Vice President Kamala Harris is a leader
A leader is someone who can see how things can be improved & who rallies people to move toward that better vision.
Leaders work toward making their vision a reality while putting people first.
I am a proud supporter of @VP Harris ???? pic.twitter.com/g0CyXSFDR6
— RiotWomenn (@riotwomennn) November 14, 2024
*Sigh*…
8 days after the election and Republicans are already coping and seething about Trump's choices.
— Shadow Of The Nerdtree (@agraybee) November 14, 2024
We have to remember that, traditionally, an incoming administration awards the various constituencies that got it elected with some sort of representation.
So the tech bros get Elon, anti-vax freaks get RFK Jr, dog killers get Noem, white nationalists get Hegseth, pedophiles get Gaetz…— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) November 13, 2024 at 6:50 PM
I’m sorry, my friends: The visiting aliens have decided there is no intelligent life down here… and may now be downgrading our ‘Mostly Harmless’ guidebook rating…
Three former U.S. government employees and a journalist said they believe the government is hiding info about UAPs from the public at a hearing in Congress Wednesday. pic.twitter.com/clcUjzKDfA
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 14, 2024
On The Road – swiftfox – Tanzania Safari Part 5 – Mara River and Hot Air Balloon
NotMax
Open thread FYI.
Science lost is science found.
Baud
The UAP thing is big on reddit.
Ben Cisco
I consider any “coping and seething” from any Republican to be performative at this point.
Baud
@Ben Cisco:
True. Also, even if not performative, who cares about what they’re feeling? US Senators are not children. They’ll either do the right thing or not, and be held accountable or not.
sab
So a UAP is just a new-fangled UFO?
Ben Cisco
@Baud: THAT PART.
Only watching local news this point; even there you cannot escape the hellscape. Ugh.
RepubAnon
I hope the folks who withheld their votes for Kamala to protest Gaza are encouraged by Trump’s appointment of Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel. The Israeli far fight is already planning on annexing the West Bank.
Protest votes work during primaries, but are counterproductive in General elections. Failing to vote for Kamala may result in the final destruction of the Palestinian people.
tcblue
@Ben Cisco: make sure you’re not watching a sinclair broadcasting station. it will aid your sanity
RepubAnon
@sab: UAPs piloted by aliens? Call ICE!
TBone
Thank you for that Clay Bennett list. 💙
My brother was numb and speechless that first day, while I was seething. I’ve been reaching out with messages of hope and love, and now that…
Time.
NotMax
@Baud
Jury still out on that assumption.
//
schrodingers_cat
Who is this we? I am not responsible for the hellscape. I did the right thing and urged others to do so.
We are in this situation because a capable black man was elected President, twice.
White women and white adjacents who voted R are as much to blame as white men.
And white liberals who did not stand by a record of achievement by the sitting President because of ageism.
Phylllis
The Kruse post is it in a nutshell. Trump is rewarding his sycophants. Nothing more. There is no long-term strategy, no ‘owning the libs’ going on. The best I can do right now is treat it as a long-term sociological experiment where I am collecting notebooks full of ‘Hmm, interesting.’ observations.
Baud
@sab:
Yes. Don’t know why they changed names, but they did a whole ago.
TBone
@RepubAnon: I checked in at a tankie website this morning and they’re all distracted by the shiny object in the sky. WTF.
sentient ai from the future
1. Betting markets (and their funding by foreign actors, natch) were absolutely part of swinging this presidential election
2. Gaetz (and I think Gabbard too) hosts a podcast, and any confirmation hearings should hang the bullshit they have said there around their fucking neck, in detail, with receipts. For instance, Chaya Raichik boosterism.
Ben Cisco
@tcblue: It’s Hearst, but tolerable.
NotMax
@RepubAnon
Did someone say aliens? (0:00 – 0:24)
;)
TBone
@Phylllis: does Project 2025 count as strategy?
TBone
@sentient ai from the future: ugh that fiucking woman! Aaarrgghhh
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@TBone: In so far as the people who put it together think they can control Trump well enough for long enough to put it into effect. Ask early-20th-century German plutocrats how well they managed it the last time around … well, obviously, one can’t literally ask, given that old age has claimed the few who weren’t wiped out by the purges, the war, or the Nuremberg gallows…
TBone
@NotMax: 💜 old favorite palate cleanser, comfort, solace, tribute 🎶 by ELO
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wtj59opWKg
Gotta rely on something when the ground under your feet gives way. I choose love and magic.
TBone
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: thank you for that perspective!
Phylllis
@TBone: Since it’s something available that someone else already did all the work on, absolutely. I was at the office yesterday & got a couple of ‘you don’t really think they’ll end federal funding, do you?’ questions from folks I know for a fact voted for the guy. I calmly responded that the people have spoken & it’s apparently what the majority wants. Not what they wanted to hear.
Baud
@Phylllis:
Good on you.
narya
@Phylllis: Yup.
TBone
@Phylllis: they can sit in their shitty diapers for 4 years, I just wish we couldn’t smell them.
Barbara
@Phylllis: I don’t see how anyone old enough to remember Reagan’s first term doesn’t understand how — except for defense — reducing or eliminating federal funding is the Republican platform. The details hardly matter.
TBone
@Barbara: Pepperidge Farm Remembers™
Baud
@Barbara:
People chose to forget the pandemic in order to pretend that Biden did a bad job on the economy.
TBone
About that word “majority.”
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/
Chaps my hide.
lowtechcyclist
I understand that Oolon Colluphid has said he will include Earth when he next revises his philosophical blockbuster, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes.
Barbara
@Baud: Well, when I was a kid you could choose the red popsicle or the orange one but not both. If losing your benefits is worth sending a strong message to Biden who am I to argue? Just stop pretending you didn’t know what the choice was about.
Baud
@Barbara:
100%
Peale
@Barbara: And since a large part of the party ran off and made Putin a hero for putting the gheys in their place, Defense Spending is no longer the priority it was for them, either.
NotMax
@TBone
They’re chortling at us, don’tcha know.
;)
Leto
@Phylllis: I was speaking with a fellow student on Tuesday, kid is like 19-20? I was talking about China, their military, brought it around to DIME theory, and then spoke about my time in the UK during the run up to Brexit, and the aftermath. Compared it to Trumpov’s rhetoric, and all he kept saying was, “I didn’t know that.” Told him about how UK farmers depended on Eastern European people to pick their crops because Brits wouldn’t do it, same as Americans relationship with Latinos. It was especially relevant to him because, apparently, his family farms. “I didn’t know that.”
If he were older, I probably would’ve laced it with a ton of scorn/anger. But he’s a kid, and this is part of why he’s at university: exposure to different perspectives. I also sent him the article about how the US government tried to get college kids to pick crops in southern Cali during the 1960s, and they quit after two weeks due to the brutal/inhumane conditions. Hope some of this sticks.
Baud
Via reddit, apt advice.
TBone
@NotMax: 😁
Potatoes are one of my complete food groups, being a descendant of Slavic people (add cheese and bacon and scallions and it’s truly a complete meal 😆).
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He did not do a bad job on the economy. There was a lot of disinformation and misinformation by the media and just plain ignorance in many instances on the part of the citizenry.
The left and the media attacked Biden for not being perfect and almost no one had his back
There is no inflation, the unemployment is at record lows, the job growth has been phenomenal. This is not a fucking bad economy.
lowtechcyclist
@Leto:
Well played.
When we’re down in Plant City, FL, “the winter strawberry capital of the world,” at Christmas, I’m gonna talk with the in-laws about how they must be looking forward to cultivating those strawberries themselves next fall.
TBone
@Baud: this very tactic has worked miracles for me.
One time on an empty NJ beach (just after Labor Day) a groyper family chose to invade our territory while we were swimming. Beach empty: groypers decided to set up shop within a two foot radius of our chairs. 24″. When we returned, they started shit talking immediately and I couldn’t have been nicer! “SO nice to have your company!” They decided we were no fun and quickly moved out (left the beach entirely).
Jeffg166
I have the data from Philadelphia. 808,580 registered Democrats. 551,845 voted, 256,735 didn’t. The felon won PA by 130,224.
Harris was right to focus on Philadelphia. It’s too bad she couldn’t get more people to turn out or vote by mail.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
TBone
@Jeffg166: goddamnit, now my Philly pride is shot to hell. I’m now solely gonna identify with DelCo instead of the wider Delaware Valley Region.
(ha ha)
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
H.E.Wolf
1. Thanks for updating us recently with the good news re: health of family members.
2. Our household reads the Electoral-Vote.com blog as our main political news source. I prefer Tues/Wed/Fri, when the historian writes. Mon/Thurs is when the more pessimistic and typo-prone computer scientist writes.
rikyrah
@Jeffg166:
Uh huh
ARoomWithAMoose
@Baud:
grey rock strategy (as mentioned in the comments a few times yesterday); make yourself boring to the abuser.
artem1s
The homophobes are going to use this opportunity to un-feminize the military for not putting the gheys and women in their place. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if this administration allowed (some) states to formally form
brown shirtsmilitias so they can ‘properly’ oversee the ‘evacuation‘ of people they don’t like.Phylllis
@Leto: We think these folks are reading the NYT & WaPo and consuming mainstream media. They’re barely paying attention to local news. SC allows for colleges to operate charter school districts & the local HBCU in my district was just authorized as one. I mentioned that as more of a funding threat to the district than the possible future loss of federal funds and these ‘district leaders’ had no clue what I was talking about. They had not heard anything about it because it didn’t have anything to do with the football playoff schedule or the volleyball traveling team.
Anne Laurie
It was decided that ‘Unexplained Aerial Phenomenon‘ was more… inclusive / scientific than ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’.
Especially since now almost everyone is carrying a camera (cellphone) 24/7, an increasing percentage of the ‘anomalies’ are bright lights in unexpected patterns, not ‘flying saucers’.
