Trump keeps trying and failing to reassert control over the media cycle as the Epstein scandal engulfs his shitty administration. One ploy was to “demand” the release of grand jury transcripts from the Epstein trial, which likely would have revealed nothing useful. A Florida judge denied that request yesterday. Then there was Tulsi Gabbard’s absurd dog and pony show, which also failed to douse the spotlight on Trumpstein.
The latest gambit is to send the DOJ’s #2, Todd Blanche, to “interview” Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell today in a Florida prison. (Blanche is #2 in the sense that he’s second in command at the DOJ after Pam Bondi and one of several turds who served as Trump’s criminal defense attorneys and now allegedly works for the government while essentially continuing to serve as Trump’s criminal defense attorney, only now on our dime.)
Night before last, Chris Hayes talked to Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie Brown, whose work exposed the sweetheart deal Epstein struck with then-prosecutor Alexander Acosta, whom Trump later appointed to his cabinet. Brown probably knows more about the Epstein case than anyone and has interviewed many of Epstein’s 200 or so victims.
If Trump’s criminal defense attorney strikes a second corrupt bargain in the Epstein matter, perhaps inducing Maxwell to name some names (not Trump or GOP donors, obvs.) in exchange for leniency, I’m not sure that will quell the furor either.
I mean, Maxwell is a convicted child sex trafficker. As Brown points out, some of the victims blame her as much as Epstein since Maxwell was the one who recruited and groomed them to be exploited by wealthy and powerful men, including Epstein.
Trump seems to have a lot of sympathy for Maxwell, but does anyone else? I doubt it. Maybe this will blow up in his ugly orange face too.
Open thread.
Suzanne
From your lips to the FSM’s orecchiette.
I read Arlie Russell Hothschild’s book Strangers in Their Own Land a few years ago. It’s a deep dive into rural Louisiana in Cancer Alley, and explored lots of questions about how the people there live, including why they are now so strongly Republican. (Even though environmental pollution has basically destroyed where they live.) One thing that stood out to me is that many of them are so fervently anti-abortion that it consumed everything else in their political sensibility. One person she interviewed fully acknowledged that the Republicans were essentially responsible for destroying the landscape of the whole area and giving people cancer and fucking over their healthcare, but then said something like, “But my battle is longer than this lifetime, it’s for the babies”. (I’d have to go find the book to be more precise, sorry.)
The self-concept these people have created is that they are the heroes who protect kids. If they ever awake to the reality that the man they backed literally raped children….. honest to God, I think we’re going to see a widespread mental break in this country that we aren’t really prepared for.
SFAW
Betty, I loves ya, but you gotta get it right:
According to members The Only Patriotic Partei in ‘Murika, it’s only LGBTQ+/Demoncraps “persons” who groom kids. Any suggestion that anyone other than thems Teh Evul “persons” (what shouldn’t be allowed to be citizens, by the way) is doing that stuff is RIGHT OUT.
I long for the day when the Rethuglican Partei is wiped from the body politic. I also hope to wake up someday, with all my head-hair back. We’ll see which happens first.
NotMax
If Maxwell’s attorneys are worth their salt their advice to her ought to be to refuse the meeting.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
More than once, I have said here that I wish for what I call a “Col. Nicholson moment” [Bridge on the River Kwai movie ref.] for the RWMFs in this country. It’ll never happen, unfortunately, but I still wish for it. [Not to get to obscure, but perhaps a better — or at least more punitive — wish would be for a Galbatorix (from the Eragon book series conclusion) moment, where they all disappear.]
SFAW
@NotMax:
I’m sure Bondi’s/Trump’s people don’t need a meeting to get the message to Maxwell that she better start blaming Hillary/Obama/Biden, and denying TFG was ever involved, if she wants to get out of prison alive.
satby
@SFAW: And some of those children were males, according to one source citing settlements paid to families of minor children by FFOTUS.
stinger
Julie Brown was also on Fresh Air July 20 (but I heard it yesterday) talking to Terry Gross about this. Brown doesn’t speculate, but she knows the case thoroughly and has real sympathy for the girls/women involved.
freshairarchive.org/guests/julie-k-brown
Mai Naem mobile
Maxwell was convicted in NY. Is it normal for people not to serve their term in another state. I think it’s interesting that she’s doing her time in Florida. Do the Feds give you a choice? Jared Kushner’s dad did his time in some southern state((Alabama?) and he was tried in NJ and from NJ.
syphonblue
Something tells me the woman in charge getting a sudden pardon after meeting with Trump’s cronies would not go over well or quell the furor
rikyrah
This entire situation is corrupt and disgusting😠
twbrandt
The site is still really wonky. FYWP I think.
MattF
Trump is trying everything he can think of– which only shows the limits of his mental field of view. Obama, Obama, Obama, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. And… that’s it
ETA: Had to do some things over and over again to get this posted.
frosty
@twbrandt: Same here. IPhone 13 Mini. Opens on Bc’s budget post sometimes. I can see the post title for OTR but get a 404 trying to open it
I guess this is FYWP telling me to be more productive today LOL.
Soprano2
@stinger: She was on “On Point” yesterday, too. I listened to most of the show. She knows more about this case than almost anyone. She says the victims are the forgotten people in this whole thing, and that every time it comes back in the news it’s painful for them. They feel justice was never done for them, not completely anyway.
Baud
@twbrandt:
I blame Matt McIrvin.
catclub
but all in your nose, ears, and eyebrows.
catclub
@MattF:
He also throws in Comey and Biden.
piratedan
at this point, I think nothing is beyond the realm of possibilities, after all, this is the same dude who feels like he has a case that he can try Obama and Biden for treason, not so much treason against the United States, but him personally because they played by the rules and apparently that’s unfair to DJT who gets to determine what is fair.
despite the optics, I wouldn’t be shocked if Maxwell is pardoned in return for providing whatever testimony may be needed to suit whatever the DJT administration wants. Maxwell has already been engaged in human trafficking, so I would anticipate that her moral compass wouldn’t shy away from such an offer. All cloaked in fulfilling a promise to drain the swamp of whatever potential political enemies and Democrats that they can semi-plausibly accuse.
the GOP doesn’t really give a fuck about optics since they control so many media arms that they can ram whatever narrative they desire, there’s more than enough pretty faces who are willing to peddle the lies as long as it means that they can have a nice car, nice digs and public notoriety.
Soprano2
@catclub: I can’t believe there is anyone who believes it when he says those people “created” the files. It’s how you know there’s bad stuff about him in there, that he feels the need to try to create the idea that the files are a hoax.
Scout211
Liz Dye has a good opinion piece up at Public Notice that hits many of Betty C’s points and adds her own signature snark, much like Betty C’s:
A few snippets:
. . .
. . .
. . .
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
They’ll make war on every Democrat in the country for making him do it.
artem1s
She’s a woman, so yea, MAGAts are gonna hate anything she has to say. And a great way to remove Bondi from their spotlight. It’s definitely a ploy to mollify the rubes. IIRC her case is currently in appeal? If so, her lawyer should tell her to STFU and plead the 5th unless they grant her complete immunity. And even then she should tell them to FOADIAF.
But in the case she does decide to take an Orangemandius ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card, that’s definitely not going to enrage the conspiracy nut jobs and should put the matter completely to rest. /sarcasm
Scout211
Not at all suspicious
Quote from Fox News, will not link.
Ohio Mom
I can’t begin to explain how I got Balloon Juice to open to this, the latest post. For my first three attempts, it opened to yesterday’s post on the budget, and refreshing didn’t work.
But this time it did, after refreshing. I don’t see any pattern except everything’s screwy. Good luck and Godspeed to WaterGirl in untangling this mess.
On the topic of this post, I’m not generally interested in stories about creepy, gross criminal people doing creepy, criminal things but once again, Republicans are forcing me to upend my life in ways I’d rather not.
Whatever takes Trump down, I’m for, except Ohio Dad thinks Vance will be worse.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Have you all seen the opening episode of South Park? They just signed a deal with Paramount but holy cow, they go savage on Trump.
I try to imagine him suing them over this. What part would he argue is inaccurate? The size of his penis or sharing a bed with Satan?
MattF
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Um… WOW. Ya think Satan is really so ‘I’m just not into itty-bitty’?
H.E.Wolf
Electoral Vote blog has been doing good write-ups on this. Weekday updates are usually posted around 8-9 AM, Eastern Time.
Today’s update:
electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Jul24-1.html
Full blog post for today:
https://www.electoral-vote.com
schrodingers_cat
Well the media and the voters who voted for Orange 2.0, and those on their moral high horse who sat out the election, got what they wanted, endless drama
Honorable mention: Dem Grandees like NP and her people like Schiff and Raskin who pushed Biden out. You are responsible for our misery right now.
frosty
@Ohio Mom: I tend to think Vance couldn’t be worse. What policies would he bring that are worse than wrecking the economy, the US world reputation, and a secret police force?
I don’t see the cult swinging over to him, which means I don’t see the cabinet or Congress groveling. Maybe not John Roberts either?
More effective? He’ll get less through Congress and his Executive Orders will get shot down.
I dunno. I’m probably chugging hopium this morning. How odd!
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: I am not sure that Right-wing Nut Jobs’ concern for babies extends to school-aged children.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they blame the Epstein/Trump/the rest of them’s victims for being in the wrong place. I think it has to do with ideas about who is innocent, a state that only babies can claim.
