Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

In my day, never was longer.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Extremely Niche Concerns

Late Night Open Thread: Extremely Niche Concerns

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Jesus tapdancing Christ. If you believe this nutball shit you are part of the problem, straight up.

[image or embed]

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 2:15 AM

If I'm to take him at face value, he's knowingly siding with people would believe bullshit lies even though he knows it's not true, but also he believes in *other* bullshit lies. Very important distinction.

— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 5:04 PM

We talked in that thread about whether it was better to try and defend the DNC and denounce the conspiracy theories, or just admit there was chicanery and ask for bygones.
I get the rationale, but I think conceding the conspiracy theories would do more harm than good, cutting off our nose style.

— Max ? (@maximumeffort433.bsky.social) May 25, 2025 at 3:29 AM


===

I will not call a person names on the computer I will not call a person names on the computer I will not call a person names on the computer I will not call a person names on the computer I will not JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW A POLITICIAN’S PLATFORM DOESN’T MEAN IT DOESN’T EXIST Y I will not call a

— Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty (@irhottakes.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 6:44 PM

I mean, look. I get that politicians cunningly hide the details of their policies outside the same three viral clips your friends share like “websites,” “speeches,” “books,” and “three seconds after the clip cut off” but if you’re a political activist, it’s your responsibility to know these things.

— Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty (@irhottakes.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 6:52 PM

Chapo Trap House said in their book in early 2017 that they aimed to make socialists out of the country's fools and failsons, and they did indeed help boost the popularity of both the socialism of fools and the socialism of failsons.

— The Girl of Lemongrab (@mc-hesher.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 8:46 AM

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    Does any good ever come from an action that is taken not to address a real problem but rather to placate people who believe in a fictional problem? I can’t think of an example where that sort of exercise didn’t make things worse.

  3. 3.

    SpaceUnit

    “Chapo Trap House said in their book in early 2017 that they aimed to make socialists out of the country’s fools and failsons, and they did indeed help boost the popularity of both the socialism of fools and the socialism of failsons.”

    Whut???

    ETA:  WVIY&)>EEDDQZMCXZP&T!!!!!

  4. 4.

    VFX Lurker

    @opiejeanne: Ugh, The Berners were and in many cases still are insufferable.

    As a GenX white woman, 2015-2016 was my first experience realizing that too many leftists did not think of me as a person. They thought women existed to help them, but not to make decisions on their own.

    I unfollowed/blocked so many abusive men that year…and maybe one or two fellow women.

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    @opiejeanne: For the longest time, I thought:

    (1) Bernie was unfit for senior executive jobs (e.g. being the chief executive) b/c he lacked one of the most important skills for that job: choosing good subordinates and spokespersons.  His subordinates and surrogates were way, way, way too often gigantic pieces of shit.

    (2) but Bernie himself was fine: I agreed with his policies almost uniformly

    But then, last FUCKING WEEK he comes out and says I WAS ROBBED in 2016.  Fuuuuuuck.  He’s still on that?  And he’s gonna fight an internecine battle over that, when he’s not even a fucking Democrat?  Oh, fuck him.  Bernie is dead to me.  He should be dead to any good Democrat.  B/c goddamn, enough is enough, you don’t go reopening EIGHT-YEAR-OLD wounds when you can absolutely nto get anything good out of that.  Reopening them out of pure self-aggrandizement.

    Ugh.

    And that’s setting aside what VFX Lurker says about sooooooo many BernieBros.  B/c yeah, there’s so much misogyny there.  Sooooo much misogyny there.

    Ugh.  So done with Bernie.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @Chetan Murthy: I hadn’t heard about Sanders renewing the “I wuz robbed” claim. Not surprising given the festival of self-flagellation currently dominating center to left spaces. It sucks, but hopefully everyone will get this bullshit out of their system and soon because there’s real work to do.

  8. 8.

