Resistance WORKS. Keep calling your reps. Keep reposting. Keep protesting. And most of all, keep showing up. #DemocratsAbroad #TakeAction #SocialSecurity
— Democrats Abroad (@demsabroad.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 5:08 AM
I have been hearing from people that they have been having issues accessing their Social Security accounts. INSTEAD of going to a branch which may be hundreds or 1Ks+ of miles away from you, call your members of Congress. They have constituent services that will help you regain access. Please share!
— Peter Morley ?? ?? (@petermorley.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 8:04 AM
[gift link]In photos: Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr around the world
— Middle-East Tracker (@me.skyfleet.blue) March 30, 2025 at 2:15 PM
About 2 billion Muslims around the world celebrated Eid al-Fitr on Sunday, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, when adherents fast from dawn until dusk.
In festive, colorful celebrations, families and friends from Morocco to Nigeria, Sudan to Albania, and Gaza to India gathered for shared feasts, exchanged gifts, attended communal prayers and spent time with their loved ones.
During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims abstain from eating and drinking during daylight hours, beginning their fast after a pre-sunrise meal and breaking it with iftar, a dinner at sunset. It’s usually a time for reflection and deeper connection to faith and community.
Ramadan officially ends when a new crescent moon is sighted, marking the beginning of the month of Shawwal, which happened Saturday…
Many people — including in Indonesia, where the tradition is called “mudik” — hopped onto trains, buses and boats to flee towns and cities and return home to celebrate the holiday with family.
In some countries, it’s traditional for elders to give money to younger family members. Some serve traditional meals such as lemang, a Southeast Asian dish of glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, or sweets like kahk — crumbly, sugarcoated cookies eaten widely in Egypt.
Eid prayers are offered in the morning, often in open spaces. In the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, hundreds of thousands of Muslims prayed Sunday at the Grand Mosque.
MEANWHILE1: Elect a clown, get a circus…
What came first, Donald Trump or stores with no eggs?
Donald Trump, of course.
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 10:53 PM
Oh yeah we're all screwed
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Just like him
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 10:38 PM
This is a really important point. Trump is losing most of the cases he's losing because no statute directly authorizes what he's doing.
Instead of complaining about judges doing their jobs, congressional Republicans could, you know, *pass legislation* to give Trump the authorities he's claiming.
— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) March 29, 2025 at 10:45 AM
On The Road – Albatrossity – Spring in the Sky Islands – 1
Baud
In red states, voters vote for liberal policies through referendums (because electing Dems = supporting black people), Republican legislators undermine these polices, and voters reelect them (because electing Dems = supporting black people).
They’re basically trying to take that national.
ETA: There’s no national referendum — but there are long-standing popular programs like Social Security.
Princess
Trump looks set to impose the biggest tax increases in post WW2 history on Wednesday, with effects falling predominantly on middle and working class people.
Baud
Via reddit, good turnout in Dallas.
Baud
@Princess:
When he backtracks because of the backlash. It’ll be the biggest tax cut in post WWII history with the benefits falling on the middle and working class people. /Media
Soprano2
@Baud: You described what happens in MO perfectly. I think they’re going to have to sue the state health department because they keep changing their standards for medication abortions to keep PP from being able to offer them. Also, they’re screwing with the minimum wage referendum the voters passed in 2024.
Baud
Walz responds to Musk.
Soprano2
@Baud: I think he honestly believes other governments pay the tariffs to us.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I don’t think he has any honest beliefs.
Princess
@Baud: Trump Steers a Wise Course on Economy — p.1
Still no Eggs — p. 20
lowtechcyclist
Hassett: “The president has got a heck of a lot of analysis before him”
Which he’ll read about zero of.
“and he’s gonna make the right choice I’m sure.”
Nah, the right choice would be for him to commit ritual suicide. I’m sure he won’t make that choice.
Hoodie
@Baud: Politics have been nationalized for quite a while now. Pretty obvious they’re not taking the legislative route because several GOP congress members are scared to vote to cut popular programs and lay off people in their districts. However, their prior experience in an off year election with Trump in the WH was a disaster because of a backlash against him. So maybe they’re trying to do everything by presidential fiat in the hope they can evade a backlash, but it’s doubtful that will work.
Hoodie
@Baud: He honestly believes that he’s the center of the universe.
Baud
@Soprano2:
These are people who sold out their country to Putin. They have no self respect.
Suzanne
Definitely no eggs when I went to the store yesterday. I bought some wooden eggs for the kids to paint for Easter.
I am not someone who enjoys driving, or who really cares about having a new car with frequency. I bought mine ten years ago and it’s been paid off, and I’d like to have it at least five more and then replace it with an EV. But I had been thinking about giving it to Spawn the Elder and getting something with 4-wheel-drive for these hills and ice. That is now absolutely off the table.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I’d imagine they made him a picture book.
Jackie
O/T This is good news for democracy! At least in France.
Glory b
@Soprano2: Yes, he’s said so, that we won’t pay them, the other countries will, it’s done to punish them.
He also said he’ll sign an executive order prohibiting companies from passing on the cost of tariffs to consumers.
lowtechcyclist
Vladeck: “Instead of complaining about judges doing their jobs, congressional Republicans could, you know, *pass legislation* to give Trump the authorities he’s claiming.”
In theory, yes. I’m not sure they have the brains anymore to put together legislation that would do what they intend it to do. They basically view a seat in Congress as access to a turbocharged social media presence.
Besides, if they did something – anything – and it didn’t work out so well, people would point out how they were responsible for it. They want to avoid that like the plague.
This goes double, triple, quadruple for giving the Village Idiot even greater power to screw everything up. This way, it’s all on him, and they’ll just say, “who, us? What could we have done?”
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He does, racism and misogyny.
Splitting Image
This could be a cause for great optimism or great pessimism depending on how you look at it.
Congressional Republicans are evidently trying to keep their fingerprints off of a lot of the stuff Trump is doing, which presumably means that they plan on still being around (or not being given the Mussolini treatment) after Trump is gone.
On the other hand, you could argue that Trump ruling by fiat (and ignoring court orders in the process) will do more damage than Republicans enacting law through Congress.
Back in the days when you could buy eggs in grocery stores, this was probably described as “six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
Baud
@Glory b:
Remember when the Village freaked out about Harris’s anti-price-gouging proposal?
Glory b
@Baud: Exactly.
And progressives try to say it’s all the fault of poor messaging, that if Democrats could figure out yhe exact magic words, they would vote for us in droves.
Of course, they don’t know what those magic words are either, but it’s Dem’s fault for not figuring them out.
Baud
@Jackie:
France is really kicking ass right now.
Baud
@Glory b:
Right. Talk is cheap. I’m not interested in people’s advice. Show me proof of concept. That goes for centrists and everyone else in between too.
