Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

We won’t go back.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Motown is Joe-Town!

Bark louder, little dog.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

The words do not have to be perfect.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Let there be snark.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

We still have time to mess this up!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

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Here’s the Lineup

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I know I’m the guy who writes that expecting legacy media to do anything for Democrats is pointless, but is there any better example than this week’s Sunday shows?

ABC’s “This Week” — Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of U.S. Central Command.   [Here’s the report on what Khanna said.  At least he got in a plug for Medicare for All before he said how much he loves DOGE.]

___

NBC’s “Meet the Press” — President-elect Donald Trump.  [Res Ipsa Loquitur]

___

CNN’s “State of the Union” — Sens. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich. [Transcript here.  Hosts went after Dingell and Durbin on the pardon.  Durbin says he’s keeping an open mind on Kash Patel and Pam Bondi but wants to see the FBI investigation.]

__

CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Jason Crow, D-Colo.; Frank McCourt, founder and CEO of McCourt Global.  [Kelly/Crow dialog was all about the hearings on the Secret Service’s failures in protection of Trump.]

___

“Fox News Sunday” — Reps. Cory Mills, R-Fla., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass.; former national security adviser H.R. McMaster.   [I scanned the video and it was mainly Mills and Moulton agreeing on how to better spend our defense budget.  And also how cutting the national debt has bipartisan support.]

Basically, when a Democrat gets on these shows, it’s either a pick-me like Khanna or Moulton (someone wiling to shit on Democrats to get attention) or a warhorse like Durbin who’s been on the shows a zillion times in the past.  The questioning is centered around the Republican message of the day, and time allotted to Republicans is more than Democrats.

So when I say that we need a different way to get our message out, this is a textbook case of why.

Reader Interactions

113Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Probably something we can all agree on. Harris obviously tried using alternative media. I hope we don’t retrench because of the loss. I don’t see us making any progress saving traditional media institutions.

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    They’ve “moved on” from Biden-Harris and the only question is how long ago did they? Inauguration 2021?

  5. 5.

    hrprogressive

    Corprofascist media only gives a shit about Republican and Republican-Lite opinions, film at 11.

  6. 6.

    VFX Lurker

    @Baud: Probably something we can all agree on. Harris obviously tried using alternative media. I hope we don’t retrench because of the loss. I don’t see us making any progress saving traditional media institutions.

    The only traditional media I still read is The Los Angeles Times, but I no longer trust its owner. I can read it for free with my library card, so I should probably cancel my digital subscription.

    I’m paying for subscriptions to Wonkette, ProPublica and Talking Points Memo. I hope it helps.

  7. 7.

    Splitting Image

    @trollhattan:

    They’ve “moved on” from Biden-Harris and the only question is how long ago did they? Inauguration 2021?

    I’d date it from the day they decided that the Afghanistan withdrawal was a dismal failure, but other theories may fit the facts as well.

  9. 9.

    cmorenc

    @Baud: Problem with Harris’s attempt to use alternative media is that the RW was already there and longer and wider.  If you randomly surfed YouTube videos, you will come across several times more channels and one-offs by RWers than progressives over the time YT has been a thing, and the RWers have been at it in disciplined, focused fashion pushing memes than we have.  Also, use of Facebook to virally spread memes.  And that’s before we even get to Musk turning Twitter into a RW troll-bot sewer pipe with an input valve from Russia.

  10. 10.

    N

    How do we create a left wing noise machine? Is their noise machine so effective because it is centralized and billionaire-funded? Does it have message discipline simply because rigthwingers are authoritarian bobbleheads and all say the same things as a herd instinct? We are losing ground with Latin voters because Republicans now have spanish language radio stations. Will we get better spokes people for the Dems when some of the old guard age out? The new leader of the progressive caucus is smart and has a good grasp on how Dems should talk. (He says respond to R messages with a quick rejection and immediately pivot to forceful expression of our message. Don’t engage on their turf.)

  11. 11.

    John S.

    @Baud:

    When the time comes, Khanna should be pilloried at the ballot box. I don’t think his shtick is going to get any better over the next couple of years.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @N: Broadcast licenses have been vacuumed up by primarily conservative corporations. I do not see a path to clawing them back.

