Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Come on, man.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

This really is a full service blog.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About

Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About

by | 153 Comments

This post is in: 

I was at the gym today watching a bit of Fox News — I mean, if you’re going to do one no-fun thing like work out, why not combine it with another no-fun activity, like watching right-wing nonsense?

Fox seems to be back to non-election footing, by which I mean they’re focusing on stories that push their favored narratives.  Today’s was a story about the woman who accused Duke Lacrosse players of raping her back in 2006.  Apparently she made her first public statement admitting that she lied.  Other stories I’ve seen in the past few days include the guy who choked out a homeless man on the subway and was acquitted at trial.  (I think they’re pretty disappointed in that one, since the UHC CEO killer has been the vigilante with more traction.)

These stories reminded me of one of Josh Marshall’s reader emails:

I’m writing now somewhat in response to the broader conversation about Democrats/men/algorithms/media and somewhat in direct response to TPM’s recent article about Democrats adapting to the “new media landscape.”

A lesson that I spent several election cycles but at this point believe as a near axiom is that “our voters” (e.g., liberals, people of color, people who live in this-zip and not that-zip, etc) just don’t respond to bad-faith communications in ways that are helpful to Democratic candidates or progressive causes. There is no machine to get Democrats outraged about obviously fake shit for the obvious but really astrategic reason that Democrats don’t want to do that. […]

Without getting into too much detail, I’ve been through multiple rounds of qualitative and quantitative tests involving rumors, memes, etc, and Democrats and “Dem +” voters just… respond to this stuff like adults are supposed to. I want to be clear that I am not talking about negative messaging or the notion of beating up on your opponents credibly (everyone responds to that stuff, and everyone also claims that they don’t). I am talking about, basically, winking at your own base.

Just my POV, but one borne of years of TRYING to figure out how to do Karl Rove stuff for the good guys.  […]

I think this framing misses one of the key focuses of Fox News.  While they certainly do a lot of fake shit, they also spend time covering stories that fit the conservative worldview:  A black woman accusing white privileged men of rape.  A white man killing a homeless man and facing consequences instead of applause.  And so on.  In fact, I’d say this is more effective than their lies.  There’s always a crime story that will reinforce Fox’s contention that cities are urban hellholes — it’s just something so minor or commonplace that traditional media wouldn’t report it.   Any story about fear of the new — like the endless NJ drone stories — are definitely in the Fox wheelhouse.  None of these are fake shit.

So, when we talk of a Democratic alternative to Fox, or at least when I talk about it, I definitely don’t think we ought to create our own set of liars spewing bullshit.  The kinds of stories I’m talking about are stories of people being denied insurance coverage, women dying in parking lots for lack of a D&C, farmers who wouldn’t be able to harvest crops or keep cattle without immigrant labor, and youth pastors raping kids.  Obviously, 24/7 coverage of stories like that would be like listening to Kindertotenlieder on repeat.  But there are a ton of bright side stores that are also missed by Fox:  urban gardens, community organizations working together to help others, the retired nurses who came out of retirement just to help with vaccinations.  Hire a bunch of young, excited reporters and put your content out as stories as well as social-media-sized morsels (video, gif, whatever).  Make it left-wing infotainment, and not always overtly political or even about politics.  I think this is what Oliver Willis is getting at, but with some leavening of good news:

Let's Give Them Something to Talk About

Reader Interactions

153Comments

  2. 2.

    hrprogressive

    I think this is exactly right, but it also requires the Democratic Party to actually believe in it, first.

  3. 3.

    hrprogressive

    @Baud:

    MVP Harris tried to sell people on an economy that would work for all, including lowering grocery prices, child tax credits, and so forth.

    And she lost, because there just is not a leftish/centerish chorus on any issue the way the Fascist right has.

    Her positivity was drowned out by the culture war.

    And the Democrats by and large don’t even try to fight back, not in language voters can understand, anyway.

  6. 6.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Good on you for boosting signal for Oliver Willis. I’ve been reading and following him for a long while and he’s a solid, down-to-earth thinker and writer. Democratic messaging is one of his favorite topics.

  7. 7.

    Nukular Biskits

    Fox seems to be back to non-election footing, by which I mean they’re focusing on stories that push their favored narratives. Today’s was a story about the woman who accused Duke Lacrosse players of raping her back in 2006.

    Last week, Sean Hannity (fuck that guy) brought this up again as he is wont to do anytime he’s trying to make the case that white men in this country just can’t catch a break.

    Again, I’ll say it:  Fuck that guy.

    Anyhoo, amazing how all the egg prices, migrant caravans and killer illegals stories dropped off the map.

  9. 9.

    Lobo

    @Nukular Biskits:

    Weird on what has disappeared, adding to your list:

    • Gas prices
    • Gaza(student demonstrations)
    • Trump is a fascist threat(from Dem’s right after election.  Radio silence)

    What else?

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Fox News IMHO because it interacts with right wing culture. It’s harder to synthesize a common left of center culture that media can have a dialogue with.

     

    @Nukular Biskits:

    That’s not a sustained push that’s part of people’s everyday lives like right wing media is.

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    Here’s atrios on part of the issue.  The last sentence seems to be key, judging from Nov 2024.

     

     

    In the view of DC big brains, “moderates”- potential swing voters – are people who like Joe Scarborough and think David Brooks is often wise. I’m pretty sure they’re more likely to think Luigi has a point than pass around the latest Niskanen Center briefing.