Once you are a child, you can’t help but start what they would consider misbehaving. What you and I would consider the result of children’s all-around cluelessness, they consider purposefully being bad.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
They only care about children for three purposes: (1) to oppress women, (2) to make the working men they take economicly advantage of feel like kings who need to protect the system, (3) as a future supply of cheap labor.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@frosty: Yeah, I was surprised when BJ finally opened to a new page this morning.
p.a.
JD is tRump’s chosen veep, so if tRump gets whacked over sexual deviation/crimes, JD gets smeared too. JD (and I’m sorry to victims but this is war for what’s left of the soul of the country) will = Junior Diddler in my posts/comments.
Scout211
@Ohio Mom: Yes, those of us who were commenting yesterday know how to get into the site through back doors but jackals who were not here yesterday probably think the site has frozen at Betty’s post yesterday.
I wonder if there is a way to post a banner over Betty C’s post from yesterday to let jackals know there are back door ways into the site. My hope is that it will be fixed soon.
Ohio Mom
@frosty: That’s my argument for Ohio Dad, that Vance doesn’t have Trump’s charisma. He thinks Vance would be less distracted by things like tariffs and more focused on destroying democracy and civil rights, and turning the U.S. into a Libertarian’s vision of paradise. Or whatever Peter Theil wants to happen.
stinger
@frosty: What exactly does Trump have on Roberts, anyway?
MattF
@Scout211: FWIW, hitting the ‘Open Threads’ link on Betty’s old post gets me back to this page.
p.a.
@frosty: Nothing. tRump is just an imperfect vessel to accomplish what Heritage & Fed Soc want. THEY don’t look for perfection to advance their agenda, and after a certain amount of knock-about align with whatever seems most promising for winning. Authoritarians fall in line. Few circular firing squads. Melon Husk is an exception to falling in line, but he was never in the club, he was just a useful idiot.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
She knows Donald Trump word is worthless and more to the point she know it was Donald Trump who got Epstein arrested because of some real-estate deal gone bad.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Children are a means to keep women in their place, barefoot and pregnant.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s part of number 1 on my list.
Betty Cracker
Holy shit, the South Park guys probably tanked the Paramount merger. Bravo.
frosty
@stinger: I don’t think it’s blackmail. I think Roberts is all in on the Unitary Executive bullshit and Trump just happens to be giving him cases that fit.
Thinking on it, I may have blamed the wrong person. Alito is probably the driver behind this and I’m sure that he doesn’t give a shit about Congress having any say in the government.
Belafon
@frosty: If I open the site it takes me to yesterday’s page where this all began. Even if I clear the cache. If I click on the banner a few times it finally takes me to the current article.
MattF
@Dorothy A. Winsor: More South Park here.
dr. luba
I’ve seen on Bluesky that the Epstein “Birthday Book” is in the possession of the Epstein estate, not the government, so could be subpoenaed.
dr. luba
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I am told that satire is not actionable under defamation caselaw.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker-creators of South Park-just got a $1.5 billion streaming deal from Paramount. Trump will probably try to interfere with the merger between Paramount and Skydance instead.
catclub
Down does not mean out. The only way Trump leaves is in 2029 – maybe, or dead.
Resign or Impeach are both probability under zero.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MattF: Oh my god
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ohio Mom: I agree on what Vance would want to do, but… he wouldn’t come in after wining an election, be viewed as caretaker president, already facing a motivated opposition and prolonged fight would drag Theil into the public eye.
catclub
Trump faces a motivated opposition. the only thing that matters is having the votes.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Depends on how you define ‘they.’ The people that are pushing abortion- and child-related issues? Absolutely. But a lot of the followers either genuinely care about the children and ‘unborn baybeez,’ or have convinced themselves that they do.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: LMAO! Looks like South Park is getting cancelled next by the orange rapist who wants to bang his own daughter.
They had a good run.
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
A Unitary Executive doesn’t need charisma to make happen whatever Theil wants. Still just shy of three and a half years left in this term.
hueyplong
@mrmoshpotato: In fairness, he doesn’t want to bang her anymore. She’s aged out.
Suzanne
@frosty:
He brings Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and a whole slew of others who want to turn the country into a Catholic integralist state.
Vance terrifies me. Not the couchfucker himself, but the puppeteers.
Jackie
Today’s THE DAY:
Wonder what will be leaked to the media.
Belafon
@Jackie: That Trump won’t release the list.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF: Oh boy! I think the micro-penised, fat, orange, fascist rapist has already canceled South Park this morning.
Fair Economist
@frosty: I think you’re chugging hopium. The real problem is the rightwing control of the media – with the latest being Ellison offering Bari Weiss a quarter of a billion for her money-losing RW media project. I’m including social media in this as well; it’s probably more important than legacy media at this point.
Trump is an addlepated crook. He succeeded because the media has been ruthless in attacking his Dem opponents, sanewashing him, and inventing accomplishments for him (i.e. the Apprentice). They’d have no problem replacing him with Vance and I don’t think Vance would be any less useful for them. Maybe more, because I think he’d be less likely to wreck the economy with tariff obsessions.
mrmoshpotato
@catclub: My pick is dead.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Oh goodness no. They’re not actually concerned with children as people with needs and developing agency and a range of human emotions and problems and skills. They’re really concerned with a self-concept of themselves as heroes and protectors. It’s a great big LARP!!!
This country hates actual children.
mrmoshpotato
@hueyplong: I doubt that. She was already older than 15 when the pile of shit said he had sex in common with his daughter.
Belafon
@Fair Economist: I don’t those on our side need to prop up conspiracy theorists, but we need some billionaires to step up and support liberal news sources.
Belafon
@Belafon: “I don’t those” should read “I don’t think”.
montanareddog
@frosty: I agree about Alito. He’s a Catholic integralist who, I am sure, would be happy for extreme right Catholic convert Vance to ascend to the throne they are building.
Vance’s supposed lack of charisma is irrelevant if elections are no longer free.
ETA: @Suzanne pretty much said the same thing
kindness
@lowtechcyclist: Peter Theil and all the other Trumpie oligarchs only care about having their taxes lowered to zero and for any and all regulations to be eliminated. They could care less about anything else Trump or MAGA do. I find that a little shocking really, especially with Theil. I have no doubts that before Trump’s term is up, gay marriage will be illegal again. Theil, as a married gay man, you would think cares about this. Then again…those sweet, sweet tax cuts.
montanareddog
@kindness: Thiel thinks Wilhoit’s law will apply if same-sex marriage is outlawed. He has the fuck you money to make that happen and there is always New Zealand
Suzanne
@kindness: Not exactly true. Peter Thiel is actually fairly religious, from what I understand. And all these freaks are reading Girard. There is a group of people who basically want Catholic monarchy, and they bought Vance. His conversion was not an accident.
Miss Bianca
Well, right now, I’m in the mood for “let it come.” Because the fever dream of “SAVE THE BABEES” needs to break somehow, some way, sooner than later.
Suzanne
On a totally unrelated note, I had an early meeting this morning, which went awesome….. but now I feel like my rhythm for the entire day has been thrown off and I feel like I’m forgetting something!
Miss Bianca
@Scout211: the only “back door way” that worked for me was posting a plaintive note on one of the previous posts and some kind jackal (now there’s an oxymoron for ya) providing me a link to this one!
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
The fundagelicals would love that.
I look forward (/s) to our own version of the Thirty Years’ War. The whole point of ‘no establishment of religion’ was about not repeating that sort of shit.
Jackie
Has this been mentioned? Looks like the NC senate candidates are firming up. It’s going to be an expensive race!
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca:
Part of me agrees, and part of me is scared that that’s accelerationalist. It’s a very common, human logical fallacy, when one is in a abusive or bad situation, to be more mad at the person or people who you felt failed to save you, rather than the abuser/manipulator themselves. So I think that could end with violence toward Dems.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: I’m not a real fan of South Park – I think they punch down at least as often as they punch up – but holy God, that is some epic shit. Good for them.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: On days like that, I sometimes go to the neighborhood diner and have a second breakfast. It’s my way of starting the day over.
Baud
lowtechcyclist
@Miss Bianca:
Speaking of which, a question for anyone who can answer it: is this the most current thread as far as we know, or is there another one that we’ve got to find the One Weird Trick to get to?
Looks like the Antarctica Part 2 thread is still 404’d regardless of what route one takes to get there.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Miss Bianca: There’s a lot of weirdness that I can’t understand and that I bet is rather arcane (to the point of needing to wave a dead chicken at the electronics). Chrome was defaulting to BC’s “Of Budgets And Bad Faith” thread, then suddenly the BJ home page was showing this post on top, then it went back to “Bad Faith”. Opera – running the Chromium core that’s also at the core of Chrome – does the same thing. Firefox – running a different browser core – seems to be behaving properly. And on iOS, the site’s misbehaving on both Safari and Chrome.
Baud
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: You know what? EVERY FUCKING THING in this country leads to violence against Dems. Or violence against people *perceived* to be Dems. Or Dem-adjacent. It doesn’t fucking matter anymore.
Right in my hometown we have the case of a couple of armed bozos – the owners of the right-wing rag in our county that has done nothing but stir up hatred between neighbors – accosting another guy in his car during the No Kings march. Because he gave them shit while they were “counter-protesting”, they figured HE MUST BE A LIE-BERAL, HYUCK HYUCK, WE’LL SHOW HIM!
