Politics didn’t die just because Trump was elected. As the vote totals get closer and closer, it’s clear that his victory was a combination of people staying home and some very low information voters voting for Trump. So, it’s essential that we do what Republicans would do in the same situation: simple, straightforward messaging of unpopular stuff. And there will be plenty:
One of the podcasts I was listening to recently mentioned that this is an extraordinary time in American political history, because we’re used to long periods of stability (like post-New Deal Democratic dominance). That’s not the case now. We’re going to have to message to low-information voters, and also try to understand the media they’re consuming, because they’ll be the margin of victory for the next few elections.
Bupalos
And stop having every other word out of our mouths be about how much we hate people, how “Trump voters all voted for this” etc.
Online culture wants to turn politics into morality. It’s not. It’s politics. Which means an ongoing negotiation about sharing the same civic space with people you don’t like, think are stupid, and strongly disagree with. That’s what it is, and focusing on how “evil” they all are and how much you hate them all renders us incapable of actually doing politics.
hrprogressive
Yeah, but is it really “alive” if people like Hakeem Jeffries are going to bloviate about “finding bipartisanship” and “working with the incoming administration”?
Jamelle is right, but if elected democrats and their surrogates don’t communicate this to the American People, will these same low-info voters even hear it to even have a chance to care?
I am absolutely not optimistic about that.
AM in NC
ABSOLUTELY.
We won’t get the MAGAs. We don’t need them. We need the normies who were LIED to and didn’t realize it.
Now we need to be creative and persistent in how we reach these people with short, simple, punchy takes on the various horrors they didn’t vote for, but we’re all getting anyway. How do we combat the lies they’re being fed in their social media feeds?
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
O/T (but not really, because it’s pertinent to every thread):
I’d like to make a simple suggestion to improve the readability of threads here. When responding to a commenter’s remarks about a particular person or entity, please name that person or entity in your reply — don’t just say “he/she/it.” The comment you’re responding to may have scrolled way up the page by the time yours appears, and few of us have a photographic memory or the patience to scroll up in turn to find out what you two are talking about.
Old School
Those poor voters who were lied to.
They didn’t know what a tariff was. They didn’t know what the effect of tariffs are. They don’t know what massive deportations will do to grocery prices. They didn’t know Trump lies about everything even though it is what he has been doing for 40 years.
You certainly can’t call them smart.
But we need to try to get their votes.
Steve LaBonne
There’s little that can be accomplished politically until we see what Trump is actually able to do, and there are serious economic and other fuckups (which I expect) that Democrats can communicate to voters about to make sure they know where to place the blame. Right now is a time to disengage a bit from electoral politics and think about what each of us can do to defend the people who will be most at risk. As for long periods of stability, climate change insures that there will never be one again in my daughter’s and even my wife’s grandchildren’s lifetime.
Realworldrj
People that voted for Trump be like, “hey, we voted for the funny fascism, not the serious one.”
@mistermix.bsky.social
@hrprogressive:
Here’s what I think is going on with Jeffries (and other institutional leaders in DC): they are used to an environment where there’s “campaign mode” and “legislation mode”. Campaign mode is when you can say bad things about Republicans. But, after the election, all is forgiven, and D’s work with R’s to get things done. That’s the fantasy, at least, and they really cling to it.
It permeates the way that D’s work with donors, too. We can get rich folks to spend billions on ads during campaigns. But getting them to put a fraction of that into ongoing messaging campaigns doesn’t happen.
Steve LaBonne
@Realworldrj: They voted for the serious fascism that hurts and kills other people.
Realworldrj
@Steve LaBonne: The leopards eating people’s faces party strikes again!
TBone
Waitaminute.
These people KNEW about J6.
They all KNEW.
hrprogressive
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
They operate in “Legislation Mode” as if they are in Jimmy Smith’s D.C., and that hasn’t been true in generations, if ever.
They’re going to comity our way to destruction if they aren’t careful.
I truly do not have any faith in any of these people doing anything to help save the country and citizens they claim to love.
So it’s going to fall on citizens to do it for them.
Shakti
Am I wrong?
This sounds galaxy brained:
Someone who says they want Ukraine to win but voted for Trump (not linking for reasons):
Did I miss that US oil drillers and refiners are primarily obligated to sell to the US? Or US oil company nationalization? Or even if we drilled every available reserve it would still be dwarfed by OPEC?
I didn’t think Biden issued significantly less permits for drilling than Trump did?
Because there’s absolutely one thing which I remember crashing oil prices during 2016-2020 and that was… the global emergency for covid-19, especially the stay at home orders.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: Mmm hmm. Poor little low information dears my ass.
Parfigliano
@TBone: But 4 states away one person is playing high school sports in a way they don’t approve. Priorities.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Your observation that leaders like Jeffries distinguish between “campaign mode” and “legislation mode” and reserve plain speaking about the opposition for “campaign mode” sounds right. But in Jeffries’s case, I don’t know if he’s capable of plain speaking. Every time I’ve ever heard him it sounds like he’s just spitting out talking points in pure politician-speak. Staying on message is admirable, but it’s probably more effective if not couched entirely in inside-the-Beltway jargon. I think we have people who can do that –Tim Walz could, so can Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett and several other legislators we could name. But will those people rise to the leadership ranks, and if they do will they lose their gift for plain speaking?
jonas
@TBone: Eh, it was over four years ago, and eggs are expensive now.
/s
df
Sorry, but if you don’t know what a tariff is, and you believe any brain-mush blowhard who says he’ll use them to do… something… that’s entirely on you. In fact, I would argue that the only way those people will learn is when they’re hurt.
My industry (tech) is full of learned helplessness. Do you know what happens when you save people from making the mistakes they need to learn? They become dependent on you for everything. If they don’t fail on their own, they will never do the hard work of actually learning and thinking for themselves. It is a truly vicious cycle, and I’ve seen (and been party to) it countless times. You just end up enabling people.
Democracy necessitates an informed electorate. If we’re at the “I don’t know what a tariff is and I don’t care to learn” stage, it’s already too late. What makes you think you can say anything that would compel someone to do something they should have already been doing in the first place? “Hey, maybe look up what tariffs are.” When has that ever worked? What’s this liberal fantasy that if only people just Googled a little more, they’d change their minds? Can we disabuse ourselves of this Technicolor dream world?
No, if you save people from themselves, they’ll never learn, and they might even start to resent you, even though they need you. How many years have we been beating this drum? The only conclusion is that people have tired of hearing it. Fine. They can keep choosing fascist dickweeds until they learn to maybe stop doing that.
JerseyBeard
But they were told SUCH stupid lies that simply reinforced their prior bigotries. They are not poor victims, not even the low info marginal ones.
Belafon
@Realworldrj: “I only wanted him to be a little evil.”
Belafon
@TBone: You would like to think so, wouldn’t you?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Shakti:
I bet they get their news from social media.
Old School
@TBone:
They know about how it was Nancy Pelosi’s fault. And that the Biden administration is locking up innocent patriots who were all there for a day of love. And… etc.
Sasha
Also, refer to every horrific Trump decision and action as being courtesy of “the Republicans”, “the Republican Party”, or “the Republican administration”, rather than “Trump”.
sentient ai from the future
@Bupalos:
i have a trans child. policies being floated and promoted by these shitbirds are intended to deliberately cause pain and harm to my child, and are in direct opposition to the medical and scientific consensus of what my kid needs.
you cannot be fuckin serious. you would have us negotiate with monsters.
Quinerly
@Shakti:
Lots of info here.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/11/18/business/trump-fracking-oil-demand?fbclid=IwY2xjawGogAhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdNHO8pXUp9_UJ4xwDPaRQyjT2BQzT6Hvgg-7Qz4xj_PxH7MfPd5in5S-g_aem_doBeSpzu3WkvCqqcYPbcuA
Shakti
@Mistermix
Clearly, Trump outreach is not my strength or ministry, because I would absolutely tell the person who voted for Trump b/c they want lower grocery prices is:
“You have chosen to believe a stupid lie, go crack a book.” — especially if they’ve gone to college. This is basic ass econ 101. If you’re over the age of a college sophomore you should understand what a tariff is and how they work.
If your cerebral cortex is fully formed (over 25) you should know not to trust such a fucking liar on anything even if you know nothing about tariffs.
I have lifelong practice in not calling stupid people stupid, but that works for kind hearted people and innocents, not malicious idiots who wanted me dead personally or structurally.
The Audacity of Krope
We’re producing more oil than we ever have, last I checked, but one particular project they want to focus on is the reason for “$2 more at the pump ZOMG!!!!1!”
Ken B
@Shakti: The US under Biden is the largest oil producer in the world.
OPEC tried to create an artificial spike in the price of oil by cutting production. Biden tapped into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, broke the back of the attempt to spike the price, and replaced the oil he used at a lower price, effectively making a profit. Odds are you never heard about it, the media was too busy telling us Biden’s old.
Oh, Trump told the Saudis to cut production during the pandemic because he thought the price of gas was too low.
sentient ai from the future
@Steve LaBonne: right, and as such, this is precisely the time for anodyne proclamations of bipartisanship in public-facing fora.
which is what makes it so important for us fucking jackals to be calling our reps and asking direct questions about how far they are really willing to throw us under the bus for the sake of comity.
ArchTeryx
I’m going to be posting this on a routine basis from now on. It’s a link to an article as to how to resist what is coming. So rather than arguing about our leaders (or lack thereof) or who fucked this election, we can decide for ourselves exactly what role we will play in the resistance.
https://convergencemag.com/articles/10-ways-to-be-prepared-and-grounded-now-that-trump-has-won/
Shakti
@Quinerly:
Thanks.
So I’m right it’s was b/c of… Covid?
Steve LaBonne
@sentient ai from the future: Sadly there are no Democrats representing me any more. Losing Sherrod Brown was heartbreaking.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: exactly.
I know a very low info, uneducated “poor dear” who doesn’t watch TV, can barely read, etc. She gets her info. from YouTube (only what she wants to hear and see, of course).
Actually said to me “If the people who went into the Capitol that day really wanted people dead (Pence, Pelosi, et al.), they’d be dead.” Extremely matter of fact; flippant. This person is not MAGA.
Doesn’t know squat about much of anything, but everyone knows about J6.
They know wrong from right, no matter who they listen to. They do not fucking care.
ArchTeryx
@Steve LaBonne: Sherrod Brown, one of the best, most effective and most inoffensive (but NOT milquetoast) senators in the Senate losing because of the D after his name?