    Splitting Image

    @Betty Cracker:

    Does any good ever come from an action that is taken not to address a real problem but rather to placate people who believe in a fictional problem? I can’t think of an example where that sort of exercise didn’t make things worse.

    No.

    Friedrich Engels wrote a book way back in 1880 called Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. The main thrust of the book is the difference between people who think about where they want to go and map out a plan to get there, and people who think about the ideal world they would like to have without any serious attempt to understand the steps that need to be taken to make it happen.

    Nothing has changed since then. The two groups of people can both call themselves socialist but they weren’t allies in 1880 and they aren’t allies now.

  9. 9.

    Pete Downunder

    @Splitting Image: ​
      When I was a young radical anti-war protester at Berkeley in the 60s some of my friends were, from memory Trotskyites, and they had many arguments about how bad the current government policies were, many quite valid, but when pressed on what they really wanted to see in the end and how to get there, they had no clue.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    @Splitting Image: Seems like the broader principle has applications across the ideological spectrum, including blatantly cynical ones. For example, in 2020, after claiming to have run a “perfect election,” Florida Republicans enacted more voter suppression laws, allegedly to address voter “concerns.” Of course, the “concerns” were manufactured by Trump and Fox News, who convinced Repub voters that the election had to have been rigged since Trump lost.

    Maybe Canard guy in the OP is attempting something similarly cynical. Or maybe he’s just a moron.

  11. 11.

    Subsole

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Yeah.  “Worked on one of Bernie’s presidential campaigns” is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a giant red flag..

     

    Edit: I should have specified. “Handled comms for one of Bernie’s campaigns”

  13. 13.

    Don L

    To be honest, I don’t understand any of this. Is this the naval gazing that the left often engages in? That’s some weird shit right there, man.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    hopefully everyone will get this bullshit out of their system and soon because there’s real work to do.

     

    That’s been true since at least 2009. No one is getting it out of their system. It’s up to us to clear the system.

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    When Warren took down Bloomberg in a primary debate, and the Bernie camp took it as a stab in the back *of Bernie*, because he needed the field to stay divided for his fragile minority-win strategy… this was the moment I decided their heads were way up their asses.

  19. 19.

    Splitting Image

    @Betty Cracker:

    Seems like the broader principle has applications across the ideological spectrum, including blatantly cynical ones. For example, in 2020, after claiming to have run a “perfect election,” Florida Republicans enacted more voter suppression laws, allegedly to address voter “concerns.” Of course, the “concerns” were manufactured by Trump and Fox News, who convinced Repub voters that the election had to have been rigged since Trump lost.

    Maybe Canard guy in the OP is attempting something similarly cynical. Or maybe he’s just a moron.

    Yep. I’ve often thought that Engel’s book could be marketed as Feminism: Utopian and Scientific or Conservatism: Utopian and Scientific without changing much of anything in the book.

    Trump is actually as good a representation of what Engels was talking about as anyone. He has a list of things that he says he is going to do: bring back manufacturing jobs, make America great again, build a wall, etc. But he has no idea of how to do anything and his voters don’t care. Therefore nothing that he says he is going to do is going to get done.

    Except the tax cut, of course, and that happens to be the one thing that Trump’s party has specifically planned for and worked towards getting.

  22. 22.

    satby

    @Baud: They’re like MAGA. When they don’t win, it’s because of the conspiracy.

    and addicted to their grievances, and racist and misogynistic as fuck. The only people who count are white working men.

    Edit: and get so butthurt when that’s pointed out that they stomp off to form their own circle jerk safe space for discussion elsewhere because of our groupthink.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Yep. It’s almost as if right-wing populist rhetoric is cover for a plutocratic agenda that happens to serve actual right-wing plutocrats who mouth populist rhetoric. And there are alleged non-MAGAs who fall for that shit every single time.

    ETA: I’m thinking here of certain MSM political reporters who credulously entertained the notion that Trump’s big ugly bill would hike taxes on the rich. No, you dopes! Of course he fucking won’t.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    certain MSM political reporters who credulously entertained the notion that Trump’s big ugly bill would hike taxes on the rich

    Whoa. I’m not fan of the MSM but I missed that bit of dumbassery.