Well, surprise surprise surprise, after they wrenched open his car door and tried to drag him out? Whoopsie, the guy wasn’t some pansy-ass lieberal after all – he was a Marine veteran with PTSD who was also armed. But then who gets arrested and detained for 48 hours? Yeah, the vet. Because the county coroner – who was also there with the geriatric right-wing dirtbags – flat-out lied to the Sheriff’s Office and claimed the guy drew on the aforementioned dirtbags.
Have the Sheriff and the DA done doodly-squat about it, despite the video evidence contradicting what these guys claimed? Have they arrested the actual perpetrators of felony menacing? Oh, hell no.
So, let the fucking fever break. Because thinking “oh, noes, they might get MAD at us and try to HURT us,”…well…that train been here and gone already. At least out here in the sticks.
frosty
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: For me, Firefox told me “I aim to misbehave.”
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
That’s terrible.
Scout211
My only advice to get around the glitches: if you are already here, keep this thread open in a tab in your browser.
I left the site and stupidly closed all browser tabs and tried many ways to get in through back doors with no success. I finally got in via my browser history through a link to this page from earlier this morning.
Yep.
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca: That is horrible. God.
You may be right. We’re in a terrible state right now. There is nothing safe about a significant chunk of the population, full of fear and guns and personality disorders and crippling resentment, and anything that comes between them and their elaborate fantasies. Could make J6 look like a garden party.
Scout211
@Miss Bianca: Wow. That’s frightening.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: This is the most current post. If another one publishes, I’ll try to post a link here. No guarantees — the site is fucked up in the back room as well as the front. Half my comments go missing into the ether.
Old Man Shadow
So… how many days before Maxwell accidentally falls out of a 10 story window in a prison that doesn’t have ten floors?
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
Did you watch the Hunter Biden interview? He has a few things to say about that subject.
Jackie
@Scout211: I had to open a new tab from Adam’s post from last night and scroll down to this morning’s post. So I have this thread open in two tabs and hopefully I can keep this one open as a security blanket and advance to the next new post from the other tab. Fingers crossed!
Belafon
@Suzanne: As Frum put it, they’re not going to like us at all for being right. But we’ll just have to push back with “All I want is for the Epstein list to be released as well, no matter who’s on it.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@H.E.Wolf:
Thanks for the reminder. It’s a site that everybody should read daily.
One quote worth highlighting:
Democrats are mostly watching with enjoyment from the sidelines.
“Mostly watching” is what’s annoying. Dems should be pounding this as best they can given the general media environment. Hell, the ‘general media environment’ is, FTFNYT notwithstanding, not letting this one go for obvious titillation reasons. And yet, that ‘watching from the sidelines’ stragety is a lost opportunity.
Melancholy Jaques
@frosty:
Roberts is driven by a religious belief that the social and political progress of 20th century was a mistake.
Belafon
82. Miss Bianca: Do you have a link? I know some Marine veterans who need to respond to that.
(Also, posting a reply sent me off to the redis thing. I’m trying a comment without a link back to see.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@frosty:
Agreed. The main thing keeping maybe a couple of mostly-but-not-completely batshit insane Congressional (R)s in line is the threat by Hair Furor to primary them with somebody more insaner.
Lose that thread and it’s back to a more business as usual mentality among them.
As we’ve seen and whether we like it or not, the Orange Fart Cloud’s hold over these people isn’t a superpower of any of the other Executive Assholes In Waiting.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom:
As I mentioned downstairs, using today’s link:
balloon-juice.com/2025/07/24/
at least seems to get one the current front page and everything up to the below-the-fold breaks. It seems to let me into the comments pretty reliably as well.
HTH! And good luck to WaterGirl in fixing this bucket of bolts!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jackie
@Betty Cracker: Thanks BC. These latest hiccups and all what we jackals are doing to find the most current (and uncorrupted) thread shows how dedicated we are to BJ. I hope we don’t have to relive the nightmare of a few years ago. All fingers and toes are crossed, plus knocking on wood…
Suzanne
@Belafon:
Agree. I noted last night that my Congresswoman, Summer Lee, pushed yesterday to subpoena the Epstein files in the House. Good for her. This is absolutely what I love to see Dems doing.
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: What’s that thing about getting in the way of your enemy? Nope, this is on Republicans, and a Democrat stepping up would just change the subject. “Democrats continue to insist on investigating Trump” would be the headlines.
Scout211
That redis notice is random and usually clicking post comment a second time works. Once I got a second warning but the third time I tried to post worked.
Melancholy Jaques
@Fair Economist:
Completely agree. The right-wing media slurring of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton cost us both of those elections. That’s five supreme court appointments!
And the right-wing powers that be would be much happier with Vance, who is apparently as pliable as silly putty.
chemiclord
@Scout211: See, it’s not a “conspiracy” if it’s done right out in the open with everyone’s intentions nakedly evident.
Miss Bianca
@Belafon: No link yet, we haven’t printed the story – my publisher wanted to give the Sheriff and the DA time to respond before we went with it. But they haven’t, so…gloves are off, it will be coming. Remind me!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Always good to remind folks that Thiel’s been a longtime funder of various groups that launder all kinds of glibertarian economic policies adopted and promoted by a lot of people with a (D) after their name and self-professed progressives ala the New Liberalism clowns, anybody who attended Abundance Coachella a couple of months back and quite a few people who comment on blogs.
Baud
Have the developers tried turning BJ off and on again?
chemiclord
@Suzanne:
The other fundamental problem with accelerationism is that it doesn’t work in the way that its proponents want it to work. It’s been demonstrated pretty frequently that there is no bottom, and letting authoritarians torch the place only leads to… worse authoritarians.
Baud
Links to WSJ story
Omnes Omnibus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Is it? Are you sure it’s not a “Please proceed, Governor” moment?
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s false, anyway. Dems have been quite active.
ETA: It is, of course, always a talking point that there’s something more they haven’t done.
Suzanne
@chemiclord: Agreed. I don’t think there’s ever been a way to fail ourselves to victory.
I wish there was a safe and non-disruptive way to de-radicalize people. Because that’s essentially what we are facing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Yeah, Dems are getting their digs in, but I think it’s a good thing that a lot of this is coming from GOP cultists.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s the only way the media would take the story seriously.
Baud
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Okay, show me (channeling my old Central Misery years). Something beyond the occasional comment? Because, as was pointed out, the quote was “Mostly watching” which means they’re not totally silent but then they’re not trumpeting it from the rooftops.
Yes, Dems are “helping” this along like attempting to subpoena the files. That might be a windmill-tilting exercise in the House but it demonstrates at least some Dems aren’t content with “mostly watching”.
We always talk about how the right will latch onto something and flog it to death in order to achieve some kind of messaging assault on us. This looks like it should be one of our moments and that’s not happening.
gene108
@Suzanne:
This is what makes the Epstein scandal so different than all the other Trump scandals. The people questioning Trump on this are Republican voters.
Some people in the cult are waking up to see their leader isn’t being honest with them on this. It’s breaking their shriveled little hearts. If he’s lying about the Epstein Files, what else could he have been lying about to them? Was all their defense of him just them being played for suckers?
Some people cleverer than me could figure out how to turn these disillusioned people into Democratic voters.
John G. Cole questioning why Republicans were going after 12 year old Graeme Frost and his family, for Graeme giving a Democratic radio address on sCHIP expansion, in 2007, turned him into a liberal.
A crack in the wall of never questioning the cult or cult leader can lead to life long change.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
archive.ph/nHJgj
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
It’s paywalled, but I’m curious about the eleven tips. As Clemenceau said of Wilson’s 14 points, “God himself only had ten!”
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
My hero!
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I’m not going to gather information for disparate sources. I suppose silence and trumpeting are in the eye of the beholder. They’ve done some work in Congress to shut down the rules committee and get the oversight committee to issue a subpoena. But like I said, someone can always complain they should be doing something more.
Librettist
Senator Kennedy has a live on-air, TIA on Kudlow’s show.
Omnes Omnibus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Why do I have the feeling that whatever Baud might post in reply you will saying that it is insufficient and still just “mostly watching”?
Suzanne
@gene108:
We don’t even know how to get people out of romantic relationships in which one partner murders the other.
If we are genuinely trying to understand “our fellow Americans” — which is important if we ever want to be effectively persuasive — I think we have to reckon with how much these lifelong problematic beliefs (fundamentalist religion, white supremacy, patriarchy, hostility to science, lack of education, militarism, and more!) absolutely cook their personal agency until it is a burned shell.
Trollhattan
Legit surprised she hasn’t had her “prison accident.”
Trollhattan
@Librettist: What’s a TIA? He brought his aunt?
Baud
@Trollhattan:
That would make Trump look worse to his MAGA supporters.
Baud
@Trollhattan:
Type of stroke, I think.
coin operated
@Baud: Transient Ischemic Attack…mini stroke
Suzanne
@Baud: Transient ischemic attack, to be precise.
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The Right, meaning Fox News, Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, OANN, and the other channels, right? The nice massive feedback loop that Democrats don’t have?
