Jay Jones, a former Virginia delegate, wins Democratic nomination for the state’s attorney general.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) June 17, 2025 at 10:09 PM
BREAKING: Judge blocks the Trump administration from limiting passport sex markers for many transgender and nonbinary people.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) June 17, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is lifting a curfew in downtown Los Angeles.
Her Tuesday announcement comes after she first imposed the curfew in response to protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the city.— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) June 17, 2025 at 3:07 PM
The “No Kings” protest was a powerful showing of hope and mobilization against President Trump’s attacks on democracy. @jimacosta.bsky.social explains in conversation with Sen. @dougjones.bsky.social:
— Center for American Progress (@americanprogress.bsky.social) June 17, 2025 at 5:09 PM
— George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) June 17, 2025 at 8:46 PM
On The Road – frosty – 2024 National Park Road Trip – Washington (4/10) Olympic National Park – Coast
Baud
Congratulations, Mr. Jones.
It’ll be nice to see VA join the other Dem AGs in leading the good fight.
eclare
The photo is beautiful.
catclub
Taco chickening out on mention of Ukraine makes a lot of sense.
Suzanne
How much do I admire Zelensky. Unsurprised to hear that TACO is too scared to face him.
I have not been following the NYC mayor’s race closely, but multiple people whose politics I generally trust said Lander is the best candidate. Now seeing him be arrested by Trumpy goons, I’m sure this elevates his profile. I wonder if that will affect his chances. I wish Andrew Cuomo would fuck off and go live under a bridge.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I’m curious to see if the ranked choice process ends up elevating everyone’s number 2 pick to the top spot.
I’m also not a fan of Cuomo.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yeah, I honestly don’t grok the ranking process and how it might be a factor.
I remember, when I was a young kid, like preschool-kindergarten age and I lived on Long Island….. Mario Cuomo was literally the first politician whose name I knew. (Probably because my grandfather would be calling him some anti-Italian slur.) Seeing Andrew Cuomo turn out to be such a nepo baby empty shell of his father has been a huge disappointment.
p.a.
Anyone get an email invite for a Census Bureau survey? It’s gotten to the point I don’t want to click on anything. Also too, sadly I don’t thrust this chud admin to do anything positive with the info.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meh, I think it was combination of the other G7 leaders weren’t fawning over him like his cabinet does and his heath is crappy. That and Trump is likely mad that Canadian First Nation Tribal Leader dared dress him down for being an asshole when he landed.
Jeffro
Spanberger/Hashmi/Jones is a strong ticket!
(and unlike their GOP counterparts, they’re all willing to campaign/appear together!!) LOL
Professor Bigfoot
This is the first I’ve heard of such… I hope there’s video somewhere, because that would be beautiful.
Baud
@Jeffro:
You mean they’re in array?
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
There was some discussion of ranked choice in one of yesterdays (or possibly Monday’s) threads. Ranked choice working as intended seems to depend very much on people having a real #2 pick (and possibly #3, etc.) rather than just writing in whoever’s name they recognize, since the latter possibility can give someone the win just based on name recognition without much actual support.
I like ranked choice in theory because it gives room for new parties to demonstrate support before they get to the point where they can actually win, and historically I think our system would have benefited from more fluidity in our party system, rather than being locked into the two we’ve got.
I don’t think this is one of those times, though. The Democrats IMHO are clearly enough defined as the party of inclusion and more widely shared prosperity, or would be so if we had more honest mass media, and the Republicans of course are their opposite: the party of white men and oligarchs. There really isn’t a third side in that conflict.
Jeffro
Bouie: well you certainly wouldn’t call it “presidential under-reach”
Jeffro
@Baud: shhhh don’t tell anyone
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
https://www.the-independent.com/news/trump-g7-first-nations-indigenous-canada-b2771096.html
What’s great is that Crowchild talked to the Orange Fart Cloud in his native language. Didn’t say specifically what was said but this was something he said afterwards:
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
As I’ve said before, my number one problem is with candidates winning primaries with low pluralities because a race has a crowded field. Ranked choice is one way to deal with that problem, but not the only one.
California and Louisiana have had jungle primaries for a while now. It hasn’t resulted in new parties emerging or even that much of a difference in outcomes AFAIK.
I think people want to blame the “system” rather than face having to deal with real voters in a real political culture.
catclub
@Jeffro: Or they just want an excuse to invoke the insurrection act and all its presidential powers.
Riling up opposition is just the ticket.
Professor Bigfoot
I think too many “liberal” white men are attracted to “the party of the white man,” even if they don’t want to admit it even to themselves.
They’ll say “no more lesser evil,” but that ONLY empowers the greater evil… that is perpetrated by white men like them.
Which, of course, makes them believe that they are safe no matter how great the greater evil becomes.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
That sums it up. We have technically non-partisan jungle primaries in Denver and it’s intensely disliked and we still get shitty candidates and electeds.
We’re gonna vote on RCV and everybody seems to think it’s a panacea when, in fact, it simply has it’s own quirks and goofiness that doesn’t necessarily equate with “better” outcomes.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist:
Truth, Justice, and the American Way
would make a decent bumper sticker.
Sounds like there’s a decent comic using that slogan, from March 2001.
Best wishes,
Scott.
stinger
@eclare: It is! But that second photo has been there for a long time, and I hate looking at MAGA signs. I might bring that up when WaterGirl is around.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
One advantage to being old is that I’ve witnessed the failure of the war against the lesser evil. Young people without experience can easily be sucked into a good moral sounding slogan.
Betty Cracker
My win is that I am taking the day off to go swimming in this spring:
Will watch out for gators, but usually in the summer they stay in the river and don’t come into springs because the spring water is too cold for them (72 F).
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Oh. That should be a side bar picture. Have fun.
Geminid
@Baud: I think open, “jungle” primary systems tend to marginilize 3rd party candidates. That may not have been the intent, but it’s an effect.
Soprano2
He should go join his brother on News Nation.
JML
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: RCV has been added in some races in my state, and it’s accomplished exactly none of what it’s proponents claimed it would achieve: turnout has not increased, negative campaigning has not decreased, it hasn’t produced “majority winners” in every race as promised. It has added in more and more candidates and made the field more confusing, and erected barriers to voting for communities, however, as it’s much more confusing for new voters and anyone with a language barrier.
I’m not really a fan. I’m definitely not a fan of the people who keep pretending it fixes politics.
Soprano2
@Jeffro: They believe they got elected because of their call to deport 11 million criminals, and nothing will dissuade them from that belief. Plus, they’re scared of the brown people who speak other languages.
Baud
@Geminid:
I guess I can see that. A candidate with “third party views” can just run under a major party label and reap the benefits of that brand.
TONYG
@Suzanne: I live close to, but not in, New York City. My understanding is that Lander is one of the two most progressive candidates for mayor. That is probably the real reason why the ICE goons went after Lander. It’s just appalling to me that a significant number of NYC voters favor Andrew Cuomo. But this is the same city that elected Giuliani twice.
different-church-lady
@Jeffro:
https://genius.com/Irving-berlin-after-you-get-what-you-want-you-dont-want-it-lyrics
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Alaska’s new system intrigues me. They hold and open primary like in CA, WA and Louisiana. But instead of the top two finishers advancing to the general election, the top four finishers advance to a Ranked-choice runoff. I think this system is less problematic than a simple jungle primary system, or a an all-comer, Ranked-choice bote in a general election.
Personally, I favor runoffs in primaries, maybe with a 40% threshold for winning outright like New York City had before they adopted RCV (North Carolina has a 30% threshold for primary wins).
But the Ranked-choice model, which is often described as an “instant runoff,” better fits what I call our “Age of Impatience.” I think RCV is the coming thing; I’m just glad its being tried out on a state and local level so we can at least learn about its dynamics and unintended consequences before wider adoption.
If I had to choose, I’d pick Alaska’s hybrid system.
Baud
@Geminid:
Agree. On paper, Alaska seems like the best system to me too.
Geo Wilcox
AN election that slipped under the radar happened in San Antonio a few days ago. A lesbian (D) won out over a Trump endorsed Hispanic man (R).