TBone
@Phylllis: JFC
sixthdoctor
https://bsky.app/profile/oliverdarcy.bsky.social/post/3lavzjpshsc2p
News: The Onion has acquired Infowars. https://www.status.news/p/the-onion-acquires-infowars
Phylllis
@TBone: In the immortal words of my husband, ‘they’re just goobers’.
tobie
I haven’t kept up with the raft of corrupt and incompetent people Trump wants to appoint to destroy various branches of the federal govt. Is RFK, Jr still in the running for head of the NIH? Heaven help us all…
Belafon
I’m currently still in the depression stage, but I feel like I’m on the back half of that curve. Getting more sleep helps. I will have to figure out what kind of resistance I can offer here in Red Texas.
Josie
@Belafon:
Let me know what you come up with. I need inspiration.
narya
@sixthdoctor: I am interested to see what happens next on this front.
MattF
I’ve been reading Carl Hiaasen ‘Skink’ novels. Funny/detective/crazy set in Florida. Skink is an ex-governor who now lives on roadkill and sometimes saves the day.
narya
PA Senate race officially going to a recount.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sixthdoctor: I saw that, but wasn’t sure whether to believe it. The source is the Onion, right
We live in strange times
narya
@MattF: Those are truly awesome.
Layer8Problem
I have been so good about avoiding news over the past few months that I just found out that (a part at least) of mountaineer Andrew Irvine was found in September.
This is not good. I have got to find some means of curating a news feed so I get useful information and not normalization and both-sidesy crap. I also want a pony.
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: I will say one thing about agriculture: The perception of an endless supply of cheap labor means that the industry has “underinvested” in technology. I remember reading an article about dairy farming and how, in some parts of the country, there has been a lot more use of technology. A farmer in Utah said that he didn’t want to invest in technology because that would mean that, in addition to an initial capital investment, he would have to pay a much higher rate of pay to (admittedly fewer) skilled workers to operate and maintain equipment, than the rate he could pay his mostly Mexican workforce. At least he was honest about the issue — he favored programs that allowed for foreign workers in the U.S., but a lot of people aren’t.
jonas
@sentient ai from the future: Gaetz has a lot more baggage than a crazy podcast. R’s are scrambling to figure out how to confirm him and not piss off Trump w/o admitting that the incoming AG is a suspected pedophile.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: changing names? Must be a real thing..UFO/UAP..
@TBone: speaking of purple turtles and other shiny distractions, what do you suppose he doesn’t want us to notice, that is way worse, than the attention grabbing list of proposed unqualified cabinet members?
sixthdoctor
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s real and it’s spectacular.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-infowars-bankruptcy-auction-rcna179936
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, when milk is back down to $2.15/gallon, it’s hard to say that food prices are still through the roof.
Soprano2
@RepubAnon: When that happens, they’ll blame Biden, not TCFG or themselves.
bluefoot
I’ve been trying to figure out what to do to make sure there are islands of safety, though with the full weight of the federal government behind rounding up immigrants, rolling back citizenship, etc I’m not sure how effective I can be. I’m already in an out group of an out group so finding anyplace where I get benefit of the doubt has been tough. Not just recently but for years now. Suggestions are welcome.
I’ve been appalled at how many people think that things will go on not too differently from how they’ve been. I think too many Americans lack the experience or imagination to conceive how bad it can get.
schrodingers_cat
You cannot melt into the background and be a gray rock if you are a visible minority.
twbrandt
@sixthdoctor: This is one of the few shining moments in an otherwise very depressing week. I love it.
Soprano2
@Baud: I got my feelings hurt easily when I was a kid. I finally learned as an adult that if they’re laughing at you and you laugh along, eventually they quit laughing at you because they aren’t getting the reaction they want.
Gloria DryGarden
For the purpose of comfort+ validation, here’s a prose poem thingy I wrote last Tuesday, when we were courting hope:
________________-
“We …wait
Holding our breath
To learn whether breathing might become safe again”
– Liminal Owl
An Epigraph Poem (safe/ lemonade)
We wait
Holding our breath
To learn whether breathing might become safe again
Waiting in hope for sunlight, birdsong, a breath of freshness,
deep, like a drink for thirsty bodies.
Hovering, but never lighting on any flower to sip nectar, always ready to flee, predators everywhere.
There’s the freeze, in stillness, like the rabbit or the possum,
The stare of a frozen deer in headlights.
If you don’t know fear, this looks like beauty, or gentleness.
There’s the flight, running through woods, whipped by branches, heart beating fast, running, but one cannot run at this sprint forever. It becomes necessary to stop, and collect oneself, and like all prey animals, to quiver and tremble and shake it off, as swiftly, as slowly as necessary, until it reaches a resting place.
But there has been no rest for too long.
Tires squeaking down the lightning fast highways of our neurons, frying our brains in the heat; the high speeds wearing off the treads, until there isn’t much left.
Knowing one is not safe, one ventures out anyway, slowly, quietly, pretending not to be fierce.
Carefully pretending one is calm, one drinks hot tea with honey and lemon, breathing in the soothing steam and fragrance.
With as many lemons as can be found we squeeze out juice into lemonade, with honey. We put lemon juice and zest into scones, and Into cake, and pie, and booze, and over fish, into salad dressing, over broccoli, in lemon chicken. If all we have are lemons, we will make so much more than lemonade.
We pass through a time of comfort foods and jasmine tea and deep breaths,
cooking, and dancing to music, as if our lives depended on it.
Melancholy Jaques
@RepubAnon:
If there is one thing revealed by recent elections, it’s that people vote their feelings without regard to how the vote will impact future policy or reality.
Soprano2
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the election. The only thing I’ll say in this post is that I think people voted for things to go back to the way they were in 2019, because they have so much longing for the time before the disruption of Covid. Boy are they going to be surprised. I want to write something longer, but that will have to wait until I have time for it.
UncleEbeneezer
@TBone: It’s like when someone tells you an offensive joke, sometimes the best way to respond is: “I don’t get it.” And then make them try to explain what makes it funny. It puts them in a really uncomfortable position because they have to spell out their bigotry right out in the open. A lot of people who think offensive jokes are fun aren’t comfortable doing that.
Gloria DryGarden
@bluefoot: your best suggestions need to be discussed in person, or through encrypted channels.
remember when far out meant cool, groovy, great, and not, out and beyond out, and therefore at risk of greater danger?
I’m wishing you clarity, safety and peace, and a way to thrive.
jonas
For too long Americans have enjoyed the privilege of not having to think about history or politics or current events and live in a bubble where all that matters is your job and sportsball on the weekends. It was a privilege made possible by our Constitution, the rule of law, a functional government, and American power in the world. Trump has promised to shred all of that and shit’s about to get real.
Layer8Problem
Well I wanted things to go back to 2015, but here we are. I think I’m at the alternating gobsmacked/petulant stage of grief.
eclare
@Phylllis:
That is a great response.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: see my comment at #75
zhena gogolia
@RepubAnon: Oh, but that was so hard to foresee!
Subcommandante Yakbreath
@tobie: This morning NPR is running a story sanewashing Kennedy’s views on nutrition…
eclare
@TBone:
I totally agree, I could eat potatoes at every meal. In fact, I had mashed potatoes for breakfast, my stomach is still churning, and it’s a nice, soothing meal.
But I like my baked potatoes with sour cream and curry powder.
gene108
Ironic thing about Republican “opposition” to Gaetz as AG is everything Gaetz has been accused of – outside of binge drinking and the type of drugs he snorted – Trump has also been accused or found civilly liable for, plus an actual felony conviction and owing $500 million in civil penalties.
There is no principled opposition to Gaetz.
RevRick
@Baud:
@Barbara: The problem was not that Biden did a bad job; he did a great job. But he did fail at two major points of communication and instead foolishly relied on the MSM to inform the public.
As soon as the American Rescue Plan passed he should have said:
1). I inherited an economy that was not going to recover on its own. There is no such thing as a normal level of employment. The evidence from the Great Depression and Great Recession shows that the economy can get stuck at high levels of unemployment and low levels of activity.
2). We will experience a nasty bout of inflation. It is an inevitable result of a shock to the economy. Inevitable. Inflation happened after the oil shocks of 1973 & 1979; after WW1 & WW2, during the Civil War and the American Revolution. COVID has thrown our economy all out of kilter, so as we recover we’re going to have to deal with inflation. But our administration will work to make our economy more resilient long term.
He and his Cabinet and Press Secretary needed to say this every day. And because they failed to give this message, we had the Lester Holts lead with soaring gasoline prices and the horrors of the grocery aisles.
The Truffle
Looks like schadenfreude will come sooner than expected.
tobie
@Subcommandante Yakbreath: Yikes. Thanks, NPR, for being feckless.
eclare
@sixthdoctor:
Love the Seinfeld reference!
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: That is amazing 😍
TBone
@UncleEbeneezer: 👍 another excellent tactic.
Gloria DryGarden
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: history showed us. It was all available to see.
meanwhile it’s easy to forget that TcFTiFg is not just his own special narcissistic grifter self, but he is connected through money and big deal brokering, and debt, to many many big money big power players.
He’s in a web serving the right “christian” nationalist fascist authoritarian folks, with their 2025 project, but also he seems to be in bed with or fawning over some huge superpower leaders.
It’s quite a wide dark web, with strings he can pull, or be pulled by.
eclare
@gene108:
Like recognizes like.
John S.
@schrodingers_cat:
Unfortunately the data doesn’t put money into people’s pockets. Most of the economic growth is going into the pockets of the wealthy while wages have stagnated since the 90s.
It might feel good to have all the facts and data while yelling at people who pay $300 a week for groceries and live paycheck to paycheck that they’re doing just fine, but it doesn’t help win elections.
Quinerly
@RevRick: no incumbent president with a 40% approval rating for most of his presidency and a 75% wrong track polling the day of the election could have won. Plus, he and his administration had a huge messaging problem re the economy. It might be great for some like me, but it’s not great for many. Saying it is great doesn’t make it great for people whose rent has tripled.
