Open Threads

Call me crazy, but I think that with the latest from Trump campaign, Trump has gone too far.

I find myself wondering if Trump and company aren’t trying to drum up a Civil War, precisely because they know he’s losing.  To me, it feels like he is trying to set the country on fire.

It’s a tactic.  If you feel like you are turned upside down by seeing the awful things they are saying, take a step back and realize that’s exactly what they want.   It’s a HUGE DISTRACTiON.  They want you to be upset and outraged.

Michelle Obama is begging us to stay active and focusing on her DO SOMETHING message – and Trump wants us to be shocked and outraged and paralyzed and disheartened.

Who are you going to listen to?  Choose carefully – we only have 8 days before election day.  Do not fall for their trap.

This is what @realDonaldTrump and his people believe about Latinos and Puertoricans…and Haitians and Mexicans and actually about anyone that is not like them…..@KamalaHarris @TeamKamala will support Latinos and will work hard to be a President for all
Americans! @Vegalteno… https://t.co/kEWRAqJO05

— Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 (@chefjoseandres) October 27, 2024

Look for the Helpers and the LeadersPost + Comments (144)

Twenty years ago — hell, 10 years ago — I would have given you a far different view of how a person who is seriously interested in politics should follow it.  That view would have included judicious reading of mainstream media outlets, looking at poll average sites, and following specific journalists on their blogs (20 years ago) or Twitter (10 years ago).

That’s all over now, baby blue.

The Washington Post and LA Times’ decisions to chicken out instead of endorsing the obvious choice for preserving democracy (and, really, preserving themselves) is just another instance of the rot of journalistic institutions coming out into the open, like the sawdust from the rot of a termite-infested timber.  Even if they weren’t as rotten and awful as they are, they’re mostly irrelevant to today’s politics.  The DC press might drive some of the DC conversation, but even though they are now, and have long been, wired for Republicans, the Republicans don’t listen to them.  These rotten institutions (especially Wordle central) have done nothing for Democrats but drive a vile, inhumane, both-sides quasi-centrism, one which was always uncomfortable with full-throated support of reproductive freedom, constantly chipped away at sensible social welfare measures (including a decent public healthcare system), and treated Democrats who aren’t really that far left as hopeless, out-of-touch radicals.  The Democratic party has been deeply damaged by our lingering view of these rotten institutions as arbiters that deserve some degree of respect and attention.  The Biden administration and Harris campaign are treating  the DC press with the lack of respect they richly deserve.

As for polls and poll averages, I think we’ve all seen that they are in the midst of constant recalibration that may or may not leave us with a better sense of where the election stands, but the rise of telemarketing so annoying that few people will pick up a strange number, combined with Republican resistance to answering pollster’s calls, means that the last dozen years of polling is a real work in progress.  Plus, we’re such a closely divided country that polling is constantly within the margin of error.

Finally, blogs and social media.  Twitter is a walking corpse, which may be replaced by Bluesky, though the collapse of journalism as a business means that  journalists on Twitter are like a scared school of fish that’s being picked off one-by-one by a nearby shark.  They’ll probably be there for a lot longer than makes sense.  Blogs have devolved into substacks, and though I can’t blame any journalist for trying to make a buck, I don’t have hundreds of bucks to spend on subscriptions, and I’m more motivated than most to read some journalists’ substacks.  Some kind of micro-payment model, where I can pay to read a story or two from a newspaper, substack or other online entity, has been needed for 20 years, but because the money that could be made there keeps it from happening.

I don’t know what’s next, but I do know what has been.

Following Politics Will Never Be The Same AgainPost + Comments (99)