY
• Abortion rights enshrined in AZ, CO, MD, MO, MT, NV, NY
• No-excuse AV in CT
• Prop 8 repealed in CA
• Minimum wage increase & sick leave in AK, MO— Henry David (@0henrydavid) November 11, 2024
Contemplating the vast comedy potential in this all-too-likely scenario:
Very good chance that there will be some kind of hairbrained scheme to make the X app the official means of voter identification nationwide that only comes out when Elon inevitably falls out of favour
— The Great El Wokismo (@canderaid) November 11, 2024
Elon Musk’s persistent presence appears to be unnerving some members of Trump’s transition team.https://t.co/vri9sXIXpg
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) November 11, 2024
More schadenfreude:
Though had I voted for Trump my mother would likely have actually waterboarded me, so
— vituperativeerb (@vituperativeerb) November 12, 2024
Baud
Thanks for the good referendum results, but I’m not sure I’d continue calling them Democratic wins since we now know many voters will vote for liberal policies but not for liberal Democrats.
Suzanne
Oh my God. LAAAAAWL.
I realize it’s a minor detail in the story….. but what on earth does he still need at Best Buy? Like, does he not have a flatscreen TV?!
WereBear
I’ve found it very helpful to draw my tablet i Ching (Brian Browne Walker) as a morning meditation. I found this helpful to me: maybe you. It is WInd/Mountain 53:
moonbat
Bright spots much appreciated, AL. I’m only checking in these days to see what you discover/mine from the interwebs for us.
WereBear
@Suzanne: Maybe Mom has had enough.
lowtechcyclist
AV = ??
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Absentee voting
TBone
I’d invite Watters and supplement his drink/food with salt peter and laxatives.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud: Thanks!
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
WereBear
@TBone: His personality is his saltpeter. 🤣
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah: Good morning!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
We get one, we’ll take it (AZ Senate). Let’s keep our fingers crossed that ballot curing pulls out a relative miracle in PA but remain pessimistic about that.
The two “hopefully we’ll learn more” issues remain the 10m drop off in Biden-to-Harris votes (we all have our pet, pundit theories) and the seemingly bizarre way people voted. As Baud noted, lotsa votes for Dem policies but those didn’t have coat tails for Dem candidates. Or ticket splitting ala places like NC.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
The problem with the Democratic brand isn’t liberal policies. It’s the things “everybody knows” about Democrats that have been pounded into suburban and rural brains for decades: Democrats will raise taxes to give free stuff to blacks and immigrants. Democrats hate the troops. Democrats want to defund the police. Democrats hate Jesus but promote every other religion and atheism. Democrats want everyone to be gay.
That might seem ridiculous, but hang out and talk to people when there isn’t an election going on.
Jinchi
Thanks for the upbeat news Annie.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
It’s sad about the Senate but the Senate caucus should be better and more unified than it has been. Except maybe for the Senators who think they’re going to be president.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
I’m not sure I agree with that. On immigration, crime, student loan relief, and perhaps other areas, many people resent our policies. It’s not all exaggeration.
WereBear
@Melancholy Jaques: I think one of the reasons they believe so many ridiculous things is that they don’t know how ridiculous they are. Everyone they know is sure about the Reptilians.
Don’t know the nightmares in their heads is probably from V, the miniseries, then TV show, with… reptilian aliens.
Their version of greatest fears realized.
Baud
Telling people their view of Dems is wrong isn’t going to go very far absent an elevator pitch about what our views actually are.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
So, as the quip goes, all of them.
That being said, Moscow Mitch does have a decent enough track record keeping his caucus in line. Sure, he let’s Susie Furrowbrows mewl or Murkowski opine about her stand-up-to-the-party bona fides but they always come thru in the end when it really matters.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Mitch isn’t running for majority leader again. Someone else will be running the caucus.
New Deal democrat
@Baud:
Agreed. And immigration was particularly salient this year. With the CBO estimating that there were an extra 5,000,000-6,000,000 immigrants to the US from 2022 through this year over the previous average, it’s not hard to see why that might cause some resentment.
TBone
@WereBear: 😆
He flattens tires to prevent the getaway tho. I once had that happen at a New Jersey casino after we’d won a bunch of money. Not going anywhere fast!
My idiot companion at the time went back inside to “win more for car tire repair” and lost his ass. We got comped into a nice room for the night though.
eclare
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I still want to know how the Des Moines Iowa Register poll, supposedly the gold standard of polls, missed it by so much. It came out the Saturday before the election and had Harris up by three. IIRC she lost Iowa by double digits.
ArchTeryx
Besides the fact that this is the most terrifying election result of my lifetime, it also is the absolute weirdest. Usually, Ds have no problem bringing out people to vote for the top of the ticket, and they refuse to vote downballot. This time, the Ds left the top blank and voted downballot instead, while the Rs voted the topline and left the results blank.
It’s goddamn Bizarro World, and that does not bode well.
I have to agree with Baud. If people vote in these policies then vote in politicians that are guaranteed to undo them – then get all upset and confused when that happens – all I can conclude is that connect-the-dots needs to make a big comeback.
“Keep your hands off my Kynect, but get rid of that damn Obamacare!”
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: And no amount of infrastructure bills and raising funding for the VA and raising troop salaries will change that.
TBone
@Baud: Tom Sullivan at Digby agrees with you.
Not for the faint of heart alert:
https://digbysblog.net/2024/11/12/the-lamentation-of-the-women/
(The article is not just about women.)
BlueGuitarist
Some Down ballot Arizona races not called yet.
Doesn’t look good for flipping AZ-6, the Groan party candidate has more votes than R votes – D voted (as with Pennsylvania US Senate race).
Overlapping state senate race in Legislative District 17 not yet called, D trailing
but looks like a pick up for that state house race
However, looks like Rs will gain at least 1 AZ state house seat.
No change in Pennsylvania state house 102 D – 101 R. Not just no net change, but not a single seat changed parties, Dem incumbent held on in Biden -29 Johnstown district.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I have not checked on the figures for ticket-splitting in North Carolina. But I recall that in 2020 Joe Biden lost the state by 80,000 while Roy Cooper won by over 200,000. That was over a quarter million ticket splitters.
Given how bad a candidate Republicans ran for Governor this year, I would not be surprised if ticket splitters doubled or more this year.
As for the dropoff in votes from Biden to Harris, I’ll point out that 30% or more of the electorate in the battleground states identify as Independent. Biden carried this group in 2020, but I think that Trump won a majority of them this time. Biden/Trump Indies could have numbered in the millions. This is something we’ll know better in coming days.
Independents may have accounted for much of the down-ballot ticket splitting as well. Indies are strange cats, and some of them will split tickets on principle.
narya
Two things I’ve stumbled across that provide some specific recommendations:
This place provides free training for bystander intervention to stop hate-based harassment (online) as well as other free trainings. I’ve never done any of the trainings and can NOT vouch for them; perhaps others can.
This from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is what she calls an early draft of a organizing playbook.
Neither of those will forestall political chaos, obviously; I’m just trying to provide resources to go with my general pessimism.
rikyrah
I haven’t watched any cable since Monday night.
Been processing it.
Hadn’t even cried..
Until I saw this tweet come across my timeline.
CNN’s Victor Blackwell talking about Black women.
Please go to the video. It’s very powerful.
We voted 91% for the Vice President.
What was our most important issue?
Saving democracy.