Gloria DryGarden
@RevRick: next time we have our foot in the door, they need to hire you for messaging coach.
i wish they had communicated this too.
TBone
@eclare: I’m using leftover roasted baby size golden taters (sliced) to make home fries for lunch. With onion, of course!
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: I can’t prognosticate on what the shiny objects and purple turtles are distracting from just yet, but I’m working on it. I am sniffing in the direction of foreign allegiances not yet uncovered…
Quinerly
@John S.:
A very astute comment. Thanks for a realty check. Had a little time this AM before I head out. Lately, I quit reading after 12-15 comments. Glad I stopped at 12 and then I dipped back in from bottom up.
eclare
@TBone:
Sounds good!
John S.
@Quinerly:
I just made the same point above. We need to stop screaming at people about how stupid they are and how they don’t live in reality. That’s not a winning strategy.
We will never convince the MAGA crowd, but right now we’re not even convincing our own voters.
Layer8Problem
@John S.: I thought wages had gone up in the past few.
Quinerly
@Subcommandante Yakbreath:
The Kennedy/Trump bromance won’t last long. Saw 3 pieces in my news fed where Kennedy is getting preachy publicly and to Trump about Trump’s diet.
Bupalos
Now that Bsky is viable, I’d like to make another appeal to stop running our information environment through Elmo’s ketamine-dusted fingers.
That X cross is sprouting the little appendages that turn Kreuz into Hakenkreuz. Yes it’s marginally easier. Yes there’s (still and hopefully not for long) more content there. But it’s got a fucking swastika printed on it. Is it really worth it? There is an opportunity emerging right now to end it as a default information source. Can we try?
anyway please don’t see this as bitching, see it as pointing to a window of opportunity that is likely to close. Personally I would much rather see nothing than even the most spirit-rousing content that comes with the mark of Elmo on it.
zhena gogolia
@John S.: Because our own voters (at least those who stayed home or voted for Jill Stein or Trump) are stupid and don’t live in reality.
Dave
@Leto: Yeah I’m far more tolerant of this form people in their teens or early twenties, I didn’t know shit about politics until I was 22ish before than it was pretty much the vaguely libertarianish attitude that is so easy for a white dude olto embrace, but people in their 40’s or 50’s and who rely on these programs?
I’m basically this is what you voted for the information was out there and not hard to find even acknowledging the sea of algorithm driven propaganda we inhabit so welcome to the boot of consequences. Now what are they going to do about it?
catclub
I would say: No they are not.
zhena gogolia
Credibly accused or adjudicated sexual abusers in the new administration:
Trump
C. Thomas
B. Kavanaugh
RFK Jr
Matt Gaetz
Am I missing anyone?
Trivia Man
@Ben Cisco: Exactly. “Concern” over cabinet picks will disappear without a peep when 100% of the cabinet is a recess appointment.
Maybe impeachment process starts the next day?
eclare
@Quinerly:
Hehehe…
Dave
@ARoomWithAMoose: I kinda go between grey rocking and happily pointing out probably consequences with a cheery “we’ll see what happens and well I hope not but we’ll see won’t we?”.
It may not be the most effective but it does seem to minimize conflict and leave people with at least some unease.
John S.
@Layer8Problem:
Enough to correct decades of stagnation? I don’t think so.
schrodingers_cat
@John S.: There has been real sustained income growth as well in the last 4 years. Doordash and instacart are not fundamental rights. I live in MA and never have I ever spent $300 a week for groceries.
But I am sure you will explain that away too.
I am calling bullshit on your claim that the average grocery run is $300
John S.
@zhena gogolia:
Keep telling them how stupid they are. I’m sure they’ll come around one day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Trivia Man: The GOP has the House and Senate. There will be no impeachment proceedings.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
That was damn weird. Yesterday afternoon I spent some time rootling around for various marches that were popular long ago (for a future project), and remembered I used to love Pierné’s “March of the Little Tin Soldiers.” Hadn’t heard or even thought of it in decades, and sat listening to it with pleasure. And now, perhaps 16 hours later, here you are serving it up in a Firesign Theatre soundtrack. I do enjoy odd, apparently meaningless, synchronicities like that!
catclub
I would argue that _pretending_ to reduce that spending is their agenda. _Lots_ of GOP businessmen see the Federal government as a source of income.
Not just defense contractors, either.
Omnes Omnibus
@John S.:
Perhaps she isn’t trying to persuade anyone at the moment?
John S.
@schrodingers_cat:
You can call bullshit all you want. That seems to be your thing.
Or you can go check out what people are actually paying in groceries these days. Here, I’ll help.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-how-much-americans-spend-on-groceries-in-each-state/
suzanne
@Baud:
You might even say…. fuck their feelings?
Chris Johnson
@Ben Cisco: Hmmm.
You see the thing is, I believe the Republicans are targeted every bit as much as the rest of us. You’ll notice no loyal Republicans are being tapped to work in the Trump admin, even those who would absolutely want to cash in on a rampant oligarchy.
Only the craziest or most vatnik MAGAs are allowed. This is because their purpose is not to represent OR to rule, but to ruin. If they were angling for a lasting tyranny, there are far better ways to do that. They’re not. The Republican Party is, believe it or not, on the outside of this now.
They are going to be the first to be suspected, first to be hunted, home-invaded, disarmed: they’re the real threat to the plan. Some of them know this.
Serious right wing dissidents are already refugees… it didn’t take them an hour. Certain people just instantly went to ground, and rightly so. This is why the first thing I said in the chaos of immediate post-election was ‘Moscow Rules!’. That’s where we are. It’s basically Red Dawn coming from inside the house. Everyone in charge actually works for Putin, not the Republicans. Only the MAGA who are well indoctrinated will be trusted.
And nothing performative is to be trusted, not now. It’ll be a trap. I consider myself one of the lucky ones as my focus is elsewhere and I can shamefully refuse to know anything more. If I know anybody who might have been right wing, thinking they were going to prosper and maybe kick hippie butts or something, all I can say is Moscow Rules and I don’t know you and don’t you dare trust me with anything, or even look nervous. You’re gonna have to be better than that because this is not a drill and it’s already too late.
I would honestly have higher hopes for Republicans who are quietly falling in line and making sure not to cope and seethe where the regime can see them. A lot of them know the deal but thought they could control it. Now they’re the uprising they always wanted to be, and they’re more fucked than I can really imagine.
Have fun, guys, you built this. Maybe next time, just don’t.
John S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fine by me. I understand lots of people are still angry and raw. Just something to keep in mind for the next election.
catclub
They could go after Mayorkas again between now and when he resigns.
Layer8Problem
@John S.: I was thinking more to your point, if that’s still your point, about sudden inflation after years of way low inflation not being matched by our stagnant wages, which haven’t been quite as stagnant lately.
I mean maybe it’s not enough to offset the price of eggs or the price of starter studio apartments.
catclub
@John S.: If you start at 1980 your ‘all the money is going to the already rich’ is somewhat accurate.
If you start in 2021 or so, then wage growth at the bottom was much higher than that of other groups.
Wages went up more than inflation. Especially bottom end wages.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: yes, it’s quite frightening to contemplate. I’m throwing the question to the group like a zen koan to study.
Bupalos
@TBone: Ha, yes. Bonus points for the reference here in your vignette because in basketball this tactic is called “pulling the chair.” It’s when someone’s strategy counts on you maintaining aggressive opposition, that’s what they’re leaning on. Instead you step aside and make room and they fall through the lane like chumps.
John S.
@Layer8Problem:
I’m just trying to figure out the result just like everyone else. And when everyone who actually bothered to vote cited the economy as their primary motivator, there has to be more to it than just that they are stupid and don’t have a proper macroeconomics education.
But that’s just my take. I’m a product manager by trade, so I try to solve the problems that exist, not the ones that don’t exist.
Trivia Man
@Jeffg166: I will point out that some “did not vote” is a reflection of extremely targeted and very effective voter suppression efforts.
Eventually many people run out of energy fighting.
It is very inspirational to see people wait in line for 4 hours to vote. But WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK dies that say about our nation? How many couldn’t do that because disability or work or child care or transportation?
Yes, Did Not Vote could have changed the worlds future (again) but that was a battlefront THEY have prioritized for decades. And it was successful (again).
JML
@zhena gogolia: I despise Clarence “Corrupt” Thomas as much as anyone, but he’s not a Trump appointee. We’ll see if RFK Jr actually lands anything; I suspect the Brainworm Failson is going to get shut out and then be amazed that his cravenness wasn’t rewarded.
That said, I’m sure there will be other sexual predators that this evil administration will put into place.
catclub
@Jeffg166: that is 68% turnout. what was it in 2020?
maybe 75%? I still credit vote by mail in 2020 as allowing many more lazy non-voters to vote.
Layer8Problem
@John S.: I’m an IT person. My job was to keep the promises the marketing and sales guys made.
ETA “Many people were saying” that the economy was bad. I’m saying inflation went up after years and so did wages.
suzanne
@John S.: $300 a week on groceries is probably about right for a family.
catclub
He is also, ‘technically’, not in the Trump admin.
John S.
@catclub:
Robert Reich did a much better analysis than my brief summary this morning (though I don’t necessarily agree with the entire thrust of his opinion).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/14/democrats-election-working-class-voters
Josie
@zhena gogolia:
Lewandowski
John S.
@Layer8Problem:
LOL
I should have said my job is to fix the problems created by Sales and Marketing. That’s usually the case. 😊
HeleninEire
@Baud: I just purchased the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” I am hoping it helps me get through these next 4 years.
catclub
the reason you don’t see those 4 hour lines in wealthy suburban districts is that they have enough ( and more) voting equipment. Completely by accident.
John S.
@suzanne:
Right now, the US average seems to be around $270, but it edges much closer to $300 (and more!) in many places.
I provided a link up above.
Dave
@John S.: Unfortunately we also need a mindless relentless extremely simple drumbeat of us good them bad until and unless someone can figure out a way to entirely shift the information environment.