    I guess a set of enormously popular podcasts can be another path. Not easy to engineer such a thing and I can’t even begin to explain Joe Rogan.

  13. 13.

    Geminid

    Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu posted a photo of a good kind of traffic jam. It was a nightime shot of a highway near Damascus, with bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye could see. All the cars were headed towards the city.

    The civil war is not yet over in some parts of Syria. Heavy fighting is reported in the city of Manbij, northeast of Aleppo. Kurdish YPG forces are trying to keep Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) forces from wresting control of Manbij from them.

    There is a very disturbing story coming out of the Sednaya prison outside Damascus. When guards left they locked down the three stories below ground known as “the Red Wards.” They did not leave the codes behind so rescuers are cutting their way through hardened doors to gain access. Just getting into the prison is difficult now because of the hundreds of family members waiting outside for word of their loved ones.

    I saw a picture if that prison yesterday and it might be the scariest building I’ve ever seen. The four stories above ground are raw concrete with narrow horizontal window strips. It looked hundreds of yards long.

    The prisoners held in the top floors were released early this morning. One was a Palestinian from Jenin who’d been there for 40 years.

  15. 15.

    different-church-lady

    I know it’s just thinking, but what I keep thinking (and saying): legacy media no longer matters. The detachment from reality we’re seeing is due to social media bubbles. What people see on Facebook due to the unholy alliance between self-curation and pushes  matters more than newspaper op-eds or the nightly news. Reality doesn’t break through, because the whole thing is designed to be a wall against it.

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Reports are that some of the people released from prisons earlier this week did not know Bashar Assad’s father was dead. I think Hafez Assad died over twenty years ago.

    Some asked their liberators if they’d been sent by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Some even asked their liberators if they’d been sent by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

     
    “Long story, Hassan. What do you know about butterfly ballots in Florida?”

  22. 22.

    Chris

    @N:

    Their noise machine is effective because it’s effectively the only one in town. Their message is repeated on every channel 24/7 all year, so that’s the message that sinks in with voters.

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: @Baud:

    https://nitter.poast.org/M_Alneser/status/1865620338966450652

    Mohamed Al Neser (النسر)@M_Alneser
    17h

    #Syria‘s longest prisoner, Raghid Tatari, freed tonight after 43 years in prison. His “crime” was the winning against Hafez’s son Bassel in a equestrian competition.

    [ image ]

    Dec 8, 2024 · 4:52 AM UTC

    Mohamed Al Neser (النسر)@M_Alneser
    16h

    Sorry i made a mistake and mixed between Tatatri and Adnan Qassar. Tatari was jailed for refusing to bomb Hama in the 80s

    43 years in prison without trial.

    Peace and comfort to the good people of Syria.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    RaflW

    I get that these shows still have some modest amount of agenda-setting power for the beltway written press as well as the early in the week breathless bundles of bullshit on the cable blabfests.

    But those shows actual tuned-in audience probably skews 65+ only. It’s going to a museum to see animatronic dinosaurs re-enacting the same tired, dusty crap as last week. And last year. And last century (I stopped watching that crap before Y2K). Just looked, David Brinkley retired in 1996. Sheesh I’m old (under 60, but I once had the viewing habits of an old… my dad, who I watched Brinkley with!)

  29. 29.

    Starfish (she/her)

    @RaflW: Yes, this is what I wanted to say. These shows may matter to a small subset of (old) inside the beltway types, but no one else cares about them.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    @NotMax:  H-B was my favorite; watched it from when I was about six.  I asked my parents to get me an album with the theme music from it one Christmas.   No clue it was Beethoven.

  35. 35.

    Starfish (she/her)

    You know, I kept wondering what happened to Bilal Abdul Kareem, but I was having a hard time remembering his name. He was a black journalist in Syria, but some folks were saying he was a propagandist. He is hated by both the US government AND the Syrian rebels. I think he was kidnapped at some point by the folks who have currently taken over Syria. I wonder what he has to say about what is going on. Has he just been lying low?

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    @different-church-lady:

    I know it’s just thinking, but what I keep thinking (and saying): legacy media no longer matters. The detachment from reality we’re seeing is due to social media bubbles. What people see on Facebook due to the unholy alliance between self-curation and pushes  matters more than newspaper op-eds or the nightly news. Reality doesn’t break through, because the whole thing is designed to be a wall against it.