THAT is when I cried. When I found out that the most important issue for Black women was to try and save democracy.
The complete irony of that, considering our history in this country will never be lost on me.
This picture in Victor’s home broke me.
The Black woman, wrapped in American flag that she’s trying to fix. Trying to mend.
She looks so tired, as she’s doing it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
A good look at raw vote totals:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/12/2285360/-You-can-t-blame-turnout-for-Harris-loss
Everything else in the piece has been well-trod here (economic message, incumbent headwinds, etc).
Author does say that much better data should be out in 6-7 months when Pew and Catalist release their validated-voter reports.
rikyrah
Why young White men skew MAGA
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8LU6FAN/
they long for the days when all you had to be was WHITE to get a clear middle class life.
note, I didn’t say White and EDUCATED
just WHITE
rikyrah
The way that this guy is so unbothered making these videos telling people to leave Black women alone 😂😂
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8LUrRCx/
TBone
Dave Troy xit:
https://about.davetroy.com/
Jinchi
Is that the lesson we learned though? I thought Kamala ran a decent campaign, but she didn’t run as a liberal.
She ran as gun owner who would crack down on asylum seekers and she pretty clearly left thousands of votes behind in places like Michigan by abandoning Muslim voters who were distraught over the war in Gaza.The only “liberal” pitch she made was for abortion rights, and that has support of 60% of the public.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Yeah, y’all came through yet again.
Baud
@Jinchi:
I really not going to debate you on that. I just disagree.
TBone
@narya: thank you.
narya
@rikyrah: Thank you for sharing that. “Black women. Mending the flag.” Truer words have never been spoken.
Omnes Omnibus
It is for me.
TBone
A recommendation to keep spirits up:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Land_Is_Mine_(film)
ArchTeryx
@rikyrah: There’s absolutely some enlightened self interest there – they have more at stake at avoiding Jim Crow going national than just about anyone else.
What’s moving is that they seem to understand that, something a whole lot of white voters absolutely refuse to understand. Black women are the most pragmatic voters we have and they get absolutely shit support from everyone else, including black men. Unfortunately, as Adlai Stevenson once said, we need a majority.
Belafon
@rikyrah: The days when that happened, dudes, is when the top tax bracket was over 70%.
Anne Laurie
I’m thinking Watters has a fantasy of himself as a True Heartland American manfully battling for the last loss-leader iPhone on the Sacred Consumer High Holiday, instead of a soft-handed second banana paid to meep between advertisements pitched at elderly shut-ins.
Belafon
@Jinchi: Leaving out her housing pitch, her Medicare pitch you are.
Jinchi
@Baud:
I think Democrats are always hardwired to learn the “lesson” that their mistake was being too liberal. This is just a right-wing propaganda.
Kamala pretty openly had a strategy of reaching out to centrist and never Trump Republicans. She wasn’t running as a liberal. If she was considered one just because Elon called her a communist, then any Democrat would always have the same problem.
narya
@rikyrah: And the thing is, even THAT isn’t true until after the New Deal and WW2 put in a safety net (for WHITE people) and revved up the economy (for WHITE people).
Anne Laurie
I’ve been adding to a post draft about Moscow Mitch since at least September, but TL, DR: One of my current small cruel delights is watching all the aspiring GOP Majority Leaders abuse him as a RINO if not a secret Dem… while ‘unbiased’ media observers who were his biggest cheerleaders just months ago suddenly remember his greatest accomplishments revolve around being a human speed bump.
Salty Sam
This is IMO the biggest problem we have to face- we are in an asymmetrical information war, and we are losing it badly.
I have no idea how to counter it, nor does anyone I’ve discussed this with.
TBone
No collaboration. No ‘going along to get along’ for me.
So. Be. It.
We all gotta die somehow, and I’d prefer quickly to dementia, especially if I can take out fascists along the way.
Stephen Miller, bite me!
WereBear
If one is looking for non-political but pertinent-adjacent, I’ve been listening to A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery by Alexandra Amor.
The best one I’ve read, in terms of helping me understand how it happens to people. Because she explains it all so well, and has such vivid memories she makes clear as a stylist.
She also recorded the audio-book, and unless one is Stephen King, I find that adds to it.
Jinchi
@Belafon: Again, housing and Medicare are not “liberal” issues. They have overwhelming support with the public. They are the definition of “Centrist”.
People taking shots at Kamala’s “liberal” campaign are claiming she was pushing the “trans agenda”, or open borders, or radical leftist policies.
Not housing and Medicare.
WereBear
@Jinchi: So we slap a “New! Improved!” sticker on the party. It’s how to sell anything.
Declare our new platform. Make it splashy. We are FOR housing and medicare.
WE HAVE LISTENED TO THE PEOPLE.
That is how we grab gonads and amygdala, when they don’t have hearts and minds.
Salty Sam
Respectfully disagree- the Dem “brand” has been successfully trashed so badly that any information presented to them as positive for Dems is going to be ignored.
It’s an information war, and we are losing.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
I am not surprised by the AZ results. Gallego was a really good candidate and Hispanic which helped with Hispanic votes. Lake was an exceptionally bad candidate. In a normal environment Gallego would have won 65/35 instead he’ll probably win by 51/49. Maricopa County didn’t show up for the Dems. Housing is a big issue in Maricopa County. The rents here are becoming California rents without the commensurate wages.
The AZ GOP has been recruiting hispanic candidates(sometimes caucasian women with hispanic names via marriage) on the lower level elected offices to attract the Hispanic vote. Sometimes it’s a city council seat or school board seat which is non partisan but that’s where they start gaining credentials and at least name familiarity..
WereBear
One angle of the disinformation issue is how people who don’t understand just conclude it’s over their head or something. If they have some kind of stake like a prejudice or a belief that makes them feel good, they won’t hear it.
I’ve got autoimmune and neurological issues but it’s really a long fused ND Burnout. There have been people to whom I have disclosed this, and they just nod, smile meaninglessly, and forget it.
Swooom!~ I’ve seen it fly past their eyes out their ears. Then they have reset and I never said it.
That’s information about the person in front of them when they asked about health. And it’s like someone snipped the tape.
So imagine how they deal with something abstract. It never even makes it past the spinal column.
rikyrah
For those who are not White and who voted for Trump…
Imma say this…..
Those communities have only had to come to America and WORK…
They have never had to FIGHT for anything in this country…..
So, yeah…….
Good luck with that as the GOP attempts to repeal the 20th Century.
Kristine
@rikyrah:
That’s what kills me about all this. “Saving democracy” was the point of the exercise. Electing people we could petition even if we didn’t agree with them now.
But those egg prices…
Baud
@Salty Sam:
Not really my fight anymore, but I’ll never be negative toward people who are making the attempt.
Jinchi
More importantly, make it crystal clear that Republicans and the oligarchs are trying to abolish it and point out that Elon wants to gut your SS check so that he can pocket another $billion.
waspuppet
I was willing to listen to stolen-election theories until now, but since no experienced state- or local-level observers have come forward with anything I guess I can leave it alone.
What I WON’T let go of, however, even if it sounds conspiratorial, is the question of what exactly Trump has on Republicans that they are so slavishly devoted to him. It’s not like he’s helping them win elections they wouldn’t otherwise win. And I am not forgetting that the Russians hacked the RNC emails in 2016 and they have never been released.