Suzanne
@Baud: To be fair….. they absolutely should improve their messaging, and part of that improvement would be gathering proof of concept. Again, there’s an entire industry of experts whose job it is to come up with messaging strategy is — which means “the right words to say” as well as how to get people to hear those words — and literally to test those strategies. The Dems certainly know how to find me to ask for money about 15x a day…. they can take some of that money I donated and hire those people.
But instead, they keep trotting out James Carville and others who still think the media environment is the same as it was 20 years ago.
I don’t expect the candidates to come up with this on their own, but I sure expect them to hire smart people.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: Good morning!
rikyrah
Congratulations again to Louisiana for defeating all four of those nightmare proposed amendments to the Louisiana Constitution.
Bravo 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Suzanne
@rikyrah: Morning!
sentient ai from the future
@Splitting Image: they are trying to have it both ways.
Recall Mike Johnson saber rattling recently about jurisdiction stripping and/or defunding of the federal courts after the shitbird got his ass handed to him
Ksmiami
@Suzanne: exactly my thoughts. There are amazing agencies etc that specialize in this. Why tf haven’t the Dems hired them? It’s not a money thing
Princess
@Glory b: if Trump could prohibit companies from passing on costs, the effect would be to send their profits and hence stock price plummeting, to drive them out of business, and/or to cause massive layoffs as a way to cut costs.
Princess
@lowtechcyclist: on the contrary, they have the brains to avoid passing any legislation. That way, when/if Trump falls/destroys everything, they can blame everything on him.
Betty Cracker
I just got swarmed by an angry cloud of hummingbirds on my side porch!
We have four feeders, and I usually refill them every weekend, adding about a quarter cup to each because I’ve read it’s not good to leave nectar out in the heat for longer than a week.
Well, I didn’t refill this weekend because I traveled on Saturday, and it rained all day yesterday. The hummingbirds are pissed! I have a batch of nectar on stove right now to appease my furious tiny overlords. (Meanwhile, there are plenty of flowering plants in the yard to tide them over.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
My small press publisher has a call out for essays, short stories, and poetry about resisting autocracy.
Here’s what they say. Details in the link:
Princess
@Suzanne: Are the Dems trotting out Carville or is the news media trotting him out? Is there any evidence any Democrat has paid Carville for strategy in last the last decade? I don’t think he’s worked on a campaign since Hillary 08, though he did endorse Bennet in CO a while back.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Smart people have different ideas.
Fundraising emails are annoying, but irrelevant when it comes to messaging to the general public.
Ksmiami
The good news is with Trump destroying our economy, I think he’ll be run out on a rail within 6 months
Geminid
@Suzanne: I may be wrong, but I don’t think it’s the Democrats bringing James Carville out; it’s the TV networks. Producers like that old triangulating windbag.
Baud
@Princess:
My question too. Carville is working for himself as a media person AFAIK.
ETA: He might still do fundraising emails for those few old voters who like him.
Mr. Mack
@Suzanne: A million times this. I happened to be in Pittsburgh last October. The TV’s in the lobby were tuned to various news channels, but were largely unwatchable due to the ridiculous number of political ads. It was back to back just relentless. I remember telling my wife that in a crowded lobby, not one person was watching the TVs, even while they sat there and ate the free breakfast. TV ad money is overrated.
Baud
@Mr. Mack:
Yet they seem to work for Republicans.
If all people saw were Republican ads on TV, they’d be complaining about Dems being invisible.
Professor Bigfoot
Once again, I feel sorry for the people of Palestine, but their “supporters” here can eat a big bag of salted dicks.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Black people need to be oppressed is a kind of belief.
Suzanne
@Princess: According to his Wikipedia page, he worked (paid) on the Bennet 2020 campaign. He also apparently maintains a great deal of influence and pols listen to him, which fucking sucks:
So. Not sure if that means that the Party or individual pols still actually trot him out, or if he does appearances and interviews of his own accord.
Spanky
@Ksmiami: Tom Friedman, is that you?
different-church-lady
People, it’s not the media. It’s social engineering, using tech as the conduit. They’re better at it because they’re sociopaths, and the people controlling the conduit are also sociopaths.
I don’t know how to fix it, but first we need to identify the problem correctly: it’s not who is on the screen, it’s who controls what on the screen.
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: breaking up Big Tech is critical. The algorithms that drive engagement are killing our democracy. That said, Dems can hire better agencies.
Geminid
Ahmed al-Sharaa presented the new Syrian government this weekend. Most of the ministers are in their 30s or 40s, including 42 year old Raed al-Salaa. He resigned his position heading the civil relief group White Hemets in order to become Minister of Disasters, Emergencies and Environment.
Hopefully Mr. al-Salaa will not have to deal with very many disasters or emergencies, and can concentrate on the environmental side of his job. Syria lost an estimated 30% of its trees during the civil war so they have a lot of planting to do.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I think the Coach is being rather circumspect, here… the thought being more like “fuck you you South African piece of shit” but the official words far more… tactful, shall we say?
tobie
Morning, all! I’m off to Florida this week because my mother is having a procedure on Friday. I already told her that if she’s well enough I’ll go to a local protest on Saturday for an hour. She sighed…not because I’m going but because she can’t join me while recovering. Gray power is a thing.
Suzanne
@Baud: Political consultants are also paid a percentage of the TV ads they place, so they are biased toward placing TV ads. And they don’t have anything like a fiduciary duty, AFAIK.
I don’t have an issue with placing some TV ads — older voters watch TV. I have a huge problem with media and campaign strategy people who don’t know who the top ten most popular podcasters are. FFS, that is your job to know that.
Betty Cracker
Regarding Democratic Party messaging, I heard a relevant interview on David Remnick’s New Yorker podcast with Senator Chris Murphy this weekend. I think Murphy has been really good in response to Trump’s authoritarian putsch, so I was interested in hearing what he had to say, which has proved controversial.
To sum up, he says the Dem brand is damaged — that we’re associated with defending a status quo that hasn’t worked for years for too many people. He says Dems should be pro government reform, not just pro government, and should seize the opportunity the open sewer of Trump/Musk corruption presents to focus on a “populist, anti-big-money agenda” (as described at the link).
Some Dems on Bluesky (GoLikeHellMachine who is quoted here a lot, for one) criticize Murphy’s proposal because they see it as a backdoor way to deemphasize civil rights in favor of economic populism. Remnick asks Murphy about this too, and he denies it, citing an example of how to advocate for vulnerable people while addressing plutocracy/corruption.
prostratedragon
@Betty Cracker:
Good warmuo for Balloon Juice!
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Credit where it’s due: you’ve been saying something similar for a long time, and you were right then, and you’re right now. I didn’t get it at first. I think I do now.
Trivia Man
@different-church-lady: exactly. And the trickle up economy is accelerating. Concentration of wealth in fewer pockets means their thumb on the scale gets heavier. More resources>> more favorable legislation (or less enforcement of existing laws) >> even more resources that bring even more influence.
BlueGuitarist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
excellent!