    I get tired of pointing out what everyone actually does know, but thought Trump would somehow suspend. Good Republicans don’t actually exist. Self-identified independent voters are actually embarrassed partisans. Genuine swing voters have brains of mush and, while I am not entirely sure how to reach them, they are more likely to be animated by guillotines than Norms Respecting. Irregular voters need to be inspired.

  12. 12.

    LeftCoastYankee

    Fox loves narratives like the Duke Lacrosse case, where they can take the outlier incident and pretend it’s representative of the majority of sexual assault claims.

    Plus, bonus points for racism and sexism….

  13. 13.

    SpaceUnit

    And who’s going to buy advertising on these bold new liberal media outlets?

     

    They’ll be so underfunded that they’ll look like a middle school AV club production.

  14. 14.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Nukular Biskits: The don’t even want healthcare from a Black person, after all the ACA was great but Obamacare was anathema.

    The majority of every demographic except straight white Christians went for Harris; and as usual white people went hard for the GOP.

    Went hard for the white supremacist and the Nazi policies he promises to enact.

    As long as Democrats have Black people in leadership positions, and continue to support civil rights for Black people, white people will continue to vote against them.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    I don’t. I stopped watching MSNBC because their programming was all about hate watching Trump. I need a good mix. I don’t care about feeling superior to the right. I care about how we’re advancing our own interests.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    @hrprogressive:

    Basically this. “Typical” folks retained Trump ad lies about Harris and didn’t absorb a thing she said about her actual positions and aspirations. The noise machine won, bigly.

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    @Baud:

    I watch cable and network broadcast news like I listen to a.m. radio.

    Not at all.

    “What would it take to bring you back, a channel that tells the truth?”

    Too late, those media have been broken for good, the same as daily newspapers.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    I mentioned this video yesterday.  I think the part about establishing and reinforcing common knowledge is an important concept that Republicans succeed at and Democrats fail out. Even Democrats tend to internalize GOP-generated common knowledge, and rarely does the reverse happen, IMO.

  22. 22.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Quaker in a Basement: Meh.  Willis, like so many of his Leftier-Than-Thou peers, is in utter denial about the effect that his constant Dems Suck (But From The Left) messaging has on voters’ perception of our party.

  23. 23.

    Old School

    I see Trump has called for an end to Daylight Savings Time.  Does that mean DeSantis, Rubio, etc. and other Republicans are going to have to stop pushing for the end of Standard Time?

  24. 24.

    @mistermix.bsky.social

    @UncleEbeneezer:

     Willis, like so many of his Leftier-Than-Thou peers, is in utter denial about the effect that his constant Dems Suck (But From The Left) messaging has on voters’ perception of our party.

    Willis has spent years attacking right wing media (writing at Media Matters) and also has columns in a number of indy media outlets extolling the work of the Biden admin.  Just check his feed, he posted links to all of it. https://bsky.app/profile/owillis.bsky.social

    I think your characterization of his work is wrong, and if at this point in time he wants to criticize Democratic messaging, I’m listening to him, because he has studied how right wing messaging wins the day.

  25. 25.

    TBone

    Some guy at our local “gas n go” just sabotaged us – he left the pump running for a long time and gas flowed freely out into the highway and even into the sewer system, causing the County to come out to try to clean it up.  Hubby was there and a female employee (his friend ) showed him her phone video of the perpetrator who has not yet been nabbed, apparently.

    I don’t know if our locals are prepared for this kind of sabotage cleanup.

    We do not know why said friend didn’t shut off the pump from inside the store.  We think she was distracted (on her phone when not busy).

  26. 26.

    UncleEbeneezer

    All this provides some context for why the poverty narrative was so easy to revert to for many. Also, I think it’s comforting: It validates people’s priors—it turns out all we needed to do was implement the exact policies they happened to favour anyway! It also lets us sidestep harder conversations (to which I will return). As much as anything though, it’s a morality play, one that emerges from our implicit frameworks and subconscious assumptions. Consider it in parallel to other explanations of the election: ‘it was a backlash to woke/cancel culture’; ‘young men are sick of feminism’, ‘the Democrats weren’t civil about Trump supporters’; and ‘Democrats shouldn’t have campaigned on trans rights.’ Notice that in all these narratives voters moving right are not granted any agency. They are just reacting to something liberals have done. As a result, liberals are implicitly assumed to bear responsibility for the outcome.

    I call this ‘what did you say to make him hit you?’ politics. The implication is intentional: We tend to perceive both liberalism and the Democratic party as female-coded—the result of decades of heavily gendered use of language by conservatives. This filters into our assessment of moral responsibility (which is also gendered), in which we offer explanations for the bad behaviour of male-coded groups and shy away from direct condemnation. We are asked to ‘understand’ the perspective of those who shift to the right and cautioned against ‘dismissing’ them. Long narratives are concocted in which explanation fades into excuse.

    This is bad morality: Someone being poor, or annoyed with the excesses of social justice, does not justify them becoming a fascist. It’s also a poor understanding of the world. Most Trump supporters are not poor (in a global sense, most are very affluent).  Finally, we shouldn’t think of the far right as simply responding to liberalism—this is a movement with ideas, goals, and plans of its own. The way it moves in the world is highly agential. Most of the last decade has been liberals reacting to things it has done, not the other way around.