I don’t like it for a number of reasons but I don’t like it a hell of a lot less than what is currently going on.
The challenge of this is that the short term and long term of this are in quite a bit of tension with each other.
Ben Cisco
@H.E.Wolf: Thank you.
Will give that link a look.
catclub
@Josie: Thanks! I was struggling to bring that name up.
schrodingers_cat
@John S.: I have never heard of this site before. Why should I trust it.
CPI had spiked in 2022 because of COVID stimulus but is now back to historical norms.
Dave
@Quinerly: I am going to take small ugly pleasure every instance where these yahoos turn on each other and set each other aflame.
danielx
@John S.:
There is a limited subset of people who vote based upon facts. There is a much larger subset who vote based upon feelings, and I understand why people are pissed off when they are paying twice the price for a dozen eggs.
However…way back in 1981 Paul Volcker was trying to wring inflation out of the economy. I talked to a guy who was paying fourteen percent for a mortgage. (Admittedly I was very young and very ignorant and didn’t really grasp what that meant.) He was some kind of pissed, and he definitely did not think it was morning in America. To use St. Ronnie’s phrase…but by the time the 1984 election rolled around the economy was booming. Everybody could see it because there was a much more limited selection of news reporting and news was mostly honestly reported. There wasn’t a whole industry aimed at telling people up was down, white was black, and the economy was shitty, despite what people were seeing with their own eyes.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: Today was not the day for a Plant City flashback, but I’m fine now :)
catclub
Obviously the aliens now know to be much more shy, since everyone has a cell phone camera. It could not be that there are no aliens.
3Sice
As it turns out, “we” didn’t have the votes in the House.
Quinerly
@John S.:
THIS!!!!
Betty Cracker
If Trump stiffs RFK the lesser, he’ll probably put Florida’s crackpot surgeon general at HHS. Not sure how much of an improvement that would be. Ladapo is a highly trained physician, but he fakes data, unjustly punishes public health officials to intimidate others and feeds lies to the public that make collective action to fight disease impossible. The nepo baby would probably do less damage, tbh.
Gloria DryGarden
@SiubhanDuinne: you asked for the poem you had missed, that Dorothy arranged on the page..
there’s another one up at #75, and there were 2 more that i recently wrote, inspired by the comment streams here
Early morning poetry:
Contradictions
what a
juicy
terse
rich statement.
i wish I could see a mind map
or chart of all the pieces you’re considering
in this set of heightened contradictions
as I try to tease out all the things you might mean,
that I wish to understand,
I flip through a range of disparate images,
and ended with this:
one lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.
by Gloria A DryGarden
danielx
@Quinerly:
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that old lone ranger and you don’t preach at Donald Trump if you want to stay in his orbit.
catclub
I still say that Harris could (and should) have repeatedly said that the economy RIGHT NOW is far better than Reagan’s ‘morning in America’ by inflation, unemployment, stock market, in comparison with other nations.
suzanne
If you’re thinking about costs and people being unhappy…. please remember that housing costs are not included in most measures of inflation, and those have gone up a lot since 2020. More than wages in most places, by a significant amount.
If you own your house, either outright or with a fixed-rate mortgage, you’re not experiencing it. But if you rent, or if you want to move, the cost increases are significant.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat:
The number in Texas on that site looks pretty close to my experience. Two people in my house and I make everything from scratch – no wasted dollars. I’m spending about $150 per week. You would double that for a family of four, which is your usual average.
Plus, my rent has gone up. If I didn’t have help from one of my sons, I would not make it every month. I guess you could say I voted against my own interests.
Dave
@danielx: One of the only “good” things about DJT is that he screws everyone over including the sycophants that attach themselves to him or those that try to use them. It’s very weak compensation but I will enjoy watching that play out again.
catclub
Failure of imagination. The GOP creates imaginary problems, like illegal aliens voting, and goes after them by all means. While ignoring actual problems.
Phylllis
@catclub: I have to admit I hadn’t really thought about this. Education spends a buttload of money on educational software, data dashboard programs, and yes, books. And a lot of that spending is only doable because districts receive supplemental federal funds. I’m thinking the CEO’s of Pearson, Scholastic, Edmentum, just to name a few heavyweights, will appreciate losing millions in business.
schrodingers_cat
There are people here who told us in the summer that Kamala Harris would win easily when we brought up white supremacy and misogyny. They have been proven wrong and yet they have shown zero signs introspection.
schrodingers_cat
White people sold the country out because they want cheap housing and cheap groceries. Congratulations. You are not going to get that in the incoming T2 reign of error.
Belafon
@Quinerly: I do think a huge chunk of his disapproval is he was so invested in trying to make things right that he didn’t sell that he was trying to fix things. To get around the media, especially in the red states where the media is controlled by Sinclair, he would have need to travel a lot.
Citizen Alan
@jonas: IMO, all republicans should be presumed to be pedophiles. Some are just better at hiding it than others.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: I prefer nepo babies, who don’t want to work.
Fanatics, on the other hand, never rest.
catclub
@John S.: but those show only two states where the average household spending is over $300/wk – Hawaii and Alaska. her bullshit looks pretty reasonable.
When Mississippi is higher than Massachusetts for weekly spending, I start thinking that the average household in MS has more mouths to feed than in MA.
Mr. Bemused Senior
How fitting. There’s hope for this timeline.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear:
Who knew we would miss trustifarians.
Citizen Alan
@Melancholy Jaques: i know you don’t mean that as a justification, but even as a justification, it is still horrible because it means that these creatures felt that donald trump would be a better steward of the nation than really any democrat. 70 million voters are some combination of insane or evil.
eclare
@suzanne:
I am so thankful that I bought my house in 2005 with a fixed rate mortgage. If I hadn’t, I’d be screwed. My jaw drops when I hear what houses near me sell for. I redid my homeowners policy last year, and I more than doubled the coverage from 2005. And I am in Memphis, not a hot market.
JML
@suzanne: even people with a fixed-rate mortgage will feel it; property taxes have made some scary jumps in some places. But you’re 100% right on renters, it’s amazing what the costs are now. And rent never, ever goes down.
Belafon
@Mr. Bemused Senior: They should keep the title, and turn it into a legitimate news source.
Mr. Mack
For 30 years I have been doing the grocery shopping for our family. It was quite a role reversal at the time, but I took the job seriously and dare say I got very good at it. I know prices. Yes, absolutely prices went up on many things, those of us with the time and technology to navigate this made it manageable. I look around at the grocery carts of others while I wait in line to pay (I don’t use self check out) and I am always shocked by the choices. You change to off brands, you do without, you look for sales, etc.
That said…the messaging around this was anemic at best. Lesson learned I guess.
Chief Oshkosh
@Soprano2:
You’re probably right, but I feel just the opposite. One of the many, many motivators to vote blue (and donate and volunteer) for me was the memory of the utter chaos that surrounded everything Trump touched, an effect that was amplified a thousand-fold during the pandemic. That chaos added immeasurably to my torture as I watched my father die a horrific (but mercifully, short) death, and at least I was able to be there for him, and the suicide of my nephew. Then came the ending of careers of some of my most trusted and outstanding colleagues, and now my having to deal with long Covid (we think…which is a whole other story).
So,…2019? Fuck, I don’t even remember it.
But I cannot stop remembering what Trump put us through.
John S.
@schrodingers_cat:
Wow. That’s a special response.
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
May I recommend Googling “average cost of groceries for family of 4”? Lots of good info from reliable sources.
And, of course, I realize varies from area to area.
I have to assume you are what is considered upper middle class? Little to no money problems? Not having to live off of credit cards with a 25% interest rate. I, too, really have no money problems and pay my cards off monthly. Love those points! But I do at least live in the real world and realize I had a lot of great breaks, strong parents, and a lot of higher education. A profession. Hated it but did well in my little niche, plus with rehabbing historic homes and flipping them. Sadly, though, most of my close friends and acquaintances have much, much less than I have. Many in their 60’s and 70’s and have never owned a home or have lost a home. Live in government subsidized housing on Social Security and extra money thru odd jobs….house sitting, Rover app, $25 an hr light yard work. Can you imagine being a 75 year man who has to advertise on community bulletin boards during Biden’s economy to do raking in stranger’s yards just to have enough extra money to live. Well, I know a guy.
I am trying to type this to come out as politely as possible. And, I am struggling.
Trivia Man
@Omnes Omnibus: But it can be introduced… get defeated immediately but i refuse to preemptively concede defeat.
”Can’t win, why try?”
– life advice to Bart from Homer
Bonus: make every senator own the pick instead of giving cover. “It as a recess appointment! I would never allow that monster to be confirmed “
John S.
@Josie:
She’s never heard of that website or you, so why should she believe either of you?
/s
John S.
@catclub:
LOL
That literally made me laugh. Not that you’re wrong in your assessment, but there is a bit of tautological magic in what you describe.
Omnes Omnibus
Okay, let’s concede that grocery prices are higher and rent is outrageous. I still contend that thinking that Trump would do a better job of fixing it than either Biden or Harris would is a really dumb thing to do.
suzanne
@JML: I keep bringing up that a record-high percentage of Americans who rent — nearly 40% — are officially rent-burdened. That means they spend 30% or more of their household income on rent. That’s a terrifying statistic.
Don’t believe me that we’re in a housing shortage? Jerome Powell says so.
WereBear
With all that was arrayed against us, we still only lost by one percent.
It’s still always and forever them cheating to maintain their unfair advantage, but when I was a child, they didn’t have to cheat that much. 90% of the people around me growing up in small towns were MAGAS, then.
Maybe a little less angry, because their dysfunctional lives weren’t challenged on the regular. Perhaps more secure because they hadn’t yet had the avalanche of scandals engulfing their religion, so the neighbors found out.
But they could pretend they were great and it’s all they have still. With all their advantages of money and media stranglehold and propaganda… they barely made it.
That’s why they don’t want a next time. But I’m living to give it to them. Because from where I sit, it’s been working.
John S.