That’s what showed that Ohio’s transition to a hard red state was complete. There was a glimmer of hope from 2006-2008, but it has been backsliding ever since. I’ve even had to give up ALL my friends from Ohio, because they’ve all gone fascist on me. I graduated Ohio State with a Ph.D. in 2008, and left Ohio. Never looked back. And sadly, I’m glad I did so. The voters dumping Sherrod Brown out the airlock means the D party in Ohio is hopelessly broken now because their operation space has narrowed to almost nothing statewide.
zhena gogolia
@Old School: I think one phenomenon is that they think they’re just voting for the person at the top of the ticket. They don’t think about all the many, many positions that person is going to fill, and how the people in those positions are going to affect their lives directly. He’s the guy with the red tie and the blue suit! He’ll make the economy great again! Stupid as that is, it explains something about their cluelessness.
Steve LaBonne
@ArchTeryx: I will again beat the drum for liberal churches as an antidote to isolation and as places where a number of the things mentioned in the article can be worked on in concert with trusted friends who share your values.
Steve Crickmore
A phrase from Freud come to mind about the arguments in Democratic circles about who was responsible for the wide spread election loss; 48 states or so suffered Democratic declines in Presidential preference between Trump and Biden in 2020 and Trump and Harris in 2024. Freud’s narcissism of small differences (German: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen), explains the arguments of what Biden/Harris could or could not have done tactically different, whereas the key factors were ingrained misinformation and bigotry, that are almost impossible to overcome, given that so many Americans have a propensity and pull towards them…especially when encouraged by such a amoral and reckless demogogue. Probably what we need now is a period of Moynihan’s ‘benign neglect’, rather than stir the pot, as we watch Trump and his lunatic cabinet choices self-destruct and unfortunately bring the whole edifice crashing down.
Noah Brand
There’s a longstanding problem I have, the belief that tomorrow I’m going to really turn things around. I’m going to wake up and suddenly have the focus, the patience, and the drive that have always been lacking, and will immediately do all the good, responsible things that experience indicates I never do. Breaking myself of this belief has been a long and painful process.
The larger problem is that all the paths to a better tomorrow seem to start with “People completely change the way they like to absorb information about the world”, and I no longer think that’s realistic.
People will prefer to get information in the way that’s easiest and most emotionally comforting because THAT’S HOW PEOPLE ARE, and information keeps getting easier and more emotionally comforting at the expense of being catastrophically less accurate. I can’t figure out a way to line up the incentives so that stops being the case. We’re not getting Walter Cronkite back, even if the Fairness Doctrine were magically reinstated tomorrow it wouldn’t mean anything anymore, and we can’t make it so social media never happened.
I just don’t see any amount of communication that beats “easy and emotionally comforting”.
Lobo
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: I loved the new church I attended Sunday. Episcopalian.
I’ll be there as often as health allows.
TBone
@ArchTeryx: 👍
RaflW
@hrprogressive: I’m just gonna keep saying this: If we don’t want Jeffries to say “bipartisan” all the fucking time, we have to tell our Democrats this in his caucus.
Over and over again. Speedial them. Have their web forms bookmarked for commenting.
He’s delivering what his caucus and his admittedly pretty shitty and often wrong consultant-class Dems tell him to deliver.
They don’t yet seem to grasp what mix says up top, “we’re used to long periods of stability … that’s not the case now.” It is upon us to tell them how we’re feeling those changes, since their beltway brethren will not be accurate about it all.
ArchTeryx
@RaflW: If the fascists start openly arresting or disappearing Democratic politicians – if people just suddenly go dark – that might hammer the message home. But if things go that far, then it’s probably too late for Congress to do much. That’s one of many paradoxes we face when it comes to throwing sand in their gears.
Steve LaBonne
@TBone: I’m really glad you’re having a good experience.
ErikaF
@zhena gogolia: Exactly! The non-politically astute public has fallen into the “President does all!” type of thought. This is extremely apparent in MAGA, but it’s also in the non-politically astute left (“Biden can just sign a paper to do this – why doesn’t he?). We need to emphasize the community of political support around the role of President. Don’t call it Trump (unless you’re talking about the moron himself), call it the Trump Administration. Don’t call it Trump’s policies, call it the Trump Administration policies. Don’t pin every odious thing on Trump (he’ll do a lot by himself), but make sure that the nonpolitical folks you talk to know it’s not just Trump, it’s his entire administration.
ArchTeryx
@Steve LaBonne: I’ve seen some very mixed bags when it comes to liberal churches – most of my experience has been UU churches.
I’ve seen a couple in extremely red areas that are little more than a storehouse for the “weirdos” that the Reds figure have no power to change anything, and they’re right. Very little sense of community there. Just a bunch of isolated people that happen to be in the same place. They’ve been so marginalized they’ve retreated to learned helplessness.
But I’ve also seen UU churches that were major organizing centers for resistance to rising right wing influence, and/or worked beneath the surface. Some UU churches are content, it seems, to just be dumping grounds for what few liberals are left in an area. And some actually care about organizing people.
Lobo
The editor ate my thoughts. Here are some thoughts. Repetition is important. A lot if was structural not personal.
Notice this is an and not an or. All these penalties added up at the margins. I think we can move on from the one weird trick that would have won it all. Now, the question is how can we respond. In this space I really appreciate AOC and Andy Beshear.
Gretchen
I think a big part of our problem is evangelical Christianity. I’ve been reading/listening to a lot of things about the homeschool evangelical culture, and the bedrock of that culture is unquestioning obedience, of children to their parents, wives to husband, families to pastor. You can’t question what the pastor says because you’re questioning God, and you can’t have a family without one person in charge with authority over everyone else. The pastors all told them that God wants them to vote for Trump and you can’t go against God.
The most interesting are people who got out of the culture. Two women have a podcast called Kitchen Table Cult. They said that everything they were taught in homeschool was wrong – dinosaurs co-existing with people in a 6000 year old earth. They didn’t learn math because their mother/teacher didn’t know enough to teach them. One said that as an adult she wasn’t prepared to participate in civil society because she’d been so isolated she didn’t even know of people unlike herself. I don’t know how we reach them. Any efforts are seen as persecuting their religious beliefs, but we have to try.
RaflW
@Steve LaBonne: I think I recall you mentioning that you’re a fellow UU. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I am figuring out ways to better (re)connect to my religiously liberal (and with that socially and — individually — politically liberal) congregation.
We saw a big spike in attendance at a lot of UU congregations on Nov. 10th. I hope some of those folks keep coming, and bring friends.
At least in UU land, we have no impetus to ‘save souls’ or bring people to some specific belief of (wow not my language) ‘relationship with g-d’. We’re about building lasting community, serving where needed, expressing some joy when the world is beautiful, and sorrow when it isn’t.
Other progressive denominations are very welcoming in their ways, too!
K-Mo
OMG THIS!
All of this!
Steve LaBonne
@RaflW: I think some of them will stay, as well as some of the new visitors in my own UU congregation. That happened in 2016 as well. People need a refuge where they know they’re among others who share their values, and they need inspiration and hope.
ErikaF
unlurking… I’ve been thinking about the huge imbalance of the media (social, news, etc) between the right and the left. It’s so very obvious that this is the main issue with today’s voters – they are misinformed and disinformed by bots and social media influencers. So is there any reason the left can’t have a botnet of their own? Replicate the bots of the right, but shift the messaging for more accurate information (maybe call it reinformation?) Yes, it sounds icky, but if we take the high road the supports are pulled down under us. For instance, once the Onion gets full ownership of Infowars, scrape the site and keep the name (do a redirect if necessary). Then the articles that have gotten the most traffic – rewrite them to give actual information (and remove the over-the-cliff right bias). The folks that blindly go to Infowars will continue to go to the site, but will read the rewritten articles, and might move them or at least make them think. Or am I letting my inner fantasy writer loose too much?
trollhattan
@Gretchen:
We have a Latino evangelical megachurch with a national following, and the minister has this to say.
So he seems fun.
Gretchen
@ErikaF: Yes, that’s true of the left also. They were insisting that if Biden would « just pick up the phone » and tell Netanyahu to stop bombing Gaza, it would stop. Since it hasn’t stopped, it’s because Biden didn’t pick up the phone. The fact that he’s been negotiating with 17 other countries for months to pressure Israel is beyond their understanding.
RaflW
@ArchTeryx: I hear ya. I’d put it a bit differently, in as much as in red areas UU congregations often do end up as havens in a hostile landscape.
Smaller UU congregations can also become a bit insular. And some bigger ones can struggle to truly welcome new people, too. Folks like the spaces they’re in, and while they may think “I want to share this” they want to do that without experiencing change. That gets sticky.
We also do tend to not want to kick out our more oddball congregants. That’s kinda a thing when we affirm “the inherent worth and dignity of all”.
If one is lucky enough to live in an area with more than one UU congregation within easy travel distance (however one travels), I always encourage people to visit more than one UU church, and of course more than once.
It is possible to show up on the one Sunday in three years that some well meaning congregants do interpretive dance to some inscrutable music, and literally the next 20 Sundays would probably be so much better (sorry, interpretive dancers. It just hasn’t ever connected for me).
Steve LaBonne
@trollhattan: Evangelical churches were one of the main pillars of Bolsonaro’s support. Their growth in Latin America as well as among US Latinos is an ominous development.
jonas
@Ken B: Moreover, a lot of US oil production is only profitable at a fairly high price point. China’s economy is looking particularly vulnerable right now and long term oil prices are set to start falling. This is great if you pump a lot of gas, but will probably idle a lot of rigs and and workers in TX, OK, and ND.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: the Priest spoke the word resistance a few times, and mentioned false prophets, using The Great Disappointment (Millerites) as an example.
During the Prayers of the People, we prayed for anyone in a position of public trust, naming President Joe, Governor Josh, the Supreme Court, and more.
The Audacity of Krope
If only…
Equally not true, though notably less desirable. Say, where are Republicans on these issues?
JerseyBeard
@ArchTeryx:
This is very very good reading. Thank you.
AM in NC
@Gretchen: This is so true.
I freaked out at this idiot Christian woman on my run the other day because she knew NOTHING about ANYTHING, and it’s because, as she said, she doesn’t watch “the news” she gets her information from Christian News sources.
She had never heard anything about Trump’s rape trials; Trump’s series of sexual assault accusations; or the Access Hollywood tape where Trump brags about being a serial rapist. And when I told her about it, she just refused to believe it. I told her just Google it you fucking moron!!!!!!!!!
THIS is what we are up against. Complete epistemic closure within a sealed bubble.
Jesus Wept.
Archon
Here’s the thing, if this was 1924 and a candidate was running on tariffs and I wanted to research what tariffs were I would have to find transportation to a library, go the economics section, find a book on trade policies and spend the rest of the day reading up on it. It would likely take someone a full day to get up on tariffs.
