Women make up nearly one in five members of our military – serving on the frontlines. But Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, doesn’t believe women in the military should serve in combat roles.
That's a national security risk. pic.twitter.com/2dOj6VgOgZ
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) January 13, 2025
Unless, of course, it gets rescheduled again, for reasons (that his GOP defenders haven’t been able to scrub his record, or his language, to the point where even Fox News can defend his nomination). This is the first confirmation for one of the incoming maladministration’s choices, which is yet another reason for its high profile.
Hegseth’s career could’ve been written for a prestige tv miniseries as a bombshell designed to damage the maximum number of female Senators on both sides of the aisle (which is no doubt part of his appeal to his defenders). At NYMag, Rebecca Traister says “Pete Hegseth Is a Test”:
Pete Hegseth is, by every measure, an abysmal nominee to run the American military. The Army National Guard veteran and former Fox News commentator has no experience managing enormous, complex organizations like the Pentagon and would, as secretary of Defense, be in charge of an $850 billion budget and 3 million active-duty and civilian personnel. His spotty professional record includes having been asked to step down from two nonprofit veterans’ groups whose budgets he reportedly ran into the ground. Questions about his personal behavior abound: He has been accused of rape (he reached a civil settlement with his accuser in 2017) and has a reported habit of excessive drinking, including while on the job and to the point of incapacitation in public. He has defended waterboarding and torture, advocated on behalf of alleged war criminals, and as recently as November he declared, “I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles.” Even Republicans haven’t been able to find much good to say about him. “If it were a secret ballot,” one moderate senator told me, “I don’t think he’d be confirmed.”
But the battle for his confirmation will not be secret; it will be glaringly public, with televised hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee scheduled for Tuesday. It is the first serious test of Donald Trump’s newly invigorated strongman model of governance and of whether he can continue to bend the Republican Party to his will even as Hegseth breaks procedural precedents, including skirting a vetting process designed to protect national security. It is also a window into the influence that Trump’s heavy, Elon Musk, is exerting across Washington by threatening to bankroll primary challenges of anyone who defies Trump. And Hegseth’s nomination is a measure of just how strenuously Democrats are planning to fight back, at a moment when they are powerless to stop the Republicans in Congress and are second-guessing past resistance efforts that have been retrospectively cast as failures. Trump has singled out Hegseth as the figure he cares most about pushing through, his next administration’s big opening number, showcasing what he hopes will be his own party’s submission to his whims and the Democrats’ humiliating impotence in the face of his authority.
The Armed Services Committee is not one that has historically been the venue for explosive partisan warfare. “The thing to understand about it,” said one staffer, “is that it’s designed to have hearings about defense policy, draft the defense bill every year, and is sort of bipartisan.” But Hegseth is all but certain to cleave the group into partisan camps. His nomination has put an uncomfortable spotlight on Republican senators who might be persuaded to vote against his nomination, especially on Iowa’s Joni Ernst, a staunch Republican who is respected by her Democratic colleagues for her commitment to the committee’s work.
A survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, Ernst has been an ally of Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, another committee member, in the ongoing fight to address sexual assault and harassment in the military. She has worked with Elizabeth Warren, also on the committee, on a law that directs the Department of Defense to protect servicemembers from blast overpressure and traumatic brain injury. A combat veteran whose daughter is a West Point graduate, she has been a fierce advocate for women in the military. Ernst herself would have been a logical candidate for Trump’s secretary of Defense. “She probably would have gotten 90 votes,” one staffer to a senator on the committee speculated, noting that she “would have been probably far more effective at the job, since she’d actually know how to do it and people would actually listen to her.”…
Meanwhile, Republicans associated with the wing of the party led by former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a clique that wants an aggressive military front against Vladimir Putin and has defended the Pentagon’s purview, may be uncomfortable with Hegseth on ideological grounds and have butted heads with him in the past. In public remarks in his role as a media personality, Hegseth has called McConnell “foolish,” referred to Collins and Murkowski as “part of the captured class,” and even needled the Republican chair of Armed Services, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, for wanting to increase the defense budget. But unless a big enough group of anti-Hegseth Republicans decide to hold hands and jump together, it’s unlikely that any one of them would stand as a lone pillar whose “no” vote would doom the nomination.
In the face of these dynamics, the Democrats, who are expected to vote against Hegseth, have their own tortured calculations to make. At least one Senate aide cautioned that Democrats on the committee would do well not to go after Hegseth simply as unqualified, given the enthusiasm of the American people for outsiders who could be brought in to clean up bloated and dysfunctional institutions, including the Pentagon. “There is a case for an outsider to fix a Pentagon that everyone understands can’t pass an audit,” the aide said. “I think most Americans are like, ‘How do we spend as much money as this?’” Democrats have defended institutions and norms against the Trumpian onslaught in a way that may have been counterproductive for a nation that is fed up with much about government and the elite class of powerful people who’ve been in charge of it for so long. “We cannot be the defenders of the status quo at the Pentagon,” said one Senate aide. “We can’t say, ‘You must give us the same person you’ve always given us.’ The problem is not that you don’t have this line on your résumé. The problem is that the thin lines you do have, you were bad at them.”…
“I just want to know if he can do the job,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, a committee member and combat veteran who lost both her legs when her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down over Iraq in 2004. “Maybe he has hidden talents that he’s not telling people about. Maybe he’s led an organization larger than a 40-man platoon, which is I believe the largest unit that he’s ever been in charge of. Maybe he has successfully led an organization with a budget of around $800 billion. I don’t know. From what I’ve seen, he has led two partisan political groups, veterans’ organizations, both of which said that he mismanaged their finances, but maybe he’s run a Boeing or a Northrop Grumman and I just don’t know about it. Because from what I can tell, the manager of your local Applebee’s has more experience managing a bigger budget and more personnel than Pete Hegseth. And I don’t want that person in charge of the DOD.”…
Some committee members are already going hard: Mazie Hirono has said that she hasn’t even tried to meet with Hegseth, since she only wants to hear from Trump’s nominees in public, on the record. The week before the hearing, Warren released a 33-page letter to Hegseth that concludes, in part, “I am deeply concerned by the many ways in which your behavior and rhetoric indicates that you are unfit to lead the Department of Defense. One Republican operative described you as ‘perhaps one of the least qualified picks for Secretary of Defense that we’ve seen.’” And as Democrats planned to gather for a strategy session on Monday night, committee aides said they would not be surprised if senators who are not known for their combativeness, including [Mark] Kelly and the newly elected Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who did three tours in Iraq, get tough on Hegseth…
(There’s a lot more material in Traister’s post, and yes I too wish I could share a gift link. Presumably it will be repeated elsewhere, after the fact.)
🚨 Tomorrow, the Senate will consider Pete Hegseth’s nomination. He’s totally unqualified, out of step with American values, and dangerous. His outdated views on women and far-right extremism have no place in 2025.https://t.co/mMPw7AuPeQ
— Rep. Gwen Moore (@RepGwenMoore) January 13, 2025
It's also cheating to consider any one of them in isolation, like henchmen taking turns fighting the protagonist. Any one of these is some degree of disqualifying, but any two of them should be beyond the pale
— Chatham Harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) January 11, 2025 at 1:16 PM
— VoteVets (@votevets) January 13, 2025
Wannabe crusader, accused sexual predator, and rampant misogynist Pete Hegseth is also a Confederate apologist.https://t.co/99cKuZXvCy
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) January 13, 2025
A complete FBI background check for Pete Hegseth is good, I guess, but there's far more than enough public information on him to reject his nomination for Defense Secretary.
He's an advocate for war criminals and a white nationalist, which alone is enough, and that's still leaving awful things out.— Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) January 12, 2025 at 10:48 AM
‘…“Damning is an understatement,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to additional information about Mr. Hegseth that he has been made aware of that, in his estimation, ought to appear in the F.B.I. report.’ www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/u…
— Shashank Joshi (@shashj.bsky.social) January 12, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Baud
Unfortunately, good point.
Hegseth is what burn it all down looks like.
sab
Ohio. At least we don’t have J D Vance. Will Moreno be a Trump flunky, or will he realize he is in for six years and thus has time to rise to whatever occassion?
Senator or catspaw. His choice.
sab
@Baud: His own mother doesn’t even like him.
Baud
@sab:
A true outsider.
Lapassionara
@Baud: I don’t think it’s a good point. A person can be an outsider AND be qualified, eg having led a large organization and managed a large budget. He is an outsider who has done neither.
TBone
@sab: haha it’s funny cuz it’s true but I wish it were funnier.
TBone
Robert Reich
@rbreich.bsky.social
TBone
This phrase almost made me vomit
Like the schlocky NFTs of his head drawn onto Sylvester Stallone as Rocky body.