TONYG
@Soprano2: I remember (I don’t know how accurately) his father Mario being a decent governor back in the eighties. Maybe an example of the “failson” phenomenon.
different-church-lady
@Jeffro:
I think this misses the mark slightly: it’s not because they believe it’s the right thing to do. It’s because it’s what they want to do.
Saying they believe in it implies a misplaced higher purpose, and that gives them too much credit. The only belief Trump and his people have is that they should be able to do anything they want. And what they want is to dominate and hurt.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Ranked-choice voting ought to eventually lead to *better* third-party and independent candidates, since as it is, you’ll usually only run as one if you either irrationally discount the spoiler effect (Gary Johnson) or actively welcome it (Jill Stein)–or if you’re the de facto major-party candidate but identify as independent for whatever reason (Bernie Sanders, Angus King).
But I suspect it wouldn’t hugely improve things in the short term, since at first we’d still have the existing ones, and the willful spoilers would probably lobby for their supporters to refuse to rank second choices because spoiling is the point.
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
Can I ask what they said the name of the survey was?
I’m kinda suspicious right off the bat because how do you get a representative sample of anything from email addresses? For any sort of household survey, you’d get a letter in the mail, because taking representative samples of addresses is something well within the Census Bureau’s capabilities.
So my guess is it’s bogus, but I can ask my old co-workers if that survey exists if I know the name, and if that survey exists, I could ask if they’re sending out invites by email.
TONYG
@Geo Wilcox: I continue to be appalled that any Latinos/Latinas would support Trump. But, of course, there were Jews that cooperated with the Nazis.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Doug R
@catclub:
It was widely known Carney would introduce another $2,000,000,000 to Ukraine, maybe trump forgot his wallet back in his other pants back in Washington?
Or he didn’t want to pay Rogers roaming charges when he calls Putin for his new orders?
Harrison Wesley
@TONYG: George Romney was a pretty liberal Republican; his son much less so.
Matt McIrvin
@TONYG: There are a lot of reasons they might; Latinos are not a voting monolith. There are many who resent undocumented immigrants and believed Trump when he said he’d just crack down on them.
Trump also ran ads in Spanish-language markets basically calling Biden and Harris Communist autocrats in the vein of Venezuela or Cuba. That could be a powerful appeal.
Betty Cracker
@TONYG: Trump won 56% of the Latino vote in FL in 2024. DeSantis also won majorities in 2022. It’s not a fringe phenomenon here.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud:
I agree completely. Social media has helped people retreat to their bubbles and, not only get more extreme and more strident, but convinced that everyone secretly agrees with them. We have the world the majority of voters have created. Misinformation is a problem, but democracy is what it is.
Betty
@TONYG: There is lots of “I got mine, so too bad for you” thinking as well as enormous propaganda efforts calling Democrats communists. Some of the vote is also based on the abortion issue because of the Catholic Church’s position. So multiple reasons.
narya
My understanding is that Mamdani and Lander have appeared together and urged their supporters to rank both of them in the top two slots (i.e., Mamdani supporters would have Lander second, Lander supporters would have Mamdani second) and I’ve seen a lot of stuff saying to rank FIVE candidates, but NOT Cuomo. And I’m not even in NY.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
schrodingers_cat
@stinger: Thanks. Good to know I am not the only one. I brought it up sometime last week in my comments.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty: It’ll be interesting to see how Trump’s actual behavior affects this support. I see two recent Newsweek articles a week apart saying “Trump’s Approval Skyrockets Among Hispanics” and “Trump Is Losing Support From Hispanics”, so you got me.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
If only young people believed that.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Funny but true.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Denver_mayoral_election
That shows exactly how an open ‘jungle’ primary can play out when the seat is open.
It’s not RCV…yet.
Our glibertarian, techbro governor supported a ballot initiative for RCV that was basically what you describe, was backed by a former DaVita exec, all the big-monied interests you would expect (Chevron kicked in $500K in support of the proposition in the last weeks of the campaign, gee I wonder why?) supported it, basically, damn near anybody I vote against or push back against was for it.
We, the voters, rejected it soundly because of the very real impact dark money would have on the open part of it.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/06/ranked-choice-rejected-nationwide/
https://www.commoncause.org/colorado/resources/vote-no-on-proposition-131/
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Baud
June 18, 2025 at 7:40 am
@lowtechcyclist:
While I think there are a lot of people who fit the description of your second paragraph, I fail to see how jungle primaries leave much of an opening for new parties.
The thing about ranked choice is you could vote for the party you really wanted without throwing away your vote with respect to the ultimate outcome. But unless I’m missing something about how jungle primaries work, there’s a real risk that by voting for a minor party, the major party you detest the most might wind up with both nominees for the general election, and then you’re screwed.
I still believe that back during the 1970s through 1990s, there was room for a third party of the center to evolve, given a system that wouldn’t have meant throwing away one’s vote. There’s reasons why Anderson and Perot drew the support they did. But it takes a significant chuck of the electorate not feeling very well served by either major party in the first place to provide an opening for the growth of a viable third party, even if the rules are set up in a way that allows for such growth.
And as I said, now is not such a time. The division between the parties is stark in a way that leaves no real middle ground. And third parties of the extremes make even less sense: you’re either on one side or the other in this fight.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I find that the centrist “mavericks” and the extremist third parties actually have a lot in common: a distaste for the two-party duopoly that is really a type of “get the politics out of my politics”. The belief that you can keep it from working the way it does, or are morally obliged to protest the way it does, by opting out or throwing a monkey wrench into the system. There’s a fondness for showboating larger-than-life figures, too.
Geminid
Former Delegate Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for Attorney General, is only 36 years old and I think we’ll hear a lot from him in coming years. Jones still has to beat current AG Jason Miyares, but the disparity in candidate quality at the top of the ticket helps Jones and hurts Miyares. Jones is a good campaigner and I expect he’ll work hard for the win.
Jones is from a politically active family. His father, Jerrauld Jones was a state Delegate and then spent 20 years on the bench as a Circuit Court judge. Jerrauld Jones passed away last month at age 70.
Jones’s grandfather, Hilary Jones Jr., was an attorney who battled Virginia’s entrenched system of segregation in the 1950s and 60s. He was the first Black member of Norfolk’s school board, and later the first Black member of the state’s Board of Education.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I should form a third party.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: RCV led to the reelection of Sen. Murkowski over a MAGA chud in Alaska. It led to the election and reelection of Rep. Jared Golden over MAGA chuds in ME-2. Which is why the GOP is so adamantly opposed to it.
Baud
Via reddit, drag queen yada yada.
leeleeFL
@Suzanne: Both Cuomo sins have been disappointing! Mario Cuomo was a great Governor! I remember when we finally stopped LILCO from opening the Shoreham nuclear plant. He said, “Never underestimate the hand that rocks the cradle!”
Only real misstep he had that I recall was his tone deafness over the aftermath of Hurricane Gloria. Had to cut his Italian vacay short, and he said something about having to deal with Hurricane Matilda (the Mrs. was not happy!)
Jesse
Speaking of attorneys General, one thing I’d like to see is investigations and, if warranted, arrests and prosecutions at the state level of illegal behavior by ICE agents and other law enforcement. Some of what we’ve seen in these videos, mainly coming out of CA (but not just there) are illegal at the state level. ICE agents aren’t immune from state level prosecution. Excessive force, assault, even kidnapping…these are state crimes. Why aren’t D governors and attorneys general on this?
oldgold
@Betty Cracker: How much are these percentages skewed by the Cuban vote?
In my town, which I admit is a tiny sample size, the Latinos, generally speaking, see the world much differently than the Cubans.
WereBear
@Suzanne: The difference between a true performer and an inept hand puppet.
Geminid
@RevRick: I noticed that Senator Murkowski campaigned alongside Democrat Mary Peltola during the last weeks of the 2022 general election. That didn’t seem to hurt either of them and it may have helped; Alaska has an unusually large share of Independents, and some of them see virtue in splitting tickets.
Peltola lost a close race last year, and now she’s running for Governor. Peltola strikes me as a very talented politician, so that race will be worth following next year.