If on April 5 you and Mr. DAW are feeling up to it, imho him being there with a walker will be inspirational for many others. Photos would be great, leaving early
Professor Bigfoot
So I’m not the only one who sees this happening.
So many people here are telling me that we can back off the defense of civil and human rights in order to get more white voters… and I’m wrong to be concerned?
It is difficult for a non-white person to trust white people at this point in time.
Soprano2
@Hoodie: Plus, any of these things they tried to do would be filibustered in the Senate anyway. They know they can’t do it through Congress, so they’re hoping the SCOTUS will let the president do it.
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: Messaging, billionaires, its always something or someone else that is the problem. They never take into account the effect their own constant badmouthing of elected Ds 24/7 in the media (both legacy and digital).
Joe Biden delivered on many of their priorities from Afghanistan withdrawl to reducing frivilous bank fees. Not only did they not stand by him, they called him Genocide Joe instead.
Another thing about messaging, black people, Jewish people and many other marginalized communities, including the newly naturalized have no problem understanding Democratic messaging as much white people seem to be having. What exactly was Trump’s brilliant messaging?
That immigrants are going to eat your dogs and cats?
Soprano2
OMG, good luck with that!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Sounds like he’s bought the right wing spin about Dems.
Maybe we should be cheering DOGE destroying agencies and firing government workers.
Princess
@Baud: Good point; they probably pay him something to use his name, and I’m sure they know exactly how much his name brings in compared to others in a given group.
Soprano2
@Glory b: What particularly maddens me is when they start by taking things like race off the table in discussions. What that means is that we can’t have an honest discussion about what FFOTUS and this Congress are doing. Look at the thing about the Smithsonian, that is OBVIOUSLY about race and gender. You can’t talk about it honestly without raising those factors.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He has been sounding like David Brooks since his divorce.
Betty
@lowtechcyclist: Speaking of brains or the lack thereof, watching Rep Stansbury take on Rep Comer is thing of beauty. He is such a dope, and she is relentless.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: THX for the link. I will listen to it this week, and also look into some of the criticism.
Sometimes I think we get trapped in binary thinking, but consensus usually can be built, IMO.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: There’s a good Democratic communications expert – I’ve heard her on the Pod Bros podcast a couple of times, but I can’t remember her name. She’s one of those people, I don’t know why Democrats don’t hire her and use her advice. Shoot, she’s giving it away for free on podcasts!!!
tobie
@Betty Cracker: The difficulty with redefining Dems is that we are such a broad coalition. I actually dislike Murphy’s reinvention of himself as a firebreathing populist. Yes, I’ll vote for any Dem because our survival depends on it but in general I’m more moved by talk about the social contract and what govt does do (and does well!) than I am by talk about oligarchs. This could be just me. My sense is that if Dems are a damaged brand, it’s becasue most Americans have no clue how much they rely on govt in their daily lives.
Betty
@Ksmiami: I think it’s called the D. C. mindset. That’s why people were hopeful that a DNC Chair like Ben Wikler could bring a new approach. The jury is still out on Ken Martin.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: You see how you have spoiled them! We want our nectar, and we want it now! What do you mean go find some yourself?
Princess
@Suzanne: I’m reading that same Wikipedia page and I can’t find anything more than that he endorsed Bennett. A Google search didn’t turn up anything either. I would not be shocked if money changed hands but really, the press should have reported that if so and not presented it as they universally did, as an endorsement. A hired strategist is not an endorsement!
The networks pick who they want for their programs. I don’t think the Dems are trotting out Buttigeig to Fox either. He’s going it in his own.
Maybe it’s a problem the Dems don’t have more control and influence in that way, but they don’t.
Jeffro
I agree with him that the Dem brand is damaged. Too many people, for far too long, have been blasted 24/7 with messaging from the Republican Noise Machine, with no response (much less any proactive messaging) from the Dems. It was bad enough when it was just Rush Limbaugh and radio – now they’re on streaming tv, podcasts, Spanish-language broadcasts, etc.
The GOP has learned to sound like us (pretending to be the party of the working class, ‘real’ America, etc) while doing things that actually make everyday Americans’ lives worse.
I agree with Murphy that running against Musk (and being anti-corruption more broadly) is a good idea. But there’s still that wideband broadcasting going on from the right, where they can take any tiny instance of corruption (or anything, really) on the left and play it up as equivalent to the wholesale looting and arson going on from Musk & Co.
jonas
Virtually every GOP member of Congress there right now is there because they visibly and eagerly hitched their wagons to Trump and ran explicitly as the MAGA candidate. He owns them and they know it. There’s nowhere to run if this all goes south. Which it will.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BlueGuitarist: Mr DAW has decided not to try to go to the April 5 demonstration. It would have made fabulous pictures, but I’m glad he’s going to stay home.
Betty
@Baud: Something that seemed effective about that barrage of ugly ads in Pennsylvania was the timing during popular sports events. My family commented on ow pervasive they were even though their tv viewing is limited to not much more than sports.
Baud
@Jeffro:
We do that to ourselves a lot too.
eclare
OMG I am so out.
Beautiful photo.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: “we’re associated with defending a status quo that hasn’t worked for years for too many people.”
I was talking to my son this weekend and he was saying pretty much the same thing. Same thing has happened in Canada. Potential conservative support is mostly millennials starting families n the suburbs who are looking at a much tougher climb than their parents had. They’re the generation that got hit the hardest from the 2008 crisis. They’re also got hit hard by covid restrictions that primarily helped people much older than them. Trump will save Canada this election, maybe, but the writing is on the wall.
oldgold
I want to believe Musk frantically jumping up and down on a stage while wearing a cheese hat, talking hyperbolic nonsense and handing out $1 million dollar checks is going to be counterproductive. Otherwise …..
Baud
@oldgold:
It didn’t hurt Trump last year.
Princess
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t think you can or should trust white people. I do think the abundance agenda can and should be built on a foundation of civil rights though — I do not think it is either or. We should not concede an inch on rights.
Ksmiami
@jonas: if? It already is going south. People are getting hit in the wallet hard. I expect Trump and the GOP to be at 27 percent approval ratings very soon.
Baud
@Princess:
People have a right to choose right wing economics. There are a lot of issues where my position is the minority position.
Mr. Mack
I don’t disagree that some TV ads are necessary and effective. But the bloated budgets for these prevent us from building a social media infrastructure of influencers (other wise known as paid shills) to get and keep the attention of younger people. THEY DO NOT WATCH TV the way us olds do. I don’t want to see George Clooney making a case for candidates or proposed legislation. I want George Clooney to spend a couple mil paying good communicators to podcast and/or produce compelling video for wide distribution. People everywhere keep their phones pressed to their faces, and they ain’t watching MSNBC.
tobie
@Baud: We are invisible. Yesterday I accidentally came across a link to Klobuchar campaigning for Crawford in Wisconsin. It makes sense. She’s originally from Wisconsin and represents a neighboring state in the Senate so WI is a natural place for her to go. But the conventional wisdom is that only Bernie and AOC are out there fighting Trump and no one else is. Others are there but they don’t have the same star power or network plugging them. Can’t this be a team effort?