In 2024 I literally can take 15 seconds out of my day to go online and find out EXACTLY how tariffs work. I get thats 15 seconds that can be used researching your fantasy football team or finding out if you got any DM’s but it’s 15 seconds. My point is we just can’t excuse this level of ignorance, these people are at best willfully ignorant or at worse just don’t really care how it affects them as long as it is assumed that there are people out there that will be hurt worse by it.
Belafon
@trollhattan: And yet deportations are higher under Biden than they were under Trump.
TBone
@ArchTeryx:
What JerseyBeard said. Please keep reposting that periodically. And any new developments that guy comes out with.
@JerseyBeard: 📣
Harry
Politics is just persuasion and compromise. that’s why it’s so hard. we need 60% of the popular vote to get anything useful done.
Is there a way to follow people on here?
Steve LaBonne
@RaflW: I am lucky enough to have two about the same distance from my house, and just last spring we left the one we were members of for a decade and are really liking our new one a lot. It’s smallish (82 members and a few long-time friends) and very friendly but big enough to not be insular, and poised for growth. Our minister, a woman only a few years older than my daughter, is absolutely awesome.
NotMax
But it sure smells funny.
//
zhena gogolia
@ErikaF: Biden’s cabinet was so stellar, and Harris’s would have been as well.
Melancholy Jaques
@Bupalos:
I just can’t treat things like racism, the desire to deport millions, abandoning Ukraine to the Russians, and the like as policies people of good faith simply disagree about.
TBone
@NotMax: 🎯😜
zhena gogolia
@Lobo: Yes.
The Audacity of Krope
@zhena gogolia: Trump’s could be rebranded as a cabinet of curiosities and no spooky story we tell of any of its members can match the horrors they will devise for real.
zhena gogolia
@RaflW: This is sounding very much like UCC to me, although we do talk about God.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: A-fucking-men. What tax rates should be is a political issue. Whether some people are less than fully human is a MORAL issue. Fuck privileged people who are ready to throw others under the bus.
RevRick
@Ken B:
@The Audacity of Krope:
The notion that we can produce millions of barrels more of oil if we just drill, baby, drill, goes against the most basic principles of economics. Sure, we could. But no oil industry executive would do it.
A glut of oil production would crash the price, which would drive some producers into bankruptcy, and lead to a drastic reduction in production. Trump asked OPEC to cut production in 2018, because the glut that fracking companies caused by so much drilling was threatening to bankrupt every fracking company.
There’s a reason why cartels develop. It’s to manage production in such a way that everybody makes a profit. It’s in the interest of one company to produce as much as it can, but if all do they crash the price below economic viability. So cartels are formed to avoid that trap. It’s also why we pay crop subsidies to farmers since the New Deal. The only way to maintain a sustainable price level is to make sure that production levels are also stable.
Consumers, of course, are clueless about the production end of businesses. They only see the price.
Lobo
@The Audacity of Krope: Are you referring to Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (or simply Cabinet of Curiosities) is a horror anthology television miniseries created by Guillermo del Toro for Netflix.
The Audacity of Krope
@Lobo: I knew I drew that from somewhere but damned if I could have told you where.
That seems right, though.
So you’re saying I should have supported Republican energy policy from the beginning?
Belafon
We are all going to have to figure out how to get actual information to low interest yet recurring voters. And figure out how to do it against all of the money people like Musk, Thiel, and the other oligarchs have. It is super frustrating that they don’t know at least a little bit if what is going on, but that’s what we have to work against.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: We are your cousins (Unitarianism grew out of New England Congregationalism), no longer Christian but interested in learning from many religious and cultural traditions while being quite friendly to atheists like me. Our two denominations have a close relationship and have collaborated on projects such as the excellent Our Whole Lives sexuality curriculum.
df
@Belafon: What if they don’t particularly want to know? What if they only want their existing priors confirmed?
rikyrah
@Steve LaBonne:
I know it was. I know it was.
dumped him for a phucking used car salesman
Steve LaBonne
@df: Liberalsplaining to them just makes them dig deeper into their mental bunker. This is a well-known result of experimental psychology which presents a daunting challenge.
artem1s
Posse Comitatus of 1878 MF’s. Let’s see the Roberts Originalist Quintet twist themselves into a knot trying to justify letting the Military threaten and invade people’s homes. Let’s see which R-Governors defy federal law and try to use the National Guard to do his dirty work. I double dog dare Mike DeWine to pull a James Rhodes and call out the National Guard to invade state universities safe harboring Dreamers. That’s not going to go over well with those nice polite gun owners out in the suburbs when you make their kids college experience unpleasant.
Remember this Mike before you let LaRose talk you into something really stupid.
Baud
With respect to the topic under discussion, I think my upcoming book Why You Suck and How You Can Stop Sucking will go a long way to addressing the political divide.
df
@Steve LaBonne: I’m aware. My entire point is that these people will probably need to find out the stove is actually hot, if decades of “hey, the stove is hot” isn’t enough. I just hope the rest of us make it through as well.
Harry
@Belafon: thank you for saying low-interest instead of low-information. I think a lot of people are just very busy raising their kids and paying their bills.
lowtechcyclist
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
That’s a real problem, because it certainly appears as if the other side is messaging on an ongoing basis. I’ll stay out of debates over what sort of messaging works best with whom, but Democratic messaging can’t just be done in election years if we’re going to win, other than in cleaning-up-after-the-elephants years.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: No offense, but in my experience, relying on the value of “liberal churches” is a slightly more realistic than relying on the existence of unicorns. But not by much. The media does not acknowledge the existence of liberal churches. The GOP does not acknowledge the existence of liberal churches. SCOTUS laughs at the idea that the religious views of liberal churches deserve the same deference as RW churches. And the RW churches themselves dismiss liberal churches as apostates who are going to end up burning in the same hell as the rest of us.
The only practical effect liberal churches have on our society is to continue giving mainstream Christianity the wholly unearned imprimatur of “good and nice.”
MFA
I don’t know about you folks, but I’m going with “You’re too stupid to realize you have been lied to.”
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Election time is the only time we come together. The rest of the time too many people are trying to move the Overton Window.
The Audacity of Krope
@Citizen Alan: Wherever you find kindness and community, man…
Citizen Alan
@ArchTeryx: My fear ever since the first “dictator on day one” comment was that Shitgibbon really would only need one day as a dictator if he had enough Dem Congressmen and Senators arrested on trumped up treason charges to give the GOP Congress overwhelming numbers to pass completely retrograde laws that will make it impossible to ever dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in. Claims that the GOP will continue to honor the filibuster are meaningless if 10 or 12 Senators are sitting in jail during the votes.
jayne
The sticking point for me is that “you were lied to” is blatantly false. Trump and his team were very, very loud about what they were going to do, and who they were going to do it to.
If you made it through the first 4 years of Trump with your belief in the Shirley Exception intact, it’s not because you were lied to. It’s because you were willfully ignorant.
I agree that the something needs to be done about the poor level of civic engagement and basic political knowledge in the voter base, but the leopards fucking told them that they were going to eat their faces. How does pretending otherwise do anything besides reassure low information voters that they don’t need to pay attention next time because whatever happens isn’t the poor dears’ fault?
artem1s
@ArchTeryx:
Make that clear to the OSU fundraisers and your local alumni association. They need to know that no one cares what the fucking football team does if the whole state is a dumpster fire. No one is going to choose to enroll their kid or apply to a graduate program where they have to be worried about stepping off campus. Nazi were marching in Franklinton and the Short North over the weekend. Maybe let your fellow grads, former faculty, the Board of Governors, and the President know what that looks like to prospective students.
The Audacity of Krope
And we’re obliged to follow laws passed under these conditions?
sentient ai from the future
@The Audacity of Krope:
anti-parental-rights is obvious code for letting kids have some kind of autonomy or validating their inner life
Aziz, light!
Politics isn’t dead. It’s only mostly dead.
The Audacity of Krope
@sentient ai from the future: That’s right.
artem1s
that was for Putin. It cost a lot more to drill in Russian and Siberia so when the Saud’s prices go down, no one buys Russian oil.
CCL
@ArchTeryx: Thanks for the link at 31. Very useful. Bookmarked.
Shakti
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I’m not sure where this person gets their news. But imagine being a covid vaccine, mask & quarantine hater and thinking Trump tanking the price of oil was good on its face . They think it’ll starve Russia and bring about world peace.
karen marie
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Hear hear!
Steve LaBonne
@Citizen Alan: Spoken out of ignorance. But that’s your problem, not mine. I don’t give a shit who knows about us or doesn’t. I care about things like the young Salvadoran man and his little boy whom my previous congregation had in sanctuary until Biden was elected and his asylum application was finally approved. (He had witnessed a gang murder in San Salvador and if dumped back there would have been shot the moment he stepped off the plane.)
Chris Johnson
Benn Jordan (a musician I know) has posted a really interesting video on Russian troll activity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ5XN_mJE8Y
Citizen Alan
@The Audacity of Krope: Well, if we don’t want to get killed resisting arrest, I suppose. I hope if put on the spot I would be the sort of person who would hide Anne Frank in my attic, but none of us really knows until we are tested.
Aziz, light!
I think it will be more effective in the future, when talking to people who might be Trump voters, to pretend I am one of them, then complain loudly about the shit that will be then be coming their way rather than ever admit I am a liberal.
The Audacity of Krope
@Citizen Alan: For at least some of us, I would hope our states find a way to protect us. For the record, I’ve gone through life only following the laws I believe in and it hasn’t bitten me yet ..
Granted, I’m still making those judgments on what I view as a solid moral/harm prevention framework.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve LaBonne: Religion does nothing for me, but I know enough good people who find solace and support in it that I won’t knock it. Shitty people aren’t shitty because of their religion. They just use their religion to justify their behavior.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: Incidentally, I can point to plenty of atheists who nevertheless find their way to agreeing fully with moral pronouncements worthy of Liberty University.
Steve LaBonne
@Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely, and nobody needs to join or even care about us. It would just nice if people didn’t talk shit about us and pretend we don’t do anything useful.
Gretchen
@sentient ai from the future: Exactly. Evangelicals believe that their children are entirely their possessions to do with as they wish. Obedience to parents is everything, and anyone who tells the kids that they don’t have to be exactly as their parents want them to be is infringing on their parental rights. That’s the reason for the homeschool thing – that kids don’t even know there’s an alternative to their parents’ worldview. And they started that in the ‘90s with the view that those kids would grow up and put those beliefs into practice. They’re the staffers for implementing Project 2025 now.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Somebody ought to tell that ridiculous “pastor” about the concept of “bearing false witness.”
What a liar.
zhena gogolia
@CCL: Yes, I’ve bookmarked it too.
Another Scott
I still don’t see anything wrong with Jeffries comments.