@catclub:
Reasonable? I don’t think so. Unless you’re arguing that $270 a week is totally affordable for people who make less than $500 a week.
Please don’t miss the forest for the trees.
Omnes Omnibus
@Trivia Man:
I understand the argument. I just am not sure that it will do much more than put it in the Congressional Record that the Democrats objected. Not a bad thing. in and of itself, but anyone doing it must be aware that that is all that they are doing.
John S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Very gracious of you to concede reality. Yes, it is an incredibly self-defeating thing to do. And there has to be a reason for it.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: Imagine going through your life trying to not think. Just ping pong around in your feelings because no one every explained how to handle those, either.
It explains so much.
suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus:
You are correct.
But I still contend that the Dems absolutely own-goaled here. When prices are going up and people are feeling squeezed, you simply do not say that the economy is fantastic. It’s like bragging about your new car to your friend who just had theirs repo-ed.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: thanks
Uncle Cosmo
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena is significantly less restrictive than Unidentified Flying Objects for phenomena that may or may not be “objects” and may or may not be “flying” and will promote less jumping-to-conclusions of the canals-on-Mars variety. (Which Schiaparelli described as canali, the Italian term for “channels,” which were in fact an optical illusion in the telescopes of the time, but subsequently misinterpreted by the English-speaking world as “canals.”)
catclub
This. It is people like us who are in an information bubble that a vast majority does not experience.
What information they do experience? I have very little idea.
Chris Johnson
@danielx: …unless your crazy is SO useful as another wrecking ball, that Trump doesn’t get to decide to get rid of you.
Trump isn’t the boss. I think when TASS dryly notes that Trump really owes Russia now, it’s ha-ha-because-totally-serious. They’ve wrangled things to the point where they can just say it and it’s a warning to the others… and a warning to Trump that he is owned.
I agree that guys like Musk and RFK are insufferable and should be the first people Trump fires in a fit of narcissist pique. If Musk’s self-aggrandizement and getting applause at Mar-A-Lago(!!!), if RFK’s eagerness to lecture Trump about his diet, are allowed to stand, then we REALLY get to see the puppet strings.
I don’t think they’d even be there if Trump’s boss didn’t want them. If they’re not quickly shitcanned for their effrontery, it exposes the whole scenario.
Quinerly
@Omnes Omnibus:exactly right. It will get worse.
But people voted for change because they were hurting.
The messaging on Bidenomics failed. Biden and his folks failed at messaging on the economy. I think we could have won if Biden had dropped out of the running after the midterms. We had had a primary.
And please note, that those of us who feel this way don’t jump in at the beginning of every thread with our feelings and project on others.
My problems with Biden have nothing to do with any feelings about his age.
John S.
@suzanne:
@Quinerly:
Obviously, I couldn’t agree more. But it really does seem now isn’t a great time to have a constructive discussion here.
People are still too raw, and they need their space to process.
JML
@Mr. Mack: It always amazes me how few people really bargain hunt, wait for sales, etc when it comes to groceries. But I was raised by two parents who both grew up poor, and while we were always fine as a household, they still bargain hunted all the time, and were frugal people. It got ingrained in me too, and even though I’m doing fairly well now, I still wait for the sale. (and I’ve had stretches where I was struggling and haven’t forgotten)
But people want what they want. or don’t want have to fight with their kids over brand-names when other things are a struggle. Or simply never really learned how to budget and save.
And it’s also expensive to be poor: you don’t have the extra to buy ahead and lay in a supply of staples (and maybe don’t have any room to store it). Instead of buying the giant-ass package of TP that will save you a bunch over 6 months, you get the 4-pack because you simply can’t throw down the extra, ever.
Belafon
@suzanne: Which, especially here in the DFW area, is driven by having areas where the minimum house size is 3000sqft and half acre lots. While I don’t want houses right next to each other, most houses don’t need to be that big, and the land could easily be half that size for a big yard. But those houses keep “those people” out of the neighborhoods. (I think we’ve talked about this before now that I have finished typing this.)
Bupalos
Thoughts while reading Snyder’s On Freedom, which is one of those great books that contains a million things you already know but essentially forgot that you know. And forgot how important they are. Or that they are very real:
My two most important and fulfilling friendships would not be possible without our advances towards gender equality. Another would not have exist but for efforts at racial equality and specifically “forced bussing.” Simply would not have happened.
We really do need to think and speak more in terms of positive freedom. The horror stories about forced birth are real and profoundly troubling, the “Gillead” stuff a little less real. But the broadest blow to freedom in all that is simply the way casting social roles for people that sorts us here and there limits everyone’s options, life experience, and human potential. Everyone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Quinerly:
You are basically arguing that we lost the election in early 2023.
catclub
I disagree. Trump has been saying the economy right now is historically terrible. There has to be pushback on that.
eclare
@WereBear:
I promise if I ever become a nepo baby in law, I will not want to work.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Cosign.
There are plenty of macroeconomic indicators that show that the US economy is doing better post COVID than almost any economy in the world. We got the soft landing of low inflation without high unemployment but that’s not enough because Joe Biden treated the marginalized as if they were human beings not tokens to feel good and virtuous about yourself or demons to project hate onto.
Also many of the people complaining about inflation are the same ones who want more government programs, which led to higher inflation in the immediate aftermath of COVID.
This blog is microcosm of what white liberal America. And increasingly a place hostile to someone like me. Trumperica has revealed the true colors of a lot of people.
Quinerly
@suzanne:
I hear you. I am beginning to think some live in an “alternative reality.”
Trivia Man
@catclub: funny – cell phones never catch bigfoot or UAP but police violence is shockingly easy to record.
🤷🏽♀️
Old School
I’ve clicked through all of the links for the average family food prices.
The $270/week figure is a year old. It comes from a Census bureau report for October 18-30, 2023.
The spreadsheet is Table 6 in the Food Sufficiency and Food Security section.
The most recent Household Pulse reports do not have a similar spreadsheet, so I’m not sure what current data would show.
John S.
@JML:
It has always been expensive to be poor. There’s a very old example which compares a rich man and a poor man buying shoes.
The rich man buys the best quality shoe that will last him for years. The poor man buys the cheap shoes he can afford, but has to replace them every year. Over time, the poor man spends a lot more on shoes.
John S.
@Old School:
Unfortunately, economic data always lags. But do you think grocery prices are cheaper now than they were a year ago?
They ramped up quite a bit in the early part of this year, and very few things have come down as much as they went up.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: Vibes, man. Can’t fight the vibes.
eclare
@Chief Oshkosh:
What a horrible few years you’ve had.
John S.
@Quinerly:
Their alternate reality is called “having money”. Which apparently renders people from seeing the plight of anyone who is not as financially stable as they are.
schrodingers_cat
I have said everything I want to say on this topic so I am muting this thread.
Quiltingfool
@H.E.Wolf: Some time ago, you mentioned the Electoral Vote site. I visited it, and I am a daily reader now. Good site.
I’m sure you saw how they are now going to be more selective on the critical emails – they will still publish them, but are banning the psycho ones, lol! I guess they would get really nasty emails from some woman from the Villages in Florida (other readers swore they thought it was a man — guess they didn’t know women could be as horribly mean as a man) so she is permanently banned!
suzanne
@Belafon: Yes, I agree with you, and I think we have talked about it before. One commenter calls me a glibertarian and a fan of Peter Thiel when I point out that we have a shortage of houses, that we need more smaller homes than we have (average household size is the smallest in decades), and that we have used design and zoning fuckery like minimum lot sizes to protect the interests of wealthy homeowners….. with disastrous effects for those who don’t come from financial means.
John S.
@Layer8Problem:
That’s just horseshit.
The majority of Americans, including many people on this fucking blog, are struggling financially. That isn’t vibes.
Old School
@catclub:
There has to be, but I didn’t see Harris pushing that the economy was fantastic. She was talking about the need to lower costs (food, prescription drugs, etc.) and build an opportunity economy.
I’m not sure who was arguing everything was great.
gene108
@catclub:
I turned 50 years old in 2024. I was six years old in 1980 and started first grade. I was 10 years old in 1984.
The median age for an American is 38 years old. I’m on the older end of the age distribution in this country, and I was in elementary school when Reagan ran for office.
We really need younger politicians whose lived experience is much more in the present than the people we have now.
suzanne
@Old School:
Biden repeatedly said that we had the best economy in the world. You can find many clips of him saying some version of that.
Which can be simultaneously true, as well as really difficult to hear when you’re struggling.
Chris Johnson
@catclub: I’ve been working some of it out. You do that by inference.
Example: there’s a largely apolitical friend who tries to keep connections with large numbers of diverse people. Thing is, that means he’s in a RW silo. He doesn’t understand that he is, didn’t intend to be, but his observed reality includes stuff that affects his reactions.
I was with him and some friends of the left/gay variety (this guy prides himself on liking gay friends) in a public conversation. We were all over the map, pretty unguarded, nothing that would offend a lefty coffeeshop. But this friend spotted a wingnut lady within earshot, with a little girl. And he recognized that the lady was flipping out without saying anything, and he kinda got us out of there, away from her.
But that didn’t worry him, because to him, crazy rightwingers aren’t dangerous. At all. There wasn’t a hint that he, even recognizing the problem, saw it as ‘oh shit, that’s the sort that’s gonna be taking down license plate numbers and calling a special hotline’. And fuck yes that’s the sort that will do that, and he didn’t even bat an eyelash.
But I was talking about going to hook up with the Episcopal Church, which I went to as a kid, with observations on how their ideology matches where I’m at currently. And he thinks this is awesome and is happy with me about it… but when I mentioned that it might touch my BUSINESS, and I might reveal going to church to my passel of left-wing musicians and producers in my audience, suddenly he panicked! He visibly shat bricks, and made me promise I wouldn’t let any of my lefty audience know I’d been near a church.
Because HIS silo insists that the left-wingers are coming to Christians’ houses in the night to murder them for their faith. And so, he instinctively panicked, in a way he absolutely didn’t over the rightwinger lady.
