— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 4:59 PM
He’s also net -7m votes, which means that in the last 40 years only McCain & Dole were bigger losers.
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 4:00 PM
… [whispers] And minds:
We are going to hear a lot of “when I voted for Trump, I didn’t vote *for Trump,*” and please pray for me because I know we need every hand on deck and can’t afford to alienate potential defectors but it will take God’s power to stop me from saying “yes you did, that’s what VOTING FOR TRUMP means!”
— Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty (@irhottakes.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 8:23 PM
The difference between Trump and Harris voters is that Harris voters understood:
-tariffs are a tax we pay
-the ACA is Obamacare
-mass deportations are a bad idea
-cabinet nominations matter
-Project 2025 is terriblebefore the election. Trump voters are learning it after.
— Jared Ryan Sears (@JaredRyanSears) November 20, 2024
Trump's electoral juice comes from his outsized celebrity appeal to a segment of the voting public that is low enough in trust, engagement, and cognitively-reflective judgment in the domain of politics to not hear about, ignore, or actively disbelieve most of the truly alarming facts about him
— Christopher M. Federico (@cmfederico.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 2:00 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,003: Putin’s Wetwork Program
Splitting Image
I seem to recall hearing that there is a special term for people who voted for the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s, not because they supported Nazi policies, but because they wanted to send a message to the previous government.
That term is “Nazi”.
I think this may also apply here.
piratedan
There’s a part of me that simply doesn’t want to hear any fucking excuses. They lived thru 45. They lived thru 46 and doing the best of any country on the planet in going thru the pandemic and they STILL fucking voted for DJT, post his guilty charge as both a federal cheat paying off mistresses and as a rapist in civil court and watched him steal secrets and plan and execute a fucking coup.
they want to discount all of that, all of project 2025, all of the deportation talk, the promised revenge tour, the dictator talk and say that they’re sorry and that they didn’t know?
fuck you.
JoyceH
It’s gonna be all leopards and faces for the next four years.
Martin
@piratedan: Democrats did a LOT of work to block his agenda before. That’s why Republicans don’t seem extreme – Democrats stop them from the worst stuff. I think this enables a cycle of extremism on the right.
I think Democrats need to stop bailing states out. Florida has a law banning ‘climate change’ from government, yet they’re happy to collect tax dollars steered to them from the other 49 every time a hurricane rolls through. They never have to have the debate within the state about mitigation because they never have to pay for it. I think Democrats need to change that. And we’re now entering an era of retaliatory politics. Trump would deny disaster relief for California but not Florida because of who voted for him. You can’t fight that apart from disarming the feds on such matters, in part because Democrats will never retaliate in kind.
Democrats need to force Republicans to actually solve their own problems.
Martin
I’m feeling a lot better today having seen that Josh Marshall and Hank Green are kind of on the same wavelength as me. I feel a bit less in the wilderness and alone where before I felt like I was losing my mind.
prostratedragon
Who do you know who will give you anything to go along with, “Good-bye?” 🎶
sab
Not complaining here, but I am on a Barnes and Noble Nook, and Chrome, and some outdated Samsung software, and as a result when I get on the BJ site it takes forever for links to load. All I get is Front Page poster’s comments and no context. Eventually they load. Meanwhile I read the comments, who are often as ill informed as I am.
Just info for front pagers. Not a complaint. Just explaining from my viewpoint.
sab
@JoyceH: Hopefully only two years. Next Congress if we can get it.
rikyrah
@piratedan:
Thank you👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Aziz, light!
@Martin: So no FEMA then.
VeniceRiley
“I ordered a sh*T sandwich, thinking it was just an edgy name …”
TS
I have been too sorry for myself, Kamala Harris, the US and the world, to read any news since November 6.
I have on rare occasions lurked. My 100% view on the difference between trump voters and Harris voters is the latter are not racists and misogynists. I read today about the poor misunderstood young men – maybe they can think about what women have been through for a thousand years and counting & then tell me about their sad and sorry state.
I still cannot believe the level of hate that produced this disaster for the world
I do think of you all and hope you stay safe through the times to follow.
The Thin Black Duke
Because I’m a petty and vindictive person, stories like this make me smile. Cry harder, you goddamned idiots. There’s gonna be a multitude of rotund leopards in the next four years.
Baud
@Splitting Image:
@piratedan:
Agree.
Rusty
@Martin: Josh Marshall always has good analysis, but post election he has been exceptional. He has avoided extreme takes and has been a voice of calmness and reflection, which at least I have sorely needed. I was very worried before the election that a lot of Trump voters just didn’t believe he would enact the parts of his agenda they didn’t like. There was a steady stream of interviews where Trump voters would be confronted with some extreme thing he said, the response was was, well that is Trump being Trump and he won’t really do that. Deportations, tariffs, gutting agencies, authoritarianism, it varied by the voters. It’s very hard to push back on that. They were interviews, so you couldn’t know how widespread this was, but it was consistent enough to be worrying. Seems like that was a real factor to his victory.
MagdaInBlack
@The Thin Black Duke: This part : ” How are you gonna have years of time to study for an open book test and still fail the test”
Yup.
Baud
@VeniceRiley:
Heh.
NotMax
@VeniceRiley
Extending the punch line of a very old joke:
“It’s not even good mooseshit pie.”
p.a.
Dear FSM when they go after unions let ICE’s & cop unions get whacked hard.
satby
@The Thin Black Duke: yep. And they won’t be able to grasp why.
NotMax
Felon 47 voters.’ after the fact anthem
Clowns to the left of us
Leopards to the right
Here we are
Stuck in a quagmire of poo
;
Geminid
I see that the Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer is the nominee for Secretary of Labor. She represented the Oregon 5th CD for one term before State Rep. Janelle Bynum ousted her this year.
Before she won a close Congressional race in 2022, Chavez-DeRemer served a couple terms as Mayor of Happy Valley and lost two state legislative races to Bynum. This makes her overqualified for a Trump cabinet nominee.
My guess is this pick is a favor to Mike Johnson, and that he hopes Chavez-DeRemer can retake that seat in 2026. It looks like control of the House might come down to a dozen or so districts next cycle, as it has the last three cycles, and OR05 will be one of them.
Bynum won by 9500 votes, but that was only 47.6% of the total. An Independent, a Libertarian and a Pacific Green candidate polled 28,000 votes between them. The Independent, Brett Smith, got 4%. Smith’s biography and political views reminded me of Nebraska Senate candidate Don Osbourne.
The Libertarian, Sonja Feintech, pulled in 1.5%. She described herself as a “Proud wife, mother, farmer [and] butcher” and pledged to “Fight Warhawks and Vaccine Tyranny.” The Pacific Green Party candidate polled 1%.
I think Bynum will be tough to beat. She seems like a very solid politician, and the trend in the Pacific Northwest generally seems to be towards Democrats.
Plus, Chavez-DeRemer will probably face primary competition from a more radical conservative. She’s a member of the House Republicans’ Main Street Partnership, a motley crew of Chamber of Commerce types, and there are already complaints that the prospective Labor Secretary is a “RINO.” Speaker Johnson may have this problem in a number of races next primary season.
NotMax
@Geminid
#1 criterion
“The hell with anything else. Will she look good sitting on the couch at Fox?”