  26. 26.

    satby

    I Spit on Trump

    As a sailor, who read Stars & Stripes newspaper in the 1970s, and then became the Managing Editor of that great, editorially independent newspaper many years later, I had the honor of being a part of our military, and understand it, and them, better than that ghastly, country club bully ever will.

  34. 34.

    Betty Cracker

    In other news, I’ve been up almost the whole night watching drunk morons in airboats trying to find their boat ramps after Memorial Day swamp parties. A vast nearby preserve is dotted with patches of dry land with informal names like Hot Dog Island, etc., and airboaters meet out there to consume cases of Busch and what-not.

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: One of my late mom’s neighbors on the Suwannee used to have a Memorial Day party every year that featured an “honor guard” procession of veterans carrying U.S. and Confederate flags. They played the national anthem and Dixie. The idea that there was any cognitive dissonance involved was inconceivable to the host. You’ll not be surprised to learn that he was a giant asshole in all aspects of life. When he finally croaked several years ago, lots of people rejoiced.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    There are reports in the last few hours of possible movement towards a ceasefire in Gaza. Roi Kais, who’s been reporting on the war for Israeli news site Kann News, posted these two items he thought significant:

        The Emirati Arabic language Sky News channel reports from its sources that President Trump will declare a ceasefire in a few days and that his declaration of a ceasefire will be part of a deal to release Israeli hostages.

    And:

       At the same time, sources described as knowledgeable told inter-Arab channel Al Ghad broadcasting from Cairo about positive developments that may lead to an agreement.

    As described by Al Ghad, the proposed ceasefire would be for 60 days during which negatiators would frame a permanent ceasefire to follow. On the first day, Hamas would exchange five Israeli hostages for “security prisoners” held by Israel. On the 60th day, Hamas would exchange five more hostages live hostages for prisoners. Israel would cease offensive operations and allow humanitarian relief at a large scale.

    This is a shift in Hamas’s position. They’ve held out for an Israeli withdrawal and cessation of all military action in return for all the hostages. They’ve said that a temporary ceasefire is unacceptable without credible US guarantees it would be made permanent. The projected announcement by Trump may be one of Hamas’s conditions.

    On its face, this upholds the Israeli position, of a temporary ceasefire and partial hostage/prisoner exchange. But PM Netanyahu doesn’t really want to end the war at all, so he can be expected to try to wriggle out this proposed ceasefire.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Trump declaring cease fires is like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy.

    Still, we have no choice but to hope Trump’s concern about his image and his need for Arab gifts leads to some sort of peace.

  43. 43.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Don L: ​

    To be honest, I don’t understand any of this. Is this the naval gazing that the left often engages in? That’s some weird shit right there, man.

    Oh good, I’m not the only one. I have no idea who Crepuscular Canard is. Why are we paying attention to this guy? I assume because AL quoted him that he’s not just some rando on the Web, but that’s how he comes across to me. Ignore and move on.

    Given all the Bernie stuff in comments, is there a connection there? I’m confused.

  46. 46.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: He’s a firm example of why I don’t listen to white men anymore (unless, like present company, they’ve demonstrated intelligence and allyship).

    I know we hate the idea of “prejudice,” but when 2/3 of white men voted for white supremacy outright and that other third are like these Berners, well… I believe I’m only rational to ignore them until that allyship is demonstrated; because the vast majority of white men are most definitely NOT allies to any of the rest of us.

  48. 48.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    When Warren took down Bloomberg in a primary debate, and the Bernie camp took it as a stab in the back *of Bernie*

    Gotta admit I totally missed that at the time.

    But if Bernie’s going on about how he was robbed in 2016, then he can fuck off to the moon.  He was practically demanding at the time that the party rewrite its primary rules for his benefit.  And they wouldn’t, thank goodness, but they bent over backwards to make sure things were otherwise fair.