It works like that. You can learn what their information is by watching closely for ‘tells’. In this case, this is a guy who stays very nonjudgemental, but you could tell his silo by what frightened him viscerally.
John S.
@Old School:
I guess you don’t read this blog or the thread you’re posting on.
Belafon
@Old School: Biden was trying to counter the Republican’s and Trump’s argument that the economy was doin bad by stating that wages were up and employment was low, which is true – and Trump and Co will ruin both – but people saw “price of food” rather than “I haven’t lost my job” as their indicator.
Layer8Problem
@John S.: Well then pull up some year by year numbers.
RevRick
@Quinerly: I didn’t say to say it was great. My intent was for the administration to say to the public, “brace yourself because we are in for a rough ride, and we will work to fix it long term.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: We live paycheck to paycheck, have very little savings, are renters etc. We feel all the economic hardships as much as, if not significantly more so than most people here. But it never once made me want to b*tch about Dems/Biden.
Old School
@John S.:
The linked survey from the Census Department was published two weeks after it was taken. As I said, the most recent report doesn’t have a similar table.
Overall, they have been fairly flat over the past year in my opinion. (The price of eggs has dropped since the bird flu.)
Do I think $8-$10 for a 12-pack of soda is too high? Yes, but I don’t blame politicians for that.
Old School
@suzanne:
So Biden shouldn’t have said that? Even though it was true?
catclub
Tell me what year a majority of Americans were _not_ struggling financially. That majority includes everyone below average income. and even more important vibe- wise, what year did they tell you they were NOT struggling financially? That would be like a farmer that does not complain about the weather.
[If it is bad, it kills the crop, If it is good there is a bumper crop and kills the prices.]
Old School
@John S.:
Who said the economy was great in this thread?
TBone
@Bupalos: 🎯
John S.
@UncleEbeneezer:
I understand macroeconomics, so despite my current economic hardships, I still voted for Harris. But there didn’t seem to be nearly enough of people like us to win the election.
suzanne
@Old School: No, he really shouldn’t have said that. From a strategic perspective, it’s the wrong thing to say. It comes off as out of touch, and makes people who are struggling feel unseen.
Layer8Problem
@John S.: That’s for damned sure.
tam1MI
I’m a singleton and I spend $150 biweekly for groceries. $300 a week on groceries is downright cheap for a family of four.
John S.
@Old School:
Most of the last 100 comments back and forth are about that.
People arguing that groceries really aren’t that expensive, that wages are really great when you look over 50 years, that Biden didn’t do a good enough job of explaining how awesome the economy is. I mean come on.
Gvg
@Omnes Omnibus: Biden won the college educated, even the white college educated and Trump has people who want to eliminate the department of education. Republicans have been hating colleges for some time and don’t like experts. Their voters admire a President who trusts his gut rather than facts.
The loan forgiveness was apparently very unpopular. I think that was partly (not only) the long standing cultivated dislike of colleges which do nasty things like try to teach students to think for themselves and make conclusions based on facts and observed results. People often come back from college more tolerant than their parents and don’t accept authority as truth anymore. We are going to have to try to protect the whole education system from theses mooks.
Quinerly
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes. Hindsight is wonderful, isn’t?
I was never 100% comfortable with Biden running for a second term, though. NEVER.
I have never bought that only Biden could beat Trump. I have always thought Biden beat Trump because of Covid. I didn’t voice anything here about my feelings until about 2 weeks after the debate. Those in my personal circle with real names😉 and I discussed it, though. We ALL felt he shouldn’t run for a second term. Most had figured he wouldn’t. So, that goes back to 2022.
But, up until the debate, I figured those in “charge” (DNC, Pelosi, Schumer, et al) knew Biden was the best for us as a party and country and could win. Honestly, I didn’t really start looking at how consistently bad his approval ratings were until Spring, before the debate…plus, all the wrong track #s. I had this big physical move here that started in 2/2022. Moving from a home I was in for 30 years….plus, selling the home I grew up in in another state. Moving and selling stuff there since 2021. And, dealing with hurricane and ServPro damage at a third property. Kinda been in my own, selfish, dare I say, “privileged” world.
I really can’t believe more people here who were following things more closely in the last 2 years weren’t screaming that Biden should be a one term president. I’m rambling a bit. Need to get on with my day. I enjoy your comments here. Felt I needed to respond to the one directed to me.
Quiltingfool
@suzanne: You are very correct about rental costs going sky high. We have two rental homes; small farmhouses in a rural area. They aren’t fancy-pants, but are well-maintained. We just now raised the rent from $500 a month to $600. I hated doing it, but our maintenance costs have gone up and will probably continue to do so.
If our renters moved, we would have a long line of people wanting to rent from us, even though they are 20 minutes from town. In town, a small house like ours would rent for $800 or more a month and probably not be very nice. My insurance broker told me one of her clients just purchased a double wide trailer and plans to rent it for $1700 a month – and he’ll get it, too.
It’s insane.
Old School
@John S.: I think you are reading what you want to read.
John S.
@Old School:
And I think you are ignoring what you want to ignore. So we are at an impasse.
taumaturgo
@John S.:
suzanne
@Quiltingfool: The cost of housing has gone absolutely batshit. And that is the largest cost that most families face.
Liberals who ignore or downplay this are both unkind and incredibly shortsighted.
Betty Cracker
It’s understandable (if regrettable) when people lash out indiscriminately because they’re hurting. But some folks just get off on shitting on others. You can tell who’s who because the latter fling poo no matter what’s going on in the world. It’s a form of abuse, but no one is required to give such comments the attention they’re designed to generate. As a wise man once said, fuck ‘em!
Old School
@John S.: Feel free to cite this comment saying the economy is great (no exceptions). Just one will be sufficient for me. No need to list all of the ones you see.
RevRick
@John S.: What would have been your solution?
If the Biden administration hadn’t pushed for the American Rescue Plan, we would have had an even worse outcome on an economy in the doldrums and a nasty bout of inflation.
As for fixing the rising income inequality, the American economy is so huge, it’s like trying to reverse the course of an aircraft carrier heading at full speed in the wrong direction. We didn’t get here overnight, and we won’t get back to where we want quickly either. Even re-enacting Eisenhower era tax rates would take years to have any positive effect.
As has been pointed out, Jeff Bezos has, relatively speaking, a low salary for a CEO. He lives off debt, and debt isn’t taxable. He borrows against his assets, and then borrows some more to pay off the original debt.
tobie
@suzanne: No, he didn’t say that without caveats. The IMF and the Economist said it.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/imf-lifts-us-growth-forecast-marks-down-china-sees-lackluster-global-economy-2024-10-22/
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024-10-19?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=17210591673&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIheeT7qDciQMVJVBHAR1SzwZ_EAAYASAAEgLUoPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Grocery prices are down. Gas prices are down. Wages are up, especially for low-income earners. Rent and interest rates and insurance rates remain sky high. All this can be true at the same time.
RevRick
@suzanne: The problem is zoning and housing regulations. Huge portions of our cities are zoned for single family housing on lots with mandates regarding lot size, height, setbacks, parking minimums. This, of course, is replicated in suburbs. And it will take a tremendous amount of political capital to overcome opposition from homeowners who will scream, “But my property values!!!”
zhena gogolia
@John S.: It’s over. There’s no “one day” left. They were told and they ignored the warnings.
John S.
@Old School:
This sounds like a wonderfully bad faith exercise! Let me guess, someone has to say the exact phrase “the economy is great” or I’m wrong, is that it?
If you’re arguing in good faith, then the sheer condescension of this comment should more than qualify:
So which one is it: good faith or bad faith?
Quinerly
@John S.:
I think it should be acknowledged that most of us who feel this way don’t pollute every thread almost right out the gate with our personal feelings about Biden.
For the most part, I am trying to distance myself from all things BJ.
And, this isn’t a “flounce.” I don’t care if I am “welcomed” or not. I don’t feel “threatened” almost every day here just because someone disagrees with me. If I had felt the least bit truly threatened, I wouldn’t write about it. I would leave. Full stop.
The comments here are just becoming less interesting and productive to me. I perked up when I saw yours and Suzanne’s. Thought there could be an interesting discussion. I would learn something. Now, I am into an argument and 2 hrs late getting out the door.
I want to consume news and facts. Hear about people’s pets, travels, gardens. And get little peeks into commenters’ lives that are interesting. And to be involved in a community that provides support for commenters going thru difficult personal times. I started as a lurker at the beginning. I even remember Cole’s drinking days.
Being told over and over that people let Biden down because of his age has gotten old. Best that I read the FPers and stay out of the comments.
There….I have said it.
WereBear
@Quinerly: Great book I’m rereading right now:
Dragged Towards the Light by Tony Russo, about the Doomsday cult of an Ohio housewife and the deaths that ensued.
He makes the point that their cult identity makes it impossible to leave, because they have not developed an authentic self to hang onto.
The last one was a memoir, this one is crime… I don’t know what I’ll stumble on next, but cults are everywhere, post Gutenberg.
John S.
@RevRick:
You’re way out over your skis. I’m not arguing any of what you bring up.
But I can’t offer you a solution when I don’t know what the problem is. None of us do. As I have said many times here in this thread, and in days past in this blog, we’re all still trying to figure out what the real problem actually is.
RevRick
@Quiltingfool: And this is a direct consequence of the several million homes deficit in home building since the Great Recession. We have not reached what used to be normal levels of construction since that blow to the economy. Between population growth and typical loss of housing due to fire or abandonment, supply isn’t meeting demand.
zhena gogolia
@catclub: I wasn’t speaking “technically.” I was speaking about our present rulers, wherever they came from.
John S.
@zhena gogolia:
Damn, that’s a nihilistic take. I’m just not there right now.
suzanne
@RevRick: The zoning and design stuff is one part of the problem. The housing shortage is a multi-causal thing.
But yes, a big part of the problem is people thinking that their neighborhood or city should never change, or that growth should be accommodated “somewhere else”. When everybody wants that growth to go somewhere else, we get to this impasse.