//
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
I agree with you and Josh Marshall. The problem with US governmental arrangements is that they make opaque the results, reasons and outcomes of governing decisions. At least in Parliamentary systems it is crystal clear for each Vote whether the elected government supported or opposed either a Bill or a Resolution put to the Parliament.
I can’t stand the complex convoluted and arcane rules of US Parliamentary institutions. They are deliberately designed to obfuscate and conceal because the system was designed before the emergence of modern, meaning C19th parties, which emerged everywhere else in the democratic world.
The US parliamentary system is the worst in the world imo, and electing a person who is at once, head of government, head of state and head of his or her Party is a recipe for absolute chaos.
Absolutely execrable, and now the international order established not just by the US, but by democracies across the world since 1945, is at the brink, because the U.S. can’t manage its own creaky, C18th version of what the rest of the world have worked out since around the turn of the C20th.
I understand people always think their own system is the best, but believe me when I say, I have been politically active in my polity for 50 plus years. At every level.
Under no circumstances would what happened in the US on 6th January 2021 ever happen here. Ever.
And if some fuckwit tried it, their arse would be banged up so fast they wouldn’t have time to enjoy Xmas 2021 at home.
Its simply ineffable.
Geminid
@NotMax: Rep. Chavez-DeRemer has a nice smile but she’s not the Fox type. They’d much rather have the Libertarian– a lithe, blonde butcher.
TBone
@Splitting Image: corollary: If (s)he’s not a Nazi, how come the Nazis think (s)he is?
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: you just reminded me about Anthony Pratt and loose lips sink ships.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/secret-tapes-trump-australian-billionaire-anthony-pratt-1234859957/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/after-white-house-trump-allegedly-discussed-potentially-sensitive/story?id=103760456
Aussie Sheila
@Aussie Sheila:
Oh, and I think Harris ran a very good campaign under the circumstances she faced. I followed it as closely as possible from here. I thought at the time and still, she was a political athlete and her VP pick performed equally as well.
I understand the issue with inflation, and imo that is what did her in, but the real issue is how a Party, a governing Party was so unable, until the very last minute was unable to tap the Party leader on the shoulder and say, go now.
That circumstance is typical in Parliamentary systems, but in the US system, you aren’t just tapping the Party’s leader, you’re tapping the Head of State as well as the Head of government.
The result was the change came too late and two perfectly good candidates narrowly lost with shockingly broad implications for the rest of the democratic world.
Baud
@Geminid:
So she would serve as Secretary for about a year?
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Yes. And if you don’t understand how and why he was there and what he was sent to do, you don’t understand how the cursed ‘five eyes’ system works. He is a rich and reliable Australian patriot.
I had no doubt when I read the report what he was doing.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: he was sent to blab nuclear secrets to his rich buddies and embarrass Donold on the international stage? I didn’t see any other real world repercussions, but some spies prolly did.
Jeffg166
A friend told me her local Democratic Party person says people are calling their congress representative to see if they can change their vote.
Baud
@Jeffg166:
I hope the local Democratic Party has an audio recording of Kamala laughing they can play over the phone for such calls.
ETA: The correct answer is, yes, you can vote blue in 2026 and 2028.
TBone
@Jeffg166: what does she tell them? 😆 “That’s not how any of this works” ?
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
If you think he was a spy for anyone other than Australia, you know nothing. He has long standing links with both sides of government here and our US Ambassador, Kevin Rudd, has excellent connections across all parties in Australia, since he was once an Australian PM.
I understood immediately what that was about the minute it was made public.
And I don’t believe for a minute that anything was ‘blabbed’ that had any real import. The point was an Australian made clear that matters were being discussed at a crummy Club that should never have been made available to anyone other than US bureaucrats at the highest level.
Good on Pratt, hate him as I do, for doing the work tasked him by the Australian government.
MagdaInBlack
@Aussie Sheila: Thank you for clarifying, because I did indeed “know nothing.”
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I was pretty surprised to learn that Australian intelligence had worked w/ the CIA to undermine Allende’s government in Chile in the 70s. What Australian interest was at stake? Then again, Australia had no business in Vietnam, either.
TBone
Yesterday’s finds from the Ancestors Treasure Box: school textbooks from the 1850s onward. From the one room schoolhouse on our farm and containing my great grandfather’s quill pen signatures (John Cooley Strange).
Eclectic English Classics: ‘The Tragedy of MacBeth’ (American Book Company, 1895)
Lucius Osgood’s Progressive Fourth Reader, ‘Principles of Elocution – Reading Lessons In Prose and Poetry, From The Best Authors’ (Entered according to an Act of Congress in 1856 by A.H. English & Co., in the Clerk’s Office in the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Stereotyped by L. Johnson & Co., Philadelphia)
I haven’t looked closely at the math and geometry books yet. The literature and lessons in the Fourth Reader are too fascinating for me to look at math yet.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: I didn’t think he was a spy, they don’t usually grant press interviews. Good for him if that’s what he was?
I was not trying to pick a fight, I merely remembered his existence and story today. Thanks for your perspective.
Frank Wilhoit
@Aussie Sheila: “banged up” == imprisoned, yes?
Aussie Sheila
@Aussie Sheila:
Oh, and we are still waiting for that demented crim to be tried for the crime of stealing US top secret documents, refusing to return them when requested by the US government, and worst of all, it is apparent he will never be tried for the worst thing any elected head of government can do- refusing to acknowledge the outcome of an election, and worst of all, attempting to overturn the democratic will of the people.
I don’t know whether people here comprehend how shocking this circumstance is to other democratic polities.
It’s simply ineffable, and underpins my longstanding view that the US taken as a whole, more closely resembles many Latin American polities than it does mature democracies elsewhere in the world.
The fact that that demented criminal arsehole was permitted to run for the highest Office again is still absolutely unbelievable to me and to 70%+ of my countrymen and women.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Well, Five Eyes (& other intel sharing arrangements between the U.S. & it’s allies) have essentially become a platform for intelligence agency to spy on each other’s citizens for each other’s benefit, to circumvent the laws proscribing domestic spying by intelligence agencies.
Yet, all of the sophistication of the natsec state & they cannot constrain the enemies w/in.
Geminid
@Baud: That’s about right; maybe a couple months more. If there is a contested primary Chavez-DeRemer will have to cut loose from the administration early in 2026
In the meantime, Chavez-DeRemer will burnish her resume and Mike Johnson will introduce her to big donors. The Oregon 5th race was one of the most expensive House contests this cycle and attracted $26 million in outside spending.
I can see no other rationale for this selection. At age 56, Chavez-DeRemer is no rising star and hasn’t much of a background on labor issues, but she is her party’s best shot at winning that seat back, I think. Between gerrymandering and political polarization, there are very few swing districts left and that makes each one more valuable.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yes it did. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), worked very closely with US intelligence with or without its own government’s permission. Re Chile, it would have been without government permission. It occurred in September 1973, 10 months after a new Australian government was elected after 23 years of conservative rule. The ALP government had to send the AG to raid ASIO headquarters to wrest information and documents from that arsehole of an organisation because they wouldn’t respond to the elected government at the time which requested information about its activities over the previous 23 years.