    He lost fair and square, and then he was far too slow in coming around and throwing his weight behind Hillary.  So if he wants to bring up 2016, then fuck him good and hard over that.  Too bad the Senate is stuck with him until 2030.

  49. 49.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: Oh we gon’ fight the sonsabitches, make no mistake about that.

    But I’m not going to refuse to see the demographic aspect of this situation; who hate us and who demand to take control of the Democratic Party; and they’re all white.

    Whiteness is an enemy to democracy.

  50. 50.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Basically, I wsnt to see Trump fail in every last one of his domestic initiatives. But the world keeps spinning while we Yankees sort ourselves out, and to the extent Trump’s actions promote an end to this war I want success, and I don’t care if he gets credit. Same with regards to Syria.

    This news is being received by Israeli opposition members with guarded hope. Omer Dank sounded pretty desperate:

       I don’t know if it will happen, but only Trump can save us.

    Iris Boker who I consider a very perceptive commentator, responded:

       It’s terrible that one psychopath can save us from another.

  53. 53.

    artem1s

    @Chetan Murthy: reopening EIGHT-YEAR-OLD wounds when you can absolutely nto get anything good out of that. Reopening them out of pure self-aggrandizement.

    it should be clear to anyone whose paying attention that Wilmer is still hiring terrible people and is a total piece of shit himself. He’s reopening 8 year old wounds for the same reason he screamed ‘stop the steal’ in 2016. It raises a lot of money. Obviously the purpose of his latest shit fit is the same as all the others he’s thrown over the last 9 years. He’s using the country falling apart to further line his pockets. He’s not the only person whose made a fortune by splitting the vote of the naive in political campaigns but he’s the one whose done the most damage to the Democratic Party from inside their own house. And now assholes like David Hogg have taken up the practice. If the ‘kill the olds’ faction of the purity ponies really believed what they were spouting they would have advocated kicking Wilmer to the curb in 2018 and demanded he give up his Senate seat to someone younger who would actually sponsors some bills and shit.

  59. 59.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: Nope. By then there will be Big Beautiful Condos all along the Mediterranean and Palestinians will get pushed into the sea.

    Kamala Harris is well and truly “punished.” <eyeroll>

  60. 60.

    pajaro

    Ranked choice voting is pro-Democracy, for it encourages a multiplicity of views, but discourages the election of candidates whom the majority dislikes.  In any Democratic primary system that would have included ranked choice voting in 2016 and 2020, Sanders might have gotten a plurality of votes, but he would have lost in the end, because he was never the choice of a majority of democratic voters, and he was no one’s second or third choice.

    Also, if Sanders wants the Democratic Party to become more democratic, he should consider becoming a Democrat and working to make it happen.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @pajaro:

    Who knows? It doesn’t matter whether or not he would have won under a different system. That doesn’t make the process we had unfair.

    And he’s too old to change his ways, so that’s a nonstarter.

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @Harrison Wesley: That ain’t happening any time soon and I think Trump knows it. He’s going after a nuclear deal with Iran for now.

    As for Gaza, Netanyahu clearly plans to prolong an intolerable situation indefinitely. The Gulf Arabs Trump visited ten days ago want it stopped. So does Turkish President Erdogan, whose influence with Trump may be on a par with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince bin Salman’s.

    I saw an interesting item posted by an Israeli OSINT account, I think “Intellitimes.” It relates to the firings of National Security Council staff Friday night:

      Report: Pro-Israeli officials have been fired from the the ational Security Council. Among those fired: Eric Trigger, who holds the Israel and Middle East portfolio in the White House.

    This news is not directly related to the Gaza talks but according to Israeli Joseph Fischer, it may be fallout from Mike Waltz’s removal as National Security Advisor some weeks ago:

       This is part of the purge campaign that President Trump is conducting in light of the discovery of an indirect contact route that Netanyahu maintained through [Ron] Dermer with the head of the national security council [Mike Waltz] who was removed from his position.