Princess
I think Gallego could be a very very useful senator for us to have. I don’t know his personal qualities or character but he can be one of those who could point us out of the wilderness.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@WereBear: I kind of had an epiphany on Wedneday. Americans don’t want Dems unless the GOP is leaving a complete and total disaster. Then they want the Dems to come in clean up. I know commenters have said the Dems are the clean up crew. It’s not just that, its that that all they’re wanted for. Screw that.
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
Yes, people want to take us for granted. It makes them feel special.
Salty Sam
I have shared here how my BIL “went over to the Dark Side” this year. We (me and Spouse, his sister) have talked to him repeatedly, explaining policies, correcting misinformation, etc.). His response is to totally reject everything we have to say, with “That’s not what *I*heard.”
This is a man who up until last year was completely apolitical. His GF (now ex-GF) was way into conspiracies, and dragged him into it.
It is crushing Spouse, as he was her favorite sibling.
Spanky
@Suzanne:
He’s not there to buy. He’s there to work. His shift starts 4AM
WereBear
@waspuppet: The Republican party as we know it today was built on the base of televangelist mailing lists.
They were recruiting cult members, waiting for their Golden Calf and the Rapture, since the fifties.
Like mice with a knockout “gullibility” gene.
TBone
@WereBear: I feel seen (by you) and I see you too.
Salty Sam
@Baud: I’m tempted to join you, but it aggravates me to no end.
Harrison Wesley
@WereBear: I’ve been saying for a while that Ron DeSantis is one of the Visitors.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: One aspect of the surge in immigraton interests me. There were many reports of Russia instigating migration from the Middle-East/ North Africa [MENA] region to Europe in recent years. The game was obvious in the case of the migrants attempting to storm the Polish border from Belarus, but Russia was encouraging migrants to make it to the rest of Europe if they could.
That was not hard to do with wide distribution of smart phones and social media. And human trafficking involves organized crime networks that would gladly take Russian gold in return for their assistance.
This was a major point of social and political stress for European nations, and it was the proximate cause of electoral defeats suffered by seversl incumbent governments.
Russia tried to weaponize migrants in order to create political instability in Europe, and they apparently succeeded. An additional part of the strategy was to encourage and amplify right-wing nativist agitation, thereby catching Left-Center governments between two fires.
They may have done the same with the US. People have remarked on how Harris’s defeat fit into an anti-incumbent trend in European countries this year. I wonder how deep these similarities run.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
mistermix has a “Drive The Car Into A Ditch” theory of national politics:
Nelle
@TBone: That’s more peaceable than my temptations.
Layer8Problem
@Jinchi: Housing and Medicare are very much liberal issues. Medicare was always regarded as mommy state socialism by the right wing. Any level of assistance on housing would be called liberal handouts and state interference in free markets. And Social Security saps our will and makes us weak and ties up money we could be investing. And Obamacare is a failure. And the forty hour work week binds the hands of capital. All of these things were pushed by liberals, and centerists saying “Nuh-uh, these are common sense programs we all can agree on” is silly. Saying that the right wouldn’t try to take any or all of these away given the opportunity is silly. They’d do it and come up with stupid excuses, or just laugh at the expressions on all of our faces and say it was worth it.
And yet another female presidential candidate didn’t pay enough attention to Michigan and paid for her oversight. Funny how that works.
ETA That last paragraph is sarcasm.
narya
@Baud: I’m worried about you . . .
Baud
@Layer8Problem:
Don’t worry, we won’t nominate a woman again for a long time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Layer8Problem: She and her surrogates were in MI constantly. Unless you mean something about Gaza.
matt
Between Lake losing and Trump winning the election outright, tough year for election troofers.
TBone
The ‘Joint Task Force’ loophole alert:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/02/15/local-police-ridiculous-qualified-immunity/6616330001/
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Somehow, the stepping down of Moscow Mitch escaped my attention. This piece is dated as it considers a Senate working with a President Harris but was otherwise informative.
Of course I read this from the article and the eye roll hurt:
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/10/06/the-next-big-dilemma-for-the-u-s-senate-gop-who-should-lead-them-in-2025-and-beyond/
Well, they are a big tent party if you define big tent a certain way. /s
Spanky
@Baud: The first woman POTUS will be Cruella DeVille, She-Wolf of the SS.
cain
@Melancholy Jaques: So we make a new party, preferably starting with the letter F.
Baud
@narya:
No need.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh I know, and you know, and I daresay Baud knows. But many people are saying, so who can argue?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Layer8Problem:
A very important web site:
https://varunpatil.github.io/Sarcastic-Text-Generator/
TBone
@Nelle: well I can’t say everything I’d like to in such a public forum! But I do give it a college try 😂
cain
@ArchTeryx:
We are going to see some really rapid changes in the federal govt especially on things Americans have taken for granted.
In 4 years, we’ll be asked to unfuck everything. Which we won’t be able to do because it’s going to take much longer than 4 years to unfuck everything by that time.
Americans have no patience. What ya, gonna do?
TBone
Calling out from Union Maid County, PA
https://unionsong.com/u028.html
(Woody Guthrie lyrics at link, not music)
Ah well I’ll just post them:
Updated verse from the 1980’s
You women who want to be free
Just take a little tip from me
Break out of that mold we’ve all been sold
You got a fighting history
The fight for women’s rights
With workers must unite
Like Mother Jones, bestir them bones
To the front of every fight
RaflW
2025 is going to be an absolute shitshow. With a lot of real suffering and loss.
I think the backlash will be severe. I think a lot of the rhetoric about who Trump is going to be super powerful cedes too much ground to him, and I hope everyone, from this blog alll the way up to Dem governors, Senators, etc, can get with the program: Blame every consequence on him and whoever is Sen. Majority Leader, big names like Ted Cruz or Glen Younkin, etc.
When the economic tsunami hits, remind Ohio voters that electing a Mercedes dealer rich guy didn’t do squat for them. Find stories of Republican voters who suddenly don’t have special ed for their wonderful but special needs kid, and tell it over and over.
hells littlest angel
Silver cloud: Gallego wins
Dark lining: It should not have been close
cain
@rikyrah: What you’re saying is resonating with me especially with the Indian diaspora. They’ve come here for financial success but those first generation immigrants are not particularly interested in social issues. They’ve built their own bubble. The 2nd and 3rd generation though are more plugged in. They don’t have an option to go back to India.
JML
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: LOL, Susan “Very Concerned” Collins, who talks a fair amount and gets plenty of tongue baths on CNN and with the FNYT, but at the end of the day votes the party line on any vote that’s close. I’m sure she wants more power in the committee chairs since she’ll be one of them. She’s trash, can’t stand her. No principles other than power.
Belafon
@waspuppet: Trump is the Right’s Kwisatz Haderach, their ultimate goal but unleashed too soon to control. He is what they got for coddling the Tea Party. The problem the right leading him are going to have is that they cannot cross him, or they will start having window issues here in the US.
RaflW
@cain: We’re gonna start by battering the GOP in the mid-terms. 2027-28 does not have to be nearly as bad as these first two years are likely to be. Yes the GOP will keep pushing where it can. And my g-d the courts will take a full generation to unfuck.
But I think a lot of conventional wisdom is still very much underpricing how much Americans will hate Project 2025. And Trumpism. People have memory holed the chaos. It’s coming back and it won’t be enjoyed by normies.
cain
@Salty Sam:
Unfortunately, for a lot of people they need to have reality bite them in the ass.