I had an ASIO file. I’ve read it. It’s a mixture of laughable stupidity and a chilling reminder of what happens under governments that work towards foreign governments, rather than their own people.
ASIO files like mine are now public and carry no penalty. I never suffered any penalty that I am aware of, because in the circles I worked in, it was assumed everyone had an ASIO file on them. And it was a safe assumption.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: I was in a continuous state of shock, a sort of fugue state of PTSD, from 2016-2020, during which time both of my parents and favorite 101 y.o. Great Aunt died, then I got Covid in Jan., 2020, then Biden won, I got a tiny teensy bit better physically by 2022, and I was able to snap out of the numbing depression, illness, and shock, and start commenting here.
A lot of it is still a blur.
Baud
@TBone:
Now you’re battle hardened.
TBone
@Baud: 💙👍😎😍
CAKE 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f9rCUQjmkxU
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Australia’s conservative Liberal Party has been in government sixteen of the years since 2000, while the liberal Australian Labor Party has been in government nine. The way you tout the superiority of Australia’s parliamentary sytem to the U.S. system, and the superiority of your Labor Party to our Democratic Party, I’d think it would have been the other way around.
My take is that you folks are contending with the same reactionary forces we are, and they exist independently of political forms.
But good luck in your elections next year! The Australian Labor Party will need that in addition to its institutional prowess.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
It’s true that external agencies can do things that domestic agencies maybe constrained from. But if you think that makes democratic life and norms null and void across the ‘five eyes’, I disagree. The scope of US intelligence interference in our politics is of course wide and pretty well untrammelled.
But the ability of Australian citizens and elected politicians to call out BS obsequiousness to the US has never been higher, and made even more pertinent by the latest democratic clusterfuck.
Oh, and we are quite aware of the penchant of the PRC to poke and prod our government and the many hundreds of Chinese students and nationals who live, work and study here. The PRC has been very active here for the last decade as has the Indian government.
The sun shines here hot, hard and bright.
It would be a mistake to think it fries our brains.
Aussie Sheila
@Frank Wilhoit:
Yes.
Betty Cracker
@Aussie Sheila: Brazil barred its Trumpy coup plotter Bolsonaro from running again and managed to indict him inside two years. Maybe the U.S. could learn something from certain Latin American countries.
TBone
@TBone: I got Covid in January 2020 because I punched a cop at end of December, 2019 and went to prison. I either got it on the open cell block or just thereafter from my Probation Officer who disappeared after my first visit with him, never to return due to a “flu” he reportedly could not recover from. The head of the Probation Dept. thereafter allowed me to do all of my one year’s probation visiting virtually online.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
Yes. And you know what?
No fucking government here would ever do to its people what US governments routinely do, because here, every fucker votes. Because it’s compulsory.
Makes a big difference in what governments can get away with, and how many lies can be told. People are people everywhere.
But structures, norms and cultures make the difference between peaceable and reasonably solidaristic polities, even if the government is conservative from time to time, and absolute violent shit shows.
I have no doubt for instance, that who ever wins the election next year that the electoral count will be fair, honestly counted and the results swiftly known. And whatever the result, no one, I mean, no one, will attempt to gainsay the results. Let alone wage violence against the result.
That’s the difference between a democracy and an authoritarian shit show.
lowtechcyclist
@Rusty:
Looks that way.
Just gotta ask, how did they miss that his whole basic theme was vengeance and retribution? How the fuck could anyone be that oblivious??
I mean, I know the media were cleaning him up, but c’mon.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
People believe what they want to believe.
lowtechcyclist
@VeniceRiley:
LOL!
Betty Cracker
Kinda hoping Trump’s white-hot hatred for Ron DeSantis prevents this from coming to pass (source is Tampa Bay Times):
Nepo baby crackpot RFKJ has already been picked to head HHS. I think I read somewhere this morning that Trump found a different crackpot to serve as surgeon general. It would be nice to rid Florida of Ladapo, who has already done a ton of damage, but DeSantis would just slot in another crackpot. As will Trump if Ladapo is passed over. Who am I kidding, it’s going to be a massive shit-sandwich no matter what.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: The CPC regime’s transnational repression activates across the world is pretty well documented, their focus is indeed on the Chinese nationals (especially students) to suppress dissent against the regime (but starting to have the opposite effect I think).
Australia had even passed an anti-foreign influence law specifically w/ the PRC in mind, but I do not recall any successful prosecution under the law. A lot waves in Western capitals about PRC espionage (well in terms of hacking it is no longer hyperbolic threat inflation), but to date not a whole lot of effort to push back the rather blatant transnational repression.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe the US should start treating its elite criminals the way it treats its poor criminals. That’s what gets me about the whole thing. The largest population behind bars per population in the world, and an elite criminal commits the worst crime against the citizenry possible, and it appears it’s impossible to get that fucker before a jury for four fucking years!
Chris Johnson
@piratedan: My trouble with that is, people are in fact that dumb: or, more accurately, it’s a perfect storm (on purpose) of siloing away the real issues raised, riling US up to fever pitch with those same issues to make us more frantic, and then priming the red voters to refuse to believe us on the grounds we’re hysterical liars.
Something’s gonna have to be done about that grand strategy or our politics will be really unmanageable for the rest of my life. It’s a shit way to run anything once you’ve won, but my concern there is that it’s all straight out of Russia, where it is in fact working to prop up a unelected leader in a country with a rather posh capital where everything else is Soviet levels of uncivilized.
So we’re supposed to join them, rather than pull our own people out of the shit because we do better when everybody does better.
If I ‘resist’ anything, it’s this idea that we’re supposed to relegate our dumb-ass red voters to hinterlands and starve them out. That’s a Russia-style answer. Not good enough. These people love the fuck out of Obamacare, they’re not unreachable, they’re just easily fooled when HUGE EFFORT is made to do just that.
Don’t undersell how much work has been necessary to do all this to us. Shit, antivaxx AND trans hysteria are largely run out of Russia as hostile ops to fuck us over and divide us. Do you figure that’s free? That’s the new arms race, and the last one broke the back of the Soviet Union. This one’s more social engineering and less intrastructural, but it’s still taking resources, and people caught up in waging this new war are themselves going to be destabilized. Even the leaders over there in Russia are all caught up in conspiracy brain land, and it’s bad for you, makes you less able to function in the real world.
Some of them probably thought the American Republican Congress would sign right on to the self-destruction of the USA for ideological reasons or because they were sufficiently under control. I think that’s a false assessment.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
We’re not going to do anything. We’re going to be out of power.
ETA: Wake me up when a blue state does something vindictive.
Starfish (she/her)
@TBone: Most things that have to do with nuclear submarines are highly classified. What you are saying about “nuclear secrets” just because this is a nuclear submarine is super hazy.
We wouldn’t want
– anyone to know where our nuclear submarines are
– anyone to have access to military technology that could detect where nuclear submarines are
– anyone to have access to military technology related to how they work
“Blabbing secrets” means that scientists have to go back to the drawing board on many many years of work because some secret on how any of this stuff works has been given away.
It could also harm various people working on a nuclear submarine.