    Yes. Social media, podcasts, YouTubers and TikTok.

    Also that people are getting political information from entertainment sources and influencers, such as Rogan.

  40. 40.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Press The Meat’s ratings charted:

    https://ustvdb.com/networks/nbc/shows/meet-press-kristen-welker/

    Basically, it struggles to hit 500K viewers in the “prime” 25-54 demographic.

    Face The Nation’s ratings aren’t really any different:

    https://ustvdb.com/networks/cbs/shows/face-nation/

    If you look at the other Sunday morning shows, my guess is that maybe about 1m total in the 25-54 demographic tune in combined over all the similar shows.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    It’s weird to me because I deliberately try to create an information bubble for myself and I still get inundated with points of view I don’t like.

  42. 42.

    Suzanne

    @sab: Most people would classify me as a politics junkie, and I haven’t watched one of these shows in probably 15 years. Maybe 20.  I legit don’t know anyone IRL who is younger than SuzMom who watches them.

    I am deeply skeptical that they matter.

  45. 45.

    Elizabelle

    @NotMax:  I love that there was an NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1952.  Maybe they should do that again.

    They all sound like sad tubas  trombones.  Whatevs.

  56. 56.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: I blocked him a long time ago on Twitter and also my email. I get junky fundraising emails from him.

    He is friends with Gaetz and the top hatemongers who work for the BJP IT cell.

    Ro Khanna is the worst of the faux Progressives.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    @Elizabelle

    Someplace around here I have a deluxe boxed set of orchestral recordings issued as a promotional item by NBC. Guessing it’s from the 1950s.

    So long since dug it out that they might even be 78s rather than LPs.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @NotMax:  Oh, marvelous.  Hope you find it some day.

    I know it was CBS, but a long time since anyone has called anything the “Tiffany network.”

    Caught a little GMA and maybe NBC mornings while visiting family at Thanksgiving, and it seems to be all marketing and lifestyle.  So much for “news.”  Although they frame that so dishonestly, I cannot listen to it.  Must remove self from the premises.

  62. 62.

    Martin

    @Baud: Harris didn’t use it very much. At least, not a lot of non-political media. Trump appears to have grabbed a fair number of non-political, traditionally non-voters by going on a decent amount of non-political alternative media. Vance did quite a lot of it.

    There’s an assumption on the left that ‘sports people’ are conservative, and by neglect by the left, they become so (Harris did do the GSW podcast, but that’s pretty friendly territory). And a lot of the alternative media on the right is outside of the mainstream right, but these guys still go on those shows. That doesn’t happen on the left. Democrats won’t go further left than Pod Save America. They wouldn’t do a Chapo, etc. And I think the problem was that Dems had no answer to left-leaning critiques on Israel. They have a bad policy they can’t defend and so they can’t really engage with the left on any of the other issues like economics and civil rights more broadly because of it.

    And I have to observe that Trump is actually pretty good on these shows where it’s just shooting the shit (better than he is in rallies from what I’ve seen), and Harris is pretty varied. Sometimes she’s really good and sometimes she seems a bit too focused on trying to get her bullet points mentioned, as if she was so on the clock and doesn’t have the time to just talk about some random topic.

    But my view was that Trump/Vance did a LOT more alternative media than Harris/Walz did, and Trump/Vance reached a lot wider audience in their choice of shows. Trump did a video game streamers show. Harris went nowhere near that kind of thing.

  64. 64.

    different-church-lady

    @Suzanne: At this point mainstream news outlets are just entertainment sources. That’s why they gravitate towards covering Trump’s every move.

  70. 70.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Elizabelle:

    I love that there was an NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1952

    I still have the original vinyl collection with Arturo Toscanini conducting all 9 Beethoven Symphonies.

    They remain the best performances although I listen to the CD version.

  71. 71.

    Martin

    @different-church-lady: I don’t know that it doesn’t matter at all, but it sure doesn’t matter much.

    Dems absolutely cannot trust corporate media. They are always going to cave to the GOPs threats and financial promises.