Eyeroller
@lowtechcyclist: AFAICT “jungle primaries” are the worst possible system. They seem to have been implemented so far mostly in areas that are dominated by one party. Maybe the goo-go types hoped to get more competition, but the outcome nearly always seems to be that the minority party is locked out completely from the general election.
I don’t like runoffs simply because the turnoff is already low in a primary and it drops off severely for most runoffs. If we had better participation then primaries plus runoffs might be a good system.
Trivia Man
Arguing politics over text with my brother. Infuriating. In no particular order here are the most aggravating points he made today.
George Soros is thwarting justice with his $$$
AOC is rich from corruption
Clinton lied about the word “is”
And somehow he ignored the link i sent him about Venture Capital Extremism from vcinfodics.com
Terrifying stuff and its all coming true
WereBear
@Suzanne: The real sadness is that he’s so good at organization and management. Ran FEMA well, I understand. Vocal critic of the pandemic handling from the White House and as a citizen I got what I needed.
Even now, Governor Hochul is not on my Christmas list, but she’s been doing the right blue state stuff. Even our Republicans, who are among the worst, must become middle of the road if they make it to the governorship.
suzanne
@leeleeFL:
So that was before I was born, but SuzMom still talks about that. One of her good friends was one of the primary organizers of that effort.
RevRick
@Geminid: Third parties are marginalized by the inherent structure of our political system. Duverger’s Law states that first-past-the-post elections tend to shove them to the sidelines and this is even more the case in Presidential democracies like ours.
Since Presidential elections have binary outcomes of win or lose, it forces the creation of coalitions before the election. This is in contrast to Parliamentary democracy where coalitions are formed after the election. Parliamentary elections are much more fluid, as a result.
The only times in US history that we have seen the rise of a new party is when the old second party committed suicide, e.g. the Federalists and Whigs.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The picture I saw it was both clear Crowchild is both shorter than Trump and bigger than Trump all at the same time.
Eyeroller
@Trivia Man: There’s probably no point in arguing with somebody so mind-poisoned. If he’s still ranting about Bill Clinton it sounds like this goes back a long time. The Soros thing sounds rather Q-Anonish.
WereBear
One of the most diplomatic things ever said about an abomination.
Don’t say I’m too harsh to a fellow human being. The secrets we know means he has done far worse.
Trivia Man
@different-church-lady: in other words, “the tighter you grasp the more they will slip through your fingers”
WereBear
We want to blame something we can fix.
Trivia Man
@TONYG: my memory is that cuomo sr was seen as a lock to be president. He got overconfident and assumed he was in total command. He tried to be coy and teased a run several times… and his moment passed. Id live to hear his kids talk about their memories of dad as a potential president
H.E.Wolf
I’m happy to reassure you that it was all over the internet last week, particularly in TX, after the Sat. June 7 runoff in which Gina Ortiz Jones won with a decisive share of the vote.
San Antonio, like many US cities near the Mexican border, has a huge Latino presence. Many Latino families have lived in the southern US for hundreds of years. Like all ethnic groups, their personal perspectives run the gamut.
Mayor-elect Ortiz Jones is many things in addition to “a lesbian” – although that is extra sweet for LGBTQ+ folk and allies, in a victory during Pride Month.
She is Filipina-American (hence the Spanish surname Ortiz), a military veteran, and pro-choice… just to name a few.
I showed up bright and early on the blog to announce it, too. :) I wrote postcards for her campaign!
suzanne
@WereBear: I hear that. But, like….. he’s trash. He treats people like trash, and even I was in 100% alignment with his politics, that would be disqualifying, IMO.
I have voted, and will continue to vote, for people whose politics are not everything I want them to be, but are effective and good at achieving consensus. But, like….. there are some boundaries.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: In much of the Black community it’s being interpreted as Hispanic/Latino proximity to whiteness and distaste for Black people.
Understand that we remember when the Irish and the Italians weren’t white until they adopted anti-Blackness and became the stereotypical “beefy Irish beat cop” and “wily Italian detective.”
The “Model Minority” trope was the offer of conditional whiteness to Asian people; but of course the Japanese internment camps are still in living memory. (nonetheless, there are Chinese immigrant families that sued against “affirmative action,” Asian folk are not a monolith either)
It’s obviously working for Rafael Eduardo Cruz and Marco Rubio, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seonachan
RCV works well in some situations, like most general election scenarios in the US where there are two main contenders and a few smaller parties at the margins. It solves for the Nader Effect, and got us Jared Golden in ME-2. In a scenario like NYC’s primary with 9 candidates it’s not going to function nearly as well, but neither is any other system.
WereBear
Dead on balls accurate.
Baud
@WereBear:
For some reason, much of our side has internalized the notion that our ideas and values are not persuasive, and so we have to rely on kludges and gimmicks to prevail. I just think it makes us look not confident.
Belafon
@H.E.Wolf: I have a friend whose family has been in the area around San Antonio since before the colonies. He and his parents didn’t speak any Spanish, though ICE would have no problem grabbing them off of the streets for their looks. He finally learned the language because his wife is from Colombia and the in-laws don’t speak English.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What the party did to its nominee last year makes us look like we are afraid of our own shadow. It was unprincipled and cowardly.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: Lots of people, of every race, are socially conservative. Oppose LGBTQ equality, love patriarchy, oppose abortion and choice. These are really activating issues.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree that made us look weak. I think we could have gotten past it if Harris had won. But now we’re in a hole that will be tough to crawl out of in the short term.
schrodingers_cat
OT if anyone is in the market for watercolor pencils. Its Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils by FaberCastell or bust. They are gorgeous!
RevRick
@Eyeroller: The whole GOP “George Soros” thing is thinly veiled antisemitism. How dare that rich Jew oppose us! That, and all references to “globalists.”
p.a.
@lowtechcyclist: here’s the email from [email protected]
Hello,
About a week ago, you should have received an email asking you to complete a new Census Bureau survey. We are sending this reminder because we have not yet received your response. Your participation will help advance U.S. Census Bureau research.
Please complete the survey using the link below.
Take the Survey
Or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser:
https://answer.census.gov/jfe/form/SV_3lpiuRbv4KjvGse?Q_DL=ZSVqVDV6sg1CgRZ_3lpiuRbv4KjvGse_CGC_Adj6DXwtVRdrkEb&Q_RD=EMD_V2mgKIHjmA0p8p5&Q_CHL=email
The final date to complete the survey is June 25, 2025.
Thank you in advance for your participation in this survey. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected] or visit https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/census-bureau-research-panel.html.
Sincerely,
The Census Bureau Research Panel Team
This collection has been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This eight-digit OMB approval number, 0607-0978, confirms this approval and expires on 01/31/2027. We are required to display this number to conduct this survey.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: What a gorgeous swimming hole!
But this is why I live in the mountains. Our lakes are always too cold for gators :)
Baud
@suzanne:
Agree. Any bit of social progress we make frees someone from having to join with us for their own protection.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Good point about the Harris win.
Baud
@p.a.:
The link says census.gov so it should be legit.
Miss Bianca
@Professor Bigfoot:
Once more, with feeling.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The people around Trump are the same thing. I think Trump was frustrated that Crowchild ignored the cheesy domination games that Trump plays that usually work on the pasty face white guys he normally deals with
And come to think of it, was Prime Minster Carney using Crowchild to tell Trump to stop with the time wasting bullshit? Maybe it’s a Canadian thing, but it seems odd having a tribal leader greet a forging dignitary at the airport.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
What cracks me up about these stereotypes is that, probably, very few white people believe in these. The big stereotypes were about Italians being mafiosi, and being too loud and uncouth, and Irish being dirty and poor.
Which is why anyone who’s of Italian or Irish descent who thinks they’re fully white…. are delulu.
WereBear
If anyone was not aware of the parade’s “malicious compliance” a second look might be in order.
We only saw clips and were debating the extent but when I heard the Army Band do the 2001 theme, I laughed for ten minutes straight.
Well played, US ARMY.
Once seen, there are signs all over. Enjoy it as the comeuppance it was to the rest of the world.