But sometimes, accidents happen, and nuclear submarines get tangled up in a fishing net, and we learn where they are.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I think there’s a great deal going on under the surface. I have a close friend who works in academic circles involving close relations with China, and that person is alert and aware of how the land lies. The person has worked in China off and on for two decades and is of course, an Australian citizen who lives here on a permanent basis. The person is under no illusions and is aware and alert and understands the pressures that his Chinese students are under.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Also, in terms of foreign policy Australia is almost unique among US allies in willingly jumping into every one of the U.S.’ violent misadventures since WW II, even more than the UK, even if it is mostly the conservative government doing the folly. I do not doubt your characterization of the Australian polity, it matches my observations from distance, but doesn’t seem to have made much of a different in foreign policy.
Is it lack of independence thought in the Australian natsec establishment, driven by a long standing & barely submerged fear of abandonment by Australia’s super power patrons (the British Empire & then the U.S.) & left alone to face the “Asiatic hordes”?
TBone
@Starfish (she/her): I was nebulous about that on purpose. Just watched The Russians Are Coming! on TCM the other day.
Holy shit, what a catch!!! Shoulda been in that movie, it’s about as (un)believable.
I adore Alan Wolf Arkin.
Chris Johnson
@lowtechcyclist: Rewatch the news reports on Trump rallies.
You can plainly see by the turnout that people literally avoided those. Some part of them knew the score. They had to stay loyal to their fantasy Trump (the one who’s Han Solo, the lovable rogue) and refuse to listen to the wicked liberal lies, and this grew to reach the embarrassing reality that they had to avoid going to Trump’s own rallies where their fantasy guy was under pressure and clearly having trouble and saying shit they wouldn’t hold him to. Easier to simply not go.
I know I totally misread that as ‘lack of support’. And it was indeed lack of support… for the actual guy there left holding the bag when the clapping stops and Tinkerbell disappears.
The trouble was, voters for Trump took pains to not check their priors. They assumed they could vote again for what they had wanted to happen in 2016. They were dead wrong.
Princess
It’s not like Trump hid any of what he wanted to do or what awful people he was associated with. It’s not like he “tacked to the centre” after the primary and promised a thousand points of light or a kinder gentler anything. My fundamental take on “why we lost” in the end is just that most people are pretty stupid. At base it’s nothing more interesting than that. But we have to live here on this planet with them, so.
That being said, I’m seeing a lot of the same remorse anecdotes posted over and over. I’m not seeing any real signs of a lot of people feeling remorse. That will take time (where a lot = say 5% of his voters.)
TBone
p.a.
@Chris Johnson: tRump voters are the traditional cartoon character sitting on a tree branch, sawing it off on the tree side. Non-voting 2020 Bidenites are standing under, looking up. Harris voters are standing aside, holding the fireman’s net, looking at each other saying, “nah, maybe not this time.” Some are saying, “hey, want me to sharpen that saw for ya?”
K-Mo
I continue to feel exhausted by politics, and a bit part of it is having spent the last few years attempting to avoid offending a bunch of ignorant people by not pointing out their ignorance on the hopes of them finding a reason to not vote for Trump.
Now convalescing in my non-activist state, I’m happy to report that these folks are very very extremely dumb and they are too dumb to know it.
TBone
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/11/tax-fight-starting-now
Relatedly, posts by Elno on a helpful time chart/graph:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgGN2RsVhaInEIzM0QXNc_AQrNwUWuCpWRXkaioTM-esK1fDdTteKXzikOIsqL4Dl4GjBh2RvDJYpR-fZHuTYcBFBsuuZZcRGa_81ArphEKS-hKrPml0I2TuxSpWii3AV7mvQlWHhsvlfk0sbnOY_3UFa7iS3uc5BOXzRc_Q6VXXWIv1_X9mZWZ
catclub
@Splitting Image: please remember that in 1933 the unemployment rate in Germany was 48%.
What excuse the US has in 2024? I don’t know.
And I don’t think the nazis got a majority of the votes then, either.
Spanky
Yeah, I’m not seeing any remorse out here in the real world. I’m putting these “remorseful Trump voters” in the same category as all those folks they would find in the diners – carefully curated samples to prove a predetermined POV.
Kay
@TBone:
I love how Tik Tok already blames any bad economic news on Trump. It’s like the NYTimes, but in reverse.
Amusing. It’s that shameless lying media and Republicans do – “9000 laid off from Toyota! Where’s your orange god now?” :)
Baud
@catclub: Thr Nazis also didn’t want Germany to be Russia’a vassal state. So they had that going for them.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I can tell you just want to dunk on the US, Americans and Democrats, but I really would like to hear your explaination for how Australia’s reactionary Liberal Party has been in government 18 out of the 27 years since 1997. Is this due to the superiority of Australia’s parliamentary system?
You see, I don’t know any more about Australian politics than you know about ours.
Baud
@Spanky:
I agree. Reminds me of the run up to the election. Lots of anecdotes relied in since normal news was unreliable.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
It’s not a misplaced ‘white Australia policy’ if that’s what you are inferring. It derives from the fact that in WW2, the Japanese army reached Papua New Guinea which is a mere few score Ks from the Aust mainland.
My father was sent there when he was twenty and barely trained to hold back a well trained and equipped Japanese army while the Government at the time scrambled to get Australian troops back from the European theatre of war to defend their own country.
The US alliance was sought for obvious reasons by the then wartime Australian Labor Government, since the British government determined that Australia might need to go under until the war in Europe was won.
After the election of a conservative government in 1949, the full weight of US Cold War hysteria was turned on. Fortunately, attempts to outlaw the Australian Communist party failed in the early 1950s, and while reactionary Catholic elements in our Labor movement together with collaborationists in right wing politics made for a difficult time for the ALP for two decades, Australian politics in and out of Parliament were free wheeling and ‘lively’.
Once the back of the Democratic Labor Party (Catholic Reaction) was broken in 1972, our politics shook free of the worst excesses of US fealty ( although there remains still too much, c/f the terrible AUKUS deal), and Australians generally remain very wary of the anti China hysteria peddled by the U.S. while having no illusions about the nature of the PRC regime.
catclub
Looking the other way, tying their shoes, playing video games on their phones.
TBone
@Kay: 💜 I don’t trust Tik Tok, but that doesn’t stop me from liking it!
TBone
And I meant to say, Obama punching Donold right in the dick was magnificent!
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
If I had more time I would tell you. But you know, I don’t care particularly these days. What I know is, no fucking government here, none at all, would pull the stunts that your government appears able to pull on your citizenry on a regular basis.
And one thing I am sure about. When an is election is held, everyone (up to 95%) of the citizens vote, and every fucking vote is counted. Properly. Without interminable fucking around with challenges because the wrong people are voting in the wrong place. And every electorate is properly drawn and has a population tolerance of plus or minus 10% .
So whatever the result, it’s a proper learning experience. And whatever the government, they bloody well know that everybody can and will vote in three years time. All eligible adults. It makes a big difference in what any government can get away with here.
A big difference.
artem1s
Let’s be clear here. They might say they didn’t believe he’d do ‘those’ things they know will hurt them. But the reality is they voted for him knowing that the Democrats (and maybe ‘their’ Reps or State) will mitigate the damage done to ‘normal’ Americans. In other words they voted for TCF because they know he’ll try and probably succeed in turning loose the Face Eating Leopard on the people they hate. And they refused to vote for Harris because they knew the Democrats would continue to try to enact policies that build from the middle out and down, but they wouldn’t about care or focus on or hating and hurting ‘those’ people the way they want them to. Remember the first thing the GOP attacked Walz for? He gave every kid free lunches.