Professor Bigfoot
Too many WHITE people.
If we’re not going to address the racial dynamics in this political atmosphere, we might as well write the whole damn thing off.
WHITE PEOPLE. If y’all ain’t got the courage to forthrightly say it is WHITE PEOPLE who are upset and WHY those WHITE PEOPLE are upset, we won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.
Other than sell the right of marginalized people down the river.
Baud
Does anyone actually know how much Dems spend on TV ads vs other spending?
Geminid
@Betty: Melissa Stansbury won the special election to succeed Rep. Deb Haaland after Haaland became Interior Secretary in 2021. Stansbury represents New Mexico’s 1st CD, which includes Albuquerque and some counties east of it.
Deb Haaland is running for Governor next year. Haaland always impressed me, and when I read her Wikipedia biography Haaland impressed me even more.
karensky
@Baud: Thanks for that! Good start to my day.
Professor Bigfoot
Absolutely not; but it’s already happening, with questions about “why are we defending trans people in sports?”
That slope is terrifically slippery.
Glidwrith
@Ksmiami: Has anyone actually called their Congresscritter and told them about these amazing agencies? I sure don’t know any.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I have to say — and this is a minor point of clarification, not disagreement with you — I don’t think that the status quo is good for anybody of any race who isn’t born into a wealth. I don’t think that the Global We are leaving our young people in good stead.
I would like to think that we can do better for them.
Baud
@Suzanne:
They can do better for themselves. They’re not helpless people without agency.
jonas
@Baud: As someone once said, “You don’t know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.”
Suzanne
@Baud: Nope. They didn’t cause climate change or the housing crisis or income inequality or anything else. We have a duty to leave the world better. IGMFY is for Republicans.
Baud
@Suzanne:
They can help fix things. But if they’re going to act helpless, they’re going to be serfs.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: Perhaps not; but it’s not anyone other than white people who are voting for Republicans because of it.
My own theory is that white people hate the fact that Black and brown people are being successful in this environment; and simply being white just isn’t enough to be above ‘those people’ anymore.
Baud
@tobie:
Yes, there’s a lot of self-misinformation we engage.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I didn’t interpret what he said that way at all. Maybe the way I summed it up was inept; I’d suggest hearing him out before jumping to conclusions. It’s worth considering, IMO.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Dems will “stand for something” again once Republicans are successful in removing competition from minorities for good paying jobs.
jonas
@Suzanne: I think a lot of people just sort of assumed that because Dems and liberals were the progressive, early adopter, new-media types 20 years ago, they still are. They are not. I think it was mistermix over at his blog who pointed out the other day that whoever is running Chuck Schumer’s social media had just re-upped some two-week old, anodyne post up about defending Social Security or something as his main message of the day, instead of railing across 8 different platforms about whatever batshit fascist insanity Trumpmusk were up to that day.
The party needs to unfuck itself with a quickness when it comes to media messaging or we are really screwed for the next four years and beyond.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
I agree with this. Same with men no longer automatically having an advantage over women.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.
matt
@Baud: ah, a command economy. good good.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yeah, I’m back to being disappointed in Murphy.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Keep reading. BC clarified.
Suzanne
@Baud: They absolutely can help fix things. But so can every middle-aged and old person.
tobie
@Professor Bigfoot: Agree. The effort to redefine the Democratic Party as a white, working class party irritates me to no end. You know what? I want to strengthen govt because when it works, it does wonders! Thank you, FDR, for the New Deal and LBJ for the Great Society. An advanced economy can’t be summarized in the binary logic that characterizes most leftist rhetoric, and the biggest binary of all–the lil guy (or salt of the earth) vs the überwealthy–can quickly slide into nativism if differences are ignored.
I still love this scene from Blazing Saddles. Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder were on to something.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: One of the more striking possibilities I recently realized: what if voters actually aren’t rational? It would explain an awful lot.
Marcopolo
Good morning folks. I’m sure there will be a few front page posts about it this week but just want to encourage everybody here to find and attend a nearby April 5 Hands Off protest. It is imperative to get as many bodies on the ground as possible.
In St Louis there are currently at least 4 different locations to choose from! Downtown, inner ring burbs, and one each in the counties to the south and west. Hopefully that will mean more folks coming out. I am still workshopping sign ideas (a BJ post on this would be fun) but I saw one from a photo of a recent protest l saw that read “They’re eating our checks, they’re eating our balances” and am thinking that will be good for one side. Probably “Hand Off our veterans, scientists, seniors, federal workers, immigrants” or something like that on the reverse.
Here’s the link to find the Hands Off location near to where you are: https://www.mobilize.us/handsoff/
frosty
@Betty Cracker: You want the hummingbirds to rely on nectar? From flowers? Like, in nature??? No wonder they’re pissed!
Get some pictures for us hummingbird-deprived jackals, plz.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: That excerpt sound sensible; I’ll try to find the time to read the whole thing. Thanks for the pointer.
I’m still on the fence about “Democrats need to find the magic soundbite to win elections again” thinking. We’re a diverse party. We have lots and lots of coalitions that agree on some things and not others. AOC isn’t going to win in rural Ohio. Marie GP isn’t going to win in Cambridge.
I do agree that we need to find ways to improve the “brand”. As has been my mantra lately – If voters won’t listen to you, it doesn’t matter how great and sensible your policy prescriptions are. Also, if you’re not where the voters are, they won’t hear you no matter how great your brand is. The first job these days is to listen to people, respond to their concerns, and show that you’re a sensible person who won’t throw them under the bus but will actually work for them.
The Blue town halls in Red districts is a great idea and needs to be expanded.
None of this stuff is easy. It’s going to take concerted efforts, and people being willing to pony up in some of the flood of annoying fundraising emails. (End of the month “deadline” is today, so be prepared.)
My $0.02.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
Re the status quo, Trump’s win destroyed that. It’s a non-issue regardless of which direction we move it.
I preferred steady progress but I’m in a minority on that. So now we try out this other thing.
Professor Bigfoot
@jonas: Maybe YOU can tell me why it is that Black, Jewish, and LGBTQIA+ folk hear Democratic messaging just fine, but it’s straight white gentiles who cannot.
Suzanne
@jonas:
Exactly. They have a lot of people in their ecosystem who have done this for a long time and got comfortable and haven’t been keeping up.
narya
@Professor Bigfoot: And that’s where the Harris/Walz campaign was so awesome: “mind your own damn business” coupled with “help for families.”