To quote a favorite protest sign: Trump can rule dez nutz.
japa21
Made the mistake of having MSNBC on and they cut to Trump speaking at the WH about them putting up 2 100 foot flagpoles, “They are beautiful pole, the best anywhere in this country, anywhere in this world”. Anyways, he went on and on and on even before the press started asking questions. Once they started, he couldn’t answer any question in less than 500 words. He is a king, the king of verbal diarrhea.
TS
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I think it’s because he can’t concentrate on anything for more than an hour – a 3 day conference was way too much for his intellect – or lack thereof. He just wanted his executive time.
suzanne
@Baud:
Yes. We go wrong when we think that diverse groups are going to hold these memories and stay in the coalition.
Bupalos
@Baud: Fair, but then there is an interaction between “the system” and the way voters become depoliticized. There’s a link between the idea that people can’t actually meaningfully inflect political outcomes in the direction they want, and a growing reality that in practical political terms, a lot of people just stop wanting anything. Or informing themselves, or caring.
Hildebrand
@Matt McIrvin: When we lived in the Rio Grande Valley, it was not hard to see that Mexican Americans, at least in the RGV, were quite culturally conservative (huge percentage are Roman Catholics with a large dollop of Evangelicals mixed in).
Add to that – a pretty deep trough of misogyny (the whole machismo thing – it is very real in the Valley).
And a definite strain of pulling up the ladder-ism – a not insignificant percentage of older folks who resented those coming over now.
All that said, Democrats can still win this group, it just takes a lot of work.
Ocotillo
@Geo Wilcox: Abbott used PAC money to get the R elected as well which made the victory even sweeter. Jones, the eventual winner, was actually not a good candidate. The night of advancing to the runoff she refused to talk to the press instead claiming she was celebrating with her volunteers. She was and Under Secretary of the Air Force and not really adept at campaigning and all that goes with that.
Sadly, in my district, a moderate D was term limited out and the R defeated a good D which is not surprising because this is a red part of town.
Also, city elections do not denote party on the ballot, so voters need to be semi aware to know who is what, but with Abbott’s heavy-handed involvement, it was evident who the GOPer was.
Miss Bianca
@H.E.Wolf: You and your postcards! You’re an inspiration. Thank you for your continued efforts in that vein.
schrodingers_cat
The anti-immigrant rhetoric we hear from Trump is nothing knew. I have heard it for over 25 years now. And not just among the MAGA. Bernie Sanders leaned heavily into anti-immigrant rhetoric against skilled immigration since he was in the Congress in the early 90s.
Check out the IEEE bulletin boards in the WayBack machine from the late 90s and early aughts. Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs etc leaned heavily into it. That was the reason Bush II couldn’t get the bipartisan immigration reform passed.
Check out Newt Gingrich’s Congress and anti-immigrant legislation they passed stripping a lot of powers from the immigration courts. Post 9/11 was the heyday of xenophobia. Talk to some who was not white and lived in NYC in that era. My friend who worked for Elle magazine has stories. She is a petite woman who works in fashion, and she came in for her share of hatred.
So the emergence of Trump is not a surprise and neither is the anti-immigrant rhetoric he spews.
PatD
@TONYG: much of that support is due to name recognition and the fact that the machine in NY backs Cuomo. That’s why Cuomo’s polling at 50% overall support, 70% of blacks, 60% of Hispanics. Many elected Dems in NY who demanded he resign as Gov now support him for mayor.
There’s also the constant editorializing from the local and mainstream media against liberal candidates.
TS
@Geminid: Australia has had RCV since forever. We don’t have primaries so it only exists for general elections. We call it preferential voting. It allows third parties to run, without having a large impact on either of the major parties. e.g. The greens cannot take votes from the more left party as there has to be a second choice which would usually be for the more left major party. It also allows coalitions to form and not be in opposition to each other. At the end of the day you still have to place one of the major parties ahead of the other, and in most cases this is where your vote is counted. In more recent times we have had well known independents running for election and if they can finish ahead of one of the major parties on the first count, they do have a chance of winning.
Edit: In most cases, It is compulsory in Australia to number all candidates so a party can specify preferences but not tell you to omit numbering – else your vote would be informal
WereBear
@Geo Wilcox: Thought it was a joke in TEXAS but it shows the shallow bench they have to draw from.
frosty
It’s an industry term.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That not so much white racism as white privilege. “The rest of you little people can muck about in that morally grey world of yours’, I whitely refuse to decide, and will whitely scold you all for the messed up choice you are forced to make.”
suzanne
@Hildebrand: Your experience absolutely matches mine, living in Arizona for decades.
schrodingers_cat
@PatD: Mamdani is personally charming but he is a purity progressive who voted against his own signature legislation because it was not “pure” enough.
laura
@schrodingers_cat: Stop It You foul temptress! No Mas art supplies. I’m busy trying to finish a mural, and you’re gonna have me wasting time trying not to buy lovely swan pens and whatnot.
Professor Bigfoot
@Eyeroller: It occurs to me that most of the problems we’ve been talking about in this thread would be solved or at least ameliorated if voting were compulsory.
A proposed Constitutional Amendment:
”As the participation of the people is a fundamental requirement of self-government, all adult American citizens are required to register and to vote in every general election; refusal to participate to be addressed by such fines or other punishments as Congress shall determine.”
It’s compulsory in Australia and therefore they make it pretty easy and convenient to do so… which is one reason why conservative Americans* will fight it tooth and nail.
Geminid
@TS: It sounds like this voting method works well for Australia, but I would note that your Parliamentary system has an underlying dynamic that is very different from ours
Ed. One major practical difference: in Australia (like the UK), the party apparatus selects its candidates; here, party nominees are selected by voters in state-run primaries.
WereBear
@TONYG: As they say, when you grow up surrounded by servants, you get a skewed view of your essential importance.
BlueGuitarist
@H.E.Wolf: Yay for you, postcards, and downballot Ds!!!
And for protests small and large.
Thursday July 17, John Lewis’s birthday, will be “Good Trouble Lives On: National Day of Action” follow up to June 14.
schrodingers_cat
@laura: Hey the pencils will go beautifully with the markers you got. You know you want them.
I have the full set of 120. Also too, the Swan pens have been a total winner for me. I am using them with colorful fountain pen inks in my drawings.
Thor Heyerdahl
The Tsuutʼina Nation borders the City of Calgary and the Crowchild name is on a major thoroughfare. Although the G7 didn’t happen on their traditional land, he is known tribal chief locally.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I am skeptical that non-voting normies would be likely to vote the way we want. Many of the non-voters I know….. are not quality people.
The people who don’t vote out of principle (misplaced, IMO, but some principle) are dramatically outnumbered by those who don’t vote out of apathy/stupidity/meanness.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m cynical enough about our democratic culture to think that with such an amendment, we’d just continue suppressing the vote but then use it as an opportunity to arrest people for being caught by it.
Redshift
@Eyeroller: I think in states dominated by one party, jungle primaries are not at all intended to boost other parties. Instead, since whoever wins the dominant party’s primary is almost certainly going to be elected, they move that choice to where the general electorate can make it instead of the much smaller and often more ideological primary voters. Whether it works for anything but making people feel like they have a say, I don’t know.
(And by talking through that, I now understand the point of Alaska’s system.)
Soapdish
If you haven’t seen it, I think Josh Marshall’s take on how Trump is approaching Israel/Iran is spot on; basically a risk-free opportunity to slap his brand on a military victory. I’d add that it has the bonus of bombing Muslims.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/an-offer-trump-cant-refuse
PatD
@schrodingers_cat: Don’t particularly care how the liberal alternatives are ranked. None of them are perfect but they are all better than Cuomo. The media pushed Adams and now they’re pushing Cuomo.
Geminid
I see Bridget Brink, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, has announced her candidacy to represent Michigan’s 7th Congressional district. The seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Tom Barrett.
MI07 is centered on Lansing, in east-central Michigan. It’s kind of swingy. In 2022, Rep. Elissa Slotkin won the 7th by 20,000 votes out of 372,000 votes cast; last year, Barrett beat the Democratic candidate by 16,000 votes out of 450,000 votes cast.