TBone
Interesting choice of words to describe Elno – “Trump’s heavy.” I remember him skipping like a dipshit, not something a heavy is typically known for.
Baud
@Lapassionara:
The point was a political one. People have come to see unqualified people as people outside the system, so attacks on qualifications sound elitist to them.
TBone
I would try to pin Hegseth down on whether he would follow illegal orders regarding deployment of the military against civilians on U.S. soil.
sab
@Baud: Hoping my Republican not NJ (nut job, not New Jersey) governor sees it that way.
Ohio being deeply Republican, we actually have a deep bench that is not MAGA. Hope Governor picks from that bench. I also hope he keeps his lieutenant governor in state. Not MAGA.
Democrats don’t have much to offer. I love Amy Acton and I believe she saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Ohio, but I am not convinced that she could run a winning campaign, so I want a guy who could and is not MAGA.
Also too, in my forlorn state, women never win anything but Lft Gov ( coattails) or judges ( not important.)
TBone
This made me LOL which I needed this morning
youtu.be/6gRSy9Z0ZPI?si=qmcccYIISvro6wVb
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: “O-o-o-Oh..shit. yup we’re done.”
At least he stopped singing.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: you crack me up!
NotMax
Members of the Senate Armed Service Committee.
Republicans:
Roger Wicker (Chair)
Deb Fischer
Tom Cotton
Mike Rounds
Joni Ernst
Dan Sullivan
Kevin Cramer
Rick Scott
Tommy Tuberville
Markwayne Mullin
Ted Budd
Eric Schmitt
Jim Banks
Tim Sheehy
.
Democrats:
Jack Reed (Ranking Member)
Jeanne Shaheen
Kirsten E. Gillibrand
Richard Blumenthal
Mazie K. Hirono
Tim Kaine
Angus King
Elizabeth Warren
Gary C. Peters
Tammy Duckworth
Jacky Rosen
Mark Kelly
Elissa Slotkin
.
TBone
“Traitors to our country support honoring traitors to our country”
bsky.app/profile/mtsw.bsky.social/post/3lfn3dyfd3k2r
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Hegseth is what a failed state looks like.
JFC. Are you kidding me?
If it’s not a joke, it ought to be.
Sec. of Defence?
TBone
bsky.app/profile/phillewis.bsky.social/post/3lfolcgkiek24
The FTFNYT is obviously stating the obvious.
bsky.app/profile/ryanjreilly.com/post/3lfok4gttm22d
documentcloud.org/documents/25486132-report-of-special-counsel-smith-volume-1-january-2025/#document…
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Oh well if you are running for election, you’re untouchable. So sad.
What the ever living fuck.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law.”
LOL that’s a sick burn about Adderal.
rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-white-house-drugs-speed-xanax-1234979503/
Betty Cracker
In her conclusion, Traister says pols’ strategy on Hegseth (and other absurdly unqualified and/or monstrous Trump nominees) boils down to how how they interpret last year’s election results:
Harsh but she’s got a point.
To pick two committee members for analysis in that framing, so far, Sen. Warren seems to reject the Trump mandate narrative, and Sen. Fetterman appears to swallow it.
People are still finding their way in the wake of a traumatic loss, and state politics play a role too. So maybe current stances will change.
But this week, shit’s getting real, so maybe we’ll get true and actionable insight into how this shit-show will play out longer term. Interesting times, damn it!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
According to the list posted up thread, Fetterman isn’t on the committee.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
What all the pundits want to avoid doing a deep analysis of is why Biden was unpopular, given how successful he was from a liberal perspective. That’s where they’ll throw up their hands and say inflation, because people on our side really want to believe that the problem is messaging rather than the substance of what we stand for.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Fetterman not on that committee.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: the playbook follows that of Hitler & Mussolini. With rewrites from The Heritage Foundation.
Mood music by The Doors (of perception)
m.youtube.com/watch?v=GrjuyRQF1c0
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
JFC! Any Public Servant or Minister in this country that did that would be toast. Very burnt toast at that. What the fuck is going on with US federal government. It’s scandalous, and I don’t normally give a fuck for Defence issues.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker:
Well Warren is right. Trump lost a plurality but he had a narrow win in the popular vote. A bit over a quarter million in 7 States. That’s not what I call a landslide.
Dems should buck up and go after the areseholes like rats up a drain pipe.
Just fucking fight dammit!
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: we are so far down the rabbit hole, and they just keep flooding it with a firehose. We’re at war.
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Yes, you are. But you can win.
Step one, believe it.
Step two, no step back, ever. Just go after the fuckers, no holds barred. Show spine and fight. Those that want to fight will follow. Those that don’t?
Leave them behind. God will take care of his own.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: I watched this the other night for fortiitude (Janis voice: it’s all the same fucking day), where the girl wins in the end.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=UJVuyQgCLDQ
I’ll never quit.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: & @NotMax: My bad — Fetterman isn’t on the committee. I think he still illustrates Traister’s larger point by sucking up to the incoming right-wing kleptocracy.
@Baud: Fair point, but I’m not convinced we can draw conclusions on the popularity of the policies Biden championed and separate that from the man and the times. I think policy had very little to do with it. But maybe my own preferences are clouding my view.
p.a.
I have always seen in polls that word policy choices without partisan codewords that the general public prefers many Democratic policies over the R’s bullshit. It’s when the policies get tied to Dem politicians that the shit starts. Has this changed? If this is still the case the problem is not either/or. That’s not comforting, it’s worse than either “it’s messaging” or “it’s policy”. It may be the case of “I’m for the liberal policy until the puke funnel convinces me people of color benefit from it.” The only idea I have on that is thatyou won’t change these people’s minds, you have to find a means to keep them home on election day. I’ve never been a Sarandon “heighten the contradictions” person, but maybe we’re at the point of “you wanted it. Here it is. Enjoy the shit sandwich you ordered.” And see what happens from there.
ETA: Easy for me, white male cis already-on-SS & Medicare to say…
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Well that was awful. Simply disgusting. I don’t enjoy that kind of violence at all. It’s loathsome.
Soprano2
@Baud: I think the drunkenness and incompetence he’s demonstrated are disqualifying enough, plus his general attitude toward women. If I were Democrats that’s where I’d concentrate my fire.
Aussie Sheila
@p.a.:
Yes, quite right. Don’t cringe or quake. People that voted got what they voted for. So did those that didn’t vote. Stop making excuses and start making cases for why home grown authoritarianism in the US sucks.
It shouldn’t be hard, given US love of libertarianism.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: you’d have to see the entire movie to understand how she WINS. We’re gonna get our hair mussed in the process.
Aussie Sheila
@p.a.:
Oh and before I retire.
Susan Sarandon is the best example I can think of as a reason to stop listening, ever, to performers for political ‘takes’ let alone guidance. She’s an idiot.
JFC people. Get a grip.
Rusty
@Baud: This is the hard part, seriously considering that the populace rejects our substance. There was a survey before the election asking people what they really felt if they could keep it anonymous. The left and right are more common in rejecting institutions. We are watching culturally a collapse of attendance and belief in churches, clubs, organizations and even government. I have my own views why (an American hyper individualism that sees all organizations as ultimately limiting of “freedom”, i.e. we are very self-centered.), but we need to seriously consider these reasons.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I feel I have lived life that way, which is why I don’t just accept explanations that I want to be true.
@p.a.:
It’s easy for everyone to say because we’re out of power.
Betty
@Baud: Not just unqualified, unfit. That should be the language they use. He is unfit in at least three ways: drinking problem, history of mistreating women (including at least one of his wives according to his mother) and mismanaging funds.
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Sure you will. But I don’t approve of male violence against women as a synecdoche for fighting back. It never works in real life. Ever.
What wins is men and women having the self respect and confidence to never, ever back down and acquiesce. Never, ever.
Not now, not ever, and especially not to such a disgraceful bunch of drunken, drug addled fascist losers.
Just. Fucking. Fight.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: I went to prison for punching a cop just before BLM exploded. I don’t need the explanation. About a movie you haven’t seen, especially.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: My latest theory with Fetterman isn’t so much about Trump’s margin of victory, but about the loss by Bob Casey. Casey should have been a shoo-in, an absolutely nice guy who suffered an onslaught from the money boys to get their hedge fund manager in the Senate. I think that spooked him.
eclare
Jimmy Kimmel on his first night back
variety.com/2025/tv/news/jimmy-kimmel-live-la-fires-monologue-1236273592/
Baud
@Rusty:
Well, I would prefer libertarianism to the corrupt religious fascism we’re going to get. But libertarian is largely a marketing ploy so that was never really an option.
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
I don’t care to see the movie actually. The cut you linked was enough. Movies of the forties, fifties and sixties that make that kind of violence instructive in any way, leave me cold.
YMMV.