    For the socialist left specifically, it’s also a morality play about society, one in which fascism isn’t a movement with ideas and goals of its own, but the punishment for neoliberalism, an inevitable and deserved consequence of it. Socialism then emerges from the ashes as our reward for having accepted our chastisement. The world doesn’t work like that. Many developed countries are cycling between mainline liberalism and far-right populism because those are the options that their systems put before the electorate. They are the ones put before the electorate because they have the most adherents. That’s it. It’s not a cyclical process of history in which each system invariably produces its successor. History does not have laws like that. It’s just stuff that happens.

    …

    I am as disappointed as anyone that the policies I wanted the Democratic Party to pursue have not had the electoral payoff I hoped they would. I can easily admit my own error: while I never thought policy was everything, I hoped it (and rising wages) would have some impact.

    A more mature American left would grapple with this, but to hear them talk today you’d think none of that policy ever happened. You might say the Democrats should have done more. They would say they did what they could with the congressional majorities they had. I’ll leave that for others to adjudicate. My response would be that doesn’t take seriously not just the lack of impact but the backlash that economic populism did have.

  27. 27.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Baud:

    That’s not a sustained push that’s part of people’s everyday lives like right wing media is.

    Understood and agreed.  Maybe it was me but I didn’t understand that part of the message.

  28. 28.

    Fair Economist

    I agree part of our problem is that Republican voters are, for the most part, venal to evil, and they *enjoy* lying. We are mostly decent people, and don’t enjoy lies. So total nonsense like Pizzagate and “eating the cats and dogs” just doesn’t go anywhere on our side. So the gullible non-political types only get “Democrats are nasty” memes because that’s what circulates.

  31. 31.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @@mistermix.bsky.social: Thanks for the heads up– I’ve liked and read ODub off and on for years; and I wonder if he’s figured out what is the messaging that white people will hear from Democrats.

    Near as I can tell, everybody else hears Dem messaging quite well, thankyouverymuch… but not so much white people.

  33. 33.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @@mistermix.bsky.social: I’ve also followed Willis for years.  Yes, he’s good at skewering the Right (which is frankly, pretty easy to do).  But when he writes about our side, you can count on the conclusion being a condemnation of whatever Dems did/didn’t do.  Sorry.  Once I see a pattern I can’t unsee it.

  35. 35.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    A lot of my fellow whites will protest (too much, I say) but prejudice drove (and continues to drive) a lot of their votes to white Republicans vice POC Democrats, even if the Democratic policies are things they (white voters) agree with.

  41. 41.

    Fair Economist

    I think Willis is right, but the problem is – what liberal outlets? WaPo and FTNYT aren’t even pretending to be liberal anymore. MSNBC does, but it’s not, it’s basically Trump 24/7 at this point. The closest we’ve got is the Philadelphia Inquirer, and it’s not a national platform.

  42. 42.

    Chris

    @p.a.:

    Genuine swing voters have brains of mush and, while I am not entirely sure how to reach them, they are more likely to be animated by guillotines than Norms Respecting.

    Right.  Back when swing voters were like 20% of the country, there was some sort of rhyme or reason to how you approached them.  It wasn’t always a good rhyme or reason, but it was there.

    The smaller the number of swing voters gets, the more we’re reduced to people who are so utterly incoherent there’s no way to craft a political message that’ll reach them.  Increasingly, swing voters are nothing but people whose “thought” process goes something like this:

    “I voted for Gore in 2000 because wasn’t Bush already president in the early nineties?  There must’ve been a reason we dumped him.  Then I voted Bush in 2004 because someone told me John Kerry was French.  Then I voted for Obama in 2008 because he reminded me of the President from 24.  Then I voted for Romney in 2012 because I heard he ran a thing called Bain Capital, and Bane’s my favorite Batman villain.  Then I voted for Clinton in 2016, because the woman I was dating at the time kept going on about it and it was just so important to her, and I wanted to be supportive.  Then I voted for Trump in 2020 because he sent me a check in the mail.  Then I voted for Harris in 2024 because Trump didn’t send me a check like he did last time.”

    How the fuck are you going to craft a political message that appeals to that?

  43. 43.

    different-church-lady

    @Leto: I just got a rocket launcher and I’m wondering if I should use it on my neighbor’s inflatable Rudolph.

  44. 44.

    Kathleen

    @Professor Bigfoot: I agree. The Trump’s’ products are hate and fear. Permission to hate and blame everyone else for their problems is crack to his followers. I maintain the issues with Trump voters/MAGATS are not necessarily related to intellect or intelligence. They reflect a fundamental spiritual/emotional/personal disconnect from themselves and their pain. They direct their denied self hatred and pain towards “the other” whom they blame for their own perceived failures .  They think Trump loves and understands them.  To badly paraphrase James Baldwin, if haters didn’t have someone to hate they’d have to deal with their pain. It’s this dynamic of denied pain and self hatred that is so dangerous and what’s fueling these virulent fascistic energies.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @different-church-lady:

    Yes. America was great in the past, particularly under his first term, and it’ll be great again when he lowers grocery prices and gets rid of illegal immigrants and makes liberals cry.

    All of that backed up by sustained right wing media 24/7/365.

  49. 49.

    Emily B.