Jackie
@japa21: I made the same mistake LOL I didn’t pay much attention to his word salad, I was focused on those poor trapped construction workers faces and expressions… A few came very close to rolling their eyes. Lotsa foot shuffling.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: I think there is something to the idea that privileged liberals have a greater tolerance for political risk (eg take a flyer on Warren or Bernie with Trump standing there) partly because they perceive themselves as basically immune to political consequences. You hear it all the time, even here, in a kind of virtuous context of speaking of alliance as primarily in the interest of others: “I’ll be fine, I’m a [cis, white, wealthy, straight, male, educated…”]
I actually had a falling out in 2016 basically accusing a DemSoc, that was insisting a little too hard on Bernie, of conducting a trust fund politics of embracing risk that would be borne by others, in more or less the terms you’re offering. I think of this as more complicated now, as there’s also something to the idea that these are maybe good risks to take, and it’s maybe good that there are people positioned to take them. Maybe it’s even worse not to take these risks.
Also, I think they’re probably wrong in the big picture that they are as insulated as they think. We all grew up in a kind of relative historical bubble with limited rose-coloured horizons, and have stunted imaginations as to the various ways things can go in the shitter.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
And that’s because portions of the party champion ideas/values that aren’t persuasive and when they (low info/moitivated voters) see that at the state/local level, they begin to question why vote (D) or why vote at all. We see that play out practically every day here.
There is a clear divergence between those of us who consistently “punch right” against the bullshit orthodoxy that basically “punches left” as evidenced by that strain of thought pushed by the Klein/MattY/Smith/Stancil/Shor/Thompson/Abundance/New Liberalism crowd.
Baud
@Soapdish:
That was my take too without even reading Josh.
laura
I have two sets of bruynzeel pencils, but they just dont blend like I’d like them to. I curse you woman…I’m of course likely to get them. There’s an art supply closet here in Sacramento called broadroom https://broadroom.org/ so if I donate the bruynzeels, I can rationalize the acquisition of AD and feel slightly virtuous.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Well, there’s always going to be a time factor with new ideas, especially when they go against conventional wisdom or economic interests. I think there’s way more impatience than is helpful to the cause. And of course, some ideas will fail, either because they should or because the bad guys were stronger. I don’t see alternative tactics producing more optimal outcomes more quickly, however.
schrodingers_cat
@laura: FaberCastell’s Albrecht Durers and Polychromos have the same numbering system and work well together. They are also available open stock.
You can score good deals on eBay as well
Staedtler’s Karat Aquarell line is also good if you like watercolor pencils.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: Black folks are notoriously “church-going, God-fearing, conservative folk.”
But Black folks have not voted Republican since before JFK.
What self-identifies as “conservative” in this country is really about white supremacy and the proximity to whiteness.
Baud
The anti-trans decision is out.
Lyrebird
@Geo Wilcox: Oh thanks for reporting on that!
Postcards to Voters helped, but I wasn’t able to join that campaign. Terrific!
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes. Indeed.
laura
@Baud: and Sotomayor’s dissent brings the wood, but for “reasons” I’m unable to paste what I’d copied. The Court’s majority are for shite.
Geminid
@Geminid: I saw the news about Bridget Brink on Laura Rozen’s Twitter feed. Rozen posts on BlueSky but only a couple times a week. Her Twitter feed is still a good source for aggregated (and curated) reporting on foreign affairs in general, and in particular on the Iranian-Israeli war that is now in its sixth day.
Rozen also regularly posts reports on the war in Gaza, which lately has been overshadowed by intense conflict between Israel and Iran.
Bupalos
I don’t think it takes “work.” I don’t think it took Republicans any work at all to get these folks. It took a complete reframing and rebranding and pivot to messages of social and civilizational decline and yearning for a past that never existed. But really not that much “work” at all.
I think we have to do something similar. Technocratic centrism is dead. Ground game is dead. 50%+1 is dead. Identity coalition is dying. We need a version of liberal politics that actually engages voters viscerally and in the deep and disturbed emotional space where more and more people exist and are going to exist as climatic, technological, and economic destabilizations accelerate.
chemiclord
@Professor Bigfoot: “No more lesser evil” might have some weight if they ever particularly entertained this alleged “lesser evil” to begin with.
I have (in general) found that the people who chant that line have always been looking for a reason to knife Dems in the back, and they always eventually find one, even if they have to make one up whole cloth.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne:
“Whiteness is infinitely malleable and can be revoked at any time.”
Likewise delusional are the Catholics who think they’re “Christian.”
(yes, of course, they’re Christian but just ask an evangelical about it…)
chemiclord
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Because at the end of the day, you can’t legislate around a shitty electorate. It doesn’t matter what rules you use or what stipulations or methods you impose. If the people want fucking hateful idiots, your government is going to be comprised of hateful idiots.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I agree. There’s a lot of privilege in putting your social conservatism ahead of your other interests.
I read Arlie Russell Hothschild’s book Strangers in Their Own Land, and she discusses this….. white people in Louisiana who are poor and their land and water is polluted and they get cancer and die early. But they’re anti-choice! So they vote GOP.
Fair Economist
@Baud: I think Alaska shows that a well designed ranked choice system improves outcome (Peralta and Murkowski rather than MAGATs, and a functional legislature) but it’s not a miracle. Raw ranked choice becomes problematic in huge fields, like NYC mayor, when voters aren’t going to have an informed opinion on enough candidates, although it’s still better than plurality.
The CA and LA jungle primaries are a top two advance system and would not be expected to weaken the 2 party system. Alaska is a better example; and it is not generating third party activity either; but it has cracked the MAGAT stranglehold on Republicans.
Jackie
6-3 decision.
DAMN IT! 😡
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: This.
The only people in the coalition who cannot become white by definition are Black people.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: I see how Black Democrats are often tagged as a “conservative” element of the Democratic coalition, but I think that label mistates the matter. From what I see, Black Democrats are a pragmatic element of the coalition.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: Whiteness remains a prime category, but it’s certainly not the only one. Which is why the largest and least predictable movement to Trump in the 2024 election was black and hispanic men.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Wow, Betty! For both the photo and for getting to swim in it!
WereBear
@suzanne: Oh, yes, not excusing the behavior. I did notice his assistant was cool to him… but knew nothing more during 2020.
Citizen Alan
Isn’t that also true of our normal voting approach? Democracy in general, depends upon a reasonably engaged voting population. which is why the house of representatives has been graced in the past by such luminaries, as Sonny Bono, Fred Grandy, and the guy who played Cooter from the dukes of hazzard.
Kristine
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Freudian typo
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady:
Exactly my thought when I read that line from the article.
Professor Bigfoot
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Indeed, a great deal of their white supremacy (I hate to use the word “racism” because white supremacists will scream that “YOU’RE THE REAL RACIST FOR SPEAKING UP!”) is entirely subconscious.
But on the receiving end whether its intentional or unconscious it still fucking hurts.
suzanne
@Geminid: I think the point is that many Black Democrats may be personally somewhat socially conservative, but that their voting behavior is more pragmatic, because they conceive of their personal conservatism in a different way relative to the public sphere than white people who are socially conservative.
WereBear
@Baud: I suspect undue influence from the people who sell sparkly things.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Geminid: I also favor Alaska’s system, but it costs more money and takes more time—perhaps that’s why it isn’t as popular.
Bupalos
I don’t think this really tracks. A turn to social issues can and in many cases is an expression of desperation. Ask an evangelist which they’d rather try to convert, someone who is hopelessly broke and despised, or an upper middle class socialite.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan: Hey, now – in fairness to Sonny Bono, he was actually a decent representative who took his job seriously. And wasn’t a raving right-wing lunatic. The current GOP could do a lot worse than Sonny Bono and…oh wait! THEY HAVE.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: The best part is, IF IT’S COMPULSORY, they cannot suppress votes like they do today.
It takes away the cudgel they’ve used since the end of Reconstruction to deny the vote to Black citizens (when we were considered citizens, that is).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Bupalos:
Which circles back to your last paragraph in #139. And yet, we have self-professed progressive voices saying we double down on that stuff, particularly ‘technocratic centrism’ when it’s shown to be an inadequate electoral strategy in 16 and in 24.
What you say in #139 is exactly why we’ve opened ourselves up, repeatedly, to a right wing populist movement that we have no effective answer for. And that answer doesn’t involve tossing away the moral center of the Party either.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: Instant ACLU suit— this man’s Constitutional rights and duties have been abrogated by local government/state government.