The fact is they could not bring themselves to pick empathy. Not just for those who are those ‘others’ they hate, but for even their own friends and family members.
Kay
@TBone:
Exactly. I’m just an observer. Maybe they’ll believe it, maybe not. No telling. It’s entirely irrational.
I saw a graph where peoples impression of the economy improved by 15 points with Trump’s election. Hmmm. Doesn’t seem to be based on grocery store prices after all.
TBone
@Kay: 🎯
BlueGuitarist
@Princess:
trump lied to distance himself from project 2025, lied about his opposition to Obamacare, and put effort into the dishonest claims of being pro-working class
To people paying attention, the blatant dishonesty made it seem he wasn’t even trying.
Sad that people could be fooled by the bs.
Maybe some of the difference between the Trump vote and Rs for Senate is the false belief that Trump wasn’t as bad as the typical corporate R.
TBone
@artem1s: it’s a death cult propped up by Pooty.
catclub
@The Thin Black Duke: good for you. I found it tedious.
sentient ai from the future
they want to inoculate themselves from criticism from all the stupidawful things that are going to be done.
they are trying to have it both ways.
they are trying to make the words they say make it seem like their actions were less significant than they really are.
we should not permit them to get away with that.
catclub
@BlueGuitarist: Trump’s lizard brain knows one thing very well: “Just lie and they will believe you.” and that is true enough for enough unengaged people to be useful.
I am pretty sure that if you ask those uninformed voters about Harris they will say she is too stupid to be elected, because Trump said it over and over again.
AM in NC
@Chris Johnson: Thanks for this. I also am tempted to say “fuck. all. red. voters.”
But that way madness (and civil war) lies. It also benefits the billionaires class (and our foreign adversaries).
THE issue of our time is figuring out how to penetrate the billionaire/foreign actor propaganda bubble. The Birchers and their dependents have been building this machine for literally half-a-century. If you include their rightwing churches, it’s been a lot longer than that.
Democrats/liberals/progressives are JUST getting to the starting line in this effort. I think it is going to take work from every one of us in real life and online and with our wallets supporting and BEING conduits of information outside the billionaire lie-machine.
Somehow WE must make the link between everything Republicans do to harm us and help the predator class, and EVERYTHING Democrats do to help us and rein in the predator class completely clear, and repeat the message over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
I sure hope people smarter than me and with more resources are working on this in a serous way – at least we’re finally seeing “think pieces” on this long-standing asymmetry. About damn time.
But really, every single one of us is going to have to play the role of information-bearers to people who live in these lie-bubbles. May be wishful thinking, but real world examples of – You like ACA coverage? You know Democrats passed that and Republicans try to take it away EVERY time they are elected?” “Yeah, It’s going to be horrible for your kid when funding for special needs students is zeroed out with the Dept. of Education – you do know that’s one of the big promises, right?” And PLAY THE CLIPS of them saying these things to the people you’re trying to convince.
Sorry for the long rant/whatever this was. I’m just feeling frustrated and want to DO SOMETHING…..
Kay
The thing that seems to get the most pushback from Trumperinos on Tik Tok is the liberals pointing out that it’s now obvious Trump and media lied about Project 2025. I think Trump hiring all those project 2025 people after media and Trump told us he knew nothing about it has them rattled. Project 2025 is actually very bad, so they should be alarmed, but it’s interesting what got thru to them (past the pro Trump media filter) and what didn’t.
Chris Johnson
@p.a.: I want to go after who is telling them to do that.
Simple as that.
Aussie Sheila
@Aussie Sheila:
Oh, and while I think the Harris/Walz team fought very well and campaigned very strongly imo, if I were a Dem partisan operative, I would be doing a lot of work trying to figure out why my base didn’t turn out. Ya know, trump didn’t win so much, as $1.8billion pissed up against the wall still couldn’t get your base out to the polls.
I don’t blame Harris/Walz.
They more than played their role.
What the fuck was the Dem Party doing in the relevant States that their base didn’t turn out? I get the inflation issue. But if the result was the same but the Dem base voted it wouldn’t be so bad imo.
But this result smacks of a base that is simply disengaged. And that is very, very bad. It’s not Harris/Walz that is to blame. It’s the whole Party apparatus.
The Thin Black Duke
I’m done kissing the [white] asses of people who want to see me dead. However, this time around, these people are going to find out about consequences because, unlike marginalized communities, they don’t have the necessary coping mechanisms to adapt to their changing circumstances.
Princess
@BlueGuitarist: He lied about Project 2025 but he did own his own project 47 which is basically the same. And I don’t remember him saying much about Obamacare one way or the other beyond saying he had concepts of a plan to fix it which he’s been saying for years. Apart from that, every speech was mass deportations, end abortion, tariffs, weirdos on stage with him, and anti-vaxx. They voted for that, and I’m not going to let them off the hook.
geg6
@p.a.:
I know I’m in the latter group. Fuckem. This is what they wanted and I’m all out of empathy for any of their buyer’s remorse.
Baud
@Kay:
I vaguely recall some media person saying it was a mistake to highlight Project 2025 because Trump could just say it wasn’t his plan.
Gvg
@Martin: we can’t do that without becoming the republicans and ruining the solutions. Remember things like real endless wars such as Israel/Palestine or Catholic/Protestant. On the other hand being polite and allowing them to hide their harm needs to end, if possible. Democrats can announce more clearly that republican policies caused this and democrat solutions solved that. We still have the problem of if the multiple medias will report it, if the people will hear it, if the propagandized will believe it etc when the republicans will say we lie and the sky is green.
We can try to demand better naming, but we are in a weak position because the voters put us there.
We have not withheld rescue of anyone in the past because that’s not what our voters want. Even though we are now madder than before, I suspect we haven’t changed enough that we wouldn’t lose more support than we gain by changing tactics. What has mattered has been our margins and the lack of them. We have not been a big enough majority in a long long time to push for things like good clear names and make Republican governors need to be seen thanking us.
We lose some of our voters by behaving “unethically “ and don’t gain more at this time.
The difference this time and other times is that I don’t see that the voters left us any ability to really save to much. The bad things are going to happen. People are going to find out. This time when they come to democrats and say “ why didn’t you do something?” We need to answer this time you didn’t elect enough of us that we had the power to do anything. That’s how democracy works. Votes matter. Who you vote for matters. If you were counting on democrats to rein in something crazy republicans were promising, maybe you shouldn’t have been voting for republicans in the first place. Tell them we had just enough to sort of partially derail some of the republican plans. Tell them when they ask/complain. That’s when they might listen.
We can’t really change who and what our already voters are. Also I live in Florida. Native, multigeneration extended family here that I love. Even the gun nuts who used to vote republicans hate Trump and started trending Democrats since Bush. I don’t understand why the state has trended red but we aren’t religious and just aren’t connected to that social set nor are we a retirement area.
different-church-lady
No, fuck it, I am going to say, “That’s EXACTLY what you voted for!” Because treating these dopes like they’re not dopes is how we keep getting here.