    Why not serve up our own scare stories? Hell, *I’m* scared about the Trump agenda…. and as many people have noted on this site, Trump’s actual agenda is wildly unpopular with voters.

    Short, simple, sensationalistic videos for social media: Measles causes hearing loss! How to prepare for Trumpflation. What the Republican plan to gut Social Security means for YOU.

    Dunno who’s going to actually make these videos…. some of those famous influencers I keep hearing about, I guess.

  50. 50.

    Chris

    @Martin:

    It’s easy for Republicans to establish and reinforce common knowledge when every media source in the country carries their message.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @Emily B.:

    Well, scare stories will be a little easier now that he’ll be in office. Ideally, we’d like a message that prevents Republicans from winning in the first place.

  54. 54.

    Suzanne

    I just read that the median age for white Americans is 45. Damn. That is old, and it has a lot of implications. I would love to verify that.

  55. 55.

    Martin

    I will note that we had a good Democrats = Freedom narrative going during the convention. The folks that produced that got it. But it wasn’t a sustained effort by the DNC/campaign afterward. It wasn’t picked up by down ballot candidates and it’s all but forgotten now.

  56. 56.

    artem1s

    But there are a ton of bright side stores that are also missed by Fox: urban gardens, community organizations working together to help others, the retired nurses who came out of retirement just to help with vaccinations. Hire a bunch of young, excited reporters and put your content out as stories as well as social-media-sized morsels (video, gif, whatever). Make it left-wing infotainment, and not always overtly political or even about politics.

    I think you wouldn’t need to even lean to heavy on the good team propaganda to bring the totebag crowd back from the brink. Normies crave having any media they can listen to without the constant anxiety producing political content. Think of it as a mix of Ted Lasso and After School Specials. Keep the politics to the evening news section where Cronkite used to live or latenight. When you have ‘breaking news’ make sure it’s actually news.
    i.e. NPR and PBS before they became wholly owned subsidiaries of Koch Industries. We have a model that was hugely popular with liberal voters but NPR caved when Gingrich’s Contract on America threatened to eliminate their funding. I was a religious listener to NPR before they started to ‘bothsides’ every story and/or just outright started telling lies about Dem’s policies.
    Given some success, you may even be able to get some of the local NPR stations to start to push back on airing the mess the national NPR programs have become. They have to pay for that crap so if they have something else to air instead…

  57. 57.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Chris: For example “Republicans are better at running the economy.” Which of course is why 100% of private sector job growth since approximately forever has occurred under Democratic Presidents (a fact which you will never hear from those same media outlets).

  59. 59.

    zhena gogolia

    @different-church-lady: What’s driving me crazy today (apart from the coming apocalypse) is the music. At the gym, at the dentist, at the bank, at the grocery store. And although we are now living in a Christianist fascist state, none of the music can be nice Christmas carols. It all has to be crappy secular music. So 1000 cover versions of:

    Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

    Jingle Bell Rock

    Rockin around the Christmas Tree

    Sleigh Ride

    Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

    Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer

    It’s the Most whatever time of the year

    I AM GOING OUT OF MY MIND!

    Only bright spot: Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is as good as Judy’s.

  62. 62.

    Nettoyeur

    Well, Trump has now excluded lower grocery prices from his “core promises.” With avian flu worries, eggs will remain elevated. But pork will be all over the place, so bacon may get cheaper. But fear not–after his tariffs hit, the economy will flounder, lowering prices for lots of things, including housing.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    If I live through the next four years I’m going to get exhausted to paralysis typing Fuck you, Donny.

    Fuck you, Donny.

    President-elect Donald Trump said Republicans would push to eliminate daylight saving time, calling it “inconvenient” and “costly,” The Hill reports.

  66. 66.

    Kathleen

    @Chris: I had dropped this link to Marc Elias/Dan Goldman video a few threads down. They discussed ramifications of Trump’s replacing career civil servants/officials with his cronies and prosecution of those he perceives to be his enemies. I bring this up here because Goldman says Dems need to focus on what it takes to win elections instead of what “message” should be which I thought was refreshing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0QDFO_zB1U&ab_channel=DemocracyDocket

  69. 69.

    Martin

    @Suzanne: Yeah, that’s correct. I used to do a lot of demographic work (important to know how the college population is changing in size and makeup). Latino median age is 30. Black is 32.

    When I retired half of all latinos were below college age in CA, and more than 50% of all HS grads were latino. CA will in time move from minority majority to latino majority. CA median ages are about 2 years younger than national across all groups.

  70. 70.

    cmorenc

    We seem to be making a huge all-in bet on FAFO – that Trump and his MAGA / GOP enablers in Congress are going to fuck things up in ways both practically and viscerally severe enough to induce enough additional members of the electorate to cripple and remove them from power.  An example historical scenario is the turnaround from the D landslide in 1964 to Nixon’s win in 1968 (after his narrow loss as VP running for POTUS in 1960 and for Cal governor in 1962 had seemed to send him forever into the political wilderness).

    However, what if the Trump’s fuck-ups do not turn out to adversely affect enough of the public in their daily lives to turn on him?  Sometimes a single event perceived as a disastrous fuck-up can also poison a President’s political future – the bloody, chaotically messy Afghan pullout destroyed Biden’s credibility with everything else for a majority of the public, especially regarding inflation, and aggravated perception he was bungling the border.  That said, go figure why the public ever trusted Trump again after his disastrously reckless, obsequious summit with Putin in Helsinki, or gross mismanagement of COVID.  Or Jan 6.  Or classified docs.  Maybe we are back to the RW misinformation-verse vs  the absent-to-ineffective progressive counter-verse.