Professor Bigfoot
@tobie: <snicker>I started laughing before I clicked the link because I knew it was the “common clay of the New West” bit. ROFLMAO
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer:
Wait…. this just occurred to you?
jonas
I saw someone interviewed in a story the other day who wasn’t aware the USPS is a public entity. The general ignorance of the average voter, even ostensibly educated ones, about how anything in the world works is absolutely jaw-dropping.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Nixon imposed wage and price controls in the early-mid ’70s. The president does (or did, anyway) have powers like that. Of course, there was cheating and ignoring the rules (I remember prices going up on Testors model paint, and later there was a lawsuit about it), but most did comply.
I don’t know if those laws are still on the books.
47 is going to keep pushing and doing whatever strikes his fancy until he is stopped. We must vote the monsters and their enablers out.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Glidwrith
@Professor Bigfoot: I also agree with this. These people are hierarchical in the extreme and the only way to reach even a minor part of them is to socially shame them, call them weird, essentially that they’re outside the hierarchy.
Our hierarchy must be built on the foundation of civil rights. How is this done?
Baud
There’s a two step process for redefining the Democratic Party.
This can be done sooner or later, but there’s no alternative to doing it.
tobie
@Professor Bigfoot: Ditto. It gets me every time. And the fear about nativism among Jews, blacks and LGBTQ+ is real and longstanding.
Soprano2
@Geminid: But if no one gets their information from those shows anymore, then it shouldn’t hurt anything, right? *rolleyes
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: My revelation was, “So, George Carlin was both literally and figuratively correct? ‘Look at how stupid the average person is, and remember half of ‘em are stupider than that!’”
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: What I’d really like to see Dems do is the same approach Republicans take. Say one thing but then do the other. Assure voters that they only care about the price of eggs or stopping woke-ness in schools etc., get elected and then pass laws that celebrate and promote diversity and protect/expand civil rights and do all the progressive things etc. Be as phony as voters demand but then always do the right thing once in office. When people complain about it, just say “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Being honest doesn’t work with our shithole voters or the media so start being the duplicitous caricature that they are always accusing Dems of being. Only do so while actually passing good laws.
(No, I don’t seriously want them to do this, but some mornings I sorta wish they would, at least on some issues).
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You are not the minority. The ones against incremental change are loud not the majority. The ones find it onerous to vote or answer the phone, are going to bring about a revolution. Yeah I will believe it when I see it.
tobie
@jonas: I’m reminded that when the debate was raging about the Affordable Care Act, Tea Party types were quoted as saying things like, “Don’t let the government touch my Medicare.” Who do they think sets standards for water safety, construction materials, medical care, food safety, consumer products, air traffic control and so on?
frosty
Two weeks is a lifetime with these berserkers in charge. I make a note of something to call my Rep about and in a day or two it’s obsolete. I have to call every time I see something and I’m just not that nimble. Or something. I’m weary, which is what they want.
Another Scott
@jonas: There was a graph of (Biden then) Harris vs Donnie on-line spending that went around a while ago. Harris was far ahead of him up until something like August, then all the billionaire PAC money started appearing and swamped Team Blue.
I’m not sure what we can do about that while we’re in the minority and cannot get sensible campaign finance rules back in place.
Maybe the effect of the playing field being slanted is bigger than our team leaders somehow not knowing how to play the game??
To be clear, I’m a big fan of dsquared’s “One Minute MBA” rules that include “the vital importance of audit”. Let’s review what the plan was, what worked, what didn’t, and how to have a better result in the future.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I have shared before that my college roommate — a straight-A student and leader of one of the academic honorary societies — turned to me once and asked, “World War II, was that the one with the Holocaust in it?”.
(She voted for Kamala this year, with bells on, incidentally.)
But yeah. People are dumb, and irrational, and they make lots of incredibly important decisions based on emotion. I worked in the advertising industry for a while, and I got really exposed to this. And I hated advertising and left and went back to graduate school. Buildings are easy, people are incredibly difficult.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: This is where I am. “Let’s go out on Main Street on Saturday morning!”
I’m not the one saying Biden was too old and it was just too boring to have him as the candidate so we should replace him with Sherrod Brown or Pritzker.
Deputinize America
@Princess:
I’ll buy foreign and pay the tariff if I need it.
Screw American labor – I’ll be goddamned if I buy an American made car anymore. Those guys have not had anyone’s back.
Geminid
@Soprano2: My Atlanta friend talks up Carville some. I keep telling Warren that Carville is a washed-up relic of the 1990s but he’s not so sure, thinks Carville still has good contacts among current political figures. I just think Carville is good at self-promotion and knows how to get attention.
It not that hard to get attention these days; you just have to come up with a succinct reason why Dems are doing it wrong.
Professor Bigfoot
Whereupon the neo-Confederate conservatives whip their white supremacist base into a froth AGAIN and IMMEDIATELY vote us back out.
Folk need to understand how much the hate for Joe Biden came from the Black, brown, Native, gay, and Jewish people he had in his Administration.
Nobody seems to have a problem with Trump’s all straight white Christian male administration, after all.
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: What I mean is that if I don’t constantly remind myself of that I start to make assumptions that are probably way off base. It really renders almost all political talk, theories, punditry etc., completely useless.
Every time someone brings up Dem messaging or being rewarded for policy X. I have to remind myself: wait, this is all based on extremely faulty assumptions.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: I heard a story about some physics PhD’s dissertation defense when s/he was asked whether the wavelength of light was bigger than a breadbox. And had trouble with it.
:-/
People have different skills and think differently. They all make this crazy, mixed-up, wonderful world we live in. We’ve got to collect enough of them together to forge a majority.
;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
Things were better before Covid when I was president, I’ll bring all that back. I’ll save you from the scary, dangerous brown and black immigrants that Joe Biden welcomed into the country. Then, the unspoken message that they’re all using toward white people – I’ll save you from the demographic change that’s coming that I know is scaring you to death. That was his message in a nutshell, and enough low-info voters bought it that we’re here now. People say they want honesty and the truth, but what they actually want to hear is their beliefs coming from the mouths of politicians, because that’s what they think “the truth” is.
Glidwrith
@Professor Bigfoot: I was raised Republican and by definition stupid about policies and what the thugs actually do to people. Anyone raised inside the liberal ecosystem has a background of knowledge that is taken for granted that a LOT of white folks just don’t know.
Perhaps simple messages: we have food stamps so soldiers are healthy enough to defend the country.
Banks used to have better interest rates because there used to be two types.
We have unions because some bosses are sociopaths.
Soprano2
@Betty: That was smart, because sports is about the only thing people pretty much have to watch live, so they’ll see at least some of the commercials.
frosty
@Deputinize America: There are no American-made cars any more. I saw (probably here) that every one has at least 25% foreign content. A lot of “foreign” cars are assembled in the USA, too.
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s interesting….. because reminding myself that people are irrational makes me think that messaging/imagecraft is more important than ever.
The Maya Angelou line about “people remember how you made them feel” has been a bit of a North Star for me in my life. I am reminded of it with frequency, in all sorts of situations.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t agree, because I’m including Republican voters among the people who don’t want incremental change.