One thing to remember is that the Continuing Resolution expires on December 20, 2024. There are going to be battles on what’s included or not, what’s increased or cut, and probably even whether there will be a government shutdown or not if DJT figures he’s not getting his way. Jeffries has to play his hand carefully to have a chance of protecting anything in the budget. And part of that is what he’s doing in appealing to bipartisanship and all the rest.
Similarly with the Farm Bill and other important legislation.
There’s much more going on than messaging about fighting DJT and who did what badly in the campaign.
Eyes on the prizes.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Steve LaBonne
@The Audacity of Krope: Donald Trump being a prominent example. Though it may be more accurate to characterize him as an autotheist.
zhena gogolia
@Aziz, light!: I don’t think I could pull that off.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: I know what you mean.
The Audacity of Krope
It certainly is. We all know the one and only thing he truly believes in is his supremacy over all he sees before him.
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: But he doesn’t really believe that. He’s just a terrified little weasel in a big bloated body. That’s what makes him so dangerous.
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
You’re absolutely right, and I just called my Congressman (Steny Hoyer) and gave that message to the person answering his phone line. Will keep doing so.
steve g
I kind of want to see how they would go about deporting a million people. At 1,000 people per day, it would take over two and a half years to deport a million. I don’t think they have any idea.
Steve LaBonne
@Gretchen: The current president of my congregation is a young female-presenting nonbinary person who is partnered with a woman. They are the child of a fundy Baptist minister and were “educated” at Liberty University! They used the list of banned books as their reading list and every time they were warned about the Satanic tendencies of some religious group, went to visit it to see for themselves. A really remarkable and admirable person.
The Audacity of Krope
Whether he believes it or not, that’s the image he portrays. I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of anyone else’s mind or soul, least of all as toxic a mind and soul as Trump possesses.
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: True. I just see a lot of terror in his eyes. Who knows.
The Audacity of Krope
@zhena gogolia: He has to live with that mind and soul, doesn’t he?
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Democrats hold caucus elections tomorrow and Wednesday.
I’d call my Representative if I wanted to complain about Hakeem Jeffries being insufficiently confrontational and speaking of “bipartisanship” too much, but Abigail Spanberger talks about bipartisanship even more than Jeffries does.
And you know what? I have no problem with that. I do not equate tough talk with toughness.
Ramona
@Bupalos: Thanks for the reminder. Can I alternate between passionate disdain and dispassionate politics if I learn to “switch off” passionate disdain and go into “politics” mode?
Also, please examine the basis for your sense that Michelle Obama’s “affirmative action of generational wealth” is viewed as negative because of the “affirmative action” part rather than the “generational wealth” part by almost everybody.
Ruckus
@steve g:
Their entire message system is
BULLSHIT
BULLSHIT
BULLSHIT
This is why they have issues – it is their entire concept of government and everything else – bullshit. They want raw power so that normal humans cannot stop them from screwing up everything, which is their only power play. They have evolved to the point where they want power to create chaos because they have nothing else. shitforbrains knows only one thing, if he’s president, he stays out of jail. Two things actually, staying out of jail and screwing over everyone else because he cares ONLY about one person, his own dumbass self.
TBone
@Citizen Alan: I’m there at church to find the people in my community who are the most likely to assist the vulnerable, etc. and to combat isolation IRL.
We don’t have a UU near enough, and the Episcopalian is only 5 mins. away.
Big gay flags out front, solar panels on roof.
Ruckus
@The Audacity of Krope:
Thing is he knows. He will never, ever admit that he does but he does, otherwise he wouldn’t act like he does. I suspect a very tough next 4 years for all of us. He can’t run any more so this is his last chance to screw over anyone and everyone. And he’ll do his best to do exactly that. Or become king for life. And we do not have a monarchy. Of course when he gets done there may not be a country left.
InMyRoom
The price of eggs will feel so much lower as the cost of everything thing else skyrockets.
Ramona
@df: Meanwhile, we need to prepare a wrung to the simple core list of things they can do (and people who’ve lied to them) when they do find out so that they don’t lash out helplessly.
I remember in the immediate aftermath of the Great recession purported liberals telling me that Fannie Mae caused it and not even knowing what a CDO was.
We need to keep refining our analysis in the meantime and strike back fast and hard when the rightwingers start doing the equivalent of what they did by blaming GFC on CRA and Fannie Mae.
Possibly part of that might be putting the vocabulary out there a lot so that people have words stuck deep in their minds when the shit hits the fan.
Also, we have to monitor the ones who will aim to pass laws to benefit from the economic shock when the shit hits the fan.
Ramona
@Sasha: Yes! This! Goddamned This! They were able to memory hole George W because of This!
Make sure to label all the new iterations of the Tea Party as the Republican “WTF” they devise!
Ramona
@sentient ai from the future: can people with trans children begin to gather into a class suit now or an organization to bring lawsuits and lay the groundwork?
How expensive are the hormonal treatments necessary to protect well-being?
SomeRandomGuy
Also, tomorrow is two weeks. Time to get over yourselves, cheer up, and carry on.
Seriously: moping is not good, and neither is doomscrolling, we learned that during Covid-19, and… well, after being told to cheer up and carry on, there’s nothing wrong with me, I have a bit of glee at using it on some of your normies, especially if it needles, just a tiny bit, where your brain wants to say “but this is DIFFERENT!” before you realize your pain isn’t that much different from a lot of other people.
I’ve had to learn that any number of times; my pains are only special to me, and everyone has their own share of pain. If you can meet minds and hearts, people might listen to your pains and want to soothe ’em, but before then, no one cares. Sad, but true.
So, time to give yourself a bit of sympathy, but no more pity, and start thinking that you have to get through the next four years, no matter what else happens, so, time to stop lagging.
Assuming you’re still lagging – if not, good on you. And if you can’t follow politics for a while, well, doomscrolling Covid-19 wasn’t good, either.
Also: the reason they’re threatening generals with prosecution is, they don’t want them to blab about how Afghanistan was Trump’s fault. “Clam up, or else.”
I’m still gone. May you never explain what your symptoms are like, and have your doctor freak the fsck out and act like I’ve been hiding something. Hey, *YOUR* office asked my pain, I said 7, or 8, “pain prevents most activities.” Yes, that means I spend my time on the couch or in bed, writhing in pain, because when the pain hits, I can’t do anything, because my pain is preventing most activities. I always figured they didn’t give a good goddamn about asking that question, how much pain am I in, but, now I know for sure. Fucking normies – I keep forgetting doctors are as often dumbass timeservers, as exist in the normal workplace.
Redshift
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
He absolutely can. I’ve heard him at campaign events a few times, most recently at a rally for Vindman, and he can be an electrifying speaker. Quoting John Lewis, cracking jokes, I even scribbled down a line about the Trumpist threat – “it’s not hype, it’s not hyperbole, and it’s not hypothetical!”
Kelly
My passport expires Dec 2025. Am I too paranoid for thinking I should renew it now?
Professor Bigfoot
@ArchTeryx: Sherrod did the same thing Tim Ryan did to give us JD Ryan: he ran as “conservative lite,” emphasized how he would work with a President Trump; ran away from Biden and Harris, and just generally did his damnedest to prove he wasn’t really a Democrat.
And lost. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Omnes Omnibus
@SomeRandomGuy: Sorry, sporto. You don’t get to dictate that timing to people.
lowtechcyclist
@Gretchen:
How about the One Weird Trick of ceasing the flow of arms and money to Israel from the U.S. government? That’s a bit more impactful than a phone call. Was that just not worth a try, or what? (Too late for it to make a difference now, given the election outcome.)
I know:
“Alas,” said Goodgulf solemnly, “it is not that easy.”
“But why?”
“Alas,” explained Goodfulf.
“Alackaday,” Orlon agreed.
–Bored of the Rings
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Super blue dog Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won her tough district in Washington.
TBone
Kittens lower your blood pressure 🐾
https://youtu.be/LbkJORdIE7o
lowtechcyclist
@Melancholy Jaques:
With you 100% on that.
Jennifer Altmiller
@steve g: 1,000 per day? I imagine they are thinking more of the Pinochet route of dropping people out of helicopters/cargo planes into the ocean.
Or in the style of lightening the ship’s load in Amistad.
These people are sadistic monsters. It won’t be humane or orderly and they don’t care what it costs.
AWOL
@Kelly: You should renew it now under any condition because there are tremendous delays in processing them.
Kelly
@AWOL: good point
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: Tim Ryan did not “give us J.D. Vance.” You may not like the kind of race Ryan ran, but that wasn’t why he lost, that was how he lost. Ryan could have run the most fiercely partisan campaign possible but that wouldn’t have made more than a couple points difference either way, and he lost by six.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: John Fetterman won his campaign in PA the same time Tim Ryan lost his.
Fetterman brought Joe, Kamala, and Barack to campaign with.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aziz, light!
@Baud: And Janelle Bynum flipped back my district in Oregon.
geg6
@Bupalos:
I have exactly zero Cheetolini voters in my life. Not even in my social media. I got rid of a lot of them in the Obama years for their racist shit and purged the rest during that asshole’s first administration. I left old friends and several cousins by the wayside forever. So I’ll say whatever I want, wherever I want, when I want. And when I see them on tv or on news sites or on other people’s socials, I will laugh and mock and revel in their pain all I want. But I’m never even speaking to anyone who voted for him if I know they did. Never. I will not even look at them. They will be invisible to me. I’m not going to be persuading anyone. Even if I wanted to, I am not the type of person who can pull that shit off. My contempt is always visible no matter how I may try to hide it. You go right ahead and I’ll cheer for you and wish you good luck because you’re going to need it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: That’s an opinion I do not share.
The base of the Democratic Party is Black people, particularly Black women; living in the blue cities.
Where was his outreach? Where was his GOTV?
Probably the same place as his oppo research.
Omnes Omnibus
@Professor Bigfoot: PA is not OH and vice versa.
Geminid
@Aziz, light!: That was a very encouraging result for Janelle Bynum. Hers and Rep. Gluesnkamp Perez’s district across the river seem very similar demographically.
You got to see Bynum’s campaign up close. How would you describe it?
Baud
@geg6:
Agree 100%. People who want to reach out should just do it and stop trying to recruit others to do it. If they succeed, they’ll be heros.
zhena gogolia
@geg6: My problem is that around here they’re sneaky — they don’t talk about it. I suspect some neighbors, but they don’t put up signs or talk about it. (The ones with signs up I don’t talk to already.) And there’s one person who NEVER talks to me about politics, but told somebody else (in May 2024) that he was going to vote for Trump. The problem is, I’m not sure he actually did. It’s not something you ask someone, is it?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@ArchTeryx: please do, thanks
Lapassionara
@sentient ai from the future: Looking back over the last few years, I can see how there has been an orchestrated campaign to demonize trans people. It started here in St. Louis with a so-called Washington University Clinic whistleblower, and it soon became the subject of op-eds and letters to the editor and state-wide legislation.