TBone
@eclare: wow, sorry I missed that so thanks for posting. Blast from the past: I just used an old recipe by Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken to make delicious banana bread the other day.
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Oh, and I have been to prison briefly as well as a young person demonstrating. But I have never had the privilege of being able to punch a cop and get out without having my body pummelled. Good luck to you for being a man I guess.
gene108
Only liberals really question how much we spend on the military. For the rest of America, they either don’t care or want to spend more.
Geminid
Lebanon’s Parliament elected Joseph Aoun President last Friday, filling a post that had been vacant since October of 2022. Yesterday they nominated Aoun’s choice for Prime Minister. From Al Arabiya:
Mr. Salam won 84 out of 128 votes, with the main opposition coming from MP’s from Hezbollah and the allied Amal Movement. I guess he’ll be elected for real once he’s chosen the various ministers. That will involve some bargsining but shouldn’t take too long.
Born in 1953, Salam served as Lebanon’s Ambassador to the UN from 2007-2017 before joining the ICJ in 2018.
The ceasefire agreement signed November 27 by Israel, Hezbollah and the Lebanese government basically tracks the terms of Resolution 2601.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: pummelling happened.
Women serve in the armed forces too. Like this post is about, partially.
Baud
@gene108:
Musk has made some mouth noises about it, but no one expects he’ll do anything serious except propose that we abandon our allies.
MagdaInBlack
When I agree with Greg Kelly from Newsmax, writing for Newsweek…..i understand why its so cold out.
newsweek.com/pete-hegseth-succumbed-blackmail-he-cant-confirmed-dod-opinion-2013704
Apologies if I missed where someone else posted that.
Aussie Sheila
@gene108:
That is the most disgraceful excuse for allowing a drug addled, drunken, sexual assaulting, fascist loser into a position like that I’ve ever heard.
Are these people serious?
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: see #11
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
Women serving in the armed forces are armed. As they should be. I’m not afraid of men, all things being equal. But they so rarely are.
I’ve been hit by a man once.
He was very sorry afterwards. I ensured he would be, both physically and socially. I’m very strong for my size and weight.
But it’s no way for men or women to behave or live.
hells littlest angel
A few shots to steady his nerves before the hearing and Pete will be jush fine.
TBone
@Aussie Sheila: yet you keep telling us to fight.
TBone
@hells littlest angel: hahahahahahaha
Rusty
@Baud: I prefer neither. I believe in a community of responsibility to each other and connection. Even the left I know I am in the minority, and as a culture we are moving even further from those ideals. For example, the erosion on the left of support for the most basic of community services, public schools.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: …..fight!
..no, not like that.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: 🎯
In your honor music
m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sOSr7n_8YU
p.a.
Where is this evident? (Not criticizing, really asking.)
prostratedragon
@Aussie Sheila: I know women whose lives are like Billie Dawn’s. One of their biggest battles is against isolation, the feeling that they can’t even talk to someone to check their perceptions. Seeing it in a movie can be like validation to someone in that predicament, and also instructive to others. Consider the case of Martha Mitchell.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: It’s super important to question everyone’s priors — including and maybe even especially our own. That said, the data we have so far doesn’t seem to indicate voters rejected the Biden admin’s policies so much as they either didn’t know about them or had perceptions distorted by the media. (Border policy might be an exception. I don’t know.)
TBone
@prostratedragon: good eye!
Rusty
@p.a.: I don’t have good survey data to point to, but anecdotally I am surprised by the number of liberals that are fine with school vouchers, and our leaders that have been promoters of charter schools and other programs that take money from our public schools.
Aussie Sheila
@TBone:
If you think the deep seated democratic decay plaguing your polity can be dealt with by the left engaging in random physical violence, like ‘punching a cop’ you are addled, and deserve to lose.
Physical resistance may be necessary. But it has to be organised, focussed, collective and above all, mindfully political. Punching random cops doesn’t cut it I’m afraid,
Kay
The only upside to a loss, IMO, is it’s freeing. The Senators should oppose Hegseth on what they genuinely believe is disqualifying, regardless of what media and Republicans currently think is fashionable. So women’s rights are currently not popular – who gives a shit? If that’s your issue oppose him on that anyway. He celebrates and encourages war crimes. Is the Senator opposed to war crimes? That’s what’s disqualifying then.
Tell the truth. The Party already lost. They’re now free to authentically advocate on what they really believe.
Princess
Rebecca Traister, jeez. She’s the one who thought Joe Biden was a sexual harasser because Tara Reade said so, and said he should step down in April 2020. Has she even apologized for that?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m pretty confident that a lot of what Biden did would have been popular if a Republican did them. In that sense, I agree that our brand is less popular than our policies. But a lot of that may be because our brand gets defined by our unpopular policies. Immigration, perhaps. And civil rights, perhaps more than we like to acknowledge.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, I hope so.
gene108
@Betty:
If Casey was too liberal for PA, in 2024, than what chance does any Democrat have in the state?
Casey was a good Senator for his state. Add in the losses of Brown and Tester and the loss of support for Democrats is an issue the party has to deal with.
@Baud:
I think outside of political junkies, most voters do not care about policy. If they did, Democrats would always win.
Cultural markers and ideology are the driving force in our politics right now.
Messaging can’t overcome this. Policy can’t overcome this. People vote or don’t vote based on some gut feeling of who they think represents “people like them”, ie their tribe.
Baud
@gene108:
The party can only control policies and messaging. Culture depends on society, which is all of us.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
Exactly. If any Democratic Senator doesn’t oppose that snivelling drug addled drunken sexual assaulter they should be primaried.
And yes, a loss does free a Party. Just oppose. Up hill and down dale. Every drunken, dumb fascist nominee.
Just Say No.
Oh, and Vengeance in victory, Malice in defeat. Learn it.
Kay
@Princess:
Her piece is so, so cynical. She’s almost gleeful at what a piece of shit this guy is and how no one, no one dare stop him.
Political media are weirdly worshipful towards dictator- like male leaders, whether the reporter is male or female. It makes me uncomfortable. I think they hire for it.
JoyceH
What gets me about these nominees is their lack of self-awareness. If a president had ever approached me to say, “Joyce, I want to nominate you to be my Secretary of Defense”, I would have replied, “What, are you HIGH? No way am I qualified to be SECDEF.” And yet I am still more qualified that Pete Hegseth.
Baud
@Kay:
Media and Republicans are on the same cultural page when it comes to trolling Democrats.
Baud
@JoyceH:
Natural consequence of anti-DEI culture.
eclare
@TBone:
Wow.
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
I’m saying they’re free to drop the careful positioning.
Republicans and media have gleefully labeled them all losers and announced that white men will be winning every battle. If they aren’t authentic and principled now, when they have very little to lose, they will never be.
I still support women’s rights and so do tens of millions of other people. I dont care if media think that’s unfashionable – I actually meant it. I’m still opposed to war crimes – was in 2005, still am. I dont care if “Americans”, meaning media and Trump voters, now embrace war crimes. Doesn’t matter to me at all.
Stop worrying about shitty, cynical political media and GOP voters and dance with the girl who brung you.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
Well apart from the political principle which should be very high on any leftist’s list, which is physical violence against women is simply disqualifying, in every other respect that man Hegseth is an absolute fucking disgrace. He wouldn’t score a job here managing a McDonalds. Let alone running the Army. JFC!
Any Dem Senator that votes for him should be carefully considered for a primary. What a disgrace.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: The first part of your comment (above the quote) seems to contradict the second. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but it sounds like you’re saying Casey got ousted because he was “too liberal” but then you say policy didn’t matter in part two. Can you clarify?
Also, I’m not a PA voter, but I thought Casey had a more centrist than liberal rep? And he was a 2nd generation pol, so if there was an anti-incumbent wave, it makes a sort of sense that he’d be a target.
Baud
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think he’s saying even a centrist was too liberal for PA.
I think the bigger lesson in Casey’s loss, and Brown and Tester’s, is that voters don’t hate rich people as much as we’d like them to.
Aussie Sheila
@gene108:
Yes,they do. Political ‘affect’ Is a big thing in politics. Think about how Dem Party ‘affect’ does or doesn’t work in different environments, and try to fix it.
Kay
Can I just say the women in media who are ass kissing these misogynists and celebrating the return to the 1950s (except for tax rates!) just disgust me?
How do they think this is going to go for them? They understand these men want them OUT of a job, right? Right wing men want them GONE, home, invisible and powerless. There isn’t going to be any exemption for political reporters.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
Redundant … deleted.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh good. Sad though. Its like a eulogy for the justice system. The prosecution that never was.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
Well you say that now! Seriously, who cares what addle brained idiots paid lots of money in media think? How many votes do they have? A hundred ? In Blue states mainly.