    Social media has a huge reach, but Dems don’t really exploit the full range of it. They’re pretty good at chat services and maybe TikTok and not good at podcasts, streaming shows, and the like. They’re very risk adverse. They’re overly focused on reaching political rather than nonpolitical audiences (the usual we can’t rely on these voters so we shouldn’t talk to them, even though Trump 3 election in a row created millions of new Republicans by doing that) and generally avoidant of being seen as not serious by appearing as normal people with normal interests. I’m not suggesting that Trump is good at that – but it was a trait people liked in Walz that I think would help Dems across the board, and they didn’t let Walz really run wild on that as they probably should have – he could have done a lot more car and sports shows.

    Most young people know AOC because she engages with the gamer community on their terms. She’ll play games on stream. Ilhan Omar does as well. They go to where young people are rather than demanding young people go where the politicians want to be. How the fuck does Adam Schiff (who I like by the way) connect with young voters? That man was born a 41 year old lawyer, best as I can tell.

  74. 74.

    Starfish (she/her)

    @Starfish (she/her): Okay, so what I loved about this even though Kareem is a weirdo was that he was on a podcast with some black Muslims in Chicago. Their overall distrust of the American government was something that everyone here agreed on, and they were trying to educate themselves on what was going on with the fall of the Syrian government through a pro-Muslim lens.

  77. 77.

    Suzanne

    @different-church-lady:

    At this point mainstream news outlets are just entertainment sources. That’s why they gravitate towards covering Trump’s every move.

    That’s true, but there is an important qualitative difference between, say, Good Morning America and Behind the Bastards.

    Honestly, the only time I watch TV news of any type is when I’m staying in a hotel. I’ll watch local news/national morning show while I get ready for the day, and maybe CNN as I wind down for bed.

  80. 80.

    Starfish (she/her)

    @Raven: Everyone on the podcast. The black Muslims in Chicago AND the Muslim dude who lives in Syria are both skeptical of the US government.

  81. 81.

    Martin

    @Suzanne: I think one problem Dems have now is that there’s 10s of millions of eligible non-voters that Trump has been slowly reeling in, presumably because they don’t like how politics works or doesn’t want to think about it, and Dems appear to love how politics works and Trump quite openly hates it.

    Most people don’t seek to get political information from Rogan, they just happen to. I see a lot of leftist politics infiltrating a range of other gamer/tech/media criticism spaces, but no Democratic politics. People aren’t looking to necessarily pick up politics there, but they are getting a steady stream of leftist politics. This is putting Dems in an awkward position where the right has a fairly wide reach and leftists are doing okay, but Dems are kind of frozen out because they are completely absent for the reason I noted above.

  83. 83.

    Citizen Alan

    @JPL: i hope the democrats never settle for having our own “john mccain,” given what a piece of shit he was.

  86. 86.

    Suzanne

    @Martin: I agree with you.

    One thing that AOC, for example, does very well is cross into my notice, even when I’m not looking for her. Or even looking for political content at all. She showed up as a guest on 99% Invisible talking about The Power Broker. (As did Secretary Pete.) I see her talking about makeup and skincare. I can tell you that she uses Stila’s Beso for her red lip.

    This all sounds kind of dumb, but as a result, I have a “relationship” to her that I don’t really have with other politicians. She’s not even my rep.

  87. 87.

    TBone

    @TBone: stupidest idea in the history of the press:

    Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who blocked the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and plans to overhaul its editorial board, says he will implement an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” on the paper’s news articles to provide readers with “both sides” of a story.

    Tiedrich:

    wait, what? are you telling me that if someone reads something in the LA Times that they don’t like, they can click a button and read a more-mollifying version of it?

    Soon-Shiong:

    “Somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he said on Jennings’ “Flyover Country,” podcast. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias and then that story automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story and then give comments.”

    Tiedrich:  no. fuck no.

    An AI-powered “bias meter” button.  WTF. Coming soon to every story ever told.

  89. 89.

    Jackie

    O/T:

    Trump announced Alina Habba would serve as “Counselor to the President.”

    Is that what they’re calling it these days?🤔

  90. 90.

    Splitting Image

    @TBone:

    “Somebody could understand as they read it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” he said on Jennings’ “Flyover Country,” podcast. “And what we need to do is not have what we call confirmation bias and then that story automatically, the reader can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story and then give comments.”