I mean I suppose Democrats could use their committee chairmanships to start investigations.
oldgold
If you are a ham sandwich, Los Angeles is the place to be.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Bill Essayli, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, recently became “irate” and could be heard “screaming” at prosecutors in the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles when a grand jury declined to indict an anti-ICE protester who had been targeted for potential felony charges.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Omnes Omnibus:
Looks like we’ll never know.
Another quote from the same electoral-vote.com piece:
electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Jul24-1.html
I guess that’s another example of Dems doing something but not enough. I’m not gonna get hung up on process here, I’m guessing there some reason a lone (D) Senator isn’t talking to a state AG on this, but at least he’s one (D) doing a tiny bit.
The point is we always approach counter-messaging in a way that represents the fractured nature of our side and yeah, some of us are still gonna bitch about it. That kind of perspective is commonly expressed over at electoral-vote which is probably why it doesn’t get much readership from this space.
Belafon
@gene108:
I can think of a few really clever people that tried to do that:
Obama: Let’s make healthcare more affordable.
Biden: Let’s give them money to improve their lives.
Harris: Let’s make home care covered by Medicare, oh, and Republicans are going to destroy our democracy.
Lots of clever people have tried. They don’t want to be saved yet.
gene108
@Scout211:
From a Blanche tweet in your link:
LOL!!!
If her lawyers are minimally competent, getting her to talk with Blanche will come with strings attached to get her out of prison early, which won’t go over well with MAGA.
I mean there’s still some Constitution thingy against self incrimination, which is basically what Blanche wants her to do by spilling the details on the sex trafficking operation.
Baud
gene108
@Belafon:
Those are policy changes or proposals. People tune those out.
Basically, I’m talking about cult deprogramming. Good policy won’t reach people at the emotional level they need to walk a way from the Republican cult.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Belafon:
All of us can argue about why we lost last November but one thing’s become apparent, that being the message “The other guy is going to destroy our democracy” isn’t a particularly compelling message to voters we need to reach.
It pains me to say that because I, like a lot of others then (and now) felt, and loudly stated, that a vote for Harris, if nothing else, was a vote to ensure our democracy endured for at least another 4 years.
And that was a patriotic message to use repeatedly and would suffice if all else failed.
For whatever myriad reasons, it wasn’t. Wish it had been.
Suzanne
@Baud: I hope the staff of Gawker has some cake on hand.
hueyplong
@gene108: If there is one person you can absolutely trust to get to the truth no matter who is implicated, it’s Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney.
Trollhattan
@Baud:
Noted.
I do miss Ozzy. No more will we hear “Shawwwon!”
Suzanne
@gene108:
Yes, you are correct. And recall that cult members usually attack those who try to tell them the truth.
gene108
@Suzanne:
People do get themselves out of toxic relationships.
I’ve heard toxic relationships used as an analogy about getting people out of the Trump / Republican cult. Everyone on the outside can see the destructive nature of the relationship, but the people in the relationship need something particular to the relationship to put cracks into whatever keeps it together, before they’ll listen to anyone on the outside about getting out.
scav
One very handy thing about constantly being failed! by one’s leaders is that it tidies away any nagging suspicions about having to possibly do something oneself. “Snap Snap waiter! Where is my promised land? And my appetizer of utopian bliss is tepid.”
tobie
@gene108: I can’t imagine Maxwell wasn’t offered a plea deal. That’s the time you bargain. Now she just wants a get out of jail free card. Blanche thinks Americans are stupid enough to fall for his BS. He may be right.
Soprano2
I think most normal people who don’t follow politics didn’t believe it. FFOTUS was president already for 4 years, and he didn’t “destroy our democracy”, and no matter how much Democrats tried to tell them about Project 2025 they didn’t believe that would actually happen either (listen to Sarah Longwell talk about trying to ask focus groups about those things). They cared a lot more about day-to-day issues that affect them directly, and that’s what they voted on, and in that area FFOTUS and his media mouthpieces were successful at selling them on the idea that he would improve their lives when it came to these issues. If people don’t feel secure in their everyday lives, a message about democracy isn’t going to resonate with them. We can say all we like that they were secure, but people believe they aren’t. They still believe it, I think that’s part of what’s making FFOTUS’s numbers go down.
ETA – I think at this point a message about Republicans not believing in democracy would resonate more, because now we have actual examples of actual things they have done that demonstrate it. People have a hard time grasping abstract concepts.
Belafon
@gene108: Experience and from what I have read seems to be that people have to get themselves out. Something has to cause them to see it for themselves. No messaging will make that happen.
And sometimes, what you get when they do break out is they shift to another movement. See Ginny Thomas.
My mom has, over the last ten years or so, gotten much better about recognizing her bigotry and seeing it in others. And a lot of that has to do with two gay grandchildren and my brother’s fourth wife’s half-Hispanic kids. I’ve been able to open her eyes more since she started recognizing it, but before then, I got into some serious arguments with her over her blindness.
mr perfect
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Mostly-but-not-completely-batshit-insane Congressional Republicans; does such a creature exist? This is from a few weeks ago:
Scout211
I’m so old I remember the DOJ called Maxwell a liar.
But Bondi’s DOJ is like no other. Lies are used to manipulate the law.
Mr. Bemused Senior
In other words, she fits right in with Trump, Bondi, Blanche, the whole crew.
Omnes Omnibus
Test
Baud
Omnes Omnibus
Chuck Mangione has died, aged 84.
Shalimar
@Suzanne: My brother’s girlfriend and her 9-year-old son were living with mom and I months ago. Brother was getting more and more paranoid and unhinged from taking meth daily, so finally he went off on girlfriend in the wee hours before daylight. This lasted for hours, with him cursing her from outside the window of the room she had locked herself and son in. He could have broken down the door easily, and also was outside so mom wouldn’t hear him ranting from her hospital bed in the living room. So he wasn’t completely unhinged, just really bad. Finally it got to be daylight and she packed what she could get quickly and left, all the while he was calling her a slut in front of her son as she was trying to go.
A few weeks later, I had to call 911 because he was threatening to kill my sister and I and also her cats in front of her. At that point, he was barred from the house and forced to go god knows where.
A few weeks after that, girlfriend got back together with him despite everything that had happened. A few months after that, they got married. From what I hear, it sounds like the son is living with his dad so he won’t be exposed to the abuse again.
As you say, we can’t even figure out how to end co-dependent relationships. I have no clue how we fix a whole fucked up movement.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Hulk Hogan is going to the one place where you can say racial slurs and no one can catch it on film.
Betty Cracker
Busy week for the Reaper. Terry Bollea, aka “Hulk Hogan,” has kicked the bucket at age 71
@Baud: Hahaha, I’ll bet.
Trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not many guys I can say flugeled his way to popularity. Chuck did.
Shalimar
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Sad that he didn’t die in bed with Peter Thiel. He didn’t, right?
Baud
Genuinely surprised he wasn’t already.
Shalimar
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sure Mangione lived a great life, but that one is a lot sadder than Hulk Hogan.
Juju
@Omnes Omnibus: Aw darn. I met him when I was a teenager and lived in a suburb of Rochester NY. He was the nextdoor neighbor of one of my favorite teachers. He was such a nice person.
zhena gogolia
@scav: Great comment.
Trollhattan
Fall in line or on your sword. Rules in the time of Trump.
We need more Jodi Bacons (mmm, Bacon) and I hope she lands a proper gig at a news organization who welcome insight and bravery.
hotshoe
Ken White (Popehat) yesterday explained that
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Shalimar:
We don’t know but it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
He was a piece of work for a loong time. Don’t forget his steroids usage to go along with his anti-labor activities and his enlightened race outlook. /s
Suzanne
@Shalimar:
Yeah.
As I noted, there are a lot of social forces out there that work to cook people’s brains. Essentially, those things work to narrow the scope of someone’s life, to give them strict boxes to fit into. And the most pernicious aspect of those forces is that those people come to depend on them. We want people to have greater ethical imagination, but that’s a really hard thing.
I read something some years ago that stuck with me, about how the U.S. has worked to try to get more North Korean defectors. They don’t go in with direct appeals or exposés or condemnation of Kim Jong Un or promises of a payoff. They start with smuggling in unrelated media. One defector said that she came across a copy of Titanic, and that it absolutely blew her mind wide open, because she had never imagined having a personal relationship that meant more to her than allegiance to Dear Leader. That¡s an entire concept that was literally foreign.
I think about this when we have discussions about why people do the fucked-up things they do. Then I remember the Mormon girls I grew up with, and the things they were brought up to believe.
Ksmiami
@Miss Bianca: yep. I’m ready to fire back. Fuck em all. There’s no purchase in being scared
Bill Arnold
@Jackie:
If that meeting with Maxwell is not recorded and the unredacted transcript made generally available, then I and tens of millions of others will assume that Blanche gave her a hardcore mob-style carrot or stick offer; e.g. clemency or premature death.
(“Plata o plomo” in another mob culture.)
Gretchen
Most of those girls wouldn’t have talked to a middle-aged man who approached them alone, but they’d trust a woman.
Lawrence O’Donnell had an especially heartbreaking story the other night. Maxwell literally did the trafficker trick of approaching her with a cute little dog and asked if she wanted to pet it. The kid’s father had recently died, leaving the family bankrupt and having to lose their home. But the kid was talented, and got a scholarship to the very prestigious Interlochen Music Camp – you have to apply and be accepted to go. Her mother must have felt that their luck was finally turning to get such a break. Turns out Epstein and Maxwell were benefactors, were there and struck up a friendship with the 8th grader, and got her into their web when she went back home.