Fuck’em. You don’t need their votes or their stupid voices. Just go to the media outlets that legacy media are bleeding listeners and viewers to. And it isn’t wapo, nyt, msnbc, cnn or any of the rest of the losers. Let alone niche ‘progressive’ mags. They are a political waste of time.
Baud
@Kay:
My guess is that they think the same thing everyone else things: Liberal Democrats I’ll save them if the Republicans go too far.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think Clinton’s loss in 2016, followed by Dem primary voter rejection of every female candidate in 2020, unhinged Traister a bit. (I sympathize with that feeling to a certain extent, but it clouded her judgement, IMO.)
I wouldn’t include her in the media herd that worships “strongman” assholes, but I think she projects that view onto the electorate. Again, not totally without reason, but it’s a deeply cynical assumption.
TBone
Little known but laudable activity from Jan. 10
news2share.com/activists-dressed-as-contractors-hang-banner-demanding-equal-rights-amendment-at-nati…
Infiltration at its finest.
LOL:
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
The ads attacking Casey were anti-transgender ads, and others depicting him as too liberal on social issues.
Casey is very much a centrist and not at all liberal. He’s been in PA politics forever. If Casey can be smeared effectively, I think it raises real doubt in the minds of some PA Democrats. Some of the Senate losses, like Casey, are unnerving.
I don’t think PA is drifting right, like Ohio or Florida have. I don’t think the greater Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas have become more conservative.
I think there are a lot of unanswered questions about what went wrong for us last year at presidential, state, and local levels, especially with regards to turnout.
gene108
@gene108:
To clarify, Casey is a very well known figure in PA politics. If he can be smeared effectively, I can see it being unnerving for Fetterman.
Glory b
@Baud: Thank you. I feel like this has become the problem. America has spent all but about 10 or 15 years of its history without active pushback against equal rights.
U of C Regents v Bakke, the first win against the expansive view of civil rights was decided in 1978. The right has been fighting Roe about the same amount of time. They’ve essentially won both, as well as other issues along the way.
The young people that we chase after don’t seem to mind that the Republican party is represented by old white men. The ones that seem inclined our way are ready to bolt if they only get 99.5 % of what they want.
Biden won the fight for $15 without an actual fight, the left will never forgive him for that. People said INFRASTRUCTURE! He did more than any president in this era, they ho humed. Anyone paying a scintilla of attention knew that we did better economically than any other country (except, arguably, Switzerland).
The Economist magazine exposed how empty the “blue collar/middle class suffering” arguments were.
Democrats did everything the pundits said should be done, mostly successfully, and got nothing. Nina Turner, AOC’s bestie, compared voting for Biden to eating a bowl of sh** without any pushback from her.
There is no one trick that will fix this. The majority (albeit small) of voters just aren’t buying what we’re selling.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The truth is I’m disgusted at how weak and coddled we are. With the exception of GENUINELY poor people, what we were asked to “endure” with covid and then the economic recovery from covid, was just not that big a deal. Mortgage rates at 6 or 7 are not, in fact, like fleeing the Dust Bowl. Slightly higher food prices does not mean one is actually going hungry.
Yet that’s all it took for half the voters in this country to say “sure! Hand it over to the authoritarian criminals!” We’re just SO fucking weak. I no longer respect people in this country. I think they’re coddled whiners.
Soprano2
Lots of white people see Democrats as the party that promotes help for everyone except them, and tells them that they’re bad because they’re white. This is the “brand” problem we’re fighting. I’m not sure what else can be concluded from the fact that our proposed policies are more popular than our politicians are.
Aussie Sheila
@gene108:
Maybe he’s too old and boring? I’m suspicious of the ‘it was the trans ads’ explanations for Dem loss. It doesn’t ring true to me. No one even knows what it means, and for those who do, they mostly don’t give a stuff. I think younger and charismatic beats older and boring, Every, Single, Time.
It’s a pity, because sometimes the older person is far better. But it’s a lesson in turning over electeds frequently. They need to be young enough to know what the fuck is going on in the electorate. Particularly in an electorate that has to be dragged to the polls every four years.
Soprano2
@JoyceH: The average white guy thinks he’s more qualified for anything than a highly qualified woman or non-white guy. Look at how they think they can coach sports better than the coaches who are hired for the job.
tobie
@gene108: I spent untold hours on the phone with Pennsylvania voters and was taken aback by the malaise and cynicism. The people I spoke to just didn’t seem to think govt made any difference in their lives. I’d try to nudge them by pointing to things like the quick repair of the collapsed portion of I95 but it made no difference. Republican obstruction worked — it made people weary of the process and the idea of a strongman who will crush his opponents desirable.
Geminid
@gene108: Bob Casey’s opponent David McCormick had a distinct advantage; that is, he had no record in elective politics. McCormick was very similar in that respect to Glenn Youngkin, another slick talking hedge fund manager. As Jeff McNeilly of tbe Richmond Times-Dispatch said of Youngkin, he started out with a blank canvas that he could paint in to his best advantage.
Because of this, Youngkin was able be all things to all people, and that’s a lot of how he could beat Terry McAuliffe in a state Joe Biden won by 10 points the year before.
Younkin was also able to bridge the divide between the two wings of Virginia’s Republican party: the Chamber of Commerce/ Country Club establishment and an alliance of Bible-thumpers and Tea-Party cranks. Those wings had been feuding for a decade, but Youngkin had them singing Kumbaya in 2021. It helped that Youngkin and his hedge fund buddies could hand out ample campaign donations to one and all.
I read that Pennsylvania Republicans had a lot of intra-party stress in 2022, over their radical candidate for Governor. I’m guessing McCormick followed Youngkin’s playbook and got the Republicans pulling in the same direction. Then he just had to pick off enough Independents, and that’s where his lack of a political record would have come in handy.
Baud
@tobie:
So did constant negativity on our own side IMHO. But I think most people don’t share my view of the harm it causes in the aggregate.
Soprano2
This was my mother in a nutshell. She thought there would be fewer out of wedlock pregnancies if we’d bring back shaming of those women. She thought lots of women were too dumb to vote. I don’t know how she squared that with having a wildly successful daughter who owned a thriving environmental remediation business and a daughter who works for city government, but somehow she did. They disgust me too, because they’re cheering for their own oppression. They want to be treated like children again.
Kay
Even our response to catastrophes – “why can’t the mayor FIX the fires?”
Because its a hurricane that is also ON FIRE? Its like we think we are entitled to nothing bad ever happening, to no consequences, ever, for our actions.
TBone
@Baud: I share that view.
Me and my glow in the dark inflatable Gritty standing on my front lawn to troll the rumpy neighbors. “Wow, we didn’t know you are into hockey” was an LOL dead giveaway because they know Gritty is an Antifa mascot.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
A lot less coddled than any other advanced liberal democracy in fact. More’s the pity for them.
You are saddled with a FPTP voting system and voluntary voting in an environment where voting for many people is far harder than it should be in a democracy, and a bunch of States that are economically declining with inbuilt gerrymanders.
Never blame the electorate. It’s foolish and self defeating. Fix it, and move on.
Baud
@Kay:
They did the same thing with Obama and the oil leak in the Gulf. I’m sure there are other examples.
Soprano2
@Kay: You can tell the people who lived through the ’70’s and early ’80’s from the ones who didn’t, can’t you? Those were genuinely bad times. People who are crying now would be prostrate under those conditions.
Baud
@TBone:
It’s the main reason I ended up here in 2010 after spending the Bush years at dailykos.
I’m no longer confident that libs will grow out of it.
Baud
@Soprano2:
There’s a lot of doomerism propaganda on social media. I’m sure some of it is oligarch sponsored.
TBone
@Baud: I project confidence to model it for others, which works, sometimes…
tobie
@Baud: I think you’re right. The constant attacks on Dems from within the Dem coalition hurt, especially among young people. Cynicism is an easy posture to adopt. The cynic always claims to be wiser than the deluded masses. It’s also a losing strategy in electoral politics.
Glory b
@p.a.: It’s that liberal policies are popular until it becomes clear that black people benefit from them.
There are studies that have shown this. Lee Atwater’s n word speech shows Republicans are aware of it.
And once black elected officials became the face of the party, it became baked in.
A book I’ve recommended on here often, “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland” by Jonathan Metzl, gives the numbers.
Baud
@tobie:
For me, it’s the constant attacks (some valid, others are just naked cynicism). coupled with the lack of balance with good things happens and good fights are undertaken.
ETA: Anne Laurie can’t do it all.