Things like vaccines and what not – they’ll soon find out that their U.S. passport won’t mean shit because no country will allow any of us to travel anywhere if we are not vaccinated.
Even worse, no vaccine research means – we are sitting ducks for another pandemic.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: And with regard to Gaza, it’s a safe bet that anything she said or did regarding Gaza was wrong ab initio. Just because.
trollhattan
What does “Prop 8 repealed in CA” mean?
cain
@Baud:
Fuck that.. when the country is at loggerheads, and they want us to fix it, we will only offer them a woman to run the country. They want us to fix it? Our choice, our terms. Otherwise, keep going.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Repeals ban on gay marriage. Good if Supreme Court overturns constitutional protection.
cain
@RaflW:
I’m afraid, things need to get much worse. The GOP has been constantly overstretching and pushing. Americans have shown this is what they want and even in 2 years they still won’t get it.
We can’t unfuck things like the department of education being cancelled. They voted for that.
Geminid
@Princess: Ruben Gallego definitely is knowledgeable on border and broader immigration issues, both on the policy and political levels. Even if Democrats are in the minority in each House,I expect they will still devise legislation in this area in order to provide a constructive contrast to Republican proposals. If Schumer and Jeffries were to ask me my thoughts, I’d suggest pairing Senator Gallego and Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX) and asking them to work up an immigration bill.
Rep. Escobar is a member of the very talented Democratic House Class of 2018. She succeeded her political ally Beto O’Rourke when he ran for Senate. Before that Escobar was El Paso County Judge, which is a powerful post in Texas’s political system. And immigration is literally a kitchen table issue in Veronica Escobar’s home; her husband is an immigration judge.
The Truffle
@RaflW: This is perfect.
Can we find our own Musk or Thiel already?
The GOP was in a similar place we are in 2012 and came back in the next two election cycles. This is important to remember.
I know recounts are still ongoing but no matter what, the Speaker is probably going to be pushed out soon because…House GOP.
Salty Sam
I think it goes beyond that- reality has been biting them in the ass for a long time, and they just dig in harder. How many times have we wondered “Why do they vote against their own interests?”
Its because they vote for their tribe, not their rational interests, and they have accepted the framing that the Dem/liberal tribe is their mortal enemy.
We continually expect them to respond to reason and objective truth. Not gonna happen.
Omnes Omnibus
I’d just as soon not.
Chris Johnson
@waspuppet: What else would they need? By now Russia is formally acknowledging through TASS that they won Trump’s election for him, and they expect tribute. Of course they’ve had the upper hand on Republicans all along.
More relevantly, if they did NOT have the slavish obedience of all the Republicans, how would you know?
I’m not joking. Liberals blab everything and have no opsec. It’s impossible to mold them into a revolutionary force: RUSSIANS have tried because that’s necessary to the plan, tried and failed.
This is the fundamental: Republicans are more disciplined, more able to be a revolutionary force. However, they expect to be allowed to be the winners. And if they are upset with how things have gone, they will not blab it on Twitter.
This is a stretch, but… near as I can tell, the Republicans end democracy and convert it to authoritarianism, IF repeat IF they are allowed to ‘make America great again’. This emphatically includes the Economist types, the wealthy (who broke for Kamala), the organizers who have been a pain in our ass for generations. For them, winning has to mean things do have to actually work. Justice means nothing to them but it has to work.
I don’t honestly believe Putin intends to give them that. I think he’s on a vengeance trip, and his wrecking ball finishes the job not by making Republicans win, but by ruining everything. No more dollar, no more international standing, Putin wants to live many years watching America become Siberia, reduced to a sub-Soviet state.
I feel this plan may be unpopular when it starts to seriously kick in. I wonder if he’s gonna have Trump start frantically exporting weaponry to Russia so they can finally have real nukes for a change? I wonder how the upper brass of the military will take that?
A lot of Americans will have a problem with ‘fooled you, enjoy third world status, also your weapons are now ours kthxbai’. A lot of Americans will be unhappy with a sudden reveal that this was vengeance the whole time, that the Cold War never stopped. It’s EXTRAORDINARY times we’re stuck with.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@JML:
Suggested name for a new drink: the Susan Collins.
You debate for several hours what you’ll have until you eventually just give up and say “I’ll have whatever Mitch is having.”
I stole that from somewhere.
Layer8Problem
@The Truffle: Pitting rich assholes against rich assholes seems a bit problematic.
Spanky
The solution to the root cause of the problem is that we need Putin to die ASAP. I hope someone is working on that.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Prominent Dems lead by Nancy Pelosi pushed Biden out at the bidding of NYT and other prestige media. So the problem is not just from the outside but within the party.
And many Ds never had Biden’s back from the get go
I have no idea how to fix that problem, where elected Ds gave polls and celebrities the veto over our nomination process. The whole we are protecting democracy sounds hollow after that. We never recovered from that own goal in the summer. And now we have sacrificed our most promising leader to satifsy the PodBros and NYT editorial board. Fuck you to all those who thought that this was a great idea.
Normies saw a party that doesn’t stand up for its leader and a successful one at that rightly concluded that they wouldn’t stand up for them when push came to a shove.
Omnes Omnibus
@Salty Sam:
There is a presumption in there that the only interests worth protecting are economic.
Steve LaBonne
@cain: Reality biting them in the ass only means that they temporarily tolerate Democrats only to throw them out again at the next opportunity. We have a very deep, intractable problem on a broad cultural level.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Salty Sam:
Cleek’s Law is a bitch to overcome.
The Truffle
Some of those election results in KY suggest maybe building the brand there is worth a shot?
JML
Messaging is a challenging one for Dems sometimes in that we always want to talk about complex policy issues. And we haven’t been afraid to do the right thing even when it benefits some and not all…but that’s also complicated to message.
Take wiping out college loan debt. It’s the right thing to do. Too many students were taken advantage of by schools and lenders and too many states dumped support for public higher ed. the country told people it was no big deal to defer your student loan payments for years and years, even when they were still accumulating interest. It’s a good policy to wipe out as much of that debt as we can and will help a lot of people.
but it doesn’t help as many as maybe we think (only 40% of Americans have a bachelors degree), and to people who didn’t go to college it can absolutely look like a big government handout to privileged people who look down on them. Plus, you have people who scraped and saved and managed to pay off their school debt, who get nothing from this and think to themselves, “hey I sacrificed and met my obligations. why are the others getting let off the hook?” Even good people at heart can get frustrated and resentful when they see the screwup they knew in school who couldn’t decide on a major, switched 4 times before finally dropping out after 6 years, and complains all the time about having to work crappy jobs having their biggest problem wiped away.
The anecdotal stories of that person (which are actually a fairly small percentage) overwhelm the reality of the many more people who took out loans for a degree that wasn’t worth what they were promised and have been trying to pay it back, but because of deferments and interest rates have now already paid more than double what they borrowed and still owe a huge amount. The anecdotal stories of someone else gaming the system, someone who can be perceived as unworthy, swamp the benefits to the larger whole.
I support wiping out student loan debt. But I understand how that’s a policy that creates resentment. So how do we do better in simplifying and improving the message?
RaflW
Here’s an interesting data tidbit (in a local oped where a GOP consultant who lives in MN really goes after MN GOP leaders for selecting total trash candidate Royce White to oppose Amy Klobuchar).