    Bibi Netanyahu’s bypassing Trump to the national security council, which reports directly to the Presdent, caused significant strategic harm to the Israel.

    Joseph Fischer* is not a reporter and has no special sources, so this is just an informed guess. But Fischer’s analysis jibes with reporting by the Washington Post that Trump removed Waltz when he found out that Netanyahu was using the Dermer/Waltz connection to undermine his Iranian nuclear negotiations.

    Ron Dermer is a former Ambassador to the US and is “Bibi’s” diplomatic front man in the Gaza negotiations.

    * Fischer describes himself as a “Global Tourism and Lodging Executive.” Like Iris Boker, he’s an intelligent, informed layperson who keeps close track of these events and like Boker, Fischer is vehemently anti-Netanyahu.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Professor Bigfoot: And I keep saying, I see all these Black leftists on Mastodon (particularly Mekka Okereke) arguing that Biden and Harris lost because they became representatives of pro-cop white supremacy, and between that crowd and the people here I get just the most intense cognitive dissonance.

  65. 65.

    Geminid

    @sab: Hamas’s leadership seems to think so. That may be based on what they are hearing from the Qataris and the Turks, who have fairly closest ties with both Hamas and Trump. Those nations want this ceasefire, and so do the Saudis and Emiratis. I would not underestimate the weight those four governments swing with Trump.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    @Pete Downunder: There’s an apocryphal story about college kids at an SDS meeting discussing whether it made sense to kill the infant children of millionaires and billionaires to stop the cycle of oligarchy and to hasten the equality of the economic and social utopia they do desperately wanted.

    :-/

    Sometimes our brains just don’t work too good, and it can be hard to break out of that way of thinking once we start down that road…

    Thanks.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    schrodingers_cat

    I have been called a crank by Betty Cracker and insulted by MisterMix more than once for the sin of seeing through the fingerwagger’s lofty rhetoric. His racism, xenophobia and misogyny wears economic justice clothes. He is a mirror image of the Orange Clown. The sage of Vt is as much the Apostle of White Grievance as the man in the WH.

    Remember, he was the first not to accept the results of an election, the 2016 primaries and called it rigged

    His pro-gun and anti-immigrant stances are just shoved under the carpet by his acolytes.

  73. 73.

    Trivia Man

    @Chetan Murthy: In 2016 i very happily voted for both Bernie snd Hillary in the primary. I lived in a state either an early primary and voted Bernie because he campaigned on several issues i cared about and i wanted to demonstrate those ideas had popular support. Naively i still expected to see media traction as an actual effect.
    Then i moved to a state with a later date and voted for Hillary. I dont think it was quite guaranteed yet but she was close to a lock. I was very satisfied to vote for her and eagerly voted her in the general. It was definitely a vote FOR her but also sending a message* to bernie that it was O V E R.

    *i know, i know. You want to send a message, use Western Union.

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: As with everything else, 47 wants to make sure everyone bends a knee to him.  Even the MotUs and the wannabe plutocrats.  He wants them to know that he can hurt them too if they don’t do what he wants.

    Plus, it’s a soundbite to feed the rubes that he really truly honestly is fighting for them.

    It’s mostly mouth noises to keep everyone off balance, another thing he learned at the mafiosi school of negotiation.

    (IIRC, there’s some story in his stupid book about some negotiation and the other guys trying for weeks to get a meeting scheduled with Donnie, and he finally consents to a 10 minute meeting.  And when the day comes, they spend 2-3 hours meeting and glad-handing and Donnie telling his staff to shift his schedule because this meeting is really important, and all the rest.  And they’re all so grateful that he’s so personable and reasonable and not at all like the monster they expected.  And, IIRC, they come to some agreement, and then Donnie screws them over anyway in the end.  The End.)

    Something something leopard spots and eating faces.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  79. 79.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: My recollection is that once he found his footing, that St. Bernard’s big theme in 2016 was how CORRUPT the Democratic party was.  Once you go there, there’s really no going back.