Kay
@Baud:
They defend the tariffs, they defend the collection of rapists he chooses for top jobs, they defend the woo woo crackpots he’s putting in charge of national health agencies, but they really push back on Project 2025. They say “thousands” of people worked on it and thus it’s coincidental that he keeps hiring out of it.
I think there was going to be an economic downturn whoever won, too much shit is too overvalued, so I’m kind of looking forward to it happening during Trump’s tenure. We’ll see how media covers it (I think we know how media will cover it).
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg:
In my opinion voters need to learn that elections have consequences. In a voluntary voting, FPTP system like the US, the effects of any government need to be felt fast and hard. Stop with ‘reaching across the aisle’ and start loudly proclaiming why every fuck up and terrible decision is a result of the trump mis administration.
I don’t mean people here.
I mean every fucking elected Dem politician. And if they can’t or won’t, sack them via preselections and find pols who will.
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
Just treat people as adults. Too many folks want to treat them as misbehaving children who don’t know better.
p.a.
@Kay: The kind of stupidity currently demonstrated by the American electorate via conservative media isn’t going to be penetrated until the flooding of their homes won’t recede, their farmlands resemble the Sonora, their “job creators'” contaminate their water supplies. IF THEN. I can see blue states trying to co-op to protect themselves to some extent; Pacific coast, NY/New England, Illinois/Michigan/Minnesota/eh… Wisconsin? Maintaining sane laws, pooling $ to protect the citizens (if the states’ rights party at the federal level doesn’t sabotage it). Even then, will the big money states, Cali, Illinois, NY (well I guess in point of fact NYC)/Mass, sign on to support the other blue states?
artem1s
I had experienced one of these clueless idiots privileged epiphanies days after the election. Every November we have to make benefits choices for the next year. I was discussing SS with an HR person. Said I wasn’t planning on retiring for another few years so hadn’t signed up for Medicare but was planning on contributing to my HSA as long as I could because I still have healthcare with my employer. Then I offhand quipped that our very stable institution might have to lay off 5-10K people if TCF gets his way and ‘cancels’ the NIH.
Her face fell so hard, I almost laughed out loud at her. She couldn’t connect the dots from TCF winning and getting his way to who would be the first to be fired if your employer isn’t going to be hiring anyone or providing HR and benefits. Maybe she didn’t vote for that asshole, but she clearly thought she wasn’t going to have to worry if he did. She had completely forgotten that the first thing the U did when COVID hit as to enact a pay and hiring freeze and then laid off half to three quarters of the HR department.
Dumbasses are gonna finally feel the full effects of Raygunism and Gohmert bathtub government and there isn’t much that can be done to stop it now.
Fair Economist
@Aussie Sheila:
This is because the Founders intended to prevent political parties, which they thought were a bad thing. It was a miserable failure, of course – it only took one election to develop a party system, which was in full swing by 1796.
TBone
Bluesky is being featured on GMA right now 💙
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
I don’t think there’ll be a normal downturn. He’ll bully the Fed into lowering interest rates fast and furious, and if they don’t, he’ll turn to expansive fiscal policy, results be damned. People won’t care, so long as their living standards don’t go down.
And then the Dem Party will have to cleanup the mess.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist:
Because they think those are good qualities.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
The answer is unsatisfying.
Whichever jackal shared the Josh Marshall piece about the Democrats struggling in an age of distrust…. thank you, that piece was great.
I am finding myself in almost total agreement with him, based on my observations. Many of the people I interact with genuinely think that the country is fucked up and that no one can fix it. Lots of these people might be in alignment with us on specific issues, and some of them vote for Dems (if they vote) because they realize the GOP is worse…. but, honestly, I absolutely see the “low trust” thing at play, and it makes people cynical and they fill in this gap with their desires and aspirations.
So Trump just becomes this avatar of all the bad feelings people feel. All the frustration and resentment and cynicism. It’s all just vibes. So all the specifics can be brushed aside, denied, or looked at cynically.
I find myself in agreement with Martin, Aussie Sheila, and others.
geg6
@Aussie Sheila:
I won’t argue with you but I do think you seem to overestimate the power of parties here in the US. In my experience locally, the party did their best to get voters out to the polls. Since we don’t have mandatory voting like you, we don’t have the power to force them to the polls. Parties can only do so much. And before you jump in to point out that the GOP gets their voters out, from my observations, it’s churches rather than the party that gets their voters to the polls. And the First Amendment leaves us with little we can do to stop that.
ETA: And may I also mention that a certain piece of shit Aussie import is also pumping propaganda at low information idiots at top volume 24/7 for the last 30-40 years.
Aussie Sheila
@Fair Economist:
Yes I’m aware of that. But the disdain for Parties or ‘faction’ as they called it, was really a disdain for democratic politics. After all the Whig Party was a recognisable Party by the late C17th in Britain. The founders would have been well aware of its existence and its sociological base. After all, it wasn’t so different from their social base and background.
different-church-lady
Reminder: replacing the Twitter addiction with a Bluesky addiction will not solve anything.
sentient ai from the future
@Aussie Sheila: im equivocal on powell and the fed. he’s already made noises like he is not going to go quietly if shitbag tries to bully him, and i think he is likely enough to raise interest rates again once this sugar high runs its course. the usual caveats, re: irrational/longer/solvent, apply
Fair Economist
There’s going to be something of a struggle between the MAGATs and the sensible (if cowed) Republicans. Sensible Republicans know what a catastrophe most of Trump’s policies will be, and will do their best to prevent them. Tariff they can’t do much about. Deportations they will be fine with, figuring Trump will be to incompetent to carry out enough to matter on a national level (a tragedy for those deported and their families, but not enough to crash the ag system, construction, etc.) Cuts to SS/Medicare/Obamacare/etc. they will want to keep small enough that most people won’t perceive them as catastrophic. Their goal is something like Trump’s first term – a few trillion in giveaway to their billionaire funders, but not much more – kind of a survivable parasitic attack.
We will see how successful they are.
Peale
@Princess: yep. I know I also live here so I’m not going to be exempt from the consequences, but I’m also in the burn it down phase. Too bad, so not sad.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Exactly.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Democrats failed to get about 7% of its base to go to the polls. You are saying we “still couldn’t get [our] base to the polls.” This kind of gross exageration tends to discredit your larger argument in my opinion
Ed. I still maintain that political forces that exist in both our countries condition both our politics independently from our different systems. That is why Australia’s conservative party has held power 16 out of the last 25 years.
Aussie Sheila
@geg6:
I understand that, and there’s no way that anyone can or should even try to prevent churches rallying their flock. But Parties exist to do the same over a much larger range of issues. And the fall in the urban vote I think made the difference between a narrow win and the narrow loss it was. A strong Party must be able to get its base out.
It has to. If it doesn’t do that, there’s a problem that goes beyond the usual ability of narrow reactionary sectarians being able to get their vote out.
I expect that Churches get their vote every time here. It’s just that secular political forces here are just as capable of rallying their vote. After all, if everyone votes, the playing field is pretty level. The task becomes who can rally their base to win either the HoRs or our Senate in conjunction with enough other forces to prevent arseholes from being able to run riot.
TBone
@different-church-lady: 👍 Why I don’t social media anywhere but am an observer. I do like that X is gonna lose out, but social media is too close to being opioids. Kicked both to the curb, except for commenting here.