“Minnesota Republican congressional candidates overperformed Trump in 83 of 87 counties by an average of approximately 2.6 points per county, according to my analysis.” I have no doubt that there were some Minnesotans who felt that Walz & the MN Dems raced too far ahead (I think they did great), but the underlying thing worth noting to me is that Trump is likely less popular even among MN Republicans than the ones they tend to know better, their state Reps.
That suggests softness for his support when ETTD gets rolling again.
Old School
Another delay.
tam1MI
You forgot, “Democrats push good, hard-working men out of their jobs so they can give the jobs to minorities”. You know, the one elect d Dems more or less proved to be true when they ousted Joe Biden.
JML
@RaflW: To be fair to the MN GOP leadership: none of their top choices for state-wide office wanted anything to do with running against AmyK, who is likely unbeatable in MN unless she does something pretty insane. And since she’s an incredibly cautious politician, that seems unlikely at best.
Royce White was a joke of a candidate, with no money and no resources (and little to no institutional support), a ludicrous platform and numerous gaffes, and still got 40% of the vote.
SFAW
@Layer8Problem:
Mrs. SFAW was listening to NPR’s interview of a Dearborn (MI) voter, who said that he/she voted for Trump to “teach Biden a lesson” (re: Gaza) or some such.
I then showed my wife Tbogg’s “Your Mumia Sweatshirt Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” to provide the appropriate response to that voter.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Most white people are more comfortable with accepting the economic frame as that saves them from any introspection. They can blame the immigrants/black people and other marginalized people for stealing their jobs, while the tankie left will used buzz words like neoliberalism, late stage capitalism and rail against billionaires.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think it’s possible to state that Biden would have prevailed — his “age” issues seem to have accelerated with the events surrounding Hunter’s prosecution and they would have been a real drag — thus, I think “elites” felt like they were between a rock and a hard place. Nonetheless, it is striking and ironic in a bad way to bang the drum about threats to democracy while using such undemocratic means to nominate your own candidate. Whether it’s Biden, Sanders, or anyone else, maybe there should be a hard wired message about nominating anyone who will be over the age of 80 by the end of a second term.
UncleEbeneezer
Mike Garcia has conceded in CA-27 so Dem. George Whitesides is officially the winner of that House seat! This is the race that I canvassed for on the final weekend. And Katie Hill’s old district (re-drawn) that my Indivisible group helped flip in 2018. Obviously it doesn’t make up for Trump and the Senate, but it does make me feel a bit of joy this morning. Garcia was one of Trump’s most odious supporters in the House.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Suzanne: he’s probably going to scope out wife number 3.
Aziz, light!
I am late with this but here it is:
I’m done. (© Baud 2024)
I have no confidence that we can salvage what passes for democracy in this country.
I believe that future historians will mark this era as when the internet began to demolish democracy throughout the world. People are awash with information sources, and choose will confirm and reinforce their biases. It’s not like having Walter Cronkite telling it the way it is.
Will Stancil nailed it:
“The growth of social media and partisan media and alternative media has turned people into little Skinner-box rats, constantly visiting whichever website or channel or account that will let them feel smart, angry, depressed – or whatever inner state they crave – all the time.”
We know that Trump version 2 will be a shitshow of corruption, incompetence, and fascist cosplay. It’s likely to wreck the economy, national security, and the functioning of our government. This might be enough to swing the pendulum back — if the Dems run a generic white man — but swinging the pendulum between polar opposites is no way to run a country. There’s no continuity, and the other nations of the world cannot rely on us any longer.
I don’t see any way out of this morass long term. Propaganda works, and AI deep fakery will make it even more effective and persuasive. The playing field is so tilted that objective truth is sliding off the edge. The stupids are in charge again. The best investment play is Brawndo.
I believe that most of the talk about messaging and branding is pointless. It can’t penetrate the distortion field that surrounds people’s brains. The majority favors liberal values, but the Democratic brand is poison. Can the name of the party be changed?
I don’t see how I can keep coming here (and many other places) to hear about SFB’s latest inanities 24/7, thereby spoiling the quality of my life with rage. I’m done with Colbert and Kimmel and Meyers and all the rest; no amount of snarkitude will help. As a lifelong information junkie and former news reporter, it will be hard for me to tune it out. Maybe impossible.
I’m 72, caring for my wife, who is 63 and has some disabilities. We don’t have children and we have little family left. Next year we will downsize and move somewhere safe (I won’t say where it is). I will be taking up food-based survivalism, because I believe my retirement income sources are going to take a big hit as the nation continues to unravel and in case its fragile distribution systems start to fail. I’m sorry that younger people must inherit this fucked up world. I tell them to be careful and to pay attention and to plan ahead for instability and chaos.
I’m an American because about 120 years ago, two of my grandparents who were born in Kyiv and the other two who were born in Minsk were infants in the arms of their parents as they fled the pogroms. America gave my grandparents opportunities to flourish, but they had to endure the prejudices of a nation filled with haters. For however many years I have left, I think I’m done with identifying as American. I suppose it’s facile for me to say that. Many people with less privilege have no choice.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: You don’t know that he wouldn’t have. He did the first time around. We should have had his back from the get go. Instead we caved to the media. He won the primaries he deserved to run again.
I am seriously thinking of registering as an independent if the backstabbing caucus assumes the party leadership.
It pissed me off and I doubt I am the only one.
West of the Rockies
I bet there is a long list of Watters family members who are sick of his smug, juvenile personality. Probably a ton of them said no thanks to another holiday dinner with that prick.
New Deal democrat
@Geminid:
Agree 100%. And they will do the same thing with the coming mass exodus of Ukrainian refugees. And Syria and Türkiye have also weaponized refugee migration.
More broadly both State and non-State actors have learned how to game and weaponize the 1951 UNHRC, and liberal democracies have not come up with any good response.
Miki
@trollhattan: Here you go – https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_3,_Right_to_Marry_and_Repeal_Proposition_8_Amendment_(2024)
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: I understand that, but, if it were universally true, no well-off white person would ever vote D. And a a lot do. The reverse is true with the poor people who vote R. Interests are broader than just economic. The 18th Century term was “enlightened self-interest.”
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Its not all or nothing. But my explanation was how the majority of a privileged class votes
And even many of those who vote D, find looking at politics through an economic lens easier than an introspection about their privilege.
RaflW
@Geminid: I’ve been pondering all this, and indeed we’ll need to wait for the data to be available and crunched. And yet, here’s my hypothesis (using that term advisedly, as I’m open to the data correcting me, I’m just an armchair curious guy):
What if “Dem turnout” ends up not being as big a drop as the first blush appears? One, as Charles Gaba points out, votes are still being counted (and cured & counted) and the popular vote margin has been tightening as the days go by.
Two, did the Dem base in fact turn out? That’s what we’ll need to see, how registered Dems showed up (or ppl identified as Dems by past primary votes in states that may not track reg info).
Independents are often talked about as a group of voters, but almost by definition, they come to that ‘party’ ID from a lot of directions, interests, and goals.
He’s gone now, but my rather conservative uncle switched from R to I around the late 2000s. He still hated Nancy Pelosi (I did not try to intervene in that, it was too baked in) but he also despaired of dumb GOP shenanigans and also really hated Sam Brownback for his horrible policies and personality.
He was also a staunch advocate of gay and lesbian equity (he passed away before most of the trans panic crap, and I’m not sure how he’d have negotiated that.)