  72. 72.

    Aunt Kathy

    Can somebody answer a question for me? This Oversight Committee fight…who votes for new committee chairs, the outgoing or incoming members? My Rep changed, I don’t know who to yell at.

  73. 73.

    cmorenc

    @Baud: Trump is term-limited but JD Vance is not as potential heir apparent to Trump.

    Would we be more fucked if Trump serves out his term, or if Trump dies one day past midway through his term, so Vance could potentially be POTUS for 10 years, with a running 2-year start to the 2028 election?

  76. 76.

    K-Mo

    The take from TPM is fine- we don’t need to simplify or sensationalize the message that’s going to the base.

    OK but let’s not overlook the need to get the low-info non-base to vote for us.  For those people we need simple messages repeated often, and we should probably consider oversimplifying and tapping into the sensational.

    And I’m not talking about fake stuff.  That’s almost always a bad bet.  But if the Duke now says she lied then that’s not fake.   We should be churning out that stuff for the low info folks.

  77. 77.

    Bill Arnold

    @Nettoyeur:

    Well, Trump has now excluded lower grocery prices from his “core promises.

    In other words, Mr. Trump is announcing that he plans to break a promise, made more than once, during his campaign.
    ETA: Mr. Trump: “Vote Trump, and your incomes will soar. Your net worth will skyrocket. Your energy costs and grocery prices will come tumbling down.”

  78. 78.

    different-church-lady

    @zhena gogolia: There are exactly two Christmas recordings that are allowed in my household:
    * Vince Guaraldi – A Charlie Brown Christmas
    * Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song
    Anything else leads to banishment until January 2nd.

  79. 79.

    Geminid

    @Aunt Kathy: There is Steering Committee that votes on these matters. It’s relatively large, about 25 members I think.

    Ed. It would be the incoming members who are eligible to sit on the Steering Committee.

  81. 81.

    Katdip

    While I agree with the premise, it misses 2 big realities: 1) Dems don’t have a closed media ecosystem like Fox/ONN/talk radio/WSJ/Sinclair and it will take a long time and lot of money to start one. Instead we try to rely on the MSM to establish what is “common knowledge”. But we all know that’s a fool’s game, as the MSM lives for both siderism and therefore never establishes objective truth. 2) people choose their reality, especially if they “do their research” on TikTok and YouTube. The algorithms only feed them more of what they have asked for in the past. So if they’re spouting some fascist or anti science content it’s not because they are independent thinkers but instead they clearly started down those rabbit holes and decided to stay in them.

  84. 84.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    Every time I catch myself reading anything about drumph online, I stop and move on to anything else. Haven’t watched any news since the election. No msnbc.  No fox hate watching.  Just Balloon Juice and Blue Sky.  I don’t see this changing anytime soon.

  88. 88.

    Kathleen

    @different-church-lady: Yes! I’ll add Handel’s Messiah. I abhor most commercial Christmas music. Yet my Choral Director in college abhorred Handel’s Messiah and refused to let us perform it for the same reasons I hate commercial Christmas music.

  89. 89.

    mvr

    In response to one of the arguments of the original posting –

    Any story about fear of the new — like the endless NJ drone stories — are definitely in the Fox wheelhouse. None of these are fake shit.

    You can lie with true anecdotes.  So I don’t think Marshall’s point is really undercut by the truth of the underlying story when it is used to push a false narrative.  That’s not to say that the whole top post is wrong, but I think this response – that the anecdotes are true – just misses his point.

  90. 90.

    Shakti

    @Bex: I’m guessing this is so they can have a booth shot and make some comment during the game which is televised.

    Because what a weird fucking choice.  Come talk sports-ball and pretend to drink beer with me.  Go Army!

    I’m not sure if politicos normally invite random hot button civilians of the moment to the army-navy game.

  91. 91.

    different-church-lady

    @zhena gogolia: I once went in for minor surgery with anesthetic the week before Christmas.

    I very much want the last music I hear on this mortal coil to be Mahler’s Second Symphony. So the night before, just as a precaution, I listened to it. The next morning as my friend drove me in I was adamant about not having the radio on.

    What I hadn’t counted on is the sound system running through the hospital. And with dismay I realized there was a possibility the last music I would ever hear in my life was going to be Have A Holly Jolly Christmas.

  92. 92.

    cmorenc

    @zhena gogolia: The decline of Biden’s approval from high 50s to low 40s sharply coincides with the Afghan withdrawal and the wide public perception of it as a chaotic bloody fiasco.  We can critique it as the best that could have been done under the disastrously irresponsible deal Trump & Pompeo committed the US to, but what stuck with the public were the messy images of a US army left lethally vulnerable and abandoning masses of Afghan allies to their fate with the Taliban.

  93. 93.

    Martin

    @Nettoyeur: Tariffs will cause stagflation, not deflation. Would bring home prices down (due to unaffordability), but not rents.

    Tariffs raise the cost of imported goods – prices up, growth down

    Tariffs raise the cost of raw materials – prices up, growth down

    Tariffs can boost jobs, but only slightly as you need to not incur more labor costs than the tariffs cost, so this tends to only happen with highly automated industries, and we have a labor shortage so that’s the wrong thing. So that’d likely fail.