I watched a friend get hooked on Suboxone for years. It did not end well.
Fair Economist
@Kay: I don’t think we’re due for a downturn. The shift to green energy is starting to have massive economic benefits, both from a useful target for investment and (with solar) the cheapest energy the world has ever had. If we continue Biden’s policies we’ll be fine.
Now Trump’s policies *will* cause a downturn. A tariff war will cause a recession, true mass deportation (in the millions) will cause a recession, and substantial cuts to the welfare state will cause a recession. Any two of these will cause a depression.
We’re going to see a fight within the Republican party between people who really want to do these things, and people who understand they will be catastrophic for the country and even the Republican party, and will be trying to make them largely symbolic – e.g. deport 250,000 people, which they can crow about endlessly to the racists but which won’t be economically consequential. Or “repeal” Obamacare and replace it with Trumpcare – with essentially the same design.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
That 7% would have made it a Dem landslide. Trump meanwhile improved his vote over 2020, somewhat.
Simply terrible all round. And again, I don’t blame Harris/Walz at all. They fought incredibly hard and well imo.
artem1s
try decades. they’ve had since Ronnie at least to figure this out. I grew up in a Republican voting house. My parents hated FDR social net and ‘elites’ and believed firmly that their tax money was being spent on poor black people. They never met a commie baiting war hawk they didn’t love.
I was a pretty common example of kids growing up in rural Ohio back in the white flight 70’s. I fell for the Morning in America schtick pretty hard. Carter was abandoned by his own party so he and Mondale didn’t seem like a ‘winner’. But it only took Raygun cutting federal money for education to get me to pass the voting open book test. Education and Pell grants were the way I got out and instantly saw how dangerous pulling that ladder up after me was going to be for future kids from rural Ohio. IMO every R administration has only made that open book test easier. And I was never tempted to choose the ‘none of the above’ third party option. Mostly because I saw how smug those asshole are about punishing Dems who wouldn’t hand over the car keys them when Gary Hart so blatantly rubbed his infidelity in the media’s face thinking it wouldn’t hurt him.
Everyone has had plenty of time to study for the open book voting and empathy test. Every single day of their lives have had examples of how not fix income disparity. They’ve been failing since 1980 and still can’t figure out that R is never the right answer.
Gvg
@p.a.: I think there are actually constitutional rules about interstate compacts and they have to be approved by Congress so that can be pretty limited in this time, at least for Blue states. I don’t recall the details from college decades ago. Restraint of trade?
Fair Economist
@Aussie Sheila: Our problem is that the parties are not what gets people engaged. What gets people engaged is media, churches, social media manipulation, etc. There are large forces supporting the Republicans all the time that way. All we have is the Dem party, and it doesn’t have the resources to run multibillion dollars of propaganda every year.
Aussie Sheila
@Fair Economist:
Ok. I understand. But what could be done with say, $1.8 billion?
Unfucking believable.
Some tidy investments need to be made in must win States to ensure your message ‘gets out’ and equally to the point, your people to the polls, no?
catclub
ha ha, have you read the US constitution?
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: I’m so sorry to hear of it. It sounds like we’re experiential twins (well, at least siblings). You describe it well. It’s a blur.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@The Thin Black Duke: come sit by me… I have heard so much about people worried about prices, from people who own cars, boats s or homes they could not afford. Why are they bitching about fuel prices when they bought a F-250 truck they never use as an actual…truck. Also love the people on SS and Medicare who voted for Trump (would have been my dad if he had not died in 2015..) the stupid is amazing
Princess
@Peale: I feel deep empathy and sympathy for people like you. We’re all going to be negatively affected, probably to a larger rather than smaller degree, given the climate issue. But no sympathy for them. They knew. They have no excuse. Last time he said he’d fix Obamacare, fix NAFTA and build the wall — lots of people could delude themselves into that. This time he said mass deportations, tariffs, and his 47 plan. That’s what they voted for.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Thanks for the reply. Not sure how the US saving Australia’s bacon in WW II obligated Australia to join in the US’ folly in Vietnam & Iraq.
As for AUKUS, fortunately for Australia the deal might collapse under its own convolution & expense before Australia has sunk too much cost into it. The return of Trump will surely cause some rethinking (dare I say even in Liberal circles?) on whether to tie Australia so fast to the US’ geopolitical fate.
Perhaps Australia will get nukes, as Hugh White has long advocated.
Quiltingfool
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yep. White people voted to get screwed over. They think they won’t be harmed, but will find out otherwise.
And guess what? There are white voters who don’t trust the Trumpy white voters. Pretty hard to develop a community, huh.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: BTW, I am acquainted w/ an Australian expat here in China who is related to John Howard. While he (the expat) is a heterodox Lefty himself & abhorred Howard’s politics, he has always maintained that Howard is a very intelligent politician that ran circles around the Labor opposition of the time.
I am not sure if that is just family pride talking…
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
No, I can assure you, Australia won’t get nukes. And since between 1949 and 1972 Australia had a right wing conservative government, propped up by a small but influential falangist faction in the Labor movement, it wasn’t surprising we were part of the war against the Vietnamese people.
Did you know our then ALP leader Gough Whitlam visited the PRC before Nixon did?
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Now that is some accurate analysis, stripped of exageration.
Look, I’m not picking on you because you are Australian and I resent an ousider’s criticism. Plan6ty of Americans including commenters here share your disdain for our system. There is a sort of American anti-Exceptionalism present: “Our trains are slower and our minds are slower too. Our basic system sucks and we have little hope of getting out of this predicament unless we can change this crappy American political system.”
This to me is a diversion. We have to fight the same reactionary forces you contend with in Australia, and to succeed we’ll have to “run the machine as [we] find it,” as 19th century politician Abraham Lincoln put it. We have to win these close elections first, and then we can worry about doing away with the Electoral College, doubling or quadrupling the size of the House of Representatives, enabling a multi-party system etc. I think those are distractions now.
Ed. Same with comparing ours to a parliamentary system which is extremely unlikely ever to be implemented here.
But your point about election integrity is well taken. I’ve read there was an exceptionally high number of Trump-only votes in some key swing states this year, way more than seen in past presidential elections. I want to see more some more research on this phenomenon before I conclude this election was not stolen.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I shared a story the other day about a friend talking to a random Trumper at a gas station, who thought Trump was president already. This was an older man, who you’d think was around long enough to know better.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Well I don’t know about running circles around the ALP. He remains one of only two Australian Prime Ministers that actually lost their seat in a general election. An election I remember fondly.
He was and remains, a very inconsequential PM, who is regularly wheeled out by the Conservative LNP to rally their troops at each federal election.
To no avail. He was and still is, a bigoted, middle class golf club bore, who still thinks he has some utility around election time.
He doesn’t.
Do pass on my eternal contempt for Howard to your little mate.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
I couldn’t care less about most countries’ elections tbh.
Im interested of course, in a professional way, but not much more than that. But unfortunately for me and my country, the US has and continues to play an outsize role in our domestic politics. That’s why I had a security file for most of my life.
As did most of my friends. It wasn’t until the 1990s that I could visit the US in a professional capacity.