I appreciate how outraged Lawrence is about all of these stories.
Baud
@Gretchen:
Ugh. That’s terrible.
Layer8Problem
@Trollhattan: Burt Bacharach made an effort, but I think he just arranged rather than played.
ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Do we have any concept of why this happened?
I mean we can all throw up ideas of why/how but that’s not actually getting an answer.
Warblewarble
When you need to whitewash, send in Todd Blanche, the writers need to do better.
Betty Cracker
@ruckus: I suspect it’s related to a WP plug-in update because of one of the error messages I’ve seen, but that’s just a guess.
ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Gotta give someone credit, if you are going to stir up shit, stir it up good.
And an anywhere near reliable voice of the people is exactly what the shitheads do not want.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@stinger: I am listening to the Fresh Air interview and !!!
I didn’t realize how bad the Epstein story is. This isn’t going away.
sixthdoctor
@Betty Cracker: As a longtime wrestling fan, I’m genuinely surprised Hogan didn’t no-sell his death.
ArchTeryx
@sixthdoctor: Death doesn’t follow the script and doesnt do kayfabe.
Trollhattan
These fuckin’ guys.
Baud
@Trollhattan:
Makes sense. Obama isn’t implicated by Epstein.
ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I’d bet it goes deeper.
These people are desperate. They aren’t getting anywhere, for numerous reasons, none of them above 3 grade level, but then look who we are talking about. OK maybe 4th grade…..
They want something that they can’t have, that likely even some percentage of the people on their side likely don’t agree with the damage being done. They are trying to remove the democracy part of our country, because that does not allow them to run roughshod over every damn law to get what they think they want and which they are 10000000% unable to deal with. Their concept of a government is anything but. These are people that would have been rejects for the wrong side during the Civil War. They are 40-80 yr old children who have zero ideas about government, laws, responsibility, reality. They just want what they want, which is for them to be in charge of humanity, except that is a mental and physical impossibility. They are 8 yr olds playing fort something and don’t even know it. The real problem is that they have real weapons and a concept that they know everydamnthing. And their brains can only handle breathing and that exhaust stuff.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s the story of Maxwell life too. I don’t what to make out of that.
Jackie
FFOTUS is really losing it:
Behar’s absolutely correct. Maybe FFOTUS will get distracted once he hears about South Park LOL
Trollhattan
@Baud:
With those Big Brains I’m expecting:
Fact: President Obama interfered with the 2016 election that Trump should have won bigly, instead of merely winning winning.
Conclusion: having won a contaminated election, Donald J Trump was never really president, merely president-adjacent.
Therefore: Donald J Trump having now served but one term as president, is eligible to be president again in 2029, his second term.
[Daddy, do you love us again?]
Shakti
So this is all blowing up in Trump’s face because he tried to pull a Geraldo Rivera with the Epstein Files to make his MAGA Qanon supporters happy/distracted? Because Musk said he was in the Epstein files — when I thought it’s verified that he is [Mother Jones link, October 2020]?
Am I understanding the gist of this?
Not sure why Trump with his one brain cell would ever pardon Maxwell — because she’s the closest biggest fish to keep in prison since Epstein has been super dead for almost 7 years, this August?
Still can’t get over how weird it is for Johnson to cut the legislative session short early. It makes him look guilty (of something).
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: They’ll still support his party. For the babbies.
Paul in KY
@satby: That’s the dirt Darth Putin probably has on TACO. Also, him swearing allegiance to Russia and being a spy.
Peale
@Trollhattan: Honestly, I hope they find that he DID try to influence the election. I mean, he was the head of the Democratic party at the time.
Unfortunately, about half our coalition at any time believes that true power is when you don’t use your power and instead try to make friends with the other side. So they’ll be shocked to find out that the head of their party wants it to actually win.
Ramona
@dr. luba:Is Mark Epstein the brother the executor of Epstein’s estate?
JML
@sixthdoctor: Ha! A fine burn.
I loved Hogan for years, enjoyed the hell out of his schtick long after I understood what pro wrestling really was…and then I found out what an asshole he was off-screen, and it kept getting worse and worse in the last decade. Sigh.
Death from steroids and racism, IMHO.
Paul in KY
@frosty: I also think the fake hillbilly couldn’t be any worse than TACO. He’d be very bad, but he’s not insane like TACO and he would hopefully bring some more stability to various aspects of government/foreign policy.
Could be Hopium though…
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Looking forward to seeing it!
ruckus
@Suzanne:
They want life as they think it must have been, long, long ago.
They don’t have a clue but that is what they want. At least that’s what it seems that they want. Possibly their brains are so much mush that all that’s floating around in there is more mush. Perhaps there’s nothing but mush floating around in there. But the bottom line is that they want to return to a time long ago where they would have been in charge. They don’t know when or what. And really it doesn’t get much less than that. They see a modern life where they are not above everyone else, where they are equal. And to them that means they drop to the level that they used to/and still do treat anyone not them, not that everyone else rises. Their concept for far longer than any of them have been alive is that they are superior and everyone else is/has to be a slave to them. They won’t admit that but the evidence is now basically crystal freaking clear. (my next to last word is misspelled but I’m trying not to swear…..)
Paul in KY
@hueyplong: Bet she’s happy about that…
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: To me, one of the great accomplishments of the GQP was they turned politics into something more like college sports. Your team is your team. No matter how good or bad they play, you’re still a Bama fan or LSU or OSU, etc. etc.
GQP has those idjits thinking about them like they think about their favourite team (IMO).
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: I’m with Ohio Dad on this. Trump is evil and creepy. Vance’s ugliness and creepiness feel even more sinister and malevolent to me. I can’t put my finger on it
ETA Heard thru local grapevine Vance fired his housekeepers at his Cincinnati home, telling them he’s not going to be spending much time at home the next 12 years. Don’t know if it’s true or not LOL.
JPL
@Trollhattan: Is Durham available?
ruckus
@Belafon:
THIS.
Melancholy Jaques
@gene108:
All of those proposals were designed to make the lives of ordinary, average people easier. These are the same working class, middle class, people that we Democrats supposedly have abandoned.
You are correct that these policies do not move voters. And in particular, they do not move white voters away from the party of white supremacy. I am not sure what will penetrate their minds. You would think a corrupt, lying bigot who tried to overthrow the government by violence would do it, but noooooooo! (Belushi voice)
Archon
@Peale: A sense of fairness, even against our adversaries is the cornerstone to liberalism. Right wing parties, especially fascists ones always use that sense of fairness against the left. They abandon the rules at the first sign of advantage and by the time we get over our outrage and fight back they are breaking another rule or law.
Its a virtue and flaw of liberals, adherence to the rules even if it means losing. My only suggestion to combat that is to make clear those that break the law to advance political goals will be shown absolutely no mercy or clemency. To that end, the Civil War needed to end in MASS tribunals and executions and everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 should have been tried for seditious conspiracy, grandmas included.
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
he will be
ruckus
@Kathleen:
The difference is in their age. dump has been aging out for a while, he’s just getting further along the trail. Vance is younger and has a side to him that dump may want to have but really doesn’t. dump just isn’t as smart as he thinks he is – and he’s aging out. If we live long enough we all do this to some degree, even if we start at different ages. Dad aged out in early 80s mom took over a decade longer. Each of us does this if we live long enough. For some it’s like a jump off a 40 story roof, for others it’s a gentle ride down a very slow kiddy slide.
Martin
@dr. luba: You have a misplaced faith in USSC caring about precedent in matters that relate to the president or the larger GOP agenda.
ruckus
@rikyrah:
Yep.
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: I am so tired of this, but I answer every time. BIDEN (in my opinion, which has the same value as yours) is who put us where we wound up. Sure, Biden accomplished a lot in his term, and worked hard for it. But Biden also aged four years, which is a lot at this point in life. He did not appear to have another four years in him, and the debate sealed the impression that he was “out of it” for many.
We do not know that Biden would have won where Harris was unable to. The enthusiasm for her was much greater among people I know than the enthusiasm for four more years (or less) of Biden as he presented himself
What would have happened if Biden had announced in a timely fashion that he wasn’t running again? We can never know, any more than we can know what would have happened if he had stuck it out after that debate performance.
Baud
Martin
@Kathleen: I think Trump is easier to understand because his only agenda is himself, and he supports these other things only as far as he thinks they help him. Vance is insanely obsequious and it’s kind of impossible to know whose train he’s going to hitch himself to next or whether once in the top seat his own agenda will finally get revealed. He’s much more of a black box in that regard. One thing he does routinely return to is that dark enlightenment bullshit coming out of the space around Thiel, so my suspicion is he just runs with that which on one hand makes regular Christian Nationalism look a bit tame, but on the other hand probably would been pretty strong conflict with the goals of most of the people in the administration now. It might look more like Trump 1.0 in that internal disagreements and infighting stall the whole thing out.
Shalimar
@Trollhattan: I have seen them say (and even Trump hint at it) that the interference prevented Trump from governing properly during his first term so it shouldn’t count. I don’t think that is an argument the Supreme Court will accept. They’re more likely to give him a 3rd term because the first two weren’t consecutive (even though the amendment doesn’t say they have to be, and Cleveland was an example of it happening before).