    Story headline: Dallas Cowboys defeat New York Giants 27-14.

    *Giants fans press the button.*

    Story headline now reads: New York Giants defeat Dallas Cowboys 27-14.

  91. 91.

    Martin

    @Suzanne: Yep. AOC is why my kids got into politics when they were in high school. I couldn’t have gotten them into politics. And she didn’t achieve that by being on Meet the Press – she showed up in a video game charity event, that no US politician would even have been aware of, let alone join because I think they would have judged it as unworthy of their time. But it had 650K viewers, and viewers that never get to see a politician in their spaces, let alone in a space like that. It was shocking to them.

  93. 93.

    TBone

    @Splitting Image: next up: school text books with AI bias meter button, and an alarm button to alert the thought police if you feel the need to report any woke or sex education taking place.

  95. 95.

    Geminid

    @Starfish (she/her): I’ve been finding some really good Syrian journalists. Most are outside the country but they often relay on the ground accounts from.people there. And molnow that it’s safe, all kinds of citizen journalists have their smart phones out recording scenes from their newly liberated nation.

    There are some good news outfits too. One of them cracked me though. The Arabic word “Sham” is sometimes used to denote the Greater Syria area, so it makes sense for a news site to call itself Sham News. But I can’t help thinking about a billboard in downtown Damascus that reads:

          Don’t Fall for Fake News.

    Get Sham News Instead!

  98. 98.

    Bill Arnold

    @Splitting Image:
    Here’s a real example, using the bullet point summary from a current latimes story:

    Rewrite this from the point of view of a MAGA Republican. Keep it to three sentences: “California’s agriculture industry takes in billions of dollars exporting pistachios, wine and other products to China, Mexico, Canada and other nations.
    In a recent analysis, economists said President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs would trigger retaliatory measures and bring major losses for the state’s agriculture industry.”

    Meta-Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct
    California’s agriculture industry is just another example of how America’s been getting ripped off by bad trade deals, shipping billions of dollars’ worth of goods to countries like China, Mexico, and Canada. The fake news economists can try to claim that President-elect Trump’s tariffs will hurt our farmers, but we know the truth: it’s time to put America first and stop letting these countries take advantage of us. With Trump’s bold leadership, we’ll make America great again, and if that means a few California farmers have to adjust, that’s a small price to pay for American greatness.

    It makes no sense if one thinks about it. Many the target audience would suck it up because it follows the MAGA form.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    Democrats have just given up, mistermix. If they were bleeding support before they’re going to bleed out now. Who would ever follow such weak people? This party is on life support – there’s no energy, no passion, there’s not even a work ethic.

  100. 100.

    Kay

    Maybe something new rises from the ashes here but this organization is just out of juice. They need to find a reason they exist.

  101. 101.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Given current events, shouldn’t the focus be on teaching the dangers of Fascism, Nazism, ethnonationalism, and religious fundamentalism?

    House Pushes Back on Communist Influence in American Schools
    WASHINGTON, D.C., December 6, 2024

    WASHINGTON – Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) today celebrated the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of the Crucial Communism Teaching Act with a bipartisan vote of 327 to 62.

    H.R. 5349, authored by Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), makes optional educational materials available through the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to help educate high school students about the dangers of communism and totalitarianism and how those systems are contrary to the founding principles of freedom and democracy in the United States.

    …

    Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is a far right reactionary organization founded by the same people who founded the Heritage Foundation. It has counted every COVID-19 related death as “victim of Communism”.

    80% of the Dem caucus, & half of the Progressive Caucus, voted “Yea”. I know that this is performative, & no Dem wants to be wedged as “Commie Sympathizer”, but “Anti-Communism” in this day & age is code for “Anti-China”. Whether such legislation makes it into law is not the point, it is to trap the Dems in the reactionary framing of threat inflation, “yellow peril”, “reds under very bed” paranoia, & general moral panic, to clear the path for reactionary & authoritarian policies later. Dems keep nodding along w/ a version of “we vehement oppose Rs on everything else, but we agree on & must work together to counter the foreign threat du jour” & legitimize both the reactionary framing shifting the Overton Window right, instead of loudly & confidently calling BS on the bad faith.