I am sorry that I do not feel that I have been an effective ally for trans people, as I do not know enough about the issue. I would welcome learning more, if you have suggestions for reading.
I read that a lot of “last minute” Trump voters were swayed by the ads that focused on this issue. The Republicans know how to reach the lizard brain of the electorate, and evidently this was effective. What we saw as utter nonsense (no child goes to school a boy and comes home changed into a girl), they saw as believable and evidently dispositive.
I think we need to be watching for the next round of demonization, as it will start up again, and we need a robust response.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Tim Ryan did nothing for black women outreach. Just assumed that black women would vote for an Irish Italian Catholic man with a bad (high NRA) rating because he was a Democrat. He was better than that but he did not communicate that.
I live in his district and I watched his evolution from antiabortion gun humper to pro-choice reasonable gun rules. He married an elementary school teacher with children, and they changed his mind. I believe it was sincere.
But he didn’t communicate that. We got bipartisan gobbleygook. My dad’s nurse’s aide was a typical black woman utterly loyal always votes Democrat and she couldn’t bring herself to vote for him. She wasn’t in his district so she hadn’t seen the evolution I saw. She googled him and was appalled. And left that slot blank.
Pennsylvanian
@zhena gogolia: I have recently decided that I think it is something that needs to be asked. If you voted for him and don’t talk about, I would prefer to make you uncomfortable by asking directly. Response will be telling no matter what.
Also, will make the sorting quite easy.
Miss Bianca
@geg6: I do still have Trumpers in my life because, as I’ve found out over the course of the years here, it’s impossible to live where I live and *not* have them be part of my life. But anyone who outs themselves as a Trump voter to me is in for a rough ride if they expect me to go along with their BS.
Outreach? No, I’m far too gone for that. I can’t even. Yeah, if others want to try it, they are welcome to do so, but I wouldn’t be able to hack it, personally.
Lyrebird
@lowtechcyclist: what you say is very eloquent. I really strongly disagree though, ,unless you were also a staffer in Blinken’s office or in the White House maybe? You know what they tried and didn’t try? In an environment where it’s likely that Biden was holding off re: Ukr restrictions (not the same situation but related) to help Harris campaign against a crew that spread rumours, “oh Biden’s sending our troops to die in Ukraine just you wait” and Bibi and Putin – helping Hamas – were actively trying to prevent a ceasefire from working.
whether or not their actions were successful is not what I am saying and I am obviously not as eloquent. I am pretty tired of the “let’s help the other side if our folks cannot work miracles” ism especially given what we can see of the consequences.
sab
@sab: Harry Reid is dead but Democrats need to somehow figure out what he did. He was a liberal Democrat but also a Mormon in Nevada where every few years almost the entire population changes (moves in or moves out) except for the Mormons who are mostly Republican. So every election every Democrat is running to win an election with an electorate that has never even heard of any of the candidates. There is no loyalty there to party or candidates.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: I agree that Tim Ryan’s outreach to Ohio’s Black community was deficient, and that was a mistake. I’m just saying that’s not why Ryan lost.
Ryan may have left Black people’s votes on the table while pursuing his failed triangulation strategy, but I don’t think Ryan left anything close to 250,000 votes on the table, and that’s what he lost by.
geg6
@Harry:
I have exactly zero sympathy for their excuses for choosing to be ignorant. My parents had six kids and both worked two jobs most of my childhood and they were as aware and interested in what was happening in the world as anyone could wish. I have no patience for this bullshit excuse making for these lazy asses. Fuck them.
CCL
@Kelly: No.
SomeRandomGuy
@Omnes Omnibus: WOW! A random weirdo on the internet says something, and you feel the need to say this rando has no actual AUTHORITY to say it!
Good for you. Treat yourself to a lollipop. Note: that wasn’t an order, either, that was a sarcastic way of saying you made a childish observation that added nothing to the conversation, so, maybe some candy will keep you quiet… oh, you figured out I was being sarcastic? Good – I didn’t want you to feel you have to say I can’t tell you to treat yourself to a lollipop.
Also: I do get to state the timing to people. Since I am no dictator, I can hardly dictate, but I can speak, and YOU, you little pissant, don’t get to tell me not to.
Hm? No, I didn’t end that sentence with “asshole” under my breath. I would only do that if you read me relate a scary-as-shit story about my doctor freaking out over my pain levels, and decided the *big* thing to do was criticize. Sorry I bothered to stick my head up.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@df:
In the information environment we are in, those people won’t connect the stove being hot to their hand burning. It will get blamed on something unrelated. That is the insidiousness of disinformation.
cmorenc
Is Bob Casey’s senate seat really dead? McCormick’s lead is down to 17.425 votes as of 6pm Monday, from over 40k immediately post-election day.
ColoradoGuy
@Kelly: I just renewed mine. It expired during Covid, so did not get renewed. If you are within 15 years of the issuance of the previous passport (they’re good for 10 years), the procedure is much simpler.
You can do it all online, or mail in your previous passport, a current passport picture (available at Walgreens), a check made out to the U.S. Department of State, and the filled-out form. The price of the application depends on whether you want an expedited application (8 business days) or the regular 3 to 4 week process. Expedited is only about $60 more. The USPS adds a week or two.
Here’s a good video that walks you through the forms:
https://youtu.be/6soDC0AsspM
Professor Bigfoot
@Omnes Omnibus: I think there are more similarities than you think; but running hard as “conservative lite” certainly has brought success here in Ohio, hasn’t it?
sab
@Geminid: He left liberal white votes on the table too. So busy trying for the independent votes that he left Democrats with the impression that he was just another blue dog. He wasn’t, but he didn’t signal anything but that he was Ohio’s weak Joe Manchin.
He was from a corner of Ohio. Nobody in either party outside of NE Ohio knew anything about him. And he ran on crossing the aisle.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Lots of things don’t work. The harder thing is figuring out what does and the replicating that for diverse areas of the country.
lowtechcyclist
@Gretchen:
Yeah, fetuses have personhood, but they lose it once they’re born.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: But, again, that running as “conservative lite” has certainly brought results here in Ohio, hasn’t it?
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Our special unicorn Sherrod Brown couldn’t even pull it off.
He changed his campaign approach. He used to present as a proud liberal. This time he was mr. bipartisanship.
And he lost not to a Republican powerhouse, but to a Republican Trump suckup who ran against immigration while being an actual hispanic immigrant, and against gay and trans while having a gay child.
It would boggle the mind if you didn’t have experience in Ohio.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I believe what it comes down to is this: the Democrats are perceived as the “party of Black people,” and therefore a majority of white people reflexively reject them, period full stop.
At least, that’s the attitude evinced by Ryan and Brown running as “conservative lite.”
No Black outreach is part of proving that they’re not really Democrats.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I live in Northeast Ohio; in a red county; and I do not believe PA is THAT dissimilar to Ohio.
In any case, having watched the failure of Ryan and the success of Fetterman… why wouldn’t you emulate that?
With the advantage of being white men?
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
100%. The only thing I would add is that white people also see white Dems as race traitors, but that’s derivative of their rejection on the “Black people’s party.”
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
I have. But you’re not me. I tend to be quite forward and confrontational on a good day. Don’t even come at me on a bad one. I would be a terrible diplomat.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Agreed. Republican Real will always beat Republican Lite. Democrats, on the other hand, do occassionally beat weak Republicans.
zhena gogolia
@geg6: We’re becoming hermits in a way, so I don’t really get the opportunity.
ETA: We have about 5 friends we socialize with. Apart from their suggesting Sherrod Brown replace Biden as our candidate, that’s about as big as our disagreements go.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
First of all, Spanbarger isn’t House Democratic Leader.
Second, not only are these next four years going to be a fight, but some of those fights are going to be on us pretty quickly. If it looks like leadership is throwing in the towel, where does that leave the rest of us?
Words and appearances matter here, because how the hell else do Democratic leaders communicate with the rest of us? Maybe Jeffries is sending us waves of psychic energy, but I’m not picking them up.
Gvg
@Gretchen: Bluntly, we have to enforce testing and check that the kids are keeping up with grades. The evangelicals have found or been given loopholes. My cousin used this. She homeschooled her kids and they could barely read for years. The loophole she was told of was psychological testing instead of subject testing and she took the daughter’s to a specific counselor in Florida for the “test” while she lived in Virginia. I am sure she was told who would pass them. Anyway she got in with a group of parents and evidently someone was a better teacher or they got motivated by friends and they learned eventually. The one who went in the army had to get all her shots as an adult though because no vaccinations. That cousin hated school and disagreed with science teachers especially so she was ready for the homeschooling movement when it took off.
different-church-lady
My gut tells me we’re putting far too much faith in the existence of mythical “wanted cheaper eggs but not deportations” creatures.
sab
I did, arguing with kay back in July, say that no way did I want any woman on the top of our ticket although I love Kamala Harris.
Geminid
@sab: Do you think Tim Ryan would have carried Ohio with a better campaign? I’m not saying he ran a good campaign, just that he did not “give us J.D. Vance” by blowing a winnable campaign.
I also wish Ryan had run as Fighting Tim instead of Triangulating Tim, not because he would have won that way but because he would have left Ohio Democrats with better morale, and that counts for a lot going forward.
The Audacity of Krope
Yes, results. And, oh, what results they were.
sab
@Gvg: JFC! Why would any responsible parent argue to protect their kid from getting help in reading?
TBone
@sab: patriarchal domination and control.
Roberto el oso
I guess I would need to have more specifics/examples of voters who were “lied to” about some things which seem so incredibly obvious but which somehow don’t match up with them also being pretty stupid. If we’re supposed to dance around certain objectionable (but accurate) words I get that, just in terms of being “nice”. IOW, when attempting to secure the votes of these to-be-pitied dumbbells, we should lie to them by disguising our actual disdain? If it works, okay (although I have my doubts).
dc
@Kelly: I am renewing mine and it wasn’t to expire until December 2026. I got notification that they have it and are processing. I paid to have the process go faster. I want a Biden Admin. passport and I don’t trust that I would be able to get one under Trump.
Baud
This should make some people happy.
sab
My baby sister did badly in school because she was so bored, and also possibly on the autism spectrum. She finished reading all her school books in class sometime in October, and then brought books from home. When they called on her in class she was clueless. So they put her in special ed in 2nd grade. In fifth or sixth grade when they finally tested her again, she was first in the school in reading, after four or five years in special ed. Her math skills had gotten wobbly.
anitamargarita
@MagdaInBlack: The 2 pieces of information these low-info voters had is that Harris is Black and female.
different-church-lady
@sab:
The answer’s right there in the question.