”He’s required to vote, why are you making it impossible for him to do so?”
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: Which is why you have to allow prisoners to vote.
WaterGirl
@Professor Bigfoot:
TRUTH
Professor Bigfoot
@chemiclord: And that’s why I believe that the Bigfoot Dictum applies to most of them:
“There is no horseshoe. There is only white people who are at best uncomfortable with any power being held in Black hands. Those white people are at all points of the ‘left-right’ spectrum.”
The fear of having a Black person “over” them has been a real motivator for a very long time now.
Again, whether conscious or unconscious, that fear of having a Black person over them has real-world consequences.
suzanne
@Bupalos:
It’s an attempt to cling to one high-status element of identity. Sparrows, curtain rods.
catclub
@suzanne: Or more simply:
If white people choose the Democratic party because it aligns with their liberalism, and black people pick the Democratic party because the GOP rejects them, the average black Democrat will be more conservative than the average white Democrat.
Captain C
@Professor Bigfoot:
If you vote for the lesser evil, you get less evil. Sometimes that’s the difference between a salvageable situation and one that’s completely fucked.
Of course, if you think voting’s all about you and figure you’re privileged enough to avoid the worst outcomes, well…
(naturally, this is not a you you, but a general one)
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The most persuasive argument is winning primaries and elections, i.e., getting actual voters to buy into a vision.
People can decry “technocratic centrism” (whatever that means) all they want, but they haven’t defeated it anywhere in the country in my lifetime except by coupling it with billionaires and bigotry under the Republican Party umbrella.
Belafon
@Jackie: Someone should use this ruling as a starting point for preventing families from taking their children to church.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: Exactly. “Nobody is free until everybody is free.”
This seems to me something that’s understood down in the bones of Black folks, Jews, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
Jews and Black people have been friends and allies since the early 20th century when Jews arrived here fleeing pogroms and oppression in Europe and found Black folks dealing the exact same shit here under Jim Crow.
catclub
There is a hymn with the phrase ‘the humble poor believe.’ Now try to get the haughty comfortable to believe.
Sure Lurkalot
@Soapdish:
Trump on the U.S. potentially bombing Iran: “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I am going to do.”
I fail to see anything like an “approach” in those words, just the rambling of a sundowning idiot. 65% of the military, including veterans, chose this person to be their commander.
Bupalos
@suzanne: It can be a lot of things, but one thing I think it is mostly not is an expression of privilege. More the opposite, but neither is it necessarily completely the opposite.
One thing I think you can say historically across political systems is that the emergence of “social issues” rising to the fore in politics often coincides with broader underlying social and economic destabilization.
Belafon
Also, dresses should be banned.
schrodingers_cat
@catclub: It depends on your definition of liberalism. I also think you are selling the base of the Democratic party short
Oh and plenty of leftists are not all that liberal.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: Bingo.
I mean, the Voting Rights Act was passed in my lifetime.
Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner gave their lives for my right to vote when I was 10 years old.
WE KNOW how fragile a thing it is.
We are America’s electoral Cassandra: the best informed and most thoughtful voters that no one will listen to.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Commenter RaflW put it best earlier this year:
And it’s clear we’re not doing either in an electorally effective way and there’s a sharp divergence on the left side of the aisle as to how we go about doing that.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist:
[ sheepishly raises hand ]
My first presidential vote was for Anderson.
It was easy to vote for a none-of-the-two candidate for President. But without a party behind them, with majorities or near majorities in the legislature, they end up mostly being aligned with one of the existing parties, or they get absolutely nothing done.
Ahhnold, The Body, Anderson, [spit] Nader [/spit], Ross, etc., drew votes because it was an easy protest for those who refuse to choose one or the other imperfect major candidates. But it doesn’t do much of anything to make the big parties change – the membership of the big parties have to force them to change.
We’ll know that things are fundamentally changing when more than a handful of House and Senate members are not D or R. Until then…
Best wishes,
Scott.
AxelFoley
@Another Scott:
Being a huge Superman fan, this is one of my favorite Superman comics. Hell, one of my favorite comics, period.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Who are the adherents among elected Ds of the EK and MY vision?
H.E.Wolf
@Belafon:
@Miss Bianca:
@BlueGuitarist:
Oop, went for a walk and am only now seeing replies. Thanks for the TX anecdote, and the kind words on postcard writing.
Re-upping the note from BlueGuitarist, for all of us John Lewis stans. :)
“Thursday July 17, John Lewis’s birthday, will be ‘Good Trouble Lives On: National Day of Action’.”
schrodingers_cat
Guys third parties are not the panacea you think it is. See for example Israel and India.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Agree. What I’m trying to say is that talking about how what other people are doing won’t work is a waste of time. Everyone gets to try their own thing. If people don’t like what other people are doing, they should figure out something better.
And isn’t that a perennial problem, both here and elsewhere?
Citizen Alan
This. Whatever the flaws of ranked choice voting, i think we are less likely to see the GOP guy win the general election with 36% of the vote because the democrat got 35% and the guy who lost the democratic primary and ran independent in a snit, got 29%. That’s how Paul Lapage was elected governor twice in what was otherwise a blue state.
Geminid
@Cheryl from Maryland: Alaska’s system shouldn’t neccesarily take up more time than the primary/general election system it replaced. Resource-wise, it seems like having four candidates run in the November runoff would definitely suck up more money and services. When I first heard sbout Alaska’s new system I wondered if the campaign industry had helped helped push it through.
The system has only been used in two cycles so far, so it’s pretty new. It seems to fit a state where a majority or near-majority of voters identify as Independent.
I’ll be interested to see if this hybrid system creeps south later this decade. I can see how it could be the new norm twenty years from now.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: To me the CBC is the moral and the organizational core of the party. I keep a close eye on their members.
Professor Bigfoot
@Captain C: It’s almost like they’ve never lived an adult life where sometimes your choices are “suck” and “suckier.”
Soapdish
@Baud: Sure, but I don’t subscribe to your newsletter. :-)
Citizen Alan
@stinger: i now live in basically the bohemian part of fresno, but every day I have to drive by that one house occupied by an asshole who still has a Trump sign up 8 months after the election.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
Just peruse the House Blue Dog and New Democrats caucus. Sure, the (D) House caucus has good unanimity on most actual votes but we’re talking about policy direction, electoral strategies and the like.
Another good example are some of the elected Dems that attended Abundance Coachella a few weeks back (https://welcomepac.org/welcomefest2025)
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
As a Texan growing up during the switch from Democrats to Republicans as the state party, I’m sorry, but a better vision doesn’t mean squat to people who prefer their privilege.
Baud
@Soapdish:
You should sign up for Baud Fancy.
For the articles.
BlueGuitarist
@Geminid:
Yes, MI-07 will be one of the most competitive 2026 US house races! Michigan will also have competitive races for R-held seats MI-10 (open, John James is running for Governor; southereastern MI, Macomb County) and possibly MI-04 (Huizenga, maybe running for governor; Western MI, Kalamazoo)
Downballot Michigan Dems need to hold their 1 seat majority in the state senate and win at least 4 seats in the state house to regain a majority.
Plus really important statewide elections, US Senate, statewide offices.
TS
@Geminid:
This is the major difference – even moreso than congress vs parliament. I don’t think RCV would work as well in primaries as in general elections where 2 major parties are involved – it could work well for the jungle primaries, probably ensuring that one from each major party was nominated
The selection of House Reps and Senate are very similar to yours – however our Senate is voted for in a different way yet again. I’m sure the only reason so many vote is because it is compulsory. The senate voting is complicated and ensures minor parties can win.
BlueGuitarist
@Baud:
QFT
Bupalos
I don’t think this is really true in the way you’ve phrased it. Technocratic centrism was the political mode of both parties for a very long time, indeed most or all of all of our lives here. It’s very entrenched. But that has begun to break down amidst the erosion of civic trust that marched through the turn of the century up through today. And its decline has already broken and reformed one party (in the worst way possible,) and created some unexpected waves and results in the other.