I’m pretty sure he voted for Obama the first time and then felt OK with Mittens. He was anti-Trump and AFAIK voted 3rd party in 2016 as he wasn’t really reachable by Hillary Clinton.
How does one ‘map’ a voter like that?
UncleEbeneezer
I’m seeing this more and more and I love it. People pushing back on the antisemitic attempt to marginalize Zionist Jews (which is like 80-90% of them) within Progressive spaces. This whole movement of demonizing Zionism started from the Soviets, and sadly became widely accepted dogma on the Left and within academia, increasing exponentially after the 10/7 massacre by Hamas. We need to reject this shit and push it out into the wilderness. So I’m glad to see the pushback. We also need to constantly affirm that what Zionism means to the majority of Jewish People is nothing like the Zionism™ that the Left has turned into a global boogie-man. It isn’t racism, colonialism, Imperialism, Apartheid, genocide, or the treachery of Netanyahu. When we use the Left’s mischaracterization of the term we are being just as complicit as if we were using the Right-wingers versions of: woke, DEI etc.
brendancalling
@SFAW: ya know, I worked with that TBogg guy at Raw Story and learned to hate his fucking guts. That said, “Your Mumia Sweatshirt Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore” was and is one of the best things he ever wrote.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: I am agreeing with you. I think a lot of people who sat out probably agreed with you. Which is why I am avoiding all the hot takes, all the finger pointing and so on. If Trump was a Black Swan in 2016, Kamala Harris was a Black Swan in 2024. It’s important not to overinterpret or overreach based on the results. Virginia doesn’t have party registration so that’s not an issue for me.
tam1MI
I almost think that in the upcoming administration, Dems should just vote “Present” on everything. Don’t try to ameliorate it or water it down, just vote “Present”. And when the media asks why say, “We’re done being America’s hazmat crew”.
Suzanne
@JML:
Here’s what drives me crazy about this shit: I vote for things that make other people’s lives better all the time. Even if I don’t benefit! Even if my family doesn’t benefit! That’s what it means to be in a goddamn coalition! That’s literally the social contract.
Biden saved the Teamsters’ pensions and they can’t even be chuffed to endorse him, because half of them supported Trump?! Get fucked. They are shitty members of the coalition.
Jim Appleton
@waspuppet:
They understand that anything less than complete enthusiastic loyalty gets them under a bus.
Omnes Omnibus
@tam1MI: Then the question becomes why even run for office, why take the seat, why take the pay, if you aren’t going to try to do the job you were elected to do?
RaflW
@rikyrah: I think one (out of many) things that has to be interrogated by Democrats, progressives, and non-White communities is wether at least some sections of Latino- and/or Hispanic-identified Americans just flat out see themselves as White, and respond to the GOP invitation to participate in core aspect of Whiteness around privilege.
tam1MI
The stupidest comment I heard on that front was, “How is it that Trump went to a Lebanese restaurant in Dearborn and Harris didn’t?” The woman barnstormed the entire state multiple times but she deserved to lose because she didn’t eat falafel. Just mindbendingly dumb.
frosty
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Updated today at 11:31AM: The difference is 3 million votes: 75,007,605 to 71,808,772.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/RESULTS/zjpqnemxwvx/president/
Same result, slightly different numbers from BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2024/us/results
RaflW
@Omnes Omnibus: I think the strategies available will differ greatly between House and Senate. In the House (assuming an outcome not yet known), Dems will probably be frozen out of all bill markups and just have to all adopt a sort of Katie Porter playbook of using their committee time to say “Hey, this sucks. Do you see this, voters? This sucks.”
There will be, in the eventuality that Johnson is herding his freakshow, where Dems will be ‘counted on’ to save the GOP from it’s disasters. That will have to be taken case by case. Maybe we do let the bond vigilantes have one really big freakout before bailing the f**kers out.
In the Senate, unless Cornyn/Thune/unnamed clown nuke the filibuster, Dems I think must do what they can on harm reduction and then, when bill passage comes, play McConnell style hardball as much as humanly possible. I am concerned about Schumer in that role.
schrodingers_cat
@frosty: I said on Wednesday that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions before all the votes are counted, especially California because it is so big.
Soprano2
@Harrison Wesley: I could easily believe that.
Ben Cisco
Posting for proof-of-life purposes.
Been a REALLY long week.
Good news is that both Mama Cisco and my gf are healing and safe (separate medical issues).
Bad news is, well, you know.
At this point I am equal parts grief, bewilderment, and incandescent RAGE.
Sincere THANK YOU to all jackals for all you tried to do.
My country has collectively decided it is too racist, misogynistic, tribal, and STUPID to be governed competently; they’ve decided that the Black party is only suited for ‘black jobs’ including political janitor.
My only regret is that we will all suffer through the results.
Joe and Kamala deserved better, and so did we.
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: Everyone should go back and look at the 2016 results in Pennsylvania. Every female candidate running for statewide office lost to a male, regardless of party. When two males were running, the Democrat won. The situation on the ground for misogynistic voting patterns is if anything worse than it was eight years ago. I can’t prove anything, I am not going to try — and it was NOT necessarily the result in all places, Wisconsin being the obvious counter example. But until someone gives me a really compelling alternative explanation, I think that should be presumed to explain much of it.
Which also means that Democrats shouldn’t read too much into the results — they certainly should not abandon their responsibility to block or obstruct or vote against bad legislation.
Steve LaBonne
@RaflW: I don’t care much about the national margin that will be affected by finishing the vote count in California- as long as we have the stupid Electoral College it doesn’t mean much. Once the dust settles I want to see some good analysis of turnout in the contested states. Also ticket splitting- was it really unusually high?
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, we went through considerable angst and hand-wringing over the last couple of days for no reason.
Geminid
@RaflW: I also believe that we’ll batter the Republicans in the 2026 midterms, but here in Virginia we’re gonna start battering them next year. We’ll have very strong candidate for Governor in Rep. Abigail Spanberger. Former Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling describes Spanberger as “a formidable politician,” and I think he is right. That race will get a lot of attention nationally.
It probably will internationally as well because there are a lot of foreign correspondents based in D.C,. They’ll be able to drive an hour or so south or west to catch “an American political rally.” They can’t miss driving past a Civil War battlefild whichever way they go, and that’s great local color.
Then they and their buddies can stop off at a winery on the way back and work up their stories over a couple glasses of wine and a light meal.
They’ll be telling their editors, “Yeah, I know I just went to Culpeper, but the race is tightening and this Fredericksburg rally is really important….No, the polls haven’t show any movement away from Spanberger yet, but the “Vibes” are shifting. Vibes are very important in this country.”
“And the guy from Le Monde told me about this killer restaurant down there. Best oysters he ever had. I’m also working on a story about the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Renaissance.”
frosty
@Steve LaBonne: I see the benefit of finishing the national vote counting is to put aside the “10 million Biden voters sat on their hands” argument. Let’s get some good data.
prn
Posted this in the thread above, because I think this could be a very useful book, and it’s free today, so download quickly. Obviously I haven’t read it yet so YMMV:
Seven Stories Press has been offering free ebooks this week, one a day. Today’s book looks very interesting, written by an imprisoned Egyptian dissident who studied anti-apartheid movements. Forward by Naomi Kline (not Wolff, the goofy one)
https://sevenstories.com/books/4410-you-have-not-yet-been-defeated
UncleEbeneezer
@RaflW: Oh they absolutely do. They still see themselves as Latino, Mexican, Colombian, whatever…but they also see themselves as more on the “White” side of America’s White/Black racial binary. I suspect this is true for a non-trivial amount of Asian-Americans too. I can’t cite any research but as someone who works with predominantly Asian-American tennis students (including adults) I definitely get that vibe from many of them. They exhibit a lot of the same anti-Blackness that unifies so many White People.
prn
Posted this in the thread above, because I think this could be a very useful book, and it’s free today, so download quickly. Obviously I haven’t read it yet so YMMV:
https://sevenstories.com/books/4410-you-have-not-yet-been-defeated
K-Mo
@RaflW: I’m with you on strategy. Trump’s policies are going to hurt a lot of people, and should definitely take a pummeling for that. But also, a lot of bad stuff will happen that isn’t his direct remit, but for which he has failed to find a solution. Dems should pound on these failures every day.