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady: I’m gonna go with Wanted Deportations Trump Trash, What Egg Prices? creatures.
different-church-lady
I mean, I get it: telling people they’re horrible doesn’t do any good.
At the same time, telling horrible people they’re not horrible doesn’t do any good either.
leeleeFL
While it is entirely possible that I may be able to speak calmly with some of these ppl, it will not be soon. I have friends who have hugged me tight and whispered in my ear that they can’t say anything in their group about how upset they are! I feel much the same. I resent the fuck out of that. The tRumpers do not own my country or my opinions. But, I need the job I have, so my tongue is gonna have scars! I am buying pregnancy tests for ppl who may need them on the quiet, looking for groups that help women thru sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies, so I can donate to them. I cannot imagine how victims of assault are feeling about now. And like someone said, they all knew about the Insurrection!
frosty
@Kelly: Mine expires in 2025 too and I just picked up passport renewal forms at the post office today. Yes, renew it. No you’re not paranoid, you’re being cautious.
sab
@Geminid: I still think he would have lost. He and his campaign people were not idiots. Nor were Sherrod Brown’s. But run as who you are, half of us might like you. Do not run for the half that dislike you, because those who do like you might change their minds or stay home.
ETA Although if Ohioans don’t know who Sherrod Brown is by now they should have let their pet turtle fill out the ballot.
TBone
@leeleeFL: I said it! They know right from wrong, no matter how low information they are, and everyone knows about J6, I don’t care what lies are being told about it.
They just don’t care.
lowtechcyclist
@Lyrebird:
I would think cutting off the flow of aid to Israel would be extremely hard to keep secret. There are plenty of more subtle, less impactful things I’m sure they tried that I might never know about. But cutting off the aid spigot? Not hardly. We don’t know if it would have worked because it wasn’t tried. But it was AFAICT by far the biggest lever we had, so it kinda makes sense that it should have been tried when everything else was failing, month after month after month as the genocide continued.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
zhena gogolia
@anitamargarita: I’m sorry to say I’m afraid that’s about it.
bluefoot
@Melancholy Jaques: This. Whether or not large groups of people are actually fully human isn’t a topic for simple political debate or “normal” policy.
@Baud: Let me know when you set up a Patreon to help fund you writing & publishing this book.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Steny Hoyer isn’t House Leader either so I’m not sure what yoir first point is.
And you and some others here can believe Hakeem Jeffries is “throwing in the towel” all you want, but that does not make it true. I just suggest that you watch what Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar say and do over the next three months and judge them on that basis.
But if you want to judge Democratic leadership on the basis of a couple Balloon Juice posts made six weeks before the new Congress even begins, that’s your right too.
gene108
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
1. Angry black man in a position of power is not a winning strategy.
2. Democrats are the party of minorities and women. Republicans are the party for most white men.
It’s too ingrained in society that a white man is a leader and authority figure versus women and non-white people.
This is one reason Democrats are pressed by the MSM towards bipartisanship versus Republicans. Obviously the ladies and blacks and the Hispanics should be conferring with white men for approval, but the reverse has never been true.
3. The Obama coalition from 2008 has broken apart. Trying to maximize minority and women turnout to offset the Republican’s getting the white vote worked in 2008, 2012, and should’ve worked in 2016 but for the EC.
3. Biden lost some ground with minorities in 2020, but made up for it by doing better with white voters.
4. Ultimately Democrats need to be more effective in getting white votes. There’s no way around it. Obama’s ability to work around explicitly needing to court white voters worked because Obama is an incredible politician and communicator.
Part of the problem is there are a whole bunch of wealthy conservative billionaires who are willing to burn millions to order society to their liking. I do not see anything like that for Democrats.
Second, Republicans and their super wealthy enablers have a win at all costs mentality. Democrats and their supporters, even wealthy supporters, are more interested in refining policy and sticking to institutional processes.
There needs to be a serious change in how Democrats view government and institutions for this to change.
Manyakitty
@Steve LaBonne: yeah. That SUCKS. I was no fan of his campaign, but he knew how to win before, so? Ohio is in for a rough ride.
different-church-lady
@Bupalos: Sorry Mac, but finding some kind of common ground with naked hatred just ain’t a thing I’m doing.
Harry
@geg6: I have little respect for them also. but they have friends who have friends and we might be able to persuade those people’s friends. it’s one vote at a time if we can convince enough of them
gene108
@TBone:
J6 didn’t cause the price of groceries, gas, and other household items to increase in price.
It happened.
The world carried on as normal for most people in this country on January 7, so a lot of people brush it off as being a big deal.
Gvg
@sab: not a responsible parent as we define it. Religion is more important than school. Reading is not really important to her. God will fix it eventually.
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: 😂 💜🙏
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus: My personal feeling at this point is that if all religions magically disappeared tomorrow, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. But you would no longer see the awful spectacle of good people doing bad things because the preacher (or priest or imam or whatever) told them to. I think you would see a lot less of otherwise loving parents kicking their LGBT kids out into the street to die homeless or disbelieving their children’s accounts of being molested because “Father O’Malley is a good man and wouldn’t do that.” And have honestly never met or even heard of someone who was anti-abortion without their beliefs being based entirely on religion. YMMV.
gene108
@Belafon:
Build out effective social media micro targeting ads. This requires people who are experts in data mining and someone, like a Democratic Peter Thiel, to supply the money.
It’d be nice to figure out how to get people to tune into liberal podcasts or web shows that can be pushed via social media, but I don’t think there are liberals who would be good at this.
We make intellectual rather than emotional appeals to people. Somehow getting people who can work on people’s emotions is essential. This also should involve white men pushing liberal ideas to other white men and women.
Gretchen
@Lyrebird: Thank you. The Middle East has been a tinderbox for half a century. Biden’s One Weird Trick wasn’t going to fix it. What were Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia going to do if we suddenly pull support from Israel? What intelligence was Biden seeing that our OWT folks don’t know about it? Why were 17 countries involved in the negotiations that both Netanyahu and Hamas kept blocking, and what were they all proposing? There’s a lot that we don’t know about the situation, but the OWT folks thinks there’s a « just do this » solution that Biden and the State Department are just too stupid to see.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: We’ll never know, well we?
What we DO know is that his campaign was conservative lite shite, and he lost to a goddamn dilettante, who should have been oppo-researched right into oblivion; and that didn’t happen.
Manyakitty
@Omnes Omnibus: what you said.
Can verify that I am nowhere near okay, but I still get up for work and clean the litter boxes and buy groceries, etc. That said, it damn near takes a stick of dynamite to get me to leave the house for a round of ordinary errands. And I’m definitely not good with people right now. My filter is hanging on by a thread and EVERYONE pisses me off.
Anyway.
MagdaInBlack
@anitamargarita: Bingo.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I’m not sure why you mentioned Spanberger in the first place. Why should what she says and does matter to me more than any other random member of the Democratic caucus? But the House Democratic Leader does matter more to me than a random member of the caucus. THAT was my point.
Anyway, why did I call Hoyer? Because when you call someone about something going on in the House, your own Congressperson is generally the person you call. This even needs explaining?
I can only go by what he says publicly. I don’t have a crystal ball that tells me what he’s doing behind the scenes. And that’s about to matter a good deal less than it has in the past.
I will, but being conciliatory with authoritarians wasn’t a good start.
Splitting Image
@different-church-lady:
I’m not putting much faith in the existence of those. In my optimistic moments I put faith in the existence of “determined to get cheaper eggs no matter how many friends and family members get deported” creatures who will turn on Trump and his crew when they do not, in fact, get cheaper eggs.
The ones who were determined to get deportations are solidly with Trump for the duration and don’t care a jot about the price of eggs.
Baud
Via blue sky, some folks here might enjoy this image.
Jackie
Not good news for Casey:
Bokonon
As someone who worked for Pat Moynihan, I appreciate this. :-)
Sure Lurkalot
@ColoradoGuy: I just renewed mine and my spouse’s online, they were set to expire in 4 months. Hopefully, it will go smoothly and there isn’t a huge backlog. I haven’t seen anything in the news about delays like there have been in the past.
It’s easy to do online but you do have to create or have a login.gov account, take and upload a photo and keep your fingers crossed the photo is acceptable.
There are instructions and examples on this website.
U.S. Passport Photos
karen marie
@Ken B: You heard about this, right?
I have to assume that Mr. Sheffield’s ban will be rescinded post January 2025.
Bokonon
One of the saddest commentaries on this election I’ve heard is that there was apparently a viral rumor that passed through the QAnon circles that Trump was going to pay off everyone’s credit card debt if he got elected.
Apparently, lots of these people believed that the stimulus checks during COVID came directly from Trump’s wallet. It’s probably something the Trump campaign encouraged.
And the credit card debt rumor seems to have delivered votes for Trump. Lots of them. Based on a totally stupid falsehood that wasn’t disproven because it traveled under the radar, from person to person, on the basis of trusted networks.
The Trump campaign also micro-targeted misinformation to particular groups … like telling black voters in particular places that Harris was going to ban menthol cigarettes if she got elected. Really. No joke.
The GOP’s complete cynicism and contempt for voters shines through. Problem is … the voters reward it.
Jackie
F’kn Bitch
The Audacity of Krope
@Jackie: How do we know Rep. Mace is what she purports to be. I’m sure she and her Republican colleagues would happily consent to a series of invasive tests to ensure they’re using the right bathroom.
Planetjanet
@Omnes Omnibus: Glad to see you, Omnes.
karen marie
@Gretchen:
Fixed it for you.
None of these people who claim they’re being persecuted are in fact being persecuted. They’re attempting to force others to live by their religious beliefs. Recognize and refuse to accept their framing.
Steve LaBonne
@Jackie: Jesus. These people are such utter trash.
Suzanne
I swear to fuck, I don’t know why bathrooms are such a fucken issue.
Hire me, I will design you some awesome bathrooms.
Steve LaBonne
@karen marie: Claiming you’re being persecuted because people you disagree with are allowed to exist goes way, way back in the history of Christianity.
Sure Lurkalot
@Jackie:
I guess Sarah McBride will just have to go to Mace’s office and piss on her desk.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: They’re an “issue” the way Haitians eating dogs and cats is an “issue”.
karen marie
@trollhattan:
How does immigration reform affect Rodriguez’s — or anyone’s – religious faith? It doesn’t. He’s a straight-up liar grasping for an excuse to try to inflict his beliefs on everyone. He can fuck right off.
The Audacity of Krope
Nothing about the rule as stated disallows this.