Kay
@Baud:
Democrats have been criticizing Democrats my entire time in the party. After the 2000 loss and the 2004 loss liberals developed an entire online ecosystem that was often critical of Democrats. We went on to win big in 2006, 2008 and 2012. I think this take, that dissent in the Party causes losses, is ahistorical.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Holy shit, where’d you pull that one from? I remember (now, at least; I hadn’t thought about it in at least 50 years!) the innocuous and quite forgettable top 40 version that some other group did. Never knew the Doors did a cover of it.
Kay
@tobie:
Trump is ALL cynicism. His pitch is 100% that everyone is corrupt and stupid except him. He won twice with it.
Baud
@Kay:
I guess we diagree. I think things have changed since then, both in the coalition and in the influence of social media.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: the algorithm is inhabited by my mother’s ghost. Infiltrated.
Another treat:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=s_MMBPkSccs
Baud
@Kay:
When you’re an open bigot, you gain credibility with at least 45% of the population for “speaking the truth.” We don’t have a similar hook.
Kay
@Baud:
Bill Clinton came to.power and dominated the Party for decades criticizing Democrats, but from the Right. But for some reason criticism from the Right is acceptable and criticism from the Left is not.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m not going entertain claims of bias. If you don’t think negativity has an adverse effect on our electoral chances, then we can disagree. I can’t prove what I feel, so I’m not going to argue over it.
Kay
@Baud:
Bill Clinton’s entire pitch was he was a new kind of Democrat. He rose to power attacking and marginalizing the Left side of the Party and dominated for decades on that.
Aussie Sheila
@Soprano2:
Actually, I lived through both those decades. I can say with certainty that younger people have it far harder than we did forty years ago. They are earning comparatively less, note I wrote ‘comparatively’, and their chances of buying a decent apartment or house in urban centres where the good jobs are, are much diminished.
Young people have never had it so bad in fact. Productivity gains in the last 35 years have been swallowed up by shareholders, not wage and salary earners, here, in the US and the UK.
The last four decades have seen a return to pre WW2 levels of inequality and want. People compare their lives with what they see around them, not what their parents and grandparents moan about their own young lives.
Baud
@Kay:
The other thing Bill Clinton did was win. If you want to convince me that a 35 year old precedent is relevant today, show me some winners.
rusty
@Baud: I agree with this, we seem unwilling to celebrate the wins and the good. AL is a gift on this, but I am often dismayed how a thread devoted to something positive is bombarded with “but what about this”, or “let me tell you how they are doing it wrong” to drag the conversation back into the muck. There is a streak of reflexive contrarianism that seems to derail recognizing the good.
tobie
@Kay: oh, I agree that Trump won with cynicism. My comment was a response to Baud about the cynicism I encountered among PA voters. They were ostensibly Dem voters who had been convinced that all politicians are corrupt and govt makes no difference in people’s lives. Trump spreads cynicism but so do politicians like Bernie Sanders.
Baud
@tobie:
You know who’s not cynical about Trump? The half of the country that supports him.
Kay
I backed Bill Clinton, btw. I was disgusted with him by the end because he’s gross with women and has no self discipline, but I backed him and defended him, although I and everyone else knew he built his career on criticizing the Left side of the Party, often unfairly or untruthfully – attacking my side of the Party.
I’m just wondering why centrists never give the Left side of the Party that.
Geminid
@gene108: I would not say Bob Casey is very much a “Centrist,” like I would Sens. Manchin and Sinema as very much Centrist.
I would describe Casey as very much “Moderate,” and I think there is an important difference here. Casey was by no means an outlier like Sinema and Manchin, but rather fit into the same moderately-Liberal or liberally-Moderate camp that most Democratic members of the Senate and the House fall in.*
We’re all entitled to our own particular political taxonomy, but “Centrist” is an especially invidious term and one that I think should not be applied indiscriminately, and in this case to Senator Casey.
* I think that most Democratic voters also fall into this camp, but this is a different question that is somewhat abstract and subjective. We’ll see some concrete data on it next year, in Democratic primaries including for Congress.
tobie
@Baud: Yes, they’re true believers. Two women in Florida just told me, “Trump is going to take care of all of us.” They’re convinced big daddy won.
TBone
I chose a face from the ancient gallery, and walked on down the hall…
m.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ-OahDUa4s
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Thirty five year old precedents are useless. Paul Keating was our PM thirty five years ago. He was a banger. Check him on yt in Parliament. But he and his predecessor ushered in the softer, gentler Australian version of the neo liberalism that Clinton did so much to cement in the US. Clinton was to Reagan as Eisenhower was to FDR.
We are a quarter of a century past the 20th century.
Nothing stays the same. Especially people and the culture they create in their particular circumstances.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: My problem isn’t with the left criticizing Democrats, it’s with the left actively telling people to vote against them and make them lose general elections, with accelerationist theories about how losing would be better in the long run. Often, the leftists who do this suddenly adopt lunatic right-wing positions later and everyone is surprised.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Wrong. It’s 49.9% of the people that actually voted. Which amounts to roughly 60% of the electorate, and less than half of those that did vote. That’s your problem. It’s turnout.
tobie
Relentless negativity about the party youre ostensibly aligned with depresses turn-out. And the relentlessness of the criticism of a Dem Pres who made supporting workers and jumpstarting US manufacturing his priorities was a sight to behold.
Aussie Sheila
@Matt McIrvin:
Anyone telling people not to vote, or not to vote for the only viable left of centre political party in the US should be shot into the sun. In any event they aren’t any kind of ‘left’ I recognise, and I’m very left, even by Oz standards.
DougL
@tobie: I believe the bernie movement did so much damage with the Left but more importantly with the youth. He had simple answers for very complex problems and painted every Dem as a corporate sellout. That message has stuck.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Betty Cracker: I watched Casey at a PA rally with Obama and he had, I don’t know how else to put it, but a ‘loser stink’ to him. I really don’t know much about Casey’s background beyond he was a solid Dem and his dad was a pro-life well respected PA gov. It makes me wonder if he had been coasting on the Casey name in his previous elections or if it was an anti-incumbent wave loss.
eclare
Beautiful photo.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
Centrists remain satisfied with the way things are because they tend to be older and wealthier by and large. I take no notice of them here, except to ensure that I vote in any preselection against anyone they support. However they are useful in some electorates. It’s important however that they don’t get to define the Party ‘affect’ with the base.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: Do you have numbers on this?
Last month’s Economist magazine says the conventional wisdom on this is wrong, that the wage/income gap has been decreasing under Biden.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: The Democrats have not won a majority of the white vote since 1968.
Also the year of the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Coincidence? Not the fault of the electorate? What?
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I feel like a centrist shitlib in many online left/liberal fora, and like an extreme-leftist bomb-throwing crazy man when talking to fellow Democrats in real life. I’m not sure what “centrist” means any more.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: Thanks for clarifying. If Fetterman is spooked, I hope he snaps out of it soon. It was one thing when he announced he was meeting with Hegseth. He argued that’s his job, and I can buy that. But some of the moves he’s made since then seem straight-up cowardly to me. Or else revelatory of his true character. I’m not sure which is worse.
TBone
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: *shakes head, sadly…loser stink? He was beloved by those of us in the know
pghcitypaper.com/news/sen-bob-casey-drank-an-ipa-at-11-am-to-celebrate-pa-certifying-election-for-jo…
mapanghimagsik
I have to admit, that taking the Jack Smith Report vol 1 s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25486132/report-of-special-counsel-smith-volume-1-january-2025.pdf and giving it to Google Notes LLM really did help provide a pretty decent summary:
Yes, the report states that Donald J. Trump engaged in a criminal effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to retain power. The report details several ways in which Mr. Trump allegedly attempted to interfere with the election:
Pretty cool when I’m drowning in documents!
Matt McIrvin
@DougL: See, I think Bernie only had that effect because he was making legitimate criticisms on the merits: modern American hypercapitalism really is fucking people over to a degree that the Democratic Party has been slow to adapt to, because political campaigns need a lot of money and media access and because some are still stuck in the 1990s paradigm of winning elections by adopting supply-siderism lite. Shutting up on that means no progress ever happens.
The worst thing he did was to hire and support some of the accelerationist lunatics I was talking about earlier.
Another Scott
Traister’s piece at NYMag says “free for limited time” for me.
Archive.IS version.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Anyway
Plus his previous win was in a mid-term wave election where Ds over-performed across the board. Using that margin as a predictor isn’t useful. As a Phillies watcher Casey had anti-McCormick ads for almost a year – he spent a lot painting McCormick as a anti-abortion-rights carpetbagger who shipped jobs to China. Wasn’t enough to sink him, sadly.
Glory b
@Matt McIrvin: AND hired Paul Manfort’s partner as his campaign manager.
Coincidence?
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
‘Decreasing under Biden’ means squat. I don’t mean that he didn’t do anything. He did. His domestic policy was the best US domestic policy in my political lifetime.
