If you like the past 8 years, vote @HillaryClinton. pic.twitter.com/cQEtIgPsEz
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) November 1, 2016
— Zeddonymous (@ZeddRebel) November 1, 2016
Wisconsin favorability ratings:
President Obama: 52.1
Governor Walker: 22.7 https://t.co/ZrWA4au2zu— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) November 1, 2016
Scott Walker has never pretended to be a smart person, but his political instincts are unimpeachable. Per the Washington Post:
WAUKESHA, Wis. — Donald Trump got the big October surprise. The momentum seems to be going his way. Hillary Clinton is again on the defensive, again over her emails. But in this enclave of white, upper-middle-class Republicans, the party’s presidential nominee still faces a barrier that will be difficult to clear.
“It’s a moral choice,” Dick Radder, a 68-year-old Republican, said as he cupped a black coffee outside a Starbucks here Tuesday. “I can’t get there. I can’t get to Trump. I’m a husband and a father. And I can’t convince myself to vote for a person who is weakening the fiber of the country.”
Most of the well-kept lawns here are dotted with signs for Sen. Ron Johnson (R) and for other down-ballot candidates, but support for Trump is less evident.
“You’re in a town that’s about going to college and raising a family. People are polished and hard-working. He’s not one of us,” said Andy Schwichtenberg, a 28-year-old stockbroker.
“I did try,” Schwichtenberg added with a sigh. “I went to a rally.” But he was not swayed and he was turned off by the crowd, which he noted was packed with men and women “who came there on Harleys.”…
hellslittlestangel
So I guess the Harley is now another symbol of white supremacist ignorance? Too bad, they’re nice bikes.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
No classism there . . .
Mnemosyne
Repeating from the thread below for the (soon to be) East Coast morning crowd: has anyone used a hotel site called TravelPony? They’re kind of like Hotwire or Priceline, but apparently can do even better on hotels. I just need one night in San Francisco, but I’m a middle-aged woman traveling on my own, so I want a nice comfy four-star hotel at a good price, not a sketchy hostel or AirBnB.
md S Oregon
Up late on the West Coast. My son is headed out to North Dakota today, to stand in solidarity with the Sioux Tribe to stop DAPL. He is among 350+ clergymen and women. They will be in training today and protesting tomorrow. And I couldn’t be more proud. Since this is not a church sanctioned event, when he expressed an interest, a bunch of family and friends offered to chip in to fund the trip. If you happen to see news clips, he will be the furry-faced curly-haired guy with a pony tail in a white alb. He is an ELCA pastor, so it is OK to say fuck and damn when you need to, and also drink beer or your spirit of choice….wouldn’t be a good German/Swede or Norwegian if you didn’t!
Mnemosyne
@md S Oregon:
Good for him! That seems to be a bit of a slow-building story, but it’s definitely gaining momentum. I hope he’s able to (peacefully) help turn the tide.
md S Oregon
@Mnemosyne: Yes it is. Saw a short clip of an interview with POTUS tonight, as someone finally asked him if he was paying attention. The answer was yes, and they will be keeping track of what his going on for the next couple of weeks. Bottom line, they were here before we were. All they want to do is keep water safe for them and the people around them that now own the land and drink the water.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I am not familiar with that website, but I did suggest that you could stay at the Sir Francis Drake. It’s right on Union Square. The cable cars run up and down Powell, and there is a BART station on Powell across from the turn-table.
Not too far away is John’s Grill, and the food is excellent. Dashiell Hammett set part of the Maltese Falcon there. Our girls fell asleep in their pasta when we ate there, but we had walked their little feet off that day. I can’t find the hotel we loved so much; I think it was on Powell, and I think it may have been bought out by the Mariott and turned into something very different. I can’t spot it on Google, and the name I remember, Union Hotel, is in a different neighborhood farther away from Union Square and I know we didn’t stay there.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
Review of Travel Pony.
It is 3 years old, but compares it to other sites.
A different review from 2015
opiejeanne
@md S Oregon: It’s more than a fair request. I hope they are successful.
Obama stepped in a few weeks ago, when the courts ruled against the tribes. I don’t remember the details, but it was because of the question he got from a student when he was in Asia… I think he was in Korea when he was asked about the issue.
Lawrence O’Donnell has been yelling about this for quite a while now, before anyone else in the media of his stature was saying anything in public.
Jewish Steel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Ugh! Surely not Harleys!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Anne Laurie:
Formatting on this post is very different from the previous ones. The font for comments has changed; it’s a serif font now and the text is somewhat bigger. Also, the original post is somewhat larger than usual. Wondering if there’s an errant or unclosed tag somewhere.
I’m on the mobile version of the site, using Chrome on Android.
ETA: And now everything has been fixed. Never mind.
gene108
Shouldn’t people in Wisconsin be proud of Harley-Davidson? It is an iconic brand, based out of their state.
Talk about a lack of civic pride.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Replied below — Hotels.com was showing a good rate for the Sir Francis Drake. I may be warming up to the gambling aspect of a Hotwire or TravelPony pick.
@gene108:
Yep, those are the same reviews I saw. It looks like they had a bad stretch in 2014 where they were having problems with their payment system, but they seem to have fixed it. I was hoping to find someone who’d actually used them since there always seems to be at least one person here who has done, seen, or knows exactly what someone else needs.
Leto
Scott Walker has never pretended to be a smart person
He’s doing a pretty horrible job of being a person, period.
opiejeanne
Scott Walker’s tweet at the top of this thread had everyone laughing, it looks so much like an endorsement.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I wandered away from that thread when the concern troll was annoying people.
md S Oregon
@opiejeanne: I think they are taking it to a higher court. Can’t recall the official name…Human Rights?? Anyway, have to sign off for the night. This 71-year old lady has to work tomorrow. I am participating in drug trials that provides me with free inhalers. I stupidly smoked too long and my inhalers cost me $600/month (when I fall into the donut hole) and pay me to inhale them and fill out an online diary. Living large in a 37′ 5th wheeler with 4 slide-outs (550 sq ft) on property I helped my daughter buy in 2005. Get to see my grand kid every day. I find it an