Scamp Dog
@RaflW: I’m UU as well. We’re a fairly large congregation in metro Denver, big enough that we’ll be able to organize ourselves and others, I hope.
Suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: To be fair….. as an architect, I will fully agree that public restrooms in the U.S. are bad. But being bad is a choice. We can do better.
Again: hire me and I will design you some cool-ass bathrooms.
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
It’s possible to strongly express one’s opposition without raising one’s voice. He could have said something like:
“We know what Donald Trump’s agenda is, and it is antithetical to everything we Democrats stand for. And few if any of the Republican members of the House of Representatives are going to be willing to oppose Trump over anything. While we are willing to work with House Republicans in those instances where it would benefit the American people, realistically those opportunities will be few and far between. Trump’s agenda is one of vengeance and retribution against people who have done no one any harm, and we will do our best to impede and, to the extent possible, halt that agenda.”
I could certainly say that without sounding angry, hell, I could say it in a very matter-of-fact tone. And I’m sure Black men who have risen to high positions, who really have to be able to not sound angry to have gotten where they are, could do a better job of it than I could.
sab
@Suzanne: I think you are way above my paygrade.
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Oh absolutely. But anyplace right now can do with existing bathrooms what my previous UU congregation has done: “All gender with urinals” and “All gender without urinals”.
The Thin Black Duke
@lowtechcyclist: I remember when Obama wearing a tan suit was controversial.
sab
@Suzanne: I have a trans niece who is afraid to visit relatives (including us) in her
homebirth state. We love her and will probably never see her face to face again. Yes I am angry.Suzanne
@sab: It’s not actually the design cost that’s the issue. It’s the construction. Bathrooms are expensive to build, and they are “non-revenue-generating”, meaning that owners are incentivized to make them as small as possible. Every square foot they use for bathrooms is a square foot they’re not using for making money.
sab
@Suzanne: I understand. Men need a row of urinals and women need stalls. Women are so expensive, whether you marry them or just employ them at 75% of men’s pay.
sab
@The Thin Black Duke: I was shocked, even though it was still summer.
geg6
@Harry:
Go for it. It’s not something I can or will do. Not my nature to be persuadable to morons. I tend to let them know I consider them morons. Whether I actually say it or not.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
I had a friend back at my old online hangout who I spent a fair amount of time with in meatspace over the years as well, who was an atheist and she was against abortion. I didn’t get into a deep conversation with her about it, but such people do exist.
I doubt there are many such people out there, though.
Quinerly
@Jackie:
All up in arms about who uses bathrooms in the Capitol.
Yet, doesn’t give a shit about people who smear literal shit on the walls of the Capitol.
I know it’s coming. Someone will have to straitjacket me when that asshole pardons the J6 pieces of shit.
geg6
@Manyakitty:
Come sit by me.
bbleh
@Steve LaBonne:@The Audacity of Krope: isn’t it just delusions of grandeur that are a fairly typical part of NPD? (Admittedly his have been pretty wildly encouraged.) I’ve always thought when I watched him that inside he’s a small, scared guy acting out almost desperately to convince people (and himself, I suppose) that he MATTERS, and that it never … quite works.
Manyakitty
@geg6: kindred spirits
Jay
@sab:
That’s funny. I don’t use urinals, I use toilets, and I sit down to pee.
lowtechcyclist
@Gretchen:
If it would make them behave a lot more aggressively towards Israel, we’d have Bibi by the short hairs, wouldn’t we?
206inKY
We also need to punch back on the microtargeted texts and social media ads. Slice up his voter demos and praise whatever’s toxic to each.
Quinerly
@Bokonon:
Thanks for adding this to the comments. I had not heard about the credit card debt. I had heard about the menthol cigarettes.
I also heard that the Trump campaign was pushing the lie that Harris was big on locking up parents for their children’s truancy. This particular lie was being pushed in Latin and Black communities.
sab
@sentient ai from the future: Same for my granddaughter. She is doing fine, but policies coming along will fix that. RFK Jr doesn’t think she should be thriving because he thinks she is defective and needs curing. I can’t even…
MagdaInBlack
@Manyakitty @geg6: Scooch over please. Me too.
Steve LaBonne
@bbleh: Still desperate for Fred’s approval.
Manyakitty
@MagdaInBlack: lots of room. And we baked cookies.
bbleh
@Steve LaBonne: which I fear Vladimir Putin has taken material advantage of. But whatever. We’re stuck with it now ’til he croaks, which I still think will be sooner rather than later given his recent evident decline
Reagan: pretty obviously well into Alzheimer-type dementia during second term.
Trump: not as clear to an amateur, but don’t tell me the guy’s doing well or not getting worse.
What IS it with Republicans and the guys they worship as demigods?
TBone
@gene108: see my comment #34.
I didn’t say whether they weighed it as being important to them (I know they don’t, after it happened). I said they know right from wrong and, no matter how much info they’re not getting, they all know about J6 being wrong.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kelly: No. Renew your passport now.
BTW, also worth getting the passport card as well. It’s got limited usefulness for border crossings (only works for a select number of locations), but it’s wallet sized and easy to carry with you at all times.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@geg6: come sit by me
RaflW
@Scamp Dog: The whole CO front range (at least Ft. Collins to CO Springs) is a great area for UU congregations. I’ve only attended Sundays at two over the years, but know some of the other ministers at least a bit. I’d pop down more, but I-70 from Summit Co (when I’m here and not in MN) is a trek.
MagdaInBlack
@Manyakitty: 🌻❤️🌻😊
sentient ai from the future
@Ramona: for blockers, the sticker price is about $45k/yr. though i’m hearing that an implant might be a better deal because it can last as much as twice as long as the stated duration of a year, compared to every 6 mo shots.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@gene108: Not just liberal ideas, but liberal manhood. They paint liberal men as emasculated.
Gretchen
@Suzanne: Angry Twitter periodically feigns outrage at the gender-neutral bathrooms at the new Kansas City Airport. They have individual stalls with good doors – no gaps – red and green lights to tell you which are occupied, and shared sinks. Great for parents with opposite-sex children and people who travel with someone who needs bathroom help. Of course there are also single sex bathrooms, but outrage Twitter never fills in that detail.
Kayla Rudbek
@The Audacity of Krope: I would cackle with delight if Mace wasn’t pure XX in her chromosomes
Gretchen
@Quinerly: I don’t think Trump will pardon the J6 prisoners. He doesn’t care about anyone who can’t do something for him. They’re « little people » who have outlived their usefulness to him.
Martin
I think this is setting Dems up for failure. 75% of voters polled said the country was headed in the wrong direction. There needs to be a lot of Dems in that poll, and while you can feel the country is headed in the wrong direction in diametrically opposed ways (too much racism, not enough racism) it suggests that people wanted change. Harris explicitly campaigned on no change, and I think if Dems continue to defend the status quo, defend institutions as they currently stand because we need institutions to fight off fascism, without acknowledging what’s not working, they’ll continue to struggle with the electorate. You’re seeing that happening here in CA with Democrats.
I think Dems got a little too much into the ‘Biden is great’ mindset while a LOT of things that needed work didn’t get work. Sure, he didn’t make things worse, but a lot of things didn’t get better. Dems mad scramble to do _something_ before 1/20 is pretty damning. You had 4 years, why the fuck are you starting NOW. Why let Ukraine make strikes now? Why confirm judges now? Why weren’t these things done a year ago? It sends the signal that the only way to get Democrats to stop talking and to act is to vote them out. And that’s a fucking suicidal message to lock in with the electorate – that they are too afraid of blowback to actually do meaningful things until they are lame duck and there’s no risk of blowback.
I’m not particularly interested in looking back on this because pundits and whatnot are still saying the dumbest shit, but Democrats do need to make changes to how we and they do things going forward. It’s not just about fixing the information space (good luck with that, btw). I’m less anxious about what Trump will bring than I am about the Democratic party’s inability to learn and apply the lesson and that doesn’t feel great.
Gretchen
@lowtechcyclist: Sure, a flat-out war in the Middle East would help save the Palestinians, right?
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: Its true we’ll never know how Tim Ryan would have done had he run a more partisan campaign, because this kind of social science experiment can only be run once. But Trump carried Ohio by 8 points two years before Ryan lost it by 6, and Trump just won Ohio by 11 points. That is why I do not buy the contention that Ryan’s campaign strategy cost him a victory in 2022.
As to the notion that Ryan could have blown Vance out of the water if he had exploited opposition research better– and he did some– experience this year suggests that if Ryan had pounded Vance more for past statements and actions, it would have hurt him very little. Oppo research should have hurt Vance this year, but it didn’t.
I agree with you that Ryan did not run a good campaign, even though I understand he outperformed other Democrats running state-wide. Ryan should never, ever have neglected Ohio’s Black communities.
He really had no excuse. I’m assuming that Ryan had worked with Reps. Joyce Beatty and Shontelle Brown on Ohio matters in Congress. He could have asked them to partner with him on his Senate campaign. Those two women together represented one and a half millon Ohioans who scarcely knew Tim Ryan!
But I’m not sure Ryan made more than a nominal effort to involve Beatty and Brown. If he didn’t, that was a big mistake. The smart move would have been to campaigned with them and shown respect for them as peers, which they are. Instead Ryan left Black Ohioans wondering if he respected them.
One way of looking at this is Ryan “overthought” the problem of winning in a red state. He had nothing to lose by aligning with Rep. Beatty and Brown. They’re both knowing, pragmatic Democrats who probably agree with Ryan on 95% of matters before Congress. The Independents and never-trumpers Ryan was trying to attract wouldn’t have held this against him even if they had noticed, which they probably wouldn’t have.
However, Ohio Democrats will get to run the experiment again in 2026. That when whoever Gov. DeWine picks to replace Senator Vance will run to fill the rest of Vance’s term. Buckeye Dems ought to be able to field a candidate who can run a different campaign than Ryan’s.
Sally
@lowtechcyclist: Excellent
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: Does the orange shitstain have plans to destroy the ADA yet?
Steve LaBonne
@Geminid: If Sherrod Brown could no longer win in Ohio, against an opponent who is a reeking pile of shit, no Democrat will win a statewide election in the foreseeable future no matter how they campaign. It really doesn’t help us to Murc’s Law that reality.
Steve LaBonne
@mrmoshpotato: The guy who can barely walk down a ramp.
Suzanne
@Martin: Agree.
And very happy to see you back, BTW.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jackie: Absolutely predictable.
Even if it fails I fully expect Mace and others to stage a screaming attack on McBride in one of the women’s bathrooms. MTG has a nasty history of anti-trans stunts, including hanging an anti-trans sign outside her office, which was directly across the hall from a legislator with a trans child.