Geminid
@Barbara: A friend and I discussed the sge isdue a few days ago, and we convmcluded that Democrats will be reluctant to back candidates much over the age of 60 in future primary contests. That’s not neccesarily a good thing in principle, but as a more practical matter most of of our good prospects for 2028 are now in their 50s or 40s.
RinaX
@schrodingers_cat: You’re not the only one. I maintain that the real damage was the Democrats’ ongoing sabotage for a month after the debate. We’ll never know now. I stopped ranting after a few days because I genuinely did not want to contribute to a negative atmosphere around Kamala.
I genuinely have no faith in the party anymore, and that, more than anything, is contributing to my current malaise. It doesn’t help to hear pundits and politicians stubbornly insisting on doing things that didn’t work before because they can’t bear to acknowledge how unsalvageable the electorate is in many ways.
Steve LaBonne
@frosty: Definitely it will be good to dispose of that (though I fear it will still have a zombie afterlife). But I think actionable insights lie elsewhere.
Gvg
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: maybe we should lean into it. “You only vote democratic when the Republicans have trashed the economy or screwed up a war so bad. Then when we have it almost fixed, you go back to them. Maybe you should think about that. What if you let things get better for longer? What if you quit going back to your abuser?”
Push what really happens when they get elected. Not just Trump, but Bush and his 2 wars, Reagan and Bush and a huge deficit plus all the growing wealth at the expense of workers, and Nixon and corruption. Then get into doublefaced Congressmen and crooked Governors. Names and democrats that had to clean up.
Go on with people not wanting to admit ACA is kentucky care and Democrats that voted for it knowing they would lose elections. Name them as heros. Lean into it, start now.
Geminid
@The Truffle: Governor Andy Beshear and his fellow Kentucky Democrats have been building the Party brand in their state for some years now. They seem to have had some success.
frosty
@frosty: @Steve LaBonne: < /@schrodingers_cat: > Oh shit, I used the Trump total not Biden. Still 10 million less than his 81 million. Fuck! I wonder how many places I posted that this morning! Not enough coffee.
RaflW
@Baud: We won’t. But a President Elise Stefanik has seemed possible.
I say seemed because it turns out her ambitions have led her to accept what I am fairly sure is a total career dead end. As anyone ever accepted UN Ambassador for the USA and then had a good electoral career after? Esp. on the GOP side, but for either party?
But to the broader point, I think unfortunately that we’ll be like the UK whose first (and for them, second, and ever so briefly third) woman PM have all been Torries.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s great news. As I recall, you worked hard to defeat Mike Garcia in the last cycle and were disappointed, so this must be especially gratifying for you.
tam1MI
As long as he is a white male, they’ll be fine with it. It’s women and minorities who’s chance to grab the Presidential nomination will have dropped to nil.
Kelly
Janelle Bynum took back Oregon CD5. That’ll keep the R majority a bit precarious.
Steve LaBonne
@K-Mo: The coming bird flu pandemic will be a spectacular entry in the latter category.
cain
@Salty Sam:
Right, but the changes that is going to happen – it’s not going to be something they can blame on Dems.
There are some truths about Dems that are deeply ingrained in their heads. This will challenge those truths if they want to blame Dems.
AWOL
@Old School: Delay of what? A farce?
cain
@Steve LaBonne:
I’m quite aware which is why I said we’re going to give them the same candidate that they overwhelmingly rejected. If they want us to fix their mess then it’s going to be on our terms.
RaflW
@K-Mo: In general, I am not in favor of mirroring GOP tactics, but in regards to the broader truism that the masses think the president fixes or breaks everything, I think it’s totally fair game to blame Trump and his forming cast of freaky cabinet members for all bad outcomes.
Can’t get homeowners insurance, or it surges 45% (it’s happening to condos now, and will to others soon). Blame Trump. Viciously.
(It’s actually a really serious problem. I am certain Trump can’t fix it. WTF we do, I haven’t a clue. Spit-roast Republicans for it anyway.)
K-Mo
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Trump has peeled off a significant number from our tribe by relentlessly telling them that our tribe doesn’t do anything for them.
Steve LaBonne
@RaflW: Harris tried to employ this technique- she never mentioned abortion without using the phrase “Trump abortion bans”. It will need to be Trump inflation, Trump recession, Trump flu epidemic, etc., all day every day.
JML
@Suzanne: Listen, so do I. I vote for all kinds of things that don’t directly benefit me. But student loan forgiveness was something that we put front and center a lot, and we (speaking as part of the whole coalition) sure seemed to talk about it as if it was simply a universal Good Thing. Which I agree with…but are we thinking broadly enough outside of the bubble to grasp how that plays as part of our broader economic message? And are we strong enough as a coalition of interests to presume that we can speak for a benefit to one part and have the rest understand that we’re going to do similar things for them too?
I don’t subscribe the the idea that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class…but I do question whether or not we message our economic plans clearly and concisely enough for people to understand that we understand their struggles and are enacting policies that will help them in ways they find impactful.
(and BTW? I’M a Teamster. You know what I’m sayin’?)
Steve LaBonne
@JML: So I would be interested in your thoughts as a teamster. Democrats rescued your pension fund. Why doesn’t this count with half of your membership as something important that Democrats did for them?
Skippy-san
Colorado defeated vouchers, too. And gave the NRA a kick in the teeth.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@JML:
Perfect summary on economics irt messsaging/framing. Of course given other observations regarding how Cleek’s Law has played out over close to 2 generations, we’ve got a lot of “better messaging” to do over a loooong time to wrest such people back into the party consistently as opposed to mistermix’s “every two years into and out of the ditch” the ditch analogy.
I live in the midst of old school Dems like me who vote for tons of stuff that doesn’t directly benefit them *and* don’t view everything thru a myopic transactional lens.
@Skippy-san:
It wasn’t vouchers per se, it was “school choice” and this state has a loooong history of supporting the school choice grift. Given the money and people behind it, I’m surprised it failed, but glad.
The NRA one was easier because of the high profile-ness of school shootings here over the years.
K-Mo
@UncleEbeneezer: Whose quote is that and who are they offering this choice to? On behalf of trans activists, I’d like to say, we are not your bargaining chips.
Jinchi
@Layer8Problem: Nobody was attacking Kamala for her Housing or Medicare agenda. The Heritage Foundation, the Republicans and the Billionaire class want to gut these things, but they hide that part of their agenda.
Because these issues are not “liberal” issues. Certainly, not the kind of liberal that loses elections.
The trick is getting voters to realize that Republicans are actually trying to dismantle these programs. And that requires Democrats to run “as liberals”, not to run away from it.