But merely ‘narrowing’ wage inequality in circumstances where wage and salary earners are enduring high inflation won’t cut it. And before you jump in, I am perfectly aware that inflation was caused by a combination of supply side glitches post Covid plus some corporate price gouging that hid behind the inflation, plus high interest rates imposed by the Reserve to discourage what I don’t know. If we lose the federal election this year, it will be because of our Reserve Bank.
Handing interest rates, ie macro money supply, to unelected technocrats was one of the worst ideas to come out of the neoliberal counter revolution.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: So, the best economic policies in a lifetime, raising wages for low income Americans more than any others, marching with unions, protecting their pensions, creating jobs, forgiving student loans, lowering the prices of drugs, etc,etc,etc, still not enough.
The states he did the most for voted for Trump in the highest numbers.
But again, Dems haven’t won the white vote since 1968.
Coincidence?
Another Scott
@Glory b: +1
I think a big lesson from this election, and several elections going back to 2008 and the Teabaggers, (and even earlier), is that relentless messaging on the Right has a real impact on the body politic. The Right doesn’t always win, but they set the baseline – if we let them.
It’s in the press’s interest to push this RWNJ stuff with their false balance, people are talking, just asking questions, it’s not our job to explain Democratic positions, reality is boring, people don’t trust the press so we have to stand back and let the monsters take over, stuff. It gets them clicks and viewers and engagement.
Lucy Worsley has a show on the rise of “true crime” media with Jack the Ripper in London. It’s the same stuff now…
One of the promises of the Internet was “something something is treated as damage and routes around it.” We can route around the nonsense. Sensible politicians can return to Barney Frank’s “arguing with a kitchen table” quips. Don’t take the bait. Don’t feed their hunger for memes. One word answers, then immediately say what our position is or say “next question”.
Of course this stuff isn’t easy. But the path is clear.
My $0.02.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Aussie Sheila: No, if you win, you are. That’s why they needed to be completed before the election, and the Supreme Court made sure they wouldn’t be. Sigh.
Eolirin
@mapanghimagsik: If they can fix the hallucination issue, it’ll be fairly powerful. That you need to read the whole document anyway if it’s important because it may add or change details is a huge problem.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
I don’t know what your point is about ‘coincidence’. Incumbents have been losing everywhere post Covid. Again, Biden’s domestic policy was very good. But it wasn’t well explained by him, and in any case, the best policy imo, the child tax credit, was over half way through his term. Again, I understand it was the GOP that sunk it, but maybe, just maybe, it might be an idea to explain that to people? I’m a big fan of dollars in the pocket, no messing about, no means test, just money. In your bank account. Every month.
I also think it was a mistake to allow the Senate Parliamentarian to fob off Dem Senators who wanted to raise the minimum wage.
That was a fight they should have had. Fuck the Parliamentarian. No one elected her. The GOP never worries about such niceties. Why do the Dems?
I understand the importance of infrastructure investment. But that’s long term, and no one gives a stuff unless they get the contract or the job. It needs to be done of course, but don’t expect gratitude.
Another Scott
@Eolirin: There was a paper a year or so ago that “proved” that it’s impossible to have a hallucination-free LLM.
I saw something on Phys.org yesterday that was a paper on how increased reliance on LLMs reduced the proficiency in actual human problem solving.
I’m not surprised (but as always, it’s just one paper).
I’m sure there will be good, practical uses for these things in some contexts, eventually. But we’re not there yet, and we’re burning up the planet trying to get there.
:-/
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Anyway
Keep seeing this over and over again. How is this to be reversed? Messaging is the only thing I can think of and that seems to get brushed off with AAs heard the message. Srsly what is the way out of this?
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@TBone: there were legitimate polls saying that Casey was in trouble. That was one of the reasons I noticed the way Casey acted during the rally. He wasn’t very enthusiastic. Maybe that’s his personality. I don’t know.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: The Internet treats evidence and reasoned argument as damage and routes around it.
Aussie Sheila
@Anyway:
So what? Obama won big in 2008, and there are proportionately less white people now in the US electorate than there was sixteen years ago. I’m sorry. Blaming racism for the drop off in the Dem turnout in 2024 just doesn’t cut it.
I understand there are plenty of racists in the electorate. There are a lot less now than there was thirty years ago. Racism isn’t why Dems lose. Party ‘affect’ is. That can be fixed. Just stop with old white guys.
Harris/Walz ran a very good campaign. Just as well. Because if she hadn’t been the nominee you would have suffered a far bigger loss.
Matt McIrvin
@Anyway:
Eliminate whiteness. (Which is not the same as eliminating white people.)
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: The coincidence is losing the white vote since 1968.
There’s a Reconstruction era political cartoon I’ve mentioned here before. A white man is being swept away to his death by a raging river. A black man on shore reaches out to save him. The white man says he’d rather die than work with a black man to save his own life.
White Republicans in red states voted for officials who promised to reject the ACA (Obamacare!) medicare expansion, even though it meant their own rural hospitals and healthcare providers would close.
AGAIN, the book “Dying of Whiteness” shows that these people know the result of their votes, but maintaining white supremacy is more important than their own economic benefit. They aren’t voting against their best interests, too many of us fail to realize what their best interests are.
DougL
@Matt McIrvin: your comment at 146 captured perfectly how I feel in my social circles. I’m the crazy leftist to my normie friends and a neoliberal centrist to my leftish friends. Stuck in the middle with you I guess.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
I understand the argument perfectly well. I disagree with it as a reason for Democratic Party electorate losses in 2024. And in fact to the extent that Democrats internalise this argument, they are useless politically. It is both self defeating and of limited value politically.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: The “hallucination issue” is how it works. Any legit applications have to be ones that accept that–that what it does is detect high-level patterns in the input data and concoct new instances of those patterns. If you’re relying on the system to give you any factual or practical output, you have to vet it so carefully that it might have been less work not to use it in the first place.
What it’s good for is getting past the blank screen on repetitive jobs where the tedium of starting out is most of the problem. The kind of thing where you might have used a custom-tailored text or code template if you had one. But the temptation to just roll with whatever it spits out is a trap.
Kay
@tobie:
Like it did after the Clinton-Obama primary? You saw that depressed turnout in ’08, right? Due to all the negativity and divisiveness?
This theory has not a shred of evidence to support it – in fact, the recent history of the Democratic Party refutes it. Its settled into hardened “truth” that the Left lost it for Clinton in 2016 – this is where this comes from, but that that is just reflexively punching Left. Maybe the Right and Center abandoned Clinton for the further Right Trump. I can look at the upper Midwest and easi!y argue that – we lost Right leaning white men to Trump in 2016. That’s as valid as blaming the Left.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: While LLMs are the gas guzzler of computation and I do not like their inefficiency, I do think a lot of the rhetoric around that is exaggerated–you can use ChatGPT all day and it’s not going to come close to the waste that probably exists in your HVAC system. (John Quiggin has been talking about that on Mastodon.)
Aussie Sheila
@Eolirin:
Yes, I understand. Simply terrible all round. The USSC needs to be shot into the sun. As does Garland. In any case, he’s gone now, and they are still there. I wouldn’t vote to select any Dem candidate for President that doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for Supreme Court reform. If you don’t do it as soon as you have a chance, winning elections will mean squat going forward.
DougL
@Matt McIrvin: Oh I agree with his critique. The problem is he sold political snake oil as the solution. This stuff is hard and complicated in a big diverse country. He made too many believe that solutions were easy and is was just the perfidy (his disdain for Dems comes thru loud and clear … he rarely focuses on gop in what I see/read) of the corporate sellout Dems that prevents us from achieving the glorious worker’s paradise. In my old age I’ve come to instantly distrust leaders with simple solutions. And ideologues who are ready to ignore human nature and political reality in asserting that they have “the answer.” YMMV.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: Obama was a black swan event.
After his first election, Democrats were thoroughly trounced in the next election, which was also the year for redistricting, during which Republicans, now with significant majorities, gerrymandered themselves into what looks like a permanent majority. Democrats faltered with young voters,who were upset that he couldn’t deliver everything they wanted in a year and a half, decided to stay home.
After his election, the Republicans began their laser focused efforts on the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, which served to reduce black voter turnout, the gerrymandering which has given them what appears to be a permanent majority.
White supremacy/ adjacency is who we are, where we have always been or swiftly returned to.
Kay
Maybe Sinema and Manchin depressed turn out by blocking everything, including voting rights legislation. That was an absolute shitshow – they made Biden look weak every day for months. Interesting how no one ever floats this theory, how the Reasonable Centrists kill any enthusiasm and momentum.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: The president doesn’t get to reform the Supreme Court. Separation of powers.
This is why I smelled a rat (or maybe young people who didn’t know as much as they thought), when Bernie supportes declared that the courts WERE NOT a reason to vote for Clinton.