And yeah, it’s about bathrooms the same way Jim Crow was about water fountains.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato: Not that I’ve heard. There’s a lot of old people who voted for Trump who love the curb cuts for their Hoverounds…..
Kayla Rudbek
@Jackie: at this rate, I may have to start carrying weaponry to defend myself from these panty-sniffing scolds when I go to a public bathroom (PCOS, genetics, and perimenopause = I have more facial hair than half of these inbred male panty-sniffing scolds or the sons of the female panty-sniffing scolds, good thing I grew out my scalp hair so I look more femme, yes I got flack in college for not being feminine enough, and no, I will not forgive or forget being made fun of behind my back as androgynous by my college classmates).
Suzanne
@Gretchen: There are so many problems with public bathrooms. Having to hear and smell the person next to you. Having to bring your belongings or luggage or beverage into a tiny-ass stall. Navigating with a baby stroller, or trying to wash your kid’s hands. I could go on and on.
We do multi-stall restrooms with partitions because they are cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and allow the building owner to surveil for stolen merchandise or drugs. Not because they provide an adequate potty experience.
Bill Arnold
@Archon:
Have you ever watched what people search for on google in the USA, with google trends? If not, it’s enlightening. Typically, about 1/2 the searches are for sports games, another quarter are for celebrities.
Geminid
@The Audacity of Krope: Well, there is the problem of Mace purporting to be different things to different people. Mace reminds me of Glenn Youngkin in that respect.
But whatever Mace purports to be, I see her as a candidate for the Senate. Lindsey Graham’s seat comes up on 2026, and I think Nancy Mace wants it. So I pretty much see anything she does or says in that light.
YY_Sima Qian
I have been pretty vocal that Dems need to junk their institutionalist/moderate/technocratic instinct/inertia & take a page from the Repub scorched earth playbook to slow down the inevitable avalanche of reactionary policies & legislations. However, I think it is OK to save all of that for when the inevitable deluge actually comes, & not exhaust themselves in outrage before the Congress & Administration are actually sworn in.
I also expect the Senate Dems to be full obstructionist on Trump nominees. However, it might be better hold fire anything beyond shots across bows until the confirmation hearings. I think it is much more damaging to the Trump Administration to sink one or more nominees during confirmation. Otherwise Trump might put the wing nuts out there now to draw fire, then pull them back before 1/20 & replace them w/ people slightly less (& less overtly) wing nutty, & have all of the Repubs & MSM praise how “normal & sane” the replacements are.
different-church-lady
@Gretchen:
There’s another kind?
Ramona
@Shakti: Our social species has evolved feeling shame and shaming for an excellent reason. This comment thread making me consider that expressing disgust is a tool in our politics repertoire. There are situations and conditions where it can be useful.
Aziz, light!
@Geminid: Sorry, just saw your question. In 2022 after blue dog Kurt Schrader retired, the Dems ran Jamie Mcleod-Skinner, a progressive who was too far left for the district, so Chavez-DeRemer flipped what had long been light blue. Bynum is a return to the mean. What I saw of the campaign was a blizzard of TV ads, most of them from Chavez-DeRemer, slickly produced with outside funding and obnoxiously Trumpian (insane killer migrants are going to sex change your kids). Bynum’s ads were positive, anodyne, forgettable. It’s hard to say how she will fare next time.
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: and nine times out of ten, the stall doors open inwards so there’s virtually no room to exit the stall once you’re done
Ramona
@ArchTeryx: thank you thank you thank you for this! It might replace my unhealthy for me every night prayer that Trump suffer a permanently paralyzing stroke depriving him of the faculty of speech.
Martin
@Gretchen: They weren’t being saved before.
Geminid
@Steve LaBonne: The reason I’m arguing this point is because this is a recurring issue; that is, the issue of campaign strategy for Democrats running in purple districts and states or as in the case of Senators Brown and Tester, red states.
It’s also an important issue because the path to a majority in Congress runs through purple districts and states. And these are tough races that require good candidates and strong campaigns to win.
But if we want to learn how to win tough races, we would do better to consider candidates who win these districts and states; Democrats like Janelle Bynum, who flipped an Oregon House seat, and George Whitesides who flipped one in California.
And Democrats like Sharice Davids. She who flipped a Kansas seat in 2018 and has held it through good cycles and bad. And Senators Tammy Baldwin and Jacky Rosen. These are the Democrats I want to learn from.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I don’t really have my head around things yet – but one takeaway is that Dems need to anchor their campaigns on issues that divide Republicans. Abortion was such an issue, but the state ballot initiatives gave people the ability to isolate that issue and still vote for Trump, so it was effective to winning the issue but not the race.
And Dems need to stop offering solutions to problems that the GOP offer up. It’s hard to knock down the problem, as they are emotional, and easy to knock down the solution. Hell, Harris’ anti-price gouging proposal was mischaracterized by major media outlets within 6 hours. That should instead have been a rant against corporate profits. $12T in profits a year is largely a redistribution of money from consumers to investors, and it dwarfs the effects of inflation ($21B from 2020-2024).
Suzanne
@Kayla Rudbek: That’s because there’s not enough clear space outside the stall for the bathrooms to open out.
I recently designed three floors of bathrooms. Some of them are nice.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I’ll add – I’m not sure Dems should take any extraordinary effort to fight these nominees. Dems need to stop bailing the GOP out of their dumb shit and let voters feel it now and then. If voters want Gaetz as AG, let them try it out for a while and campaign on it in 2026. I’m not convinced a different nominee would be worse – that is, they’ll almost certainly be as vindictive as Gaetz but might actually be competent at running an agency.
Gretchen
@Martin: They should at least fight hard against the national security risks. Once Tulsi gives the Russians all our secrets, we won’t be getting them back. Sean Duffy at Transportation probably can’t do too much damage.
Gretchen
@Suzanne: the KC bathrooms are really well done, and their are family restrooms with more room for strollers, changing tables, etc. It might be the good design that makes them so mad – it’s hard to find a legitimate criticism.
Gretchen
@Geminid: Sharice Davids is my rep, and she’s really good. I remember going to a Dem meeting a long time ago, and they said « a Dem could win in Johnson County! » We thought, sure, we have to run someone, but don’t be delusional. Then Dennis Moore won several terms until he retired. Then it was solid R for a few years and in 2018 there was a fire to win it back. There were about 7 primary contenders, including a couple of teachers in a year when education was a big issue, and I was inclined towards one of them. I just didn’t think that Kansas was going to go for a gay Native American female MMA fighter, even one with a Cornell law degree. My son in law convinced me and shamed me into knocking doors with him for her, and we were elated when she won. She never really mentions being a Democrat. She’s in the district All The Time, doing coffee meetings with constituents, pop-up help with your VA and SS benefits, visiting businesses, taking credit when government money paid for something. She does the work without any partisan fighting and lets people know she’s listening and working for them. Her mom is a veteran and she makes a point of letting people know that and a strong interest in helping veterans.
Another Scott
@Martin:
As Suzanne said, it’s good to see you again.
1) Agreed, there’s too much punditry demanding that we swallow their interpretations and throw their favorite scapegoat’s punching bag under the bus. But it’s hard to know the correct lessons and what to change without seeing the final numbers and how they break out and doing some sensible thinking about them.
2) We’re pretty much guaranteed changes in the campaign for 2028 – that always happens when we don’t have an incumbent.
3) It’s easy to say that the institutions and systems failed and therefore we need Big Structural Change™. Trouble is, of course, we have to work within the existing framework of laws and the existing courts. Biden tried for a lot of Big Changes and was slapped down by a few RWNJ courts and the SCOTUS did backdoor shenanigans to keep those rulings in place, when they weren’t actually making things worse.
If we want lasting changes, we have to work within the system while we’re modernizing and fixing the system. And that will not be easy – as Biden showed us.
It’s a slog. It will continue to be a slog.
My $0.02.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: I think Dems need to both rail against obscene corporate profits & “greedflation/sellers’ inflation” that they drive, & offer anti-price gauging proposals as good policy solution. Dems need populist messaging to reach disaffected voters, but it can’t just be populism w/o substance, that is a race to the bottom the Dems won’t win against the Rs & a slippery slope to all kinds of evil, too.
As for obstructing Trump nominees, the goal isn’t to get a “better” replacement, but to defenestrate/emasculate the Trump Administration early to undermine any sense of momentum & inevitability to its reactionary project. Relish in taking scalps, these wing nuts deserve to have their scalps taken. What I have in mind is how the Rs sank Tom Daschle’s nomination to the DHS early in Obama’s 1st term, & intimidated several other nominees into withdrawing their nominations.
George
@JerseyBeard:Your observation about people believing in stupid lies is spot-on. People don’t say they are in favor of tariffs because they are in favor of tariffs. People who say they voted based on the price of eggs or gasoline didn’t cast their votes based on the price of eggs or gasoline.They simply use those excuses to veil their bigotries.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: +1
The Senate needs to do its job and keep incompetent monsters out of positions of trust under the United States. If they can’t do that, then the least they can so beat up the reputations of the monsters so that they’ll think twice about wanting to be considered for such a position.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
SectionH
@geg6: yep. If you show yourself as a racist misogynistic asshole, in whatever parameters, you are dead to me. And I’ve lived that for more than 2 decades
Chris T.
@Lobo: There is also Literature: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheCabinetOfCuriosities
Dave
@ErikaF: Short and medium run it’s absolutely necessary though it will be harder for us to do. The default messaging just doesn’t lend itself to the sort of simple ridiculous BS that dominates.
And then the question is how far can you go before you become just as bad as what you are opposing though I don’t worry too much about that the distance to get from here to there is fairly massive.
Long term everyone really needs to tout serious thought into the current information environment and how to prime that environment. I don’t pretend to age the slightest clue but that needs to be running concurrently with more aggressively making use of the current dysfunctional environment.
The contradiction isn’t inherently unsolvable but isn’t exactly easy to overcome.
Dave
@The Audacity of Krope: Morally and philosophically of course not. Practically well that’s a harder question.
Dave
@Jennifer Altmiller: I suspect the smarter eviler ones want to round people up and then use them as farmed out slave labor in attempt to keep food prices from shooting up and indulging their ugliest worst impulses.
Practically I suspect they will not be very effective at this, if it happens at all, but I assume as at least some of them are thinking along those lines. And at the minimum the hardcore of their base will think it’s brilliant and never once consider there disunity in their rhetoric about liberty and freedom and their actual actions.
Steve Crickmore
@Bokonon: Lucky you. Doris Kearns was excellent, but I was fortunate enough to audit two of Pat Moynihan’s classes at Harvard in 1973/4 for the full term. I have never encountered a professor as lively and provocative. Probably the most formative influence on my life about politics and public policy.