K-Mo
@Suzanne: Yep
K-Mo
@RaflW: I’m still waiting on the splits but my intuition is, low-education Latinos voted their low education ahead of their ethnic identity. What did high-Ed Latinos do (outside of the Cuban population, whose ethnic identity is anti-Castro)?
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: I would not say Turkiye has exactly weaponized migration against European countries. Turkiye has indeed shaken the E.U. down for funding to support the 5 million+ Syrian refugees that the Assad regime has driven from Syria. The money is being used for shelter, health care and schooling.
But this is a Mediterranean regionsal problem and Turkiye shouldn’t have to carry the load itself. And the Europeans could have prevented the problem if they had followed through on their efforts to help Syria’s opposition topple the murderous Assad regime.
That almost happened in 2012. But when Assad called upon Russia, Iran and Hezbollah to save him, the European countries quickly stepped away and left Turkiye holding the refugee bag.
The Turks are very cynical about the European nations’ foreign policy. The Europeans would like to ignore instability in the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions in hopes it won’t spread to them. That passivity has come back to bite them in recent years, notably when Hamas started the current regional war in October of last year.
Europeans were the same with the Black Sea region. That changed February of 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time, but before that Europeans nations hardly raised a fuss when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Crimea and Donetsk in 2014.
Europeans often criticize Turkiye’s independent foreign policies. They opposed Turkiye’s intervention in Libya in 2020, on behalf of the internationall recognized Tripoli government. But the Europeans were sitting on their hands as they watched the Russian Wagner Group almost take over 2 million barrels a day of oil production.
The Wagner group and the Benghazi-based Haftar government never would have given those oil fields up, but as long as the Europeans could buy that oil they didn’t care who got the money.
Then Turkiye stepped in, and pretty soon their M.I.T. intelligence agency was helping the Tripoli government press the Wagner Group and it’s Libyan auxiliaries back. When Turkiye’s National Assembly authorized sending troops and Turkish ships started shelling coastal positions, Haftar’s side threw in the towel and agreed to a ceasefire.
The Europeans responded by griping about R.T. Erdogan’s “Neo-Ottoman ambitions.” But Erdogan knew that Russian domination of Libya was a threat to his country just like Russian domination of Syria and Crimea were. It was also a threat to the Europeans, and if they had pulled their heads out of the sand they could have seen it too.
Jim Appleton
@Steve LaBonne: Yeat, one of my second or third thoughts at 4am last Wednesday was what are the chances that the same guy kills a lot of people in successive pandemics.
Tim in SF
That’s a win for women, not a win for Democrats. Those bills took away a really good reason to vote for Democrats in the House and Senate and the state legislatures of those states. Now that abortion rights are safe in those states, there is less of a reason to vote for Democrats in those states going forward.
Kirk
@Steve LaBonne:
And the tariff driven inflation. And the depression from at least 5% of the workforce being removed at the same time. Oh yeah, the housing market drop (not only buyers, but renters with that 5%).
Pin it all to them.
Quinerly
@Tim in SF:
No truer words.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Great memory! Yes, Garcia won by only 300 votes…grrrr…
PS- are you on BlueSky?
JML
@Steve LaBonne: I think it’s notable that while the International refused to endorsed, the big joint councils below them did. That said, Teamsters membership as a whole experienced the same forces that the electorate as a whole did.
My local is made up of public employees, but we’re a challenging amalgam of very different voices and careers: public defenders, university professionals, corrections, court reporters, county employees doing work like snow plow drivers, school maintenance & food service workers. We’re all public employees, but we have different work environments and priorities.
The pension issue should have been huge for our membership…but a lot of members simply don’t believe that the GOP would let their pensions fail. They can’t conceive of a screwing that large or that it would happen to them. Most members haven’t gone through a major strike, either. And for a lot of members…they don’t get a Teamsters pension. They get a state or county one, if they get one at all.
One of the reasons I brought up the college loan forgiveness program is that most Teamsters don’t have a college degree. I’m a university professional, and my portion of the local (and the public defenders) gets the impact and supports this initiative, but for a lot of others it doesn’t make sense to them. they’re driving truck and struggling to get by and think that people who went to college are doing better than they are, and a lot of times feels like those same people look down on them. Again, it’s a little different in my local because the snowplow drivers get to hear that the assistant registrar is working the perfume counter at Macy’s on nights and weekends to pay for child care…my local is a little different.
At the end of the day, I’ll bet you Teamsters membership supported Harris in greater % than the general public, and I’m not sure an endorsement from the international would have made that much difference. but it’s something we’re wrestling with as a membership where a lot of people in the leadership know that the Biden administration was the most pro-Labor administration they’d seen in more than generation…and that it was too diffuse a principle for the membership. And the leadership has much less control of the vote of the membership than in 1970. or 1950. Or 1930.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@trollhattan: eliminated slavery in CA constitution, specifically jails and prisons requiring prisoners to work (involuntary servitude).
K-Mo
@Kirk: Those are examples of the former category, not the latter.
I’m talking about, for example, grocery prices. They haven’t been growing much for a year and a half, but voters want them to come down. Absent a deeeeep recession, prices will not decline. So blame it on the Trump administration!!
Or take the expansion of the wage gap between less- and more-educated people, which has been in action for 50 years. If that continues, blame it on Trump!!
If small towns continue to languish, blame it on Trump. If test scores of public education students drop, blame Trump. Inter generational poverty transmission? Trump. Internet porn? Trump. Unrest in Venezuela? Trump. Make him feel own it all.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Wise words from a young black woman running for VA’s Senate. Go read the whole thing.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2024/11/12/2285701/-Moving-Forward#comment_90115973
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: No, I probably won’t get to BlueSky for a while. I’ve been wrapped up in Middle East matters, and journalists and media sites there still use Twitter almost exclusively.
Some Turkish journalists like Ragip Soylu and Levent Kemal are quite critcal of the changes Musk has brought to the platform, but they don’t seem all that anxious to leave. Turks are already very cynical about American media in general, so when some Yankee asshole messes with the information sphere it’s just another day ending in “y” to them.
But Laura Rozen is a good aggregator as well as Substack writer, and she is on Blue Sky. So I’ll probably join and hopefully she’ll lead me to some good diplomatic reporters. And I miss Cheryl Rofer’s posts and that’s another good reason to join up.
Cheryl Rofer is the one who led me to Laura Rozen, and Rozen is the one who led me to Axios reporter Barak Ravid and Middle East Eye Turkiye bureau chief Ragip Soylu.
Jinchi
No. Prop 8 was the ban on same sex marriage. Californians voted on an initiative to repeal Prop 8, even though the Supreme Court had already legalized SSM.
They’d learned after the Dobbs decision the lesson of what happens when you don’t repeal outdated laws like those controlling abortion rights.
The bill to outlaw involuntary servitude in CA prisons unfortunately failed, probably because most voters thought “work is good” and didn’t catch the connection to slavery.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Jinchi: I was confused by the numbering. Prop 6 this ballot was eliminating involuntary servitude, and Prop 3 was modifying the state constitution to enshrine same sex marriage. A prior Prop 6 has escaped my memory. The only prior one I remember anymore is Prop 13, which decimated property tax funding on schools, which was 40? years ago now.
Steve LaBonne
@JML: Thank you. That’s very informative.
The Truffle
@Tim in SF: so what happens if Trump pushes for a national abortion ban? What then?