Anyone who knows the system knows that the most important thing presidents do is appoint judges and justices.
Presidents don’t and can’t direct their actions
And this is why lots of us said elections won’t mean squat anymore after so many young people decided to stay at home rather than vote for Clinton.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
Okay. The Dems will never win again because ‘white people’ or something. Just explain to me the increase in turnout for trump of low info voters, and the wild drop off of traditional Dems in the same election. You lost by about a quarter of a million votes across seven states. It was a terrible loss because of who won. But it’s not the worse political loss suffered by the Democratic Party in my lifetime. By a long shot.
Matt McIrvin
@DougL: I felt it particularly during COVID, with all the sturm und drang about how much social isolation was enough. I felt like a virus-obsessed paranoid killjoy when talking to my real-life friends and family (to the point that it caused some serious strain in relationships), but like an irresponsible MAGA plague rat when talking to some online leftists, who were pushing for a permanent reorganization of society to minimize physical presence, something like Asimov’s “The Naked Sun.”
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: Gee, how old are you?
Eolirin
@Another Scott: You don’t need the LLM to be hallucination free, you just need the application to be hallucination free. The solution to that won’t be through making the LLM perfectly error free, it’ll be through new techniques applied on top of the LLM or that replace the LLM. And efficiency is being focused on pretty heavily now. There’s a strong financial incentive to get power costs way down.
I’d argue that if they can’t solve the power issue the entire thing is going to be abandoned before it gets anywhere useful. It’s already not profitable at current costs and that can only be sustained for so long. Though demand for a cost effective solution might also grow to consume large amounts of energy too. But it’ll only do that if it’s useful.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
Actually, it’s Congress that determines the number of Supreme Court justices, not the President. I would be looking for someone as President that signals the need for far reaching reform, signals that s/he supports it fully, and supports Congressional Dems that think the same.
Kay
I’ll tell you who’s depressing enthusiasm right now – the Democrats who have already surrendered. No one voted for these people so they would cosplay MAGA. If this is the plan to regain a majority its a bad plan. We’re still losing. That’s the truth. Unless someone steps up and actively turns it around we’ll still be losing in ’26.
I actually do have some faith, but it isn’t in leadership. Its in the Democratic Party rabble. WE will rescue us. Like we always do.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
Over 70 years old, in very good health and quite fit if I say so myself.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: There’s stuff that’s been done in the code generation space that gave the AI access to the language’s compiler to validate it’s output against that got error rates from something over 20% into low single digits.
It’s not like you don’t have access to definitive truth when you’re doing document summarization. Good validation methods should be able to catch those kinds of errors and fix them. At the cost of more latency.
Kay
I fed some electricians last night, all under 30 and they had this conversation that made me sad. They think Japanese and Korean companies treat workers better than US companies. They say this matter of factly, like everyone knows it. They said Honda and Samsung are much better employers than Amazon (they’re working in an Amazon facility right now).
So if you’re pitching to them and you’re “buy American” theyre like “ugh – American employers suck”
I did not know this.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
Any Dem elected cosplaying at maga lacks the political ethics and skill to represent Democrats. They need to be disciplined by Party members in their State/electorate stat. I just don’t know how you can get anything done or get anywhere politically when scum bags decide fighting is too hard, and just go along to get along. Fuck them off in the next round of Primaries.
JFC. One minute trump is an ‘existential threat’, and the next minute, ‘who cares, he looks like a winner’.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay:
The best investment the Democratic Party could make right now is to drop $100 million into organising Amazon in key states. Bar none. Note, not all states. Just the states where it will make a difference. And it will.
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
I knew Amazon was a bad employer but I did not know US based employers were considered “bad” now and really you want to work for Honda or Samsung. Yikes. Its worse than I thought out there.
tam1MI
She’s pushing the Biden-has-dementia lie, so I presume not
Eolirin
@Kay: They’re probably right, at least with those examples. That’s part of the problem right?
But this is also a cultural problem. Because people trying to make that better don’t win elections because the electorate as a whole doesn’t care that much about labor issues, not even a lot of the white union members. At least not more than aligning with racially based cultural signifiers matters to them.
Eolirin
@Aussie Sheila: If not for white people being really racist, the Republicans would not have won an election since Eisenhower. It’s not that we can’t win despite the racism, it’s that it’s always an uphill battle and when we do lose it’s because of the racism. We do not win with a majority of white people at all, ever. So we need to hold a very disparate coalition together. A coalition that does not actually have shared values so much as has no other place to go.
Absent a clear crisis it’s really hard to get that group to show up together. That’s why the cycle since Clinton has been electing a GOP, them shitting the bed very badly, getting a Democrat in, and then facing immediate headwinds for continuing to win elections if nothing major is going on.
I honestly think a large part of why Harris won is actually because as much as inflation has sucked, people don’t feel that at threat right now. Which means it’s safe to go back to voting primarily on cultural issues or not bothering to show up, which means we lose. We were hoping Dobbs would change that dynamic, but it didn’t seem to make enough of a difference. People don’t associate voting for Democrats with protecting abortion rights looking at the way ballot initiatives went versus elections for candidates. Or at the very least it’s not important enough to them to make the trade off of not voting Republican.
I don’t think there’s a way we can fix that.
sab
@Eolirin: Your comment is brilliant.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, mechanical things aren’t terribly efficient (thermodynamics, and all that).
However, … EnvironmentAmerica.org:
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Tazj
@Kay: I think that it had to depress turn out and it took away an important talking point for the election campaign on how the tax credit significantly decreased child poverty. I think Biden and Harris may have mentioned it but your point obviously can’t be as strong when it doesn’t exist anymore and members of your own party took part in killing it.
Eolirin
@Another Scott: The cost of running those data centers for AI will crush the operating margins of the companies running them if they can’t get things under control.
And GenAI isn’t yet clearly useful enough to warrant the explosion in demand at prices that would make it profitable for the companies offering it. So it either gets much cheaper or much more useful, and relatively fast. Or it will go away. There’s no criminal use cases, like money laundering, to boost it up like the crypto market; even for criminal use it needs to be cheap.
Eolirin
@Tazj: They weren’t members of our party in this election. We could have gone after them for it.
But I think the bigger thing is simply that people don’t really know how any of that works, and don’t particularly care, and it was a benefit that went away while Biden was president, and that’s all its going to be seen as. Or it was something related to covid and everything related to covid is being memoryholed because no one wants to remember.
sab
@gene108: Brown ran as Republican Lite this last time. I have talked to young voters who were surprised he was a Democrat.
Aussie Sheila
@Eolirin:
Er, Harris didn’t win. That’s the point. In any case so long as it is considered ‘brilliant’ to excuse electoral losses to ‘racists’ in the absence of a clear analysis of the electorate that actually turned up to vote as opposed to the electorate in your head, then there’s no point to politics I guess, until racism is excised from everyone.
JFC
Aussie Sheila
@Eolirin:
People as ‘whole’ don’t have to care about Labor issues. Just the people who actually ‘labor’ in the places that need money and time to organise. I don’t care what ‘everybody thinks’. I care about structural and strategic changes that make a difference at the margins. And so should you.
Anyway
sob! I wish …
For me tribalism works as a better word choice. There’s the R tribe and the rest…
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: But in each election going back almost 60 years, Dems losing the white vote has been one of the only constants.
Why don’t you think that topic deserves scrutiny?
“White people or something” is kind of dismissive.
Skippy-san
@Baud: To me the inability of Americans to understand what is needed to run DOD is just one example of our civil military divide. Burning it all down destroys all the good things too.
Tazj
@Eolirin: I think you’re right that the fact that it went away and it did under Biden is more important than any rhetoric during the campaign but what a tragedy that Manchin voted against it to begin with. Maybe they didn’t go after him because they needed him for other votes like for judges or maybe it didn’t matter at all after the vote for it failed and people were hurt by it.
Feeling very frustrated by the fact that the tax credit didn’t get extended and Build Back Better didn’t pass to begin with. So many policies that could have helped people right away like family leave and free preschool and subsidies for rent.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
Which white people? Where? In which state. I’m not dismissing racism as such. I’m dismissing the doomerism that wants to excuse strategic and organisational weakness by blaming racism. Does it exist? Of course.
Can you win anyway? Of course.
Eolirin
@Aussie Sheila: Typo
And you’re missing my point.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: Happy to see that you consider it to no longer be a hindrance.
tam1MI
People in the party who criticize the party from the Right still vote for the party. They contribute to victories. People who criticize the party from the Left not only do not vote for the party, they go all out to try and convince others not to vote for it either. They contribute to defeats. Contributing to victories tends to earn people more goodwill.