So forgive me if I’m sick and tired of the increasingly anti democratic shenanigans that passes for politics there. Sooner or later it’s going to bite me and my country and comrades on the bum. Hard.
You may think you’re exceptional, and you are, but not quite in the way you think though.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Haha! I will pass on your contempt of Howard! (Although my acquaintance is much older than me.)
Yes, I am aware that Whitlam went to China before Nixon. He seems to have been the best ALP PM in the post-WW II era, & his term ended in such a shameful manner (by others) that it makes for a lot of what if.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
He was an excellent PM. Brought down with the assistance of the US embassy. They were in fine fettle after Chile in 1973.
Miss Bianca
@piratedan: Yeah, I’m there with you on this one. I may have acquaintances (not really calling them “friends” anymore) and family who voted for the Orange Excrescence, and I may still have to interact with them, but that doesn’t mean I have to excuse them.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I can tell you don’t care much about other countries’ elections, and you have little interest in American politics. That does not prevent you from speaking authoritatively about them, nor should it; we do that all the time.
I can see how you are wary of American influence on Australia. So far as I can tell, the last time the US treated an ally as an equal partner was the UK in the Second World War, and that was for sentimental reasons.
But it’s the American example that would concern me. We went 228 years before we elected a demogogue as President, in 2016. Australia has been choosing Prime Ministers now since 1901. That’s 124 years without a demogogue.
Your parliamentary system may more resistant to a right-wing demogogue, but it’s not proof against one. There is little I can see to stop a charismatic version of Scott Morrison from taking over the Liberal Party. Then you will be one election away from having your own Donald Trump as PM.
brantl
@piratedan: BUT. IN ORDER TO WIN ELECTIONS, WE HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO STOP THEM FROM GETTING TO THE BUYERS’ REMORSE PHASE. Because they aren’t going to get there on their own, and WE need them to GET THERE.
We’re all on the same bus they’re sinking in the Shitstick’s lake.
brantl
@VeniceRiley: It’s going to have to be OUR job to inform them that it really IS a shit sandwich, all the time, from now on, as nobody else will do it.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
Er no, we wouldn’t. If you knew more about a Parliamentary govt you would know why.
The PM isn’t the Head of State.
He/She is an elected member of Parliament like any other MP.
Their role derives strictly from their ability to command sufficient votes of the MPs in Parlt. That usually, although not invariably happens because the Party Leader whose Party can command a majority vote of Parlt is entitled to have their Party nominees sworn in as the Government.
And I’ll bet I know far more about US history, it’s government and politics over the last 50 years than you know about anything outside your own State, let alone your own country as you have ably demonstrated.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: And oh yeah. I do not embrace American Exceptionalism, I just don’t embrace the American anti-Exceptionalism that is in fashion among some people here.
But I’m not sure if you meant me personally when you referred to “your” exceptionalism, or if you meant Americans collectively. If you meant me personally, I suggest you shove that insult up your Antipodes!
Bill Arnold
@Martin:
That narrative is crumbling.
There will be more studies resembling these:
Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes (Daniel M Gilford*, Joseph Giguere and Andrew J Pershing, 20 November 2024)
Climate change increased wind speeds for every 2024 Atlantic hurricane: Analysis (Nov 20, 2024)
full report (pdf)
Climate change increased wind speeds for every 2024 Atlantic hurricane: Analysis (November 20, 2024, pdf)
Ramona
@Aussie Sheila: to we US citizens too! It’s surreal!
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Well, now you are just getting down to personal insults and more exageration. I know plenty about American politics outside my own state. I think you would know that if your reading here was not so sporadic.
As for politics outside my own country, I bet I know a lot more than you do about politics in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: They thought he was saying that stuff because it makes libs upset. People hear what they want to hear.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: All you did here is explain general facts about parliamentary systems that are common knowledge. You did not show how your system is proof against a right-wing, populist demagogue taking over one party, and that party then winning a general election.
Ramona
@AM in NC: Simon Rosenberg on YouTube discussed bold ways to do this with Joe Trippi on November 13. His channel is Simon Rosenberg.
Ramona
@artem1s: did you mean ACA instead of NIH?
marklar
@Geminid: ” You did not show how your system is proof against a right-wing, populist demagogue taking over one party, and that party then winning a general election.”
Truth. This very well may happen in Canada very soon.
TBone
On The Ground update from Tom Sullivan in Asheville, NC (disaster relief – it ain’t good):
…
https://digbysblog.net/2024/11/23/disaster-zone/
Aziz, light!
When I encounter right-wing people in my hiking club, I try to tell them that the real fight is not between left and right, it’s the rich versus all the rest of us.
This never penetrates their unbeautiful minds. Because they will not listen to anything we say, resistance to Trumpism will have to come from inside the house. I’d like to see an effort to plant fake RW accounts inside their social media. Gain their trust by spouting the usual noise, then slip in doubts about what the GOP will do to health care, prices, regulations that protect us, national security, etc. They won’t hear anyone who identifies as liberal, but they listen to each other.
TBone
@Aziz, light!: infiltration gambit
K-Mo
@Chief Oshkosh: I had a really hard time emotionally in 2016-7, eventually bottomed out and got help in 2018, and have been building wherewithal since. I’m definitely battle hardened.
K-Mo
@Eunicecycle: I keep thinking about that story. It’s not just that he thought Trump’s impact on gas prices would start on Election Day. It’s also that he thought gas prices had declined notably since Election Day ( they haven’t) and was unaware that gas prices have been falling for a full 2 years
What can you do? They are morons.
K-Mo
I think these 3 imperatives can all be pursued at the same time:
1. Limiting the damage however we can.
2. Cultivating empathy for anyone suffering, regardless of their culpability.
3. Bearing witness to the suffering we can’t prevent, and its causes.
Martin
@Aziz, light!: States or coalitions of states make their own FEMAs. And states figure out how to pay for it. It’s that last part that doesn’t happen now in red states. There’s no debate about disaster aid apart from denying it to New Jersey and demanding it for Texas, and never paying for it. We have to break that cycle.
To be clear: I don’t think Democrats should change their goals or ideals one bit. Don’t back down on the goal at all. A reconstitution of FEMA at the federal level should *always* be a goal. This is a recognition that FEMA requires national buy-in and we don’t have it, so we’ll send it back to the states until such time as there is national buy in. That’s why I would tie returning these to federal to eliminating the electoral college – because that’s the thing that’s forcing the state cultures because that’s how presidents campaign. And you can’t get rid of the EC without ¾ of states voting for it. I’m okay if we do the same with Dept of Ed. Maybe Medicaid. I’m not wanting these things, but I think if the GOP wants them gone, let it happen and focus on the states showing how to do it well. If we believe that red states will miss these things, they’ll have some drag-out fights around taxation within the GOP – which is what Democrats need to win – we need to divide conservatives. And if they don’t miss them, then maybe they should have been in the states all along. I think Democrats need to learn to say ‘okay, maybe this isn’t working nationally, let’s try something new’ and not get so hung up that Alabama voters will be hurt by the change when Alabama voters demanded it.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Australia is probably the US’s most reliably ally, even above Canada.
Mind you, maybe they shouldn’t be sometimes.
satby
@Geminid: she’s a troll. Always has been. Shows up just to tell us how stupid we are.
Roberto el oso
@different-church-lady: Agree.