I think Dems are still at the “you still can’t build a motorcar that is more reliable than my horse!” phase with this. And “that motorcar never would have beaten my horse if you hadn’t paved the road for it!”
StringOnAStick
A friend with experience in this area thinks they kept Trump on carefully regulated doses of Ketamine and likely a kicker of something else throughout the last months of the campaign, which explains the megalomaniac behavior, outrageous behavior to rile up his crowds and emotional disregulation (like that bit with him treating the microphone like it was a penis he was fellating). Now he’s being weaned off it, and what we see is the increasing dementia-like behaviors as the bill comes due for all that pharmacological intervention. His ending statements ending now with “thank you for attending to this matter!” Is such classic dementia-like behavior, it was probably the same thing his dad said when they gave him a fake office and papers to sign as he became incapacitated.
Eyeroller
@RevRick: QAnon and related conspiracy theories are extremely anti-Semitic.
Matt McIrvin
@chemiclord: they can do what I do– vote Democratic but feel guilty about it.
Sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around the desire of normal people to feel that they’re doing the right thing. Whatever I’m doing, whatever it is, I have a personal emotional need to figure out the way in which it’s morally wrong, and these folks are really good at providing them.
Shana
Cool (at least in our household) fact: my older daughter went to law school with Jay Jones. She heartily endorsed him in this race. We’re pleased with the lineup and I’m going to see Abigail tonight at a neighbor’s house.
BlueGuitarist
@H.E.Wolf:
John Lewis dancing to “Happy” (43 seconds)
https://youtu.be/ygRLrbE85ws?si=yPzueUBL-crpWeyQ
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thanks.
Biden moved to the left when he was President compared to where he was when he was a senator. It got him nothing from the leftier than thou. Yes they didn’t knife him in the back after the debate. But they had weakened him significantly during his time in office by pooh-poohing his achievements in the media.
So what incentive does the next Dem presidential frontrunner have to kowtow to the leftier-than-thous?
Another Scott
@Eyeroller: +1
Runoffs have a history in the South of being a tool to suppress Black representation. On the other hand, there is merit in elected officials having at least 50%+1 voting support.
As always, who counts the votes matters. Every election matters. Everything’s connected (to some degree, anyway). We need to keep monsters out of office, because they will entrench themselves if they have the chance.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@StringOnAStick:
They remind me of the language of IT trouble tickets or bug reports. At least with those I know what I’m supposed to do (fix the bug).
tam1MI
I disagree on this. Part of the reason we lost the Latino vote is because we DIDN’T have a ground game with them.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jackie: We expected this was coming, but I’m still absolutely gutted. This will kill trans kids.
I guarantee they’ll be coming for trans healthcare for adults next. And it doesn’t bode well for the win on passport markers yesterday, nor a host of other anti-trans cases in the works.
Captain C
@Professor Bigfoot: Apparently for them pragmatism and harm reduction are ‘impure’ or something, and deep down, they kind of look to General Jack D. Ripper as an aspriational model, rather than a lunatic to be avoided.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Of the many options available to you, how did you determine how commenting here is morally wrong?
jonas
I’ve been noticing that, too. What’s up with that? It’s like he’s dictating an office memo or something. Just so weird. If a Democratic politician were doing something like this on social media, they’d be dragged for it until the end of time.
tam1MI
But Biden was old.
Captain C
@StringOnAStick:
No wonder he and Lone Skum had a falling out.
Baud
@tam1MI:
This is more because Hillary was “that woman.”
Professor Bigfoot
@Eyeroller: “Those who hate Jews seldom hate only Jews.”
Old School
@tam1MI:
Seems unlikely that having President Harris would have made a difference in this decision.
Bupalos
@Belafon: I think I’d offer the term “narrative” rather than vision. The Trump coalition does not have a singular vision, it’s actually pretty diverse as to the end states that the people riding that tiger or shambling along under its spell envision. Its political strength is that it can cram almost every discontent and fear of modernity into a classically powerful political narrative of decay and decline caused by outside enemies.
I know in retrospect we can kind of explain the odd metastasizing of Trumpism in moralized terms of us just misunderestimating how many bad people there were. But really, we need to stop and think about things like them managing to pull increasing numbers of pro-choice hippies or disadvantaged black men and stop saying “well, humanity is just worse/more racist/stupider than we thought.” That later part could be true or not, but it doesn’t really matter.
We need a more constructive but similarly flexible narrative that addresses the discontents of this destabilized age more constructively.
Trivia Man
@Miss Bianca: my dad did some lobbying for a coalition of restaurant owners. One of the bills he lobbied for would make it easier for bars to have casual music (i think a specific use case was to allow them to play a radio station without requiring additional royalty payments).
He told me nearly 100% agreed with his position but most refused to support it. They all gave essentially the same answer. “Sonny bono is an expert and he says vote no. I like sonny so i will vote no”.
Bupalos
@tam1MI: I’d be willing to bet we spent more effort on ground game with hispanics than the Trumpies. We got historically crushed on this shifting margin because the broader narratives resonated.
Of course “dead” is an overstatement. But I’m basically reacting to “we have to work harder.” I don’t think so, I think we have to work smarter.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: There is a very substantial overlap on policy between New Democrat and Progressive Caucus members. In many practical ways, their differences are a matter of branding based on whether their districts are deep-blue or light-blue. A handful of Democrats like Shontel Brown (OH) cross affiliate with both the New Democrats and the Progressives.
But you might not be that satisfied with a lot of Progressive Caucus members either; for instance your state’s Dianne DeGette and Joe Neguse.
Sister Golden Bear
Good thread analyzing the SCOTUS’s decision banning youth trans healthcare. As in other decisions, the Sinister Six cited things that were never established at trial and provably false evidence presented by the plaintiffs. They also cited the UK’s Cass Report, which has been denounced by medical organizations worldwide as an unscientific political hit piece, which was used in the UK to ban trans youth healthcare.
Plus they relied on a 1974 ruling which “had long been considered a shameful relic from a time of rampant sex discrimination.”
Worth noting that the SCOTUS is allowing the exact same treatments to be used for cis kids.
Trivia Man
@Professor Bigfoot: at my (white) church we had an intense workshop on white supremacy. The facilitators were firm on using that term – white supremacy.
Part of the exercise was discussing the use of the term instead of softening it. LOTS of hurt feelings like “not all white people!” The facilitators were clear – good. It should make you uncomfortable. Its an uncomfortable situation and softening it doesn’t help. Bummer it hurts YOUR fee fees, but YOUR comfort isnt the problem OR the solution. IDGAF you are “one of the good ones”. It is a dire and systemic situation so your squeamishness over that powerful word is irrelevant.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: This is bizarre. AOC was as strongly in Biden’s doomed corner as anyone, despite “end the gerontocracy” being one of the DemSoc’s main (if conflicted) themes. It was quite clearly on “look what he’s done for us terms,” and in fact it seems to me they met with him at the time and got an additional small horse-trading item… I forget what just now.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I think people want to blame the “system” rather than face having to deal with real voters in a real political culture.
They also have to face that not everyone believes that their hate is in any way positive.
This countries population has grown just a tad over the lifetimes of many alive today. That word tad is doing some heavy lifting. And not all of the growth is from people that look like our “leader.”
Thankfully.
This is a diverse population – because humanity is diverse. A lot of humanity does not look like, say me. (Yes some would say lucky on their part…) Humanity is a diverse segment of the animal population on this planet. We can look different and still be humanity. We can look different, say in skin color. Or height. But that does not make someone different less human. What does that is thinking that only one shade/size/gender/language, etc, etc is correct. Which is bullshit, pure and simple. How many wars, murders have occurred since the first human because of those differences? And that makes us better humans? BS. We are human because we are different than birds or dogs or …… Some of us have actual intelligence – imagine that. Some of us have a talent that many others do not. And those talents differ. Some can sing, others never should outside of maybe during a shower. (Maybe) And on and on and on. And on. Are the differences a reason to do most of the things that some do to gain a top spot? NO, they are not. Respect is earned and can and often should be lost for many. That does not make them not human. Likely makes them an ass but then what would humanity be without assholes? More full of ____?