    And it’s why Our Revolution is still going today, carrying the same grudges, still using the same language, still, AFAIK, pushing the Naderite They’re Both The Same, etc., etc.

    Message discipline is important when campaigning, but burning down the house because it’s not perfect is insane.  St. Bernard could and can never build an actually effective mass political movement because it’s all about imagined conspiracies to prevent them from instantly getting what they want.

    The real world doesn’t work that way.

    Him being shocked, shocked that the monster he built and fed lies for years about how CORRUPT the Democratic Party is actually didn’t want to come together at the Convention to support actual Democrats and make things better was another illustration of how totally incompetent he is as a political leader.

    Grr…

    So, Yay for St. Bernard when he actually votes the right way.  But keep him away from the party because he’s toxic to trying to form a working majority.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  81. 81.

    different-church-lady

    @Chetan Murthy: ​

    B/c goddamn, enough is enough, you don’t go reopening EIGHT-YEAR-OLD wounds when you can absolutely nto get anything good out of that.

    “Right now the MOST IMPORTANT thing is that we stop Trump. And I could have done it in 2016, but [repeats litany of complaint for the 900th time…]”

  82. 82.

    dnfree

    @Splitting Image: This is what I thought about the Occupy Wall Street movement.  They knew what they were against, but they seemed unable to coalesce around a concrete idea of what they collectively agreed they wanted, so the movement devolved into setting up these tent cities and creating little libraries for them and organizing food service and holding meetings.  The peaceful Vietnam protests knew their goal, and so did the Civil Rights movement.

  83. 83.

    different-church-lady

    @Matt McIrvin:

    between that crowd and the people here I get just the most intense cognitive dissonance.

    At least around here we’re pretty sure we’re wrong.

  84. 84.

    different-church-lady

    @Don L: ​

    Is this the naval gazing that the left often engages in?

    Actually, we spend most of our time glaring hatefully into each other’s navals.

  85. 85.

    Librettist

    Wilmer will run in 2028 if he’s not dirt surfin’.

    The Mike Gravel of Eugene McCarthys. It is a salve for the ego and bank accounts.

  86. 86.

    Matt McIrvin

    @dnfree: I remember being kind of depressed at how the Seattle CHAZ/CHOP settlement in the wake of the George Floyd protests worked out: they made a big deal about how they were able to handle troublemakers “without police” but it involved their own security force acting, as far as I could tell, exactly like the police, including an incident where they shot somebody and the folks in charge sounded exactly like small-town citizens falling in line behind a trigger-happy cop.

  87. 87.

    Interesting Name Goes Here

    @Another Scott: And people used to look at me funny in other places and on other sites when I would say that Bernie Sanders is one of the worst things to ever happen to this country.

    He played a dangerous game, lost that game, and has now been angling for a second chance so he can hide his fuckups before they come to the surface long enough to destroy his manufactured reputation.

  88. 88.

    PatD

    @Professor Bigfoot: maybe it’s actually a good thing that your views aren’t representative of Democratic leadership and instead reserved for the comment section. There aren’t enough of us to win elections on our own. There never has been and won’t be any time soon given the inroads Republicans have made with working class minorities.

    So it sounds good and you’ll get some amens but it’s politically dumb and I’m thankful no one in positions of power believes this.

  89. 89.

    dnfree

    @Matt McIrvin: And I have a right-wing relative who mentions CHAZ frequently as one of the indicators that the left and the whole police reform movement is clueless, so that situation is used on the right to discredit the legitimate concerns.