    But then, Dems have been doing this since the Cold War, so why should Cold War 2.0 be any different.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    It feels like final guardrail has failed. First the GOP failed, then the institutions failed, then media collapsed and now Democrats have just given up. They were last man standing.

  103. 103.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley. TechBros are his constituency, many of whom are techno-libertarians, & more than a few techno-authoritarians.

  105. 105.

    RaflW

    I know Bsky isn’t for everyone, but I heartily recommend frequent doses of jamelle bouie. Here’s an example of a thread where he is laying out how actual resistance can happen. It’s not skeets. It’s not even street protests.

    We use the bureaucracy to jam up the works.  There’s a good chance a bunch of his “Dictator on Day 1” E.O.s don’t even end up working, and fur sure they’ll be gummed up in lawsuits for a while.

    @jamellebouie.net‬
    a useful thing to ask is how specifically does a rule or regulation or order go from issuance to implementation. for instance, trump has said that he will issue an executive order denying birth certificates and SSNs to the children of undocumented immigrants. okay. what happens next?
    Dec. 8, 2024 at 6:42 PM

    well, states are responsible for issuing birth certificates and not all states collect citizenship information, so first and foremost, trump would have to somehow persuade the relevant agency in every state to collect citizenship information AND stop issuing birth certificates

    this may require new state laws, which may or may not pass depending on the state. the social security administration only issues new SSNs after receiving the relevant information from state agencies of vital records. the existing process does not require an SSN from the parents.

    and so the SSA would have to develop a new process requiring states to collect that information. in the meantime, it attempts to stop issuing SSNs may run into legal obstacles, including lawsuits from state AGs

    assuming the new rule can be implemented, democratic-run states may simply decide to only transmit SSN applications when the citizenship of the parents is known, leaving the SSA in the dark but still issuing birth certificates as normal.

    a grand trump pronouncement, in other words, becomes a muddled program with patchwork implementation and a lot of legal vulnerability.
    Bouie often posts to try to emphasis that everything is not over. The fights haven’t even begun.

    Yes, kay (and others), some Democrats are pretty disappointing right now. But when this shit starts backfiring and Trump keeps fucking up, we need to have been 1) stiffing the spines of some of these Dems, b) supporting the folks like AOC who get it, and iii) understand that not everything that we may want a fight about will be the strategic place to have that fight.

    Trite, here, but: Keep calm and carry on!

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    @N:

    How do we create a left wing noise machine? Is their noise machine so effective because it is centralized and billionaire-funded? Does it have message discipline simply because rigthwingers are authoritarian bobbleheads and all say the same things as a herd instinct?

    There is a Hack Gap. Lies and meaningless slogans are way easier to create in quantity than true statements, and the right will get behind it.

    There’s nothing inherently preventing our side from just generating a lot of vapid Fox News style bullshit with a left-wing slant, but liberals won’t get on board with it, some will attack it for being bullshit and then get shit for being centrist quislings and the circular-firing-squad nature of the left will do the rest.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It does kind of feel like that. I don’t see them full-throatedly opposing all of TCFG’s terrible nominees, which is what they should do. What we found out in this election is that voters actually don’t care about politicians being bipartisan, they like it when you stand for something they think will help them even if it’s a lie.

  108. 108.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: Look what happened with Hunter’s pardon. Instead of all getting on the same page saying “Well TCFG nominated a person who published an enemies list so of course Biden had to protect him from that, I hope he protects a lot more people from TCFG’s vengance” half of them wrung their hands about it and agreed it “looks bad” instead of saying “circumstances changed, why aren’t you asking Kash Patel’s supporters about his enemies list?”

  111. 111.

    RaflW

    I don’t mean to negate anyone’s dismay that there are surely some Democrats in Disarray. That’s a near-given because of the nature of our party — we’re not attracted to authoritarian, top-down, all row the same way without question people.

    But I’m really serious about the spine stiffening (even with the typo above). Democrats in office may (we can hope!) change behavior if we demand it. Republicans respond to their base because their base made it clear that previous years and years of blowing off base demands was no longer to be tolerated. We can learn from that. (there’s very little else I want us to learn from Republicans).

  112. 112.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I’m discouraged that some of them seem to be obeying in advance instead of opposing TCFG and what he wants to do.

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