    The responding retaliatory tariffs against exports would likely cost more jobs than would gain.

    Overall, prices go up, growth goes down, unemployment may even go up.

    One way you mitigate the effects of tariffs is by plowing the tariff revenue into a broad welfare state. But that’s almost impossible to come ahead on – but it does lessen the pain. Trump is likely to do that, but only for his supporters as he did when China cut off US soybeans and he handed all the tariff revenue to them.

  95. 95.

    trollhattan

    Runner Girl fitting in a trip to Miami before coming home to CA for Christmas, and she’s in the Miami we only see in movies–oceanside Miami Beach in some zillion-story destination resort hotel with a suite so big it has a laundry room. Training runs on the Atlantic shore.

    Heh, she’s coming home to 50 and rain.

  97. 97.

    Bill Arnold

    @cmorenc:
    It was a well-executed withdrawal. The media crafted a very false narrative about it, made money off of it, and helped elected Trump 47 with it.

  98. 98.

    Chris

    @Katdip:

    But we all know that’s a fool’s game, as the MSM lives for both siderism and therefore never establishes objective truth.

    The MSM is way beyond both-siderism at this point, especially in this decade.

    Also, the third leg of the media tripod is social media.  Which nowadays, is pretty much all right-wing puke funnels.  In a way that wasn’t true in the 2000s or even 2010s and has contributed enormously to making it hard for anything but the right-wing narrative to get out.

  100. 100.

    Old School

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit accusing a New York doctor of prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas resident in violation of state law.

    This lawsuit is the first attempt to test what happens when state abortion laws are at odds with each other. New York has a shield law that protects providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions, which has served as implicit permission for a network of doctors to mail abortion pills into states that have banned the procedure.

  101. 101.

    Kathleen

    @Steve LaBonne:  Right. When I was in Glee Club in high school we performed part of it at Christmas and part at Easter. I so enjoyed singing that. I was a first soprano back then (gulp) and got to hit the high note in the Halleluiah Chorus! Even had a couple of recitative solos.

  103. 103.

    john b

    @Suzanne:

    I just read that the median age for white Americans is 45. Damn. That is old, and it has a lot of implications. I would love to verify that.

    it’s true

    (Well 44, at least. and six years older than the closest other race — Asian American.)

  104. 104.

    Suzanne

    @cmorenc:

    However, what if the Trump’s fuck-ups do not turn out to adversely affect enough of the public in their daily lives to turn on him? 

    As much of an asshole as I am….. this would be a good outcome. If he turns out to be less damaging than I expect, that’s good.

  105. 105.

    @mistermix.bsky.social

    @mvr:

    You can lie with true anecdotes.  So I don’t think Marshall’s point is really undercut by the truth of the underlying story when it is used to push a false narrative.  That’s not to say that the whole top post is wrong, but I think this response – that the anecdotes are true – just misses his point.

    It was a reader of Josh Marshall, just to be clear.

    I think there are two different kinds of lies – the one you point out (true fact, false narrative) and the one that Josh’s reader pointed out (false “fact”, false narrative).  The latter was the kind of lie that Josh’s reader said doesn’t work with Democrats because they don’t like that kind of nonsense.  Agree that the former also happens on Fox.

  107. 107.

    @mistermix.bsky.social

    @Old School: I was wondering when Paxton would sue a dispensary in NY for providing weed to a Texan.  Seems like the same bullshit to me.

  108. 108.

    BigJimSlade

    We can have some Kindertotenlieder, but let’s mix in a little Das Lied von der Erde, too.

    ETA: ok, if you really want some Shostakovich, too, we can go for some Babi Yar and the 14th Symphony, as well.

  109. 109.

    WTFGhost

    So, when we talk of a Democratic alternative to Fox, or at least when I talk about it, I definitely don’t think we ought to create our own set of liars spewing bullshit.  The kinds of stories I’m talking about are stories of people being denied insurance coverage, women dying in parking lots for lack of a D&C, farmers who wouldn’t be able to harvest crops or keep cattle without immigrant labor, and youth pastors raping kids.  Obviously, 24/7 coverage of stories like that would be like listening to Kindertotenlieder on repeat.  But there are a ton of bright side stores that are also missed by Fox:  urban gardens, community organizations working together to help others, the retired nurses who came out of retirement just to help with vaccinations.

    The other thing Fox does, is, it establishes standards for its readers. Like, Trump’s big complaint about Bloomberg was “he’s short”. How did he establish that? He’d duck behind his podium. I saw Fox hosts laugh, and say “that’s the President at his best,” which was ironically the case – his best was mockery of short people.

    But the point is: every Fox viewer feeling a bit disgusted by mockery of that nature has just been told, no, they’re wrong, this is what good Fox News viewers think is *good*.

    So: I agree. By reporting on *good* things, we also have reporters able to establish standards. “Look, a community garden! It’s *great* when cities work with residents!” and you can even say “Of course, Republicans consider these sorts of programs a waste of money. They don’t think improving lives is worthwhile.”

    People like Elon Musk saying they *want* UHC’s CEO to aggressively deny care should make everyone realize that, if anyone is getting us to Mars, it won’t be that heartless, soulless, POS, or his human host, Elon Musk. That is the kind of liberal network we want.