  91. 91.

    jefft452

    @Chetan Murthy: “(2) but Bernie himself was fine: I agreed with his policies almost uniformly”

    Agree on the policies, but I never thought Bernie himself was fine

    I cant think of a potential D POTUS who would be LESS likely to get Bernie’s agenda passed then Bernie

    He would be at war with the D’s in the House and Senate from day 1

  92. 92.

    planetjanet

    @pajaro:  The place for a multiplicity of views is in the primary.  The general election is not the only election we have.  Ranked choice has some good qualities.  It would be nice to only have one election.  But it also requires a lot more thought to go into a strategic vote.  That is asking a lot for the average voter.  You want change, work for your favorite candidate in a primary.  It also makes a great learning experience for a candidate to build a campaign and persuade people to join.  One all-compassing election does not provide that.

  93. 93.

    Betty Cracker

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I have been called a crank by Betty Cracker and insulted by MisterMix more than once for the sin of seeing through the fingerwagger’s lofty rhetoric.

    That’s not true, at least not in my case. I did a post on the Trump/Musk assault on science which quoted Naomi Klein’s theory on the motive behind it, and you called Klein a left-wing crank, using the fact that Klein was quoted (without engaging the substance of what she said) as a springboard to complain about the left in general.

    I said to me you sound like a crank on the topic of anyone to the left of, well, yourself probably. It had absolutely nothing to do with Sanders, whom I also find annoying.

  94. 94.

    wonkie

    There are a lot of the Dems are terrible etc arguments on bluesky, often from people who believe that policy proposal changes will have the magical effect of winning elections. I have a response that I use for them that goes like this:

    Most people most of the time vote on style and brand, not substance, so the policy discussions are inside baseball wanking with little or no effect on elections. Third party and non-voters are parasites who are happy to benefit from Dem policies while backstabbing the people who did the work to get the policies implemented.  It’s a bullshit waste of time to spend energy attacking Dems: what are you doing to attack Rethuglicans?

    Overstated, I know but my message is aimed at people who don’t do subtlety,

  95. 95.

    chemiclord

    @pajaro: Look towards the mayoral race in New York City as an example of the flaws of ranked choice voting.  Right now, you have Cuomo and about ten other candidates, six or seven of which fall pretty far on the progressive to leftist line.

    Well… unfortunately, because voters have their pet candidate, and have absolutely refused to coalesce around one, and even further, refuse to consider any of the others as #2.  As a result, Cuomo is significantly ahead, and will likely win by a considerable margin.

  97. 97.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: There’s reason to believe a good chunk of Cuomo’s calculations in deciding to run again was based on the general unwillingness of ‘progressive’ or ‘leftist’ voters to settle for anything less than their personal favorite candidate.  It’s always the other, less pure (by each voter’s personal measure) that should drop out, for the good of The Cause!

  99. 99.

    Interesting Name Goes Here

    @Baud: Everybody got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.  In my experience, progressives like getting punched in the mouth a lot.  Like, A LOT.

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    @chemiclord:

     

    @Anne Laurie: A Marist poll from a couple weeks ago showed Cuomo with 45% and Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani breaking ahead of the rest of the pack with 22%.

    When respondents were asked for their top five rankings, the poll showed a final result with Cuomo still first with almost 60% and Mamdani just over 40%.

    Mamdani is a very liberal candidate. That and his affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America might explain the higher ranking the other candidates’ supporters give Cuomo.

    This may be reflect the headwinds the DSA’s International Committee’s foreign policies create for its candidates, even though they center other issues and not foreign policy in their campaigns.

    There may also be a feeling that despite Cuomo’s personal baggage he would still be a more reliably competent Mayor.

    Regardless, it’s hard to see how the Cuomo opposition can turn this around, even though he seems to be running a fairly lackluster campaign and he’s boring as hell.

  101. 101.

    chemiclord

    @Baud: ​
      Because ranked choice still requires an electorate that thinks rationally, and acts rationally, in order to get positive results.

    It’s why I like to say, “You can’t legislate yourself out of a shitty electorate.” If voters insist on making dumb choices, there’s no democratic process that will save a city/state/country from that.

  104. 104.

    Paul in KY

    @Another Scott: Yeah, cause those millions and billions wouldn’t go to another relative…

    Brilliant idea when you’ve taken too much bad acid.

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