Professor Bigfoot
Lord ain’t that the truth. Why I went into engineering; machines are far simpler than people.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Exactly this. I didn’t spend 4 years badmouthing Dem electeds and I am not blaming them for their lack of messaging.
Lecturing know-it-alls can do the messaging and protesting. I am resting until the midterms. 2024 was rough for me. Besides unless one agrees with them completely they tend not to listen to people like me anyway. So I will be using this year to find my artistic voice and inner peace.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I thought you were talking about the Dems and their voters.
Soprano2
I think this pretty much nails it, although I’d say that for a lot of people it’s subconscious rather than conscious. They were raised in a world where the expectation was that they would be at the head of the line for everything, then the world changed and now they have to wait in line with everyone else, and it enrages them but they aren’t sure why. Most people have never actually thought about it, to them white people always being first in line is just the way the world is.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Devil’s advocate:
His biggest identifier was the (R) behind his name.
He had the party (name and infrastructure) of their parents and grandparent and the media and the corporate establishment behind him.
As with 2016, enough people who might and did vote for a Democrat before (Joe Biden) could not stomach voting for a woman.
It’s trite, but I think it’s increasingly clear that it’s true – people (in the main) don’t vote for policies. They vote for personalities and members of the tribe. In 47’s case, it wasn’t voting for him so much as voting against Kamal.
[ insert famous comic of billboard here ]
It’s a big problem…
[ sigh ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m talking about the plurality that voted for Trump over Harris. Although I think many of the third party voters also aren’t with me.
Glidwrith
@Glidwrith: And reading this, I still fell into the trap of an economic viewpoint. Sigh, I gotta go to work, check back later.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: Trump is good at sales and messaging and imagecraft. It’s the only thing he’s good at.
He sells a message of vindication and sticking it to the elites, of Democrats being snobby and out of touch, of foreigners and minorities stealing their birthright, of hot women being theirs to exploit.
jonas
@Ksmiami: It’s starting, to be sure, but most people are still so out of it, they won’t notice for a bit that everything around them is on fire. Right now it’s just still about eggs.
frosty
@Professor Bigfoot: @Suzanne: I did engineering wrong. I have a PE but I was doing watershed planning – which means a lot of public outreach and messaging. Starting with don’t litter and pick up after your dog.
One of my favorite observations while on a stream walk looking for stormwater outfalls: Just below the outlet was a newspaper delivery bag full of crap. The dog owner carefully picked it up, tied the bag, then dropped it into a stormwater inlet.
Revise messaging: Those inlets don’t go to the sewage treatment plant, they go to the creek.
Professor Bigfoot
@Deputinize America: I very specifically chose my daily driver partly because I had worked directly with the manufacturing engineers for that company, and partly because it was built in Chicago by UAW workers.
I love the car. I treasure the time I had working with those engineers (who were, coincidentally, about the most diverse engineering team I’ve ever seen).
But those UAW workers can go fuck themselves from now on, as far as I’m concerned.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You may be right. Most Americans have been insulated from their own stupid electoral decisions because of what America means to the world (primacy of the $, our position in the post war era etc) But the current administration is upending that status quo. So we will see how many people that wakes up.
Professor Bigfoot
I’d say for the vast majority it’s entirely subconscious.
That’s why I’m constantly on about how people need to seriously grapple with the role of white supremacy in their own daily lives, in their own literally unconscious choices.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I think it’s a relatively small group that gets their information from the political talk shows people like Carville inhabit, or the secondary coverage of them. My own exposure to mainstream media is through the CBS Radio news reports that I get from my car radio; short reports on the hour and half hour.
No room for op-ed pieces there and I like that. I generally don’t give any time at all to op-ed pieces anyway and consider them a waste of time and thought. That is, except for the ones I write on Balloon Juice!
schrodingers_cat
@Glidwrith: Using economic messages is fine. But one needs to be aware of the subtext of race/gender etc.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
The hardest parts of my job are the consensus-building and bringing-everyone-along parts.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Right, its subconscious, its the air you breathe.
Race is to the US what caste is to India. And it took getting out of the country for me to realize that subconscious bias.
One comedian put it eloquently, India has sentenced only two Brahmins to death, one killed Mahatma Gandhi (Godse) and the other was a notorious serial killer (Raman Raghav).
Splitting Image
@tobie:
The good news is that, assuming most Americans are capable of learning, they are going to get a clue pretty damned quick.
Professor Bigfoot
And, gods help us, IT WORKS.
From outside that bubble it’s absolutely laughably ridiculous, but it works; and we desperately need to address why it is that so many white men even think this way.
Professor Bigfoot
@Glidwrith: While all of those are good and worthwhile, how do these messages get through their entitled belief that they are owed? That women and immigrants and those people are taking their jobs and their women and their country away from them?
UncleEbeneezer
From your lips to the FSM’s ears.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: @Professor Bigfoot: They pretend not to understand so that they can avoid any introspection. Or they actively like what Trump says regarding women/immigrants/black people/Jewish people/trans people.
Geminid
@Baud: The third party vote pretty much collapsed last year. I think the Libertarian candidate got less than 700,000 votes. That’s down from 1.8 million in 2020 and and over 3.5 million in 2016. My guess is that Trump captured the Lubertarian vote last year.
Indie candidates in downballot races didn’t seem to have much of an impact either, but I can think of a couple exceptions. One was in Marcy Kaptur’s northwest Ohio district where the Libertarian got over 3% and may have enabled Kaptur’s narrow plurality win.
The other was the Pennsylvania Senate race. There, an independent won 2% running against the Biden/Harris admin’s Gaza/Israel policies. Senator Casey lost by so little I think the Independent candidate made the difference. Some of her voters may have thought Casey would surely win and thought they had a “free” protest vote
Ed. One thong I realized folloeing the close House votes in California was thst their jungle primary system.effectively culled Independent candidates in the first round.
This is an observation, and not neccesarily a recommendation for the jungle primary system used in Cal, Washington state and Louisiana.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: I’d say that Murphy’s analysis is generally correct. For better or worse, the one thing that cuts across groups in this country is economics, i.e., we’re mostly bound together by our love of consumer choice, which is a big part of how Americans define freedom. However, people are fickle on that. In 2024, people who otherwise probably don’t like Trump voted for him because of economics. These people just didn’t like the status quo, with the irony being that it’s exactly what they wanted four years earlier when Biden defeated Trump after the chaos of his first term.
People want change when things do not appear to be working, and they don’t have a lot of patience. In 2020, change meant restoring normalcy. In 2024, it meant something different. That was a big part of the problem for Biden, i.e., he got a lot of great things done initially but didn’t seem to be able to offer much for a future that addressed people who may have been left behind in the Covid/post-Covid era, mainly people who didn’t have much in the way of assets. His age played into the sticking power of that narrative. Harris did not have sufficient time to establish a different narrative. Some of her proposals (e.g., the $25k mortgage credit) were a step in the right direction, but it was a bit too timid and too late.