WTFGhost
The problem with Ghislaine Maxwell, is, reporters have the goods on what she *should* be complaining about, and if they hear a single victim being left out, if they hear a single R pol left out, they will go apoplectic, and, we might (might!!!) even see an R-aligned commenter scream about kiddie diddling.
I mean, that’s just what happens when you start doing something like sexual abuse of minors. My mom was no activist, she just let it slip that she was sexually abused as a minor. And I think if someone was rounding up evil sexual predators, however secretive my mom might have felt, she would have been willing to tell the truth under anonymity, and even on the record, if she saw one, but not another, sexual abuser about to get kicked in the teeth by the law.
I don’t think there are any lefty or righty sexual abuse victims, I think there are people who, upon hearing justice might be meted out, will demand it, not because they’re weepy waily victims, but because they won’t let a weepy waily victim be ignored, not when justice comes to visit.
Melancholy Jaques
@Shakti:
He is doing that asshole’s’ bidding and he is owning the libs, so it’s all good with the people he cares about.
Booger
@Omnes Omnibus: Does that leave a Gap?
piratedan
@Baud: for fucks sake Senator Peters, THE PRESIDENT IS A SEX OFFENDER, already convicted!
Spanky
@Juju:
Mrs. Spanky was living in Rochester back in the late 70s and met him a couple of times. She also mentions how nice a guy he was.
As for Hulk Hogan, steroids are a hell of a drug.
Miss Bianca
@Librettist: whoa – you mean the Senator from LA? Did I get that right?
Baud
@piratedan:
While true, the public hasn’t cared about that the same way they care about his connection to Epstein
ETA: Trump wasn’t convicted of a sex offense.
Kathleen
@Melancholy Jaques: Thiel thinks democracy is dead and women shouldn’t be able to vote. Plus God only knows what other arcane Catholic/Opus Dei stuff he believes.
WTFGhost
Why?
Do you think your arguments are so powerful and, let’s face it, beautifully spoken and intelligently phrased, that no human being will ever again speak so clearly and finely on a topic of national importance?
Or, do you have strong feelings about an argument, and every time someone else brings that argument up, you HAVE TO JOIN IN TO PROVE YOU ARE RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT and everyone else is WRONG WRONG WRONG?
Or do you just like repeating yourself, when the point of an argument is over a year past being completely moot?
Or, and I suppose this is possible too, is it because you never thought about why you keep repeating yourself?
Just, you know, for what it’s worth, I find your arguments dull, and foolish seeming, because they have no point in today’s world, when the reason for having those arguments is long over, and, no matter how many minds one changes, absolutely nothing in the real world will change for the better, or the worse, and, the situation is vanishingly unlikely to happen again, so nothing will be learned for the future.
Nettoyeur
@gene108: See the movie The Death of Stalin. A black comedy, nevertheless captures the psychology accurately.
Kathleen
@Baud: I think Dems were waiting for that moment when MAGATS lost patience. I think they knew at some point the overreach would be so bad even the MAGATS would snap. And they were watching and waiting.
ruckus
@Martin:
Dump is aging out.
Vance is running into walls. Not jogging, running.
IOW dump can’t help himself. This is part of growing old. If we live long enough we all go through this. Some younger than him some older and the rate of progress is individual, as is the actual path taken. Vance is one who seems to have an overabundance of pompous arrogance, maybe not as large of one as some do but it is a normal human trait.
If we live long enough we all age out, just at different ages, paths and rates.
RedDirtGirl
@Shalimar: I’m sorry. That sounds really rough.
Nettoyeur
@Baud: Er , E Jean Carroll would like a word.
Nettoyeur
@Trollhattan: Only has one story.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@ruckus: I think what Vance has is unbridled ambition. There’s no telling what he might do as President. We may find out [shudder].
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@H.E.Wolf: thank you for the links. The write-ups are indeed excellent!
dnfree
@Trollhattan: Transient Ischemic Attack, but my doctor told me it’s more commonly just called a mini-stroke these days. It’s like what happened to McConnell, where the person just freezes up for a short period of time and doesn’t seem to have after effects.
Ramona
@Baud: Good!
NotMax
@Nettoyeur
Nikita in 1956 (3 years after Stalin died):
“It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person,” said Khrushchev, “to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god.
“Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior. Such a belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin, was cultivated among us for years.”
Old School
@Nettoyeur: E Jean Carroll was a civil trial. No convictions involved.
Ramona
@Scout211: Blanche is speaking to Maxwell to find out what she has on Trump. That he cannot be sure whether she is lying or not is a good thing.
Kathleen
@Gretchen: He was on fire and he brought in their voices to make the crimes real. Her story was heartbreaking to begin with but I teared up when I heard the part about the dog. That poor girl was suffering enough.
Baud
@Nettoyeur:
What word would she like? I’m sure she knows civil trials don’t result in convictions.
NotMax
7 hours without a new post?
Baud
@NotMax:
That we know of.
Bill Arnold
FWIW, I just saw rawstory (usa feed) suddenly start displaying yesterday’s stories.
That would mean a broader problem, perhaps cloudflare.
Balloon-juice appears to use cloudflare; I ran into new cloudflare anti-crawler support recently on balloon-juice.
Baud
Here’s a pick me up for those who follow polling. Remember this is with a good stock market and still fairly strong job market.
Martin
@dnfree: There were polls on the eve of the election asking the hypothetical ‘If Biden remained the nominee, who would you vote for?’ and Biden loses by 9. If nothing else that puts the lie to the ‘the only reason Harris lost was sexism and racism’.
Also, if the reporting is to be believed, the campaign to push Biden out by Pelosi and Obama had started long before the debate. They were already concerned about fundraising and volunteers not showing up and about Biden’s ability to keep up with the demands of the campaign – they knew about the pre-debate problems. Biden being seemingly unaware of his current poll numbers in an interview. The debate is what caused them to really demand a response – was the campaign staff doing Biden dirty, was Biden unable to keep up, etc. Obviously they concluded it was more of the latter than the former.
This fantasy that everything was fantastic until George Clooney wrote an OpEd just won’t die – grow the fuck up, that’s not how the world works. And Hunter isn’t an objective observer here. I don’t think he’s wrong about a lot of his critiques, but he’s also out there blaming everyone except for the guy in charge of the campaign. We had the same thing happen after Clinton lost – the campaign staff fucked everything up. Well, they all worked for her, and she didn’t see it, so sorry, buck stops with the boss. The inability to detect and correct staffing problems is a flaw in the candidate – often a fatal one in a campaign. I think Harris put too much trust in her corporate advisors and they steered her off of a winning message. I think her early instincts were good ones. But she hired them, she listened to them, she didn’t see it wasn’t working, and the loss is on her.
This scapegoating shit is what we fucking hate most about the GOP and it drives me crazy to see it constantly showing up here. Biden lost the trust of the people who run the party machine and that’s why he got pushed out, and Harris lost because she trusted the wrong people and campaigned on the wrong message. There’s no point blaming Plouffe and Tony West when Harris hired Plouffe and Tony West. She paid for that bad advice. It’s on her, end of story. There’s no point blaming the guy who gave Biden ambien or the guy who may or may not have been too afraid to give Biden the bad news on his polling. It’s on Biden, end of story – hire better people, recognize when you’re losing donors, recognize when nobody has given you updated polling information, recognize when you’re falling in the polls and remedy that. That’s the fucking job and there’s no point blaming other people when you don’t do the job. That doesn’t mean Biden is a bad guy, or Harris or Pelosi or Hunter. Not everyone is able to meet the moment and we should reward people who can admit they aren’t able to meet the moment, and not be afraid to say ‘sorry buddy, you biffed that one’ when they can’t. But turning these people into your enemy is MAGA-like behavior.
Paul in KY
@Baud: My stuff works fine. No new post as of 1418 ED
Refreshed and looks like a new Betty post at 1401.
Baud
@Bill Arnold:
A lot of websites use cloud flare.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Remind me what happened to Kruschev…
Baud
@Paul in KY:
Are you a witch?
Paul in KY
@Baud: I was wrong and am not a witch. Looks like a new post went up at 1401.
Baud
@Paul in KY:
How do you get to it?
No One of Consequence
Site having early onset Alzheimers? Behaving nutty for me today.
-NOoC
Baud
@No One of Consequence:
Been borked for over 24 hours.
Scout211
But repeated TIAs will cause ischemic brain damage and other neurological damage.
Ramona
@rikyrah: If Vance were to assume the presidency, he would not be able to cow Congressional Republicans the way Trump does because he’s not the idol of MAGA the way Trump is. This would be an improvement.
Baud
New thread up.
Martin
@Baud: The stock market is really deceptive right now though. There are hundreds of billions being invested in AI silicon and infrastructure with the promise that it’ll make money later (it’s hemorrhaging money now) and those billions make up between a quarter and a third of the market valuation. It is an enormous bubble.
Underneath that, you have traditional companies showing okay numbers because they pulled inventories and sales forward to avoid tariffs and we’re not really seeing the effects of the tariffs yet. GMs profits are off by ⅓ because they’re eating the tariffs out of fear that passing them on to consumers will lower sales (duh). As a one time hit, no big deal, but if that’s durable, the market will need to price it in.