  111. 111.

    Martin

    @@mistermix.bsky.social: There’s another category. If they want to raise trans kids in sports, you can point out that’s maybe a couple hundred kids nationwide, but a much bigger problem is wealthy parents that are paying for their kids to go to professional sports camps, and even to lie/bribe their way into competitive spaces. That’s a much bigger problem.

    You can counter a ‘fairness’ story with a larger one that you have policies to address, but you have to be willing to play a similar populist strategy.

  112. 112.

    Kirk

    @Bill Arnold: Agreed. If it had been as bad as the media played it, US deaths would have been 1300, not 13.

    Any dead is still bad, but given the profession and the mission it was a scratch.

  113. 113.

    Martin

    @cmorenc: I think that’s unlikely. Trumps failing is that he doesn’t do any of these things to benefit the citizenry, but to benefit himself.

  115. 115.

    Kirk

    @john b:

    @Suzanne:

    I just read that the median age for white Americans is 45. Damn. That is old, and it has a lot of implications. I would love to verify that.

    it’s true

    (Well 44, at least. and six years older than the closest other race — Asian American.)

    I think this, in large part, is an underlying reason why so many white voters – especially white men – went Trump.

    They’re scared. The future is coming, it’s obviously not only different but won’t have them on top by default, and at some level it scares them.

    It scares them because of projection, and that same projection means nobody will convince them (as a group) that they’re wrong because they’d lie about it if the positions were reversed.

    Heck, they won’t even believe us old white men who believe otherwise.

  116. 116.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’ll be blunt: we can never beat them at this game because when it comes to noise machines, evil is inherently stronger than good, lies are stronger than truth. We will lose.

    The ONLY thing truth has going for it, in this entire world, is that it’s true. And that’s the reason to keep saying it, because we will lose and we will lose, but when a catastrophe occurs in which reality bites everyone in the ass, we’ll be there.

    And that’s when we will win. That’s the only time that we EVER win. That’s how it’s been ever since I was born.

  117. 117.

    Captain C

    @p.a.:

    think David Brooks is often wise.

    People like that ought to be locked up in a Clockwork Orange-type setup and have driftglass’ columns on Bobo read to them by a slightly distorted computer voice until they either get it or their brains break permanently and they can’t harm anyone else anymore.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    Fox doesn’t know what to do with itself.

    trumpov is about to be back in office, only with even more incompetence and rage-tweeting (which they can’t keep ahead of)

    his cabinet picks are a tough sell even with the low-info MAGAt base

    everything is great economically, BEFORE trumpov takes office

    Russia just got its ass kicked out of Syria

    It’s probably time to go looking for some liberal professor somewhere saying something that is marginally offensive to the most sensitive MAGAts and making 5 or 6 stories out of that

  122. 122.

    Jeffro

    btw this is dumb and no one is proposing this:

    when we talk of a Democratic alternative to Fox, or at least when I talk about it, I definitely don’t think we ought to create our own set of liars spewing bullshit.

    all we need is a network that puts out actual *truth* 24/7 and mercilessly mocks people who dwell in the FauxBubble and – AND – notes how fake news always results in people not really getting what they want.

    How can you get ahead in the world, if you aren’t really dealing with the real world?

  123. 123.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @p.a.:

    Self-identified independent voters are actually embarrassed partisans Republicans.

    Embarrassed Republicans. They’ve never voted for a Dem and never will. Back in the 80s they’d be the “oh I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” spouting crowd–all done to cover their inherent Republican voting. Yes, back then they are overwhelmingly white, middle class, college edumacated professionals.  Back then and until mid-point last decade, what drove their vote was their personal tax rate.

    Today, the education aspect is different as many have noted, but they remain white and race is possibly more of a determinant than back then because they certainly feel more threatened in terms of societal dominance.

  125. 125.

    Shakti

    @Kirk:

    Meh.

    Doesn’t explain why Trump carried younger white people. Relative status seems to matter so much more than absolute status.

    I do think there’s something to that median age — which isn’t further broken down by gender.

     

    The median age might explain why they’re so responsive to certain issues (trans hatred, ha ha let’s get rid of abortion) — the men are fully not young and losing testosterone anymore, and the women around this age are squarely into perimenopause. A lot of women who are further into perimenopause think they less reason to care about the ramifications of a whoops pregnancy and for a shorter amount of time.

    [I legit saw a  45+ lady say “I’m in perimenopause and I’m stopping my birth control” and her pregnancies and deliveries damn near killed her. Of course this highly educated MAGA contracted covid, refused vaccines and claims she almost went to the hospital.]

    It’s just deeply weird to be preoccupied with what other people do with their junk. Maybe the pessimism about the “economy” has to do with the fact that is when your earnings and status supposedly peak if you’re a man.

    It’s a weird way to express a midlife crisis, let me tell you.

  127. 127.

    Subsole

    @Kathleen:

    I think this is broadly correct.

    Do not think these people are stupid. They aren’t. They’re arrogant, selfish, and cruel. They voted, knowingly and with malice, to screw over everyone – and would have been (and, God willing, will soon be) mightily offended to discover “everyone” includes them.

    Above all else, they are insecure. They are weak. They are soft. All their ranting about woke and trans and elites is them lashing out at people who are doing just fine without them. 