Eolirin
@Aussie Sheila: The strategic and organizational weakeness of the Democratic party are, in my opinion, exaggerated to the extreme because people don’t want to grapple with the fact that white supremacy is still the dominating force in US electoral politics that it is.
You can’t organize your way to a consistent governing majority when almost half the population will never vote for you because you’re the party of black people. You can still win, sure. Because the numbers are now close enough that other factors can tip the balance, but a lot of those other factors are entirely out of the hands of the Democratic leadership. And many of the issues we can successfully leverage stop helping us when we succeed at fixing them.
Which results in the GOP getting back into power when we have a good run.
And the reason for that is absolutely the electorate, and not the leadership and not the parties.
People keep going on about how great the GOP is at certain things, but most of that is actually Fox and right wing radio having a successful business model that lets them get paid to vomit bullshit at their listeners. The left doesn’t want to pay for that, so there’s no way to counter it except to make it illegal.
And you need the courts to succeed at that. And to have already won.
People are acting like the Dems could have done more this cycle, or could do more than they did this cycle, and I think that’s pretty much bullshit. If we can’t win doing as much as Harris did, we weren’t going to win, and it wasn’t because of anything we could control. That doesn’t mean we stop doing what we’re doing, but it does mean that we cannot win under every set of circumstances and the reason is because enough of the American public want leaders like Trump that we need external factors to beat them back, and we’re vulnerable to any external downturn in the face of them.
Glory b
@tam1MI: Yes, I don’t know why that’s so hard to figure out.
Lobo
@Kay: This!
Eolirin
@Eolirin: We also need an impossibly large governing coalition to effect the kind of structural changes that would improve our chances of winning.
Getting back to 50 senators, let alone 51 is going to be very very difficult. We can’t pass legislation without that. We can’t get new judges. And unless all 50/51 of the senators we can eventually get to are behind things like court reform or getting rid of the filibuster, we will not be able to act on what would be sweeping changes that would be immediately attacked as partisan in a way that would likely piss off a majority of the country. And only because we were doing them. Republicans as the party of white people, get a pass on that kind of behavior. This is, media slant aside, also a cultural thing. We can’t really control it.
Until and unless there’s a strong enough cultural shift away from the Republican party and the white supremacy that underlies it’s relevance, this is nearly impossible to accomplish. The last time there was that kind of cultural shift the Great Depression happened. And it held a coalition together until the Civil Rights Act passed.
We very likely need a near societal collapse to gain any kind of durable majority.
Climate change will provide. Unfortunately it may do too good of a job.
Anyway
So just give up until the electorate changes? Srsly the lack of anything actionable in the white supremacy analyses is very frustrating. Matt Mc had a point with his “make white meaningless” (paraphrasing) – need to think on that some more.
Eolirin
@Anyway: Yes, because the Harris campaign did literally nothing? I don’t think they did anything wrong. I don’t think they could have done anything better.
Sometimes the best you can do just isn’t good enough. It doesn’t mean there’s an actionable thing you can do other than to keep doing what you’re doing and hope the circumstances change enough that it becomes enough.
The party can’t change the culture. People either wake up to the problems with how they’re approaching politics or they don’t. It won’t have been for lack of trying on the Dems part.
This is just another form of only Dems have agency. Any time we lose, it’s because we must have done something wrong. Not because people have terrible values and are willfully ignorant and wanted to vote for crazy people and weren’t amenable to persuasion. Not because covid related disruptions lead to a global anti-incumbent sentiment.
If only we had found a better way to string words together I’m sure it would have swamped all of that
What’s going to make a difference next time, if we’re allowed to win going forward anyway, is that the GOP breaks shit. People don’t like that.
Miss Bianca
@Eolirin: Yep, that sums up the situation quite accurately and succinctly. Alas.
Matt McIrvin
@Anyway: I mean, getting rid of the whole concept of whiteness is something like a 1000-year utopian dream, not anything we can do for the next campaign cycle.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: Climate change will get rid of whiteness while we’re all busy bickering.
Unfortunately also all the other kinds of peopleness. :p
Ruckus
@Baud:
Hegseth is what burn it all down looks like.
He’s more what an atomic bomb looks like. With zero safety restraints.
He has not one positive in his entire portfolio. Or life.
My take is that if we (the country and the citizens) live through the next 4 yrs, it will amaze me. And it’s not just this one person, ultimately shitforbrains is responsible.
I hope to be amazed but I’m not holding my breath.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: What I’ve been saying for a while is that clever lies will usually win against truth in competition for mindshare because a lie can be any flattering, appealing or scary thing you need it to be, while truth is constrained. The only advantage truth has is that it’s true, and straying from it in actual policy will cause reality itself to be your enemy.
But the only way for the public to see that is generally for lie-based policies to actually be implemented and cause a catastrophe. Sometimes, this makes a good enough impression that it lasts for a while. But memories can also be short.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Why do humans expect any large assembly of humans to be perfection, or even just a positive outcome?
Look at who is going to be in charge for the next 4 years, does anyone else think there is, somewhere, a call for total and complete destruction of the concept of this country?
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: The lies don’t even need to be clever, as it turns out.
But yes.
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
This collection of the GOP is going to try to break everything.
Because what they want is not a functional, rational government.
They want total power over everyone else. They want to take the concept of government back 300 years and not even to anything positive then. They want complete power to screw anyone, anything over that does not proclaim them the highest level of human life. They are complete and utter egomaniacs who think they are obviously far, far ahead of any other human in every way, shape or form. Of course it is difficult to see anything positive with their heads so far up their exhaust chutes.
Ruckus
@Eolirin:
People don’t like that.
Very, very unfortunately a lot of people do like that. Many, many people do not like or want to be equal. That would mean they would have to change for the better – and they have zero concept of better, as in zero concept of better even for themselves. They are the burn it all down crowd. They want to start it all over. Except their concept of burn it all down leaves nothing to start over with.
Eolirin
@Ruckus: No, the history of the country really suggests that when you break core fundamental and necessary things that people rely on, that they get really pissed off about it and vote you out of office.
Kansas is still electing Democrats to the governorship, and their GOP dominated legislature reversed tax cuts, because of how badly Brownback fucked up the state.
There are a lot of people who talk about wanting to burn things down, but there’s a tiny minority of radicals that are happy with the results of doing so.
The people who want power and dominance over everyone else quickly find out that the policies they’re pushing for mean they’re also getting fucked over once they’re put into practice. As long as elections are allowed to matter, there’s a pushback.
tam1MI
If you want the really killer argument as to who it’s moderate Dems that kill our election chances, you could point to the 30 moderate Dems who spent most of July 2024 forcing Biden to step aside and then leading us all to defeat in November…
Aussie Sheila
@tam1MI:
Can’t sleep, but I can’t let that one go. No, I’ve changed my mind completely on that. Biden should have indicated after the mid terms that he was not running for a second term, and permitted a proper Primary. Harris would have won that imo.
She and Walz ran a great campaign, and very narrowly lost.
If Biden had run instead you would be looking at a wipeout a la 1984. As it is, it’s not good because of who won instead. But it’s a lot better than it could have been.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: People also care about infrastructure investments if they use that infrastructure. An example would be the $10 billion that the Infrastructure bill provided to New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, or the $66 billion for capital improvements to Amtrak’s passenger rail network. Riders can see tangible improvements even if more are needed.
But the attitude you just expressed is widespread, and was one of reasons Democrats did not value that legislative success like they should have, and failed to make more political capital from it.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
Well you should make political capital out of everything you do. I’m sure the NY investment was good, needed and popular. But, you know, it’s New York.
Money in people’s pockets, straight up, no frills, no fuss, no means test. Just give people money! And a wage rise.
You can’t do much about interest rates, God knows. They might stuff us in a couple of months. But give people some money goddammit.
And infrastructure takes forever. Far beyond the incredible, two year federal election cycles in the US . It’s important, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it barely three years after the Bill passed.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: It seems like the memory lasts longer at the state level than at the national level. Nationally, when you win a Presidential cycle, even after a horrifying catastrophe caused by the other side’s policy, you basically have two years to do whatever you want to do, because you’re probably going to lose at the next midterm. Recall, it was surprising that 2022 was just a loss and not a complete wipeout like 1994 or 2010
Maybe it’s because the separation of powers and the geographically organized nature of national elections makes impressions of incompetence less lasting.
Matt McIrvin
…And, of course, there are certain types of catastrophes that don’t actually hurt you (failing at 9/11 caused Bush’s party to WIN the next midterm).
MrPug
I stopped reading at a line from one of the quotes in which I’m paraphrasing “the battle for his confirmation yada yada yada” because there is, effectively, no battle for his confirmation. Hegseth’s confirmation was a fait accompli weeks ago. I’d be shocked if a single Republican votes “no”. My only question at this point is how many Democrats will vote “yes” in the full Senate.