Looking again at the DJIA, things look great. But when you look at the 10-Qs, things look borderline catastrophic. Enormous capex with no cash flow, totally fucked balance sheets due to inventory and sales shifting, other kinds of shenanigans to appease the President. And if you work in these companies you get an insight to the problems – layoffs, hiring is down, consumer sales are down, purchase agreements on hold waiting for tariff clarity – which belie the top line optimism. The unemployment rate for new college grads is really high because the entry level jobs that many of them were aiming for have either been eliminated in favor of AI, or because of tariff uncertainty. I think if you poll people working in tech, they’re not going to reflect a good economy – things are bad there. If you poll people in the auto industry, things are bad there. In ag, things are really bad.
WTFGhost
@Ramona: Vance is also a lawyer, and can’t plead “difficulty understanding legal advice” to a judge. Trump gets *huge* amounts of leeway from the courts because he can keep swearing he’s following legal advice, but a lawyer can’t say that – a lawyer is expected to understand the law, even if they’re not particularly well versed in it.
Like, remember when the judge gave Vinny the book of procedure to read, in a day or three, to get ready for trial? And Vinny’s holding this gigantic book, saying, “just this?” trying to bluff like he’s not horrified?
Yeah. The judge expected Vinny to have that book memorized, but, of course, the judge also expected he’d be skimming, reviewing information he already had down *cold* since he was pretending to be an experienced trial lawyer.
(Ref: “My Cousin Vinny.”)
Belafon
@Martin:
I doubt there was anyone saying that the only reason Harris lost was sexism and racism, but they contributed.
greenergood
@satby: Maybe the fact that some of the abused children were male might spark the MAGAs, but seriously, if the abuse is of any female child over the age of 12, the MAGAs will not give an almighty shit – either 12-year-old girls are wedding material (depending what state you live in), or they were too tempting to their abusers, so it’s all their fault, or both. Donald for the win!!
Ramona
@Martin: Well said!
japa21
@Martin: I like and appreciate most of your comments, but that is a load of BS, drawing of conclusions from thin air, etc., etc.
Ramona
@WTFGhost: I really have to watch “My Cousin Vinnie”! I’ve only seen snippets of it. I know the plot somewhat from diffusion and lines from it like, “My clock is ticking and ticking!” and “Exxxactly”.
It’s possible I’ve seen it but I’ve forgotten most of it and need to watch it again.
WTFGhost
You’re neither a pollster, nor a statistician, and you managed to prove it well, without mentioning either word.
Polls don’t reveal truth; they don’t expose lies; many times, they don’t even provide actionable data.
unrelatedwaffle
@Ohio Mom: Men of any and all political stripes have said of Epstein’s victims that they “knew what they were getting into” by becoming models and going to Epstein’s home or parties with older men.
Our entire culture teaches boys and men that girls are to be taken advantage of, tricked, steamrolled, or coerced into sexual acts, which is only just and good because boys cannot help themselves, and it would be nice if people recognized that this is a worldwide problem of rape culture and misogyny, and not just a couple of bad guys we’re mad at for a few weeks.
Suzanne
@Martin: Thank you, your insight is helpful.
JML
@Ramona: The courtroom scenes in My Cousin Vinny are really quite well done. Fun, smart, and surprisingly accurate as to the legal forms and requirements.
Another Scott
@Martin: And yet Melon felt the need to dump $250-ish M into 47’s campaign in the last 2-3 months, and several other dark-money MotUs probably did similarly as well, while Biden (and Harris) were apparently obviously doomed, doomed.
I don’t buy your story.
Counter-factuals are fun. I don’t know if Biden would have lost worse. It was a close election – too close. :-( It was only a foregone conclusion in hindsight (and too-pat explanations arrive like a flood afterwards).
Those with money and power know the levers to push (slanted news, fighting progress, etc.) to try to get the result they want – they didn’t think the result was a foregone conclusion.
My $0.02.
Best wishes,
Scott.
chemiclord
@ArchTeryx:
Death is actually Meng?
JML
Truth. Vance isn’t well-liked by almost anyone outside Peter Thiel’s little cabal, and certainly doesn’t have the command over either the rank and file or the electeds that the Orange Idiot manages to hold. While the GOP will always tend to fall in line at the close, there’s also plenty of power-hungry bastards in their ranks that would seize on the death or resignation of Dear Leader to try and claim power for themselves. And none of the wannabes are likely to have the same ability to drive turnout.
It can’t happen soon enough. Because the GOP is such a cult of personality, with few consistent policy positions left, let alone popular ones…once the boss goes the in-fighting will begin. It almost has to: Uday or Qusay will try to claim rights of succession, MTG and various fools in Congress will try and claim the mantle, and a handful of governors/ex-governors will try to take charge, not to mention charisma-free Vance and others in the cabinet.
NutmegAgain
@Suzanne: The cynic in me says, Well, they’ll just redefine “child” so a 12 year old is fair game.
Martin
@Belafon: No a number of people here, when presented with the idea that maybe Biden’s economy wasn’t perfect, or that the Israel policy was a bigger deal, or that Democrats were campaigning on the wrong issues will quite often retort to me that the only thing anyone needs to know about why Harris lost is racism and sexism.
Basically, ‘we ran a perfect campaign, it’s not our fault’.
...now I try to be amused
@Jackie:
Add smart and funny and popular. But worst of all, Obama is almost certainly a better golfer than Trump.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Martin:
Thank you for bringing this up in the first place and responding.
Most of what we get, depending on the originator is exactly that. It happened daily. It’s an excuse to not examine other very pertinent aspects of the loss and how to move forward.
That’s one reason why some always rejoin with either sexism or racism or a combination of both, it’s to double down on things that aren’t working, typically originating from the MattY “liberals”.
Factors? Yup, nobody’s denying that.
Martin
@WTFGhost: I am a statistician/data scientist and I have run polls and focus groups.
And you’re right, polls are a very coarse tool, and the information they provide is very limited. That’s why I’m a much bigger fan of focus groups because people lie to themselves all the fucking time and you can start to uncover that in a two-way interaction and get a better sense of what they really believe, which probably is pretty orthogonal to any question you thought to put in the poll.
To be clear, the poll that showed Biden losing by 9 doesn’t tell us he would have lost the election. We don’t know how Biden would have performed if we rewound the clock and he doesn’t drop out. In fairness to him, he may have rallied and pulled out a win. Or he could have continued to struggle. I think the news of him having stage 4 cancer suggesting he had cancer throughout the campaign is an adequate explanation for his fatigue and that he probably would have struggled to rally as the grind of the campaign continued to increase.
Martin
@japa21: What conclusions did I pull from thin air? I’m genuinely curious. All of the stuff about Pelosi/Obama behind the scenes was reported. I didn’t invent that. Maybe the reporting is wrong, but they didn’t deny it either so I think there’s a fair bit of credibility to it. You can see the reporting prior to the election regarding the fundraising fall off, and some concerns regarding volunteer staffing. Not back in Feb/March where the reporting indicated things were going really well, but by June (before the debate) donors were worried that Trump was outraging him, Biden was behind in the polling in the blue wall states in April – months before the debate, that calls with donors seemed to not allow those with concerns to ask questions – donors expect a certain openness out of the campaign and they were seeing it close ranks. Again, if the reporting is to be believed. These are signs of trouble months before.
Everything else in my comment is that the boss owns the results. If we want to blame shitty staff, they own that too because they hired them. That’s the standard we hold Trump to, no? He hires these idiots, they embarrass him or don’t do what he wants, he calls them losers – like, you hired them, asshole – stop blaming them.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Its hard to critique your own side, especially when you thought your side was doing the winning thing and then don’t win. I got a lot of it wrong myself. There’s also a pile of ‘could we have avoided these unforced errors of having to remove our candidate 4 months before the election’, which I will forever contend was an unforced error. But you can’t make these evaluations if you are wrapped up in romantic notions like loyalty and entitlement because you’ll never be able to see past them. And that just causes you to make the same mistakes in the future because you denied yourself the opportunity to learn something. I think the GOP are making that problem in spades right now, because when Trump goes away they’re going to be fucking lost at sea. But it’s not like the left doesn’t do it as well – everybody does it. There are lessons to be learned here – learn them. We can debate them, sure. I’m sure some of my analysis is wrong – I throw it out here to encourage a debate about what the lesson should be, and too often I get ‘you’re wrong fuck off’. Like, no, engage with it. Where did I go wrong? Show me evidence that pokes holes in my theory. Is my timeline wrong? Do you have polling data that counters mine? Is there reporting I missed that refutes what I offered? Come up with a stronger theory.
In fact the even harder analysis is when your side was doing the wrong thing but won anyway. Then there’s no introspection and you get fucking shellacked next time out. You gotta do the critique even when you win.
ruckus
@Belafon:
This concept has started to lessen across the country.
But lessen and gone are two entirely different concepts. We will always have humans that think what they see in the mirror is what is proper, and that anyone that doesn’t look like someone from the same gene pool is BAD.