With the destruction that Trump has brought, it’s possible that Americans might again want a restoration a la 2020. However, I think that’s unlikely because we really don’t have some proven figure to fall back on like we did with Biden in 2020. Because of that, Dems have to have some sort of change narrative that is more like 2008, i.e., building something new out of the wreckage created by Trump.
I wonder if an effective approach might be to out-Trump Trump, but in a less insane manner. Part of Trump’s effectiveness is that he has the ability to get people to contemplate believing or doing things that heretofore seemed crazy or inappropriate. This is why he does shit like saying he wants to take over Greenland or make Canada the 51st state. These ideas are silly and, for this exact reason, they end up getting mainstreamed because the media likes to cover them and people find them entertaining.
Taxation is an example of how this could be done on the Dem side. Trump wants tariffs to revitalize American manufacturing. It’s a pipe dream, but whatever. Dems could counter with something that uses that as a premise but brings the US to a system more along the lines of the VAT structures in Europe and elsewhere. Since we’re going to have all this tariff revenue, propose to drop or reduce the income tax rates on the bottom tax brackets who will be bearing the brunt of these import taxes at least until this magical revitalization occurs. Let the fucking rich pay for the transition. This is where you could create a wedge between the GOP and its potential voters.
Splitting Image
@Geminid:
The easiest explanation for this is that third party votes have basically always been fueled by resentment and anger at “the system”. When a major party candidate bases his entire campaign on resentment and anger, why vote third party?
Gin & Tonic
@Professor Bigfoot: What’s an American car? A Ford, built by Turkish workers in Germany? A Chevrolet, built by Mexican workers in Mexico? Or a Honda, built by non-union American rednecks in Tennessee?
Geminid
@Splitting Image: That’s probably part of it. I think Trump’s people also effectively targeted Libertarian voters. I saw some of that on social media. The party itself went through some internal struggles after 2020 and that may have allowed the Trump campaign to more easily peel them off.
Betty Cracker
@Hoodie: Good points. I think Murphy’s take is worth considering, at least, in part if not in whole. I am also sympathetic to the argument that a fairly narrow electoral loss shouldn’t be taken as a sign that the brand is broken. But on the other hand, there’s at least some evidence of widespread discontent within the party’s base, and no organization can afford to ignore that.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Who forms the base of the Democratic Party and why are they unhappy with the party, according to you?
Baud
@Geminid:
They’re going to need that lube to withstand four years of getting screwed.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Indeed. His message is simple, I will save you from the scary non-white people and it worked.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gin & Tonic:
Exactly. To use another example, brand-loyal Honda owners, who’d most likely never be caught dead owning an “American” car go out and buy a Honda Prologue EV…mostly designed by GM and built in one of their Mexico plants.
A good look back on automakers deliberately building plants in the Old Confederacy:
https://labornotes.org/2024/02/south-where-automakers-go-discount
People always talk about boycotting “the south” on a variety of levels. People can start buy looking where their potential new car was built.
cmorenc
@Glory b: how exactly is DT going to prohibit by XO companies from passing on tariff costs to consumers without making it prohibitively costly to carry any imported goods or even goods with some imported components?
Soprano2
I think there’s something to this, especially since she was a black woman, but I still think the most powerful part of the message was “I’ll take you back to the before-Covid times”, because that’s what people want. I know he never said that explicitly, but it came through loud and clear in a lot of what he did say. Lots of people want to go back to 2019, when things were cheaper and we hadn’t gone through a horrible pandemic that killed a million Americans and changed some of the things we do probably forever. Most people hate abrupt change, and you can’t get more abrupt than what happened with Covid.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks for this. You expressed what I need to embrace, and I am going to work on that starting today. I am not an artist, but my writing is my art, and I need to get back to it.
schrodingers_cat
@Josie: Writing is an art. I am going write everyday as well.
PatD
@Baud: I think there’s a lot Democrats can do to improve the image of government in the states, districts, and localities they control. Some of that may be regulations (building more housing), some of it may be crime (everyone wants safe streets), some it may be education (everyone wants good schools). So they probably do need to invest in improving outcomes and then promoting that.
They Call Me Noni
I am going to dip my toe in here and am pretty sure my that my personal take on this will get slapped down nine ways to Sunday but here it goes.
Perhaps part of the problem is that there are millions of voters who sit on the sidelines because they feel that their very top of the ballot vote literally does not matter. All the votes are counted, but not all votes matter. Cycle after cycle it comes down to a smidgeon of voters in a handful of states. It is disheartening to say the least.
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction regarding the Pennsylvania Senate race: the “Indie” candidate I spoke of actually ran on the Green Party line, and she only got .96% of the vote. Leilah Hazow’s 66,000 votes might have made the difference in David McCormick’s 15,550 vote winning margin but it’s not nearly so likely as I thought.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: By “the base,” I meant voters who are registered Democrats. The “some evidence” I referred to is polling that indicates Dem voter discontent with the party. Examples are easily found via Google. Please note I did not say that polling is dispositive, just that there’s “some evidence” of broad discontent, and in my opinion, it would be foolish for the party to disregard it.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Thanks.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Betty Cracker: the brand IS broken. right wing media across various platforms have convinced people that the democratic party is the most evil entity on earth. literally that it’s run by red sea pedestrians who weaponize black and brown people to dominate and liquidate good, christian republicans. then they go to fabulously decadent parties hosted by queer people where they all laugh at the good christian republicans as they celebrate their victory
they’ve been at this across all spectrums since ‘96. people SWIM in this sea of RELENTLESS propaganda and breathe the miasma constantly without noticing. might as well ask a fish what water is.
it’s something that ALWAYS has to be taken into account
the media space tells people that no matter WHAT the gop DOES, they’re BETTER. than democrats bc the democratic party is EVIL
then the normies see the gop blasting the democrats. they see the media hammering democrats. they see DEMOCRATS shivving their leaders CONSTANTLY.
are we surprised when they don’t pull the lever marked “d”?
(oookay, INSTANTLY time-stamped myself there, but still)
if WE won’t fight for OUR people, why would OTHER people think we’d fight for THEM?
strange visitor (from another planet)
@schrodingers_cat: speaking of writing, have you had a chance to check out any of those reviews?
Soprano2
@frosty: We don’t want their bags of trash at the sewage treatment plant, either! Although the bar screen will probably catch them.
Glidwrith
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, we can’t call them lazy, that won’t win. And we can’t say they have to compete for women and resources because they’re basically destroying the country in order to get them.
I do think we should take pages from what oppressed groups have done before: use the law (which is already happening) and appeal to fairness.
Perhaps point out they won’t get women or country because the rich men are hoarding all of it?
Professor Bigfoot
@Gin & Tonic: Once again, *you are so right.*
The thing so many folk do not get is that we now live in a GLOBAL economy, and damn near EVERYTHING has, at the very least, materials and components that crossed international boundaries.