Cities change and grow, they have done so for millennia.
John S.
@Quinerly:
I’ve been a denizen of this blog since back when Cole was a Republican. Things change around here, but the community is still full of good people.
Do what you have to do, but don’t stay away forever. 🙂
zhena gogolia
@John S.: A Russian asset is going to be Director of National Intelligence. It’s over.
Old School
@John S.:
It’s good faith.
Your best example of someone saying the economy is unequivocally great (or superb or fantastic) – I don’t care about specific wording – is Omnes conceding grocery and rent prices are high.
I’m on to more current threads.
Omnes Omnibus
@John S.: If you want to be an asshole about it, fine. I was trying to take that argument off the table and say that it was still a bad decision to vote for Trump and the GOP. And, when I do decide to be condescending, you won’t be in any doubt about it.
suzanne
@Quinerly: I’d like you to stay. I appreciate your voice here.
Quinerly
@John S.:
I got here from Andrew Sullivan, of all people. Let’s at least laugh about that.
suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Literally no one disagrees with you on this.
But there’s an important human connection aspect to politics — in fact, Biden has historically been excellent at it. The salient point that we’re trying to get at is that the Dems did not do a great job of hearing the mood, reading the room….. and that might have been really important to this outcome.
And the tenor of the discussion here, in many threads, is that people who say they are financially struggling are entitled children.
tam1MI
What completely blows my mind is that these people honestly thought they could oust a President who had just gotten over 14 million primary votes – votes that the people casting them didn’t have to cast. Oust him in the most humiliating and public way possible, spit in the faces of his supporters who had blown up their phone lines and their faces and their emails and their social media accounts all but begging them not to do this thing…
They honestly believed that there would be no blowback from this. That none of the people who’s votes they had just trampled underfoot would conclude that the only difference between Republicans and Democrats was that Republicans stab you from the front. Was there ANY discussion of where they were going to make up the votes if a percentage of those voters stayed home? Any strategies put in place for how to win those voters back over? (Well, yeah, there was one. Pundits kept scratching their heads wondering why Harris kept refusing to distance herself from Biden and kept steadfastly defending his record. She’s no dummy. She knew that she desperately needed to make up ground there).
You add the Female Penalty and the Gaza Voters out to Teach the Dems A Lesson to that already toxic brew, and that’s pretty much the election.
John S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ll leave being an asshole to you and all the other fine people around here that deign to acknowledge that not everyone else is as well off as you are.
Omnes Omnibus
@John S.: You have no fucking idea what my financial situation is.
John S.
@Old School:
Bad faith it is then. Because there’s plenty more than just that, but clearly you prefer to ignore it. So off you go!
Have a lovely day.
John S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t have to. Your attitude and the bullshit your peddling says plenty.
Now go and pretend to be outraged some more while the rest of us worry about putting food on the table.
catclub
Also the president.
Jeffg166
@catclub:
Biden got a 66% turn out in 2020. The felon got a 91% turn out in 2020. It’s about the same for 2024
Quinerly
@tam1MI:
What completely blows my mind is Harris outperformed her boss by 9 points if you look at her boss’s abysmal approval rating of 40% the day of the election.
When you guys who continue to start this crap in every thread actually find some data that says people stayed home because they loved Biden so much and wanted to punish Harris and the Dems by electing Trump, please post it. Tell, you what, find 5 solid Dems who follow politics down in the weeds who say they stayed home because Obama, Pelosi, and Clooney hurt poor Mr. Biden.
Get my email from Betty Cracker. I will read it.
Sure Lurkalot
@suzanne:
It has been thus for ages…our forebears telling us stories of the depression, walking 3 miles in the snow to school. “You don’t know how good you have it” was an ongoing theme in my house. The message has changed but there’s solace in believing there’s been an upward arc.
Until there wasn’t and the idea and many facts pointed to kids not “doing as well” as their parents.
Starting out in the 80’s, I had a wealthy but greedy boss who gave staff (mostly women) raises based solely on inflation. After a few years of advancement, learning and doing more, I expressed disappointment at my annual review and told him I had worked hard because I wanted to make my life better, not just tread water.
That many feel this way is not surprising, but voting for Trump as the solution? That’s where I disconnect before I short circuit.
John S.
@Sure Lurkalot:
We’re never going to reach the MAGA voters, so there’s no point in trying.
But we need to figure out why Democrats didn’t turn out in greater numbers or why they left the top line blank when they voted straight Democrat on the rest of the ballot.
They didn’t vote for Trump.
suzanne
@Sure Lurkalot:
I absolutely agree with you.
My overall point is that there is an emotional valence aspect to politics, and I think the Dems kind of messed this up this cycle. Like, in conversation, we enjoy when people are on a same wavelength as us, that they hear and know us. That they match our energy.
People felt pretty angry this time. For justifiable reasons. And enough people gravitated toward the candidate who matched their energy. It’s fucken dumb. But it’s a deeply human and predictable kind of dumb, and Dems should be better at this. Heck, Joe Biden used to be the best at this.
Gloria DryGarden
@Citizen Alan: im taking exception to your statement. It’s not helpful.
just like all men are not rapists, and all priests are not abusing boys or enabling it,
not all of any one group is sexually abusing children.
in circles where it’s discussed, we note that child sexual abuse crosses every group: rich, poor, Christian, other religions, and any ethnic group. Some of the perps are women, also.
They can seem like nice upstanding citizens, all wholesome. You just don’t know.
i highly doubt that it’s only peeps from one political party who do it.
I’ve not rechecked my statistic, but it’s around one in four children.
LAC
@suzanne: Yeah, but how again was Trump going to fix this? And Harris did address it, but maybe the “concerned economically anxious” folks couldn’t hear her over “black black black black woman woman woman” ringing in the ears. I know, there is always a “complex macro economic” reason why a majority of white voters may have voted the way they did (eyeroll). However maybe you all sit with the other reason for more than five seconds. Because that is what we are doing. We do not have the luxury of doing otherwise.
suzanne
@LAC:
He’s not. I have never argued otherwise. People are irrational and make bad decisions.
Omnes Omnibus
That’s the point and the problem we need to solve. How do we win in this environment? The rest is commentary.
suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: One of the first steps to building credibility with people is that matching-of-energy, creating that feeling that the leaders hear and value you. That’s a step toward winning.
LAC
@suzanne: So irrationality is what happened here? Being irrational is buying a bag you can’t afford at a store or betting it all on black in a vegas casino. You may regret it the next day. This is a tribal selfishness and indifference to others suffering for years that does not need to be coddled.
John S.
@suzanne:
You make excellent points, and seem to be able to keep a reasonable dialogue going. Probably because you comment more often, and have a good reputation with the folks here.
I have to run to pick up my daughter at school… her insulin pump isn’t working and her sugar is over 500.
suzanne
@John S.:
LOL that’s not true.
suzanne
@LAC:
It shouldn’t be coddled. It does need to be redirected.
Good political communicators and consultants would do this.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gloria DryGarden:
Seen, with gratitude, and bookmarked.
You are wonderfully gifted. Thank you. Anything any of us can do to help ease our collective pain is welcome.
John S.
@suzanne:
LOL
The Thin Black Duke
White people arguing about everything except about how white people are the problem.
cain
@The Thin Black Duke:
100%
cain
@Omnes Omnibus:
It isn’t going to come from the media that’s for sure. When Gaetz is described as an edgelord we aren’t going to be able to make great decisions. When low information voters only get that.
Given so many only looked up whether they voted ok after the election – JFC.. I wonder if we just need to stop inundating the airwaves with our stuff. Clearly, they built a filter. I know I would have.
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: A big chunk of the problem is complacency from white people (voters who think they won’t be hurt by Trump so they can vote for whiteness and non-voters who think that none of it matters).
Belafon
@The Thin Black Duke: There was a bsky thread that included the comment that white men are the problem, and a bunch of us white men replied “Yep” and a woman in there kept responding with “Why are you accepting that you’re part of the problem?” Well, because while it isn’t me exactly, it’s the group I’m part of and I completely understand how they’re messing things up.
tam1MI
Except that we have historical data to show us what happens when Presidents fail to talk up economic successes. Look up “Jimmy Carter” and “malaise” for how well that works out.
I agree. The time to have tried to oust Biden was during the primary. That would have opened up it’s own can of worms, however, because I have my doubts that Kamala Harris would have emerged the winner. The base would have just been cracked in a different direction.
John S.
@The Thin Black Duke:
I’m Jewish. I may look white on the outside, but no white supremacist would ever consider me to be white.
Jews came through for Harris just fine at around 80%.
suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Agree. White people get to vote for their economic interests because they don’t face other threats.
tam1MI
The alternate reality is call d, “Not being a privileged white person”.
John S.
@suzanne:
Which is why white-looking Jewish people didn’t vote that way. We have faced real existential threats for our entire existence as a people.
When you’ve been beaten up by a group of white people for no other sin than wearing a Star of David (as I have), it tends to make an impact on how you view things.
Ruckus
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
How many people never, ever learn from history?
I’d bet 99% of them think that sooner or later they will win and then…….. It will start all over. People will be subjected to BS and control, things will get worse and at some point their will be a war or an uprising and things will change for about 15 minutes and then it will start all over – again. We can learn from history, what we seem to be unable to do is figure out anything better. We go from absolute control to war to recovery from war to absolute control to war to recovery to – rinse repeat for most of history. Some humans seem to think/believe that they know every damn thing and then it starts all over again. We are at a crossroads in humanity. There are enough of us that the past ways are not actually working all that well – in an overall sense. We seem to not understand that what we do while alive affects many that come after us – at least in much of humanity. We create a government that seems to work but some fell that they need more power, more presence. We fight, some win, some lose, we start over, possibly try a different direction, we fight, some win, some lose, we start over…. Is this starting to sound repetitive? Sure there are differences over history in the wars, mainly in the weapons used but at the end of the day, is it better or worse? We have many that seem to think that money is far more important than humanity. Once again we, as a whole seem to be able to make things less different that it might appear, often at a rather large cost. Will humanity ever find a reality that works and works for all? Or will greed and that desire for power never actually stop?