But humans are one of the few animals that have a wide range of a lot of things. Skin color being one of them. Some people are even more selective about differences from them. Some of that is history – skin color, some is just plain human expectations and then there is generalizations about others who must not be equal. Humans mostly have more brain power, which is often twisted, useless, far less than average or just shows plain ignorance. Also human brain power levels can vary widely, their upbringing may be crap or only self learned. We also live longer than many other animals. But while we may have a lot of possibilities of who we become, many are raised in a very limited show of humanity. Parents both have to work long hours to provide. Kids may hang out with kids that were raised by shitty parents – to become shitty adults. Mental acuity can be misused. I’m sure the list isn’t bottomless but it is longer than many other species of living creatures.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Yes! It is a classic. You won’t regret it.
Another Scott
@Martin:
You provide lots of interesting comments and solid reasoning, and I’ve learned a lot from your posts, but often it’s nearly impossible to figure out where you’re getting your numbers. It can be a lot of work for people who think you’re wrong to know how to rebut your arguments when you don’t provide links.
For example, is there a link for your ‘election day poll said Biden would have lost by 9%’ comment?
Seeing where you’re getting your numbers might lead to more thoughtful engagement. Or not; we are jackals after all. 🤪
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@Martin: You’re right to say there were signs of trouble all along. We should be honest about that. An alarmingly large number of Democratic voters didn’t think their own incumbent president was up to four more years on the job. Can’t speak for anyone else, but I saw the same thing among Democrats I know in real life.
At the time, I dismissed that, thinking incumbency was too valuable a resource to be squandered. And before someone points out that Biden won the primaries in states that held them (mine didn’t), yeah, but we must also acknowledge that Biden’s decision to run again froze out every other credible candidate since no one (except that congressman whose name I’ve already forgotten) wanted to be blamed if things went sideways. It was a collective action problem.
Anyway, we can’t know what would have happened if Biden stayed in, but every piece of data we have, such as it is, tells us it would have been worse. I find these confident assertions that Biden would have won baffling. I guess it’s mostly venting, which is fine, but it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to ignore any lessons we can learn from the defeat.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Having tied themselves to an anchor.
I live in hope.
lowtechcyclist
Dead thread (ETA: OK, maybe not pining for the fjords just yet), but it’s interesting that comments #251, 252, 256, and 258 are all in response to the same comment, #235. Clearly some divergence of opinion here.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Same here. After all, what’s it taken in the post-WWII era for an elected incumbent to lose the general election? Trump: pandemic. Bush I: recession. Carter: Hostages and 20% interest rates. Just seemed silly to throw that away. So I was ridin’ with Biden until the day he stepped aside.
Agree. The alleged ‘liberal media’ had been bashing him ever since the Afghanistan pullout. He still was the best President of my lifetime, but I don’t think he could have pulled it out.
And that doesn’t mean that racism and sexism weren’t an adequate explanation of Harris’ loss. In an election this close, the results are ‘overdetermined’ – that is, there are usually many things going on that are sufficient to explain the margin of loss. And there are enough people who won’t vote for a woman of color but would have voted for a white male Democrat to explain that loss – but there are also people who voted for Harris who probably wouldn’t have voted for Biden.
Not sure if anyone’s ever tried to statistically estimate the size of that group, but given the sudden burst of enthusiasm once Biden stepped aside and anointed her as the candidate suggests it was nontrivial.
It’s complicated. Maybe it would have worked out better if Biden had limited himself to one term much earlier, but he too knew the track record for incumbents.
Omnes Omnibus
One thing that that I find interesting is that the people who stayed with Team Biden were very concerned about loyalty and having the candidate’s back. IOW fighting for someone who had fought for them. And the betrayal they felt was that they didn’t see that happening. Now, people talk about fighters. And some Biden people wonder will they be left hanging if they fight? One thing I will say about AOC and Crockett, is that they they had Biden’s back very publicly and that are being combative now. I would trust them never to cave. Others? Less so.
ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
All of This.
We humans like to find fault and we really like to find it somewhere other than a mirror.
We also, many humans anyway, are very willing to find fault in everyone other than ourselves. This is one thing that humans of all stripes, countries, origins, etc have in common. Now some will say they did wrong when they actually did, but many/most have to have it proven with zero, or at least close to zero possible doubt before they will admit to doing wrong. (Was a city mental health counselor a long time ago and this was one of the things we were told to watch out for. Which was good advice.)
ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
I think this is a sound comment, with good points.
Presidential elections don’t always go the predicted way and in this case I was in the spot many others were in which is the same one you had. We liked Joe Biden. But we saw what the stress was putting on him. And as an old now my own self I can state that while living in my late 70s is good, old is still old. Some things get harder, your life moves a tad slower, while the world doesn’t. Now old is different for each of us, at this point in my dad’s life he was struggling with Alzheimer’s. Often his speech made not a lot of sense. Add in a couple years and he didn’t speak for the rest of his life – his brain couldn’t operate his speech center. I’ve knew another old guy who could still speak 5 languages into his mid 90s. Had a cousin who never learned to speak – died at 6 months. We all age different, life isn’t fair, we get what we get.
ruckus
@Mai Naem mobile:
I imagine there might be more men’s prisons than female prisons. Now I could be totally wrong but it seems to me that at least in the past more men were criminal scum than women. There may just not be as many prisons for women as for men. Looked it up. 6.6% of prisoners in US prisons are female. 93.5% are male. 154853 total inmates in Federal prisons.
Martin
@Another Scott: So I don’t think the actual poll is still available but here’s a reference to at least one such poll. This is a 7 point gap, I may have miss remembered 9% off of the 41% Biden.
My recollection was that it was a Marist, not YouGov poll so there may have been more than one, or I may have confused them. Marist don’t seem to have their last poll available that I can find.
But I have previously linked to the poll here – some months back.
Another Scott
@Martin: Thanks. I appreciate it.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Martin
@lowtechcyclist: Incumbency cuts both ways. I think Harris struggled to separate herself from Biden’s policies because of that. If you have policies that aren’t working, it’s difficult to attack that. You kind of have no choice but to defend them. That contributed to Trumps loss in 2020 – he couldn’t run from his own record.
I don’t consider Biden such an outstanding president. Yes, he’s an incredibly decent person, and he brought a lot of needed experience to the job, but I think he was also insufficiently humble in this moment:
A lot of us heard him say he intended to be a transitional president. And he could have simply put that to the test – set up a field of potential successors and let the voters decide in a primary without him as controlling the party putting his thumb on the scale. But we didn’t get that. He chose for us. That was in April 2023 noting that voters didn’t want Biden to run 14 months before the debate. He was convinced he alone could win, he could overcome the already poor polling, and really that cast the die.
We can’t say what a proper primary would have produced. Maybe it would have been Harris with a longer campaign, maybe not. Maybe we would have lost by more, but it would have avoided the unforced error of having to pull the candidate, it would have given room to correct on some of the unpopular policies as that would have needed to be sorted out during the primary – and it wouldn’t have benefitted anyone to make it nasty and undercut the benefits of incumbency – a continuation of the stuff that was popular.
I think that was a selfish decision to change course and I think that set up so much of what followed. Win or lose at least the voters would have had the say, and a full opportunity for that candidate to succeed. Instead we were denied both, and we should demand both. And much of the problem is that Biden set that expectation throughout the 2020 primaries. He was going to go in, with his experience which was unparalleled, and sort out the problems Trump had made and set up the next generation. A lot of voters backed him with that understanding – it was a way to defuse the age question by suggesting he’d be one term and mentor a replacement.
And whether or not you think he was too old to run, voters thought he was too old to run. Popping out the back end with stage 4 cancer doesn’t exactly undercut their argument.
Look at that Sept 2023 poll and every demographic shift in that poll materialized in the 2024 results. Not to the same magnitude, but every trend played out. That’s 8 months before voters saw a Harris nominee to be racist or sexist against.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I agree. Though I think that notion of loyalty is a bit misplaced in politicians. They don’t know you exist, it’s very parasocial. And the idea that they will always have your back is also misplaced. They will cut you loose in order to win – that’s the reality of it and Democrats do need to get tougher on that point. Obama got elected not promising to come through on gay marriage, but his winning created the space for that policy to happen. Did he sell out the gay community? You can certainly argue that but the result is what matters, no? Eyes on the prize.
Biden shifted on immigration policy when he determined he needed to in order to win. There’s no universe in which a Biden having just ‘sold out’ immigrants wouldn’t have been immeasurably better than Trump. It would have bought time to bring the electorate to the more welcoming position. Democrats will probably need to yield on trans athletes the same way, and hope to get that policy back after we win. But you only get to do that after we win. You don’t get to set policy when you lose.
There is no honor in going down with the ship. If the ship is sinking and you can’t stop it, just get on another ship. You don’t owe Biden anything. He’s had an astoundingly successful and privileged career – he’s fine, he’s gonna sleep fine at night, get into heaven, all that. Cut him (or anyone else – Obama, AOC – the lot of them) loose when they are no longer able to move the cause forward. Do not get attached, they are not your personality.
Paul in KY
@Baud: When I left this thread I couldn’t get back here! So sorry I couldn’t respond.
Paul in KY
@Ramona: That’s a good point. Hadn’t thought of that.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Misogyny among the electorate (people generally inclined to vote Dem) really hurt her (and Hillary), IMO.
Paul in KY
@Martin: The buck stops here.
Paul in KY
@Martin: I think he really really really wanted to whup TFG’s ass one more time and was blinded by that desire.
Paul in KY
@Martin: Good point there. You gotta do what you gotta do to win.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: dead thread, but just have to say you’ve summed up my feelings and fears better than I could have.