I am an old man. I hope to get a fair bit older. I have zero expectation that humanity is going to grow the hell up, and centuries of examples that many are not going to. Does not mean that the rest of us shouldn’t. We have many, many things that make this possible, and many, many things that stand in the way. But then it is humanity, and when has all of it ever respected the rest of it? Or earned that respect? Yeah, I thought so. And I believe there is ample proof, in a world changed dramatically in the lifetimes of many still standing. Can we do better? I sure as hell hope so – but I’m not holding my breath.
Eyeroller
@Trivia Man: “Sonny Bono has an extremely obvious conflict of interest but he’s my pal and I probably need favors from him, so I’m voting no.”
Sister Golden Bear
@Old School:
Sadly she would’ve have made a difference.
The Sinister Six already had their minds made up, and invented evidence and law to support it.
H.E.Wolf
@BlueGuitarist:
Thank you for posting that! What a great, and good, person he was.
Geminid
@BlueGuitarist: I am intrigued by how three midwestern states– Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota– will have promaries next year for open Senate seats currently held by Democrats. Those primaries should provide plenty of evidence as to where the Democratic electorate is at right now, and what appeals to base voters.
Belafon
@Bupalos: Agree, but we also have to come to terms with the fact that there are a lot of people who, no matter how much you make something appealing to them, will wonder why “those people” are getting something, for many definitions of “those people.”
Another Scott
@RevRick: This is a great reminder.
Thank you.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Trivia Man
@Eyeroller: my take was “im lazy and cant be bothered to learn the subject” with a dash of he is entertaining and i like schmoozing with him at parties.
But vote trading definitely. Especially in the olden days before party lines became so rigid.
Baud
Hildebrand
@Bupalos: Misogyny is a not insignificant part of that movement.
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
Sonovagun, I think it’s real. CBSM is the Center for Behavioral Science Methods at the U.S. Census Bureau, that website is a real Census website, and here’s a Census Bureau paper from 2021, presented at AAPOR (which is a major statistical conference) about this survey is doing. Basically, they’re ‘web probing’ as they call it, as a means of pre-testing Census questionnaires before sending them into the field for real. I’d have no issue with filling it out.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: Letting prisoners vote is one of those things that sounds completely insane to normies even if they identify as liberal. “What? No! It’s part of their punishment! Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time!” etc. I’ve had the conversation.
What I say is that I don’t think politicians should be able to craft their own electorate by manipulating the right to vote, and that’s more important than the interest in punishing felons by restricting their rights.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: 100%
Edit: For example, the war on drugs.
Baud
@Ruckus:
You know me well.
suzanne
@Hildebrand: Amen. As I have said before…. misogyny has interracial appeal. I should also note that it has appeal across the political aisle, too.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot:
I think this is an unrealistic kind of identity-moralizing that is counter productive. Obviously there will be different opinions about a phrase like “best informed and most thoughtful,” but it’s just universally true that those who are most pressured economically and socially with less educational opportunity and less opportunity for leisure engagement don’t tend to be the best informed and that should be expected. That is itself a downstream aspect of inequality and racism and we should understand that, not insist on the opposite. If you want to know who is going to be disproportionately unaware for instance that the Big Beautiful Steaming Shitpile cuts medicaid and shovels money at millionaires and billionaires, that’s going to be minority, poorer, and less educated voters.
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/voters-knowledge-political-news-varies-widely-study-shows
If you want to know who is going to be pulled out of their traditional political habit and orbit towards Trumpism, a post-truth movement designed to prey on the vulnerable, it’s going to be less-educated, poorer, younger, and minority voters. That is what is happening.
Bupalos
@Belafon: There will always be “a lot of people like that.” You can’t get everyone and don’t need everyone. What we need to be honest about is that we are vastly underperforming. We’re losing to an undisciplined, unpopular, and psychologically compromised buffoon. There are not enough people “like that” to explain this away.
Seonachan
@Matt McIrvin: It was in fact the Normies in our state who disenfrachised the incarcerated in 2000.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: I do think the vast majority of people, even if they are quite conservative, think it’s unfair to keep ex-felons from voting even after completion of their sentence. That’s why Florida had to find a scummy loophole to keep doing it (and throwing people back in prison for voting when they thought they could).
Gretchen
@Professor Bigfoot: My town has been planning a new city hall for four years. There have been numerous meetings and displays explaining the 10 different proposals, the pros/cons/cost of each, and hours-long discussions. A final plan was settled on and was about to start, when an offshoot of Americans for Prosperity started an opposition, demanding that it go to a general vote. They did a poll, and half the people hadn’t even heard of the issue. Yet most of them felt that they should be allowed to vote on it rather than having it decided by people who studied it. Those uninformed people would hear the « taxes bad » message and vote no on a much-needed project.
Gloria DryGarden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I hope I can find a YouTube video of that…
Gloria DryGarden
@Betty Cracker: That sounds so very lovely. I long to come, too. I hope it’s wonderful.
out here, people are inner-tubing the rivers, and a friend is posting video of folks surfing a small rapids spot near Salida. This I’ve never seen before.
Gloria DryGarden
Such an excellent choice of a protest sign for the sidebar. I adore it.
Soprano2
@Baud: I’ve also heard that a significant number of people don’t trust Democratic politicians because they believe the politicians deceived them about Joe Biden’s fitness to run for office. You might not like that, but i think it’s the truth.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I just chalk that stuff to excuses. There’s always going to be one people cling to.
JML
Unfortunately you’re right about this one: allowing incarcerated people to vote is an exceptionally hard sell. While there’s a lot of rational ways to justify it, the emotional side of the argument is very easy to weaponize, and it’s not just a losing issue but one that will be used against liberals not just in an election where it’s actually an issue for for a decade later as a reason why liberals can’t be trusted.
Ugh. Especially since in GOP-world, every district would have a large prison in which they would lock up their “undesirables”…while counting them all in the census and making sure they get plenty of aid for the population the try to make sure doesn’t count in any other way.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Yep.
Blaming the system doesn’t drag names into a political discussion – not right off the bat anyway. And changing minds can be much more difficult than selling legislation. And. Compromise is/has been a part of real democracy from the beginning, because it seems that some people demand a higher rank, whereas a democracy requires equality. I’m an old and have been following politics for well over half a century, and while communications has made much of life better it has also allowed those who demand a throne above everyone else to see who the opposition is.
Citizen Alan
@Miss Bianca: I blame him for the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, which was an appalling assault on the Public Domain.
artem1s
Also,too the well know phenomenon of “Fuck you, I’ve got mine” Republicanism. That program/law/civil right is obviously a waste of MY tax dollars because I no longer need it and THEY don’t deserve it.
TEL
@Trivia Man: Your brother is looking to score points off of you, not actually engaging in debate. If he thinks about these talking points he’s throwing you at all, he probably knows they’re bogus as well. If you want to continue, don’t debate each piece of crap he throws at you, instead, throw Dump’s largest overreach right into his face every time he tries something else.
My brother is an idiot who tries that stuff. I’ve made him back off of trying to score points by telling him I’ll only engage if he stays away from politics. Mind you, the first time I did it we didn’t speak for several months. After that, he understood I meant what I said and when I gave him a warning to knock it off, he stops.
Ruckus
@JML:
Universal saying – Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
I’d bet people of all languages and sides of life will agree with this, with one exception. Criminals. Especially hard core criminals, the felony side, and more, the repetition side of felony crime. Those that think they can make a better living with less effort. And could give a rat’s whatever that you get hurt, as long as they win. Prisons are full of these folks living there. Sometimes they learn, way too often they do not.
AxelFoley
@Soprano2:
What, do they think Trump was the epitome of good health?
Captain C
@AxelFoley: IOKIYAR
Still true.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
Jesus said it’s the sick, not the well, that need a doctor. If you think you’re fine, why would you change?
Kayla Rudbek
@suzanne: dirty, poor, violent, and drunken Irish, to fully complete the stereotype (says the quarter Irish Notre Dame alum)
Kayla Rudbek
@Hildebrand: there are times when I think that racism is one of the few things keeping the USA from falling into a religious dictatorship (the inability of the Protestant sects and the right wing Catholic and Orthodox to agree on which religion gets to be in power being the main other thing)