(It’s a Ford built in Chicago, the last full size sedan they built, and it’s damn fast ;) )
A couple of weeks ago I grabbed a package of cookies… when I read the label it turned out they came from India.
When we are literally eating munchie food from thousands of miles away…
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
I must say I’m impressed with somebody who can cook up a joke out of that depressing combination of facts.
lou
I have a friend who is a public affairs professor. Her perspective: Democratic leadership isn’t listening to effective public affairs communicators, but the same old consultants that focus group things to death and reduce everything to platitudes. We need to do what Republicans do: simple slogans that pull on people’s emotions. Nuance doesn’t work. Data doesn’t work. You need an emotionally resonant message.
Also — and I blame Rahm Emmanuel and people of his ilk — you need to grow the party from the ground up and in all locations. Howard Dean was right with his 50 state strategy. We’d be a different country if the Ds stuck to that. Rahm as DNC director killed it and wrecked the party long term.
Betty Cracker
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Who is the “our people” in that sentence — elected Dems or groups we say we want to protect?
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Betty Cracker:
we should absolutely NOT drop any members of our coalition out of expediency or fear. we ALSO really need to start having our our candidates’ backs.
democrats get limited operating time in the public’s eye. there is no reason to be slagging our own and splashing it across social media. disputes about tactics or personnel should definitely be happening but should be kept on the DL.
Kristine
@Glory b:
I’ll be interested to see if that works—won’t that run right up against fiduciary responsibility wrt running the company in such a way as to maximize shareholder benefit (ie profits)? Does Wall Street believe reduced regulation will result in enough income to counter reduced profits across many industries?
Have they yet begun to realize that Trump is kinda bad at this business thing?
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: He was being interviewed when he stated this pernicious fact. It was not a joke.
DougL
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Your comment at 187 is the most critical one imho. The rightwing controls all the media (incl social) – the narrative agst Dems (and their base voters) is constant and deeply woven into the background narrative of white/male society. Until we address this we liberals (in all our flavors) are largely pissing in the wind. IMHO.
coin operated
@Suzanne:
Ain’t that the truth. Any time I’m having a bad day with the computers I manage, I pull out my old nursing license from 1997 and tell myself it could be worse.
Professor Bigfoot
You talk like there’s a way we can win white men; but nearly 2/3 of them voted for Trump, and of that remaining third, how many of them bitch constantly and mightily about how the Democrats are doing it wrong?
Betty Cracker
@strange visitor (from another planet): I agree we shouldn’t sell out members of the coalition. I have mixed feelings about the idea that we shouldn’t criticize elected Dems publicly. Sometimes hearing public outcry is the only thing that motivates them to change course for the better.
The Audacity of Krope
His position that Biden should drop out was vindicated by Harris’s loss? That’s some sick mental gymnastics they’re pulling there.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Betty Cracker: maybe that worked in the before-times, but i mean, would you plan and fight a war like that? in the full view of the enemy? because the fascist gop has definitely gone to war against us, even if many on our side can’t grasp that yet.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: It was JOE BIDEN who brought us back to the before-Covid times. Why has everyone forgotten this?
WTFGhost
from a Blusky link:
Technically, congressional Republicans could do that, but they don’t want to. They want Trump to do it all, without any blame falling on them. They don’t want the burden of governing; they just want power. Is that so wrong of them?
(Ans: hell, yes, it is, but….)
WTFGhost
@Glidwrith: Heh. Saying “simple messages might help” is a good way of having Fox News call you an elitist who thinks right wingers are stupid.
@Kristine: It’ll go as well as his executive order demanding that water on *one* side of a mountain magically transport it to *the other side* of the mountain, because he “turned on the valve.” (You thought his lack of science knowledge would cease to be on display after “burning away lung tissue, almost like a cleaning,” but *nooooo-oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo.*)
(It is rare for “no” to have so many syllables, but I was third in line, and thus annoying younger brother to an elder sister and brother at the same time, and we always know the correct number of syllables – one more than the one that makes our sibling tempted to hit us. In Trump’s case, that’s five syllables too many, but the SS keeps him from committing crimes over Zoom.)
@Soprano2: Plus, no one important cared about the roughly 400,000 people who died due to Trump’s refusal to try to manage Covid-19 as anything but a political challenge. Don’t forget the “we can ignore the mass death and coup attempt,” participants – without them, Trump is in jail and Harris is President.
It’s a huge, huge, blind spot, but that’s kind of why the big lie works.
@Hoodie: Alas, you’re assuming a rational message will get out. I wish I were wrong, but, Republicans have been killing sensible, rational, Republican-leaning messaging for decades. The Affordable Care Act is what you would have gotten, if Republicans had the majority, and needed to pass health care reform, with Democratic votes – and they’ve savaged it at every opportunity. We need a different kind of wedge – an emotional wedge, where they stop thinking of themselves as defending good from the forces of evil. Trump could have provided that, but, Republicans decided they liked fascism-light, so they’re now getting fascism heavy.
@schrodingers_cat: I’d say it’s more that, Republicans love when a Trump or a Reagan, acts like that, to give them cover to be racist.
@schrodingers_cat: But it’s not *just* subconscious. The subconscious goes away in time, if allowed. It takes real energy to keep hating.
Betty Cracker
@strange visitor (from another planet): Aargh, WP ate a reply, so I’ll sum up: we aren’t the planners, so nobody in leadership will listen to what we say on the DL. Our power to affect the direction our leadership wants to take us is limited.
As I understand it, the angst among rank-and-file Dems is that they are convinced Trump is an existential threat and angry that some elected Dems aren’t acting like it. I felt that way too at first and still do in some cases, but I think elected Dems overall are improving, and maybe that’s because the electorate has goosed them in that direction. That’s a good thing!
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Betty Cracker: will gavin newsom, yakking it up with bannon and kirk and maher about how shitty the democratic party is, goose the electorate?
does complaining on CNN, that the ending of the adventure in afghanistan was the worst withdrawal in history because it wasn’t done the way they wanted, goose the electorate?
clooney telling biden to hit the road in an op ed in the fucking new york fucking times, does that goose the electorate?
i’m not talking about the people on BJ (though some here REALLY have axes to grind), rather the idiots who like to play out major party debates in blatantly hostile forums that then gleefully magnify the message of, “even democrats don’t like the democratic party!”
that’s gotta be the dumbest shit we do. and for some reason, there are factions of the party that are compelled to do this incessant, PUBLIC self-sabotage over and over again.
cain
Imagine not able to go to Haj because you might not be able to come back into the U.S.
Geminid
@strange visitor (from another planet): I’ve noticed that House Democrats have been pretty good at not trashing each other or the Party in general. They seem to have a lot of mutual respect, and I think it’s well-justified.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Geminid: And then there’s Rashida Tlaib, but we won’t discuss that right now.
Just me
@Professor Bigfoot: The Black male and Hispanic vote helped Trump win the election. We have to understand how THAT happened.
Just me