Soprano2
@JML: My husband said his third wife’s kids only wanted brand name cereals, so they bought one box and kept it to pour the generic cereal into. The kids never knew the difference. There are ways to be smart about stuff like that.
Soprano2
@suzanne: I had a co-worker almost yell at me “Don’t tell me the economy is good!”. She was upset just because I said some of the economic indicators were good.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: If the $ tanks everyone who is not a megamillionaire will hurt and not just in this country.
tam1MI
@suzanne: Am I weird for wanting both Quinerly AND Schrodinger’s Cat to stick around? 😉
suzanne
@tam1MI: No. I like perspectives.
Soprano2
@suzanne: I do too, I’ve learned a lot from people here. I will say it’s hard to hear people say they are in a uniquely distressed position economically that other generations have never experienced before, because I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes I point out to people that they’ve made a choice. Buying a big ass truck you don’t need when you commute 30 miles to work one way every day is a choice, when the price of gas is $4.00/gal don’t cry to me about it because I bought a sedan that gets 22 MPG in the city. They made a choice to buy that vehicle when gas was $2.00/gal thinking it would stay that way forever. I’m not saying they can’t make that choice, I’m saying the choice has consequences that they evidently want to be shielded from. It doesn’t work that way.
John S.
@Soprano2:
Wow, I had no idea that everyone was poor because they drove a truck. Now if only I had a truck to sell, then I would be in a much better economic position.
Thanks for the meaningful insight!
ETA: The fact that you and many others here don’t even realize how incredibly tone deaf your comments are is a huge part of the messaging problem that cost us this election.
LAC
@The Thin Black Duke: Oh, I thought that this can be consulted away. So…no then
There is a problem with a lot of white people: you are climbing a mountain of shit laid out to you by some billionaires. Instead of asking why you are climbing a mountain of shit, you look to left and right of you and get upset that there are people who do not look like you climbing too.
Kim Walker
This is probably a dead thread. I didn’t see anyone pointing to the limited number of grocery store chains and how easy it was for those CEOs to use supply chain issues to continue to jack up the prices of food. They practiced this for years – remember when there was an epidemic that sickened/killed baby pigs and the price of pork went up (although the deep freeze warehouses were bursting with bacon). What about the cartels raising the price of limes and avocados? How about $8 cauliflower? Producers and their associations sent out press releases and the distributors raised the prices. That was just their practice run. I believe the grocery store CEOs were called into the House and were happy to confess to collusion. The software program that allowed local area apartment owners to collude in raising rent? The DOJ is now after them. Developers who buy up all the farmland to create really awful, expensive suburbs and cities just roll over cause they like the property taxes. Never mind that a variety of housing needs to be available if for no other reason than to keep the damn traffic down. The exact same issues are happening here in Canada – capitalists large and small are running rampant in new and interesting ways causing havoc directly and indirectly to the citizenry. And the retrogrades are running on it.
suzanne
@Soprano2:
I don’t think that’s the argument. Things can be bad without being the worst ever.
I will note, though, that there is a ton of data indicating that lots of people aren’t doing great economically. There’s evidence that people are paying for necessities with credit cards and now have a bunch of debt, that the cost of their rent or mortgage has climbed, that auto repossessions are up. It is reasonable to be unhappy with this. (Call it “late capitalism”.)
The Dems simply will not convince anybody to vote for us if we do not do the first thing, which is to acknowledge that that is difficult. We can then undertake the task of convincing voters that we have the better strategy to correct those problems.
Inflation seems to have wiped out governments all around the world. I don’t know why anyone here is skeptical that rising cost of living is a hardship for people.
John S.
@suzanne:
Hence why my assumption (perhaps incorrect) is that the people here making that very argument must be pretty well off. I never would have expected to get such vociferous disagreement on expensive groceries and the cost of living impacting people’s lives, and yet here we are.
Apparently it’s just because white people suck, people drive trucks and everyone isn’t as smart as Democrats.
Old School
@suzanne:
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that.
I don’t know why the argument seems to be that Kamala Harris didn’t acknowledge this or make it part of her campaign.
John S.
@Old School:
That’s right, multiple people came away with the same impression, but they’re all wrong. Only you hold the truth to what people actually mean when they write things on this blog.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: before you go, will you please request my email from watergirl? It’s not far to Taos area. I’d like to be able to visit you, as you had offered.
The threads that devolve into bickering and angry disagreement aren’t fun for me either.
Annd then there are discussions that are so informative and engaging it’s hard to leave to do the daily basics.
I dropped a prose poem, meant for comfort at #75, you might enjoy.
suzanne
@Old School: The argument is that Dems in general — including Biden — were pretty loud about the economy being really strong. And that probably undermined any effort by Harris to connect with, you know, the working-class people who used to vote for Democrats.
Like it or not, we have the brand of a team. The Dem brand has apparently become, for too many people, annoying college students with blue hair and college-educated professionals in electric cars. (Lattes? Arugula? Dijon mustard?)
Ruckus
@Chief Oshkosh:
But I cannot stop remembering what Trump put us through.
There is a reason I call him shitforbrains.
I’ve said this here before but my dad used to take Forbes and I’d read it because I ended up owning the business he started longer than he did, where we manufactured tooling for the plastic product side of business mostly. shitforbrains was sometimes in Forbes because his father owned a lot of NY property, apparently he was worth $400 million when that was considered a rather fair amount. He has/had a brother and sister who seemed to be rather normal people, with jobs and careers. But anyone with an ego (huge) and skill set (small – non existent?) like his is going to be an issue/problem.
tam1MI
Let’s take a look at that 40 percent you cited. You have earlier stated that the 40 percent stayed stable across the board. So that means that 40 percent of likely voters were pretty happy and satisfied with Biden’s performance. In political science, that 40 percent is called a “base”. It is axiomatic that you build off your base to win elections. While 40 percent isn’t an ideal spot to start from, it’s still do-able, especially, as in this election, your opponent has an even worse approval rating than you. What elected Dems basically did, it in a fit of panic, was to throw that stable 40 percent away in the hopes that they would get the other 60 percent. They forgot that “a bird in the hand” is worth 2 in the bush”.
But as for data, here is a piece of data to support my thesis. Here is a map breaking down the intensity of support for Joe Biden in the primary by county. The color assigned to him is blue. The darker blue a county is, the more votes for Joe Biden, the more intense the support was. Do I have to to point out the two swing states that the strongest intensity of support for Joe Biden were Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? Two of the four states that were absolutely crucial to Harris’s electoral college hopes and two states she lost? (Michigan shows pretty solidly blue across the board too, even in the areas where the Uncommitted crowd was doing it’s worst). According to the people insisting that defenestrating Biden was a perfectly fine and laudable decision, Harris losing three crucial swing states where Biden’s support had been strongest was just… I don’t know? A coincidence? My thesis at least proffers a rational explanation for how this happened.
Old School
@suzanne:
Media: Donald Trump says the Biden-Harris economy has been a disaster and things are the worst it’s ever been. How do you respond?
Response A. Under Biden-Harris, the U.S. economy has been the best in the world. Elect Kamala Harris so that this progress can be continued.
Response B. Well, Donald Trump has a point. Groceries are more expensive.
tam1MI
I agree with you that this is the nut they need to crack in order to win go forward.
John S.
@Old School:
Response C. The economy is great, Trump is a liar, and if you don’t agree with our macroeconomic analysis or our assessment of your personal finances, then you’re a fucking idiot.
Worked out great. Keep it up. 👍🏻
tam1MI
But from what I could see at least, Harris did that. I don’t think it was lack of empathy that did her in.
Ruckus
@Old School:
Groceries are more expensive.
So is everything else. OK gas has come back down a bit. Gas in SoCal around me is pennies under $4/gal. As I’ve written here before, possibly in this thread, I worked, senior in HS at a gas station and gas was 35 cents a gallon. But I am an OLD and that was a longish time ago. Life goes on, it gets better, it gets worse, it gets better, it gets……. A difference is that many cars get far better milage than many came anywhere close to. Hell at least we didn’t go back to having to ride a horse to get anywhere more than a mile away with having hay to feed it, and a shovel to clean up after it and a barn for it to sleep in. And I like horses!
tam1MI
@The Thin Black Duke: White people arguing about everything except about how white people are the problem.
I should probably add that rather obvious corollary to my “pissed off Biden supporters stayed home” theory – and I say this as a woman so white you could use me to read by on a moonless night – is that, yeah, there is a certain cohort of our coalition that would be apt to be pretty darn furious at the sight of a white guy getting pushed aside for a Black woman*; and who’s… how shall I say it? INTRINSIC QUALITIES lead them to believe that they would probably be able to ride out a Trump presidency better than other folks.
* – Even though said pushing was in no way, shape or form her doing.
John S.
@tam1MI:
Harris was the product, but our own voters weren’t buying it.
So either they 1) didn’t like the product (for whatever reason) or 2) the product marketing was ineffective or 3) the product was good, the marketing was good but the timing was wrong (meaning the market wasn’t quite ready for the product).
If Democrats really want to learn from this going forward, it would behoove them to determine which of these was the biggest factor, and you only get that by talking to the people who didn’t buy the product.
It’s basic win/loss analysis.
bluefoot
@The Thin Black Duke: pretty much.
We seem to recapitulating a lot of the same rationalizations as happened in 2020 after it became apparent that POC and poor people were disproportionately affected by COVID and suddenly narratives and desires changed about helping and protecting each other….
brantl
@MattF: frequently saves the day.
brantl
@RevRick: it’s cute that you don’t think Lester Holt would’ve still said the same crap anyway.
brantl
@Layer8Problem: they have.
brantl
@John S.: That’s not Biden’s fault is it since he was only here for four years those decades belong to other people you don’t get to scold Biden for those.