  128. 128.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @artem1s:

    We have a model that was hugely popular with liberal voters but NPR caved when Gingrich’s Contract on America threatened to eliminate their funding..

    Let’s not forget the Bushies blatant, and successful program, to capture the Corp for Public Broadcasting.

    Since then, they exist to reassure the upper middle class that everything is gonna be alright.  That drives Totebagger Radio coverage/framing of national politics in that 2/3s of their listeners are over 45, are making well over $150K (the ones younger than that have an average income of around $90K a year), is white, and has been brainwashed since 1980 that BOTH SIDES DO IT!!!!

    Basically, Totebagger Radio targets upper middle class moderates who, outside of the actual 1%, are some of the most comfortable people in ‘Murka.

    If they were  too responsive to the unwashed partisan masses, they’d alienate their base and their corporate sponsorships.

    Even when they earnestly attempt to be legitimately even-handed, they don’t realize they’re operating in a tilted arena that’s been built atop right-wing postulates — you can “agree” or “disagree” without realizing that the entire framework is slanted and you’ve tacitly endorsed their position the moment you agree to the terms.

  129. 129.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: He’s not totally horrible. I get why people enjoy his work.  Sometimes I do too.  But if you scroll through his Bluesky feed from the last 48 hours it’s a lot of examples of taking the least charitable approach to Dems possible and borderline Murc’s Law.  When I see that someone generally takes that tack as their go-to move I find it boring and unhelpful.  Especially at times like these.

  130. 130.

    Suzanne

    @Shakti: Agree with you about relative status being much more important to people than absolute status.

    According to the last data I have seen, the cohort of white people ages 18-29 went equally for Harris and Trump. Every other age cohort of white people went more for Trump. This election was interesting in one respect….. in every recent presidential election, there¡s been a pattern that the youngest age cohort votes the bluest and the oldest age cohort votes the reddest. That didn’t hold this time. The 45-64 age cohort voted for Trump more decisively than the 65+ age cohort did…. although both of those age cohorts voted strongly for Trump.

    As noted above….. the median age of white people is 45, and those age cohorts are much whiter than the three younger cohorts.

  131. 131.

    Subsole

    @zhena gogolia:

    Minor quibble.

    They will give a shit. They’ll bitch and moan. Then they’ll blame Biden or Democrats.

    You’ll know they know that they fucked up when they start mumbling about how it would gave been just as bad or worse under Kamala.

    When they reach for the both-sides? That’s when you know it has dawned on them that they made the wrong choice. It’s their attempt to retroactively justify the wrong choice by pretending both choices are wrong so nothing matters – and thus, they cannot possibly be responsible for all this.

    So, no. They will care. But where they would blame us, they will excuse Republicans. Likely by blaming us.

  133. 133.

    dnfree

    @different-church-lady: Wow, the rocket launcher comment made me laugh out loud!

    It reminded me of when we moved to our “over 55” development, which has rules about lawn decorations—quantity, size, etc.  At our first board meeting, another new resident stood up and told the board he was disappointed to find out there was a rule forbidding inflatable lawn decorations.  “I’ve got a garage full of them and now I can’t use them!” He complained.  We looked at each other and snickered quietly.

  134. 134.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Steve LaBonne:

    It’s not.

    Here’s how you know: they always talk about the unfairness of men competing in womens’ events and how men have an unfair advantage (natch).

    They never talk about women competing in mens’ sports. A trans-man should, by their logic, get bumped at least a medal-grade. But they never broach that, because they aren’t worried about women who look like men. They’re worried about men who look like women. Because the former does not threaten their sexual identity, and the latter…hoo boy.

     

    Everything in conservatism, everything that is poisoning this country today, ties back to the toxic coping mechanisms of fragile masculinity. I would say fragile masculinity is the true root of conservatism. More than the racism, even, though just barely.

  135. 135.

    Citizen Scientist

    @UncleEbeneezer: I’ve been reading Oliver Willis for years and often agree with him, but I also agree with your opinion here.  Since the election, he’s just been 100% negative on team blue and it’s rather annoying and counterproductive.

  138. 138.

    Martin

    @Steve LaBonne: Neither one is about sports. Both are about fairness. But with the wealth argument, Democrats have a solution to a fairness problem, where without it they don’t.

  144. 144.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Martin: I didn’t propose a message. You proposed one that clearly won’t work because it isn’t addressing anything but excuses.

  147. 147.

    Jay

    wait, so “delay, deny, depose” is a criminal threat if a civilian says it to a corporation but if a corporation uses it as an actual policy that kills people then it’s fine?

  148. 148.

    Jay

    @Subsole:
    The defining hallmark of MAGA, its very essence, is white grievance based on things that never happened.

    Migrants taking their jobs. Minorities taking their college. Democrats taking their guns. Progressives taking their meat and making them eat bugs. Liberals taking away their miserable god. Gays taking their marriage. Trans people taking their bathrooms and sports. Foreigners taking their money. The entire ideology is built on the idea that someone somewhere is somehow taking something from them.

    And the grievances are never focused on the “right” someones.

  153. 153.

    Martin

    @Steve LaBonne: It’s addressing what they feel, without validating why they feel that way. Left unanswered, we tend to lose. You can’t fully cede the narrative to them, nor can you engage in the kind of educational campaign needed to win them over. But you can distract them, which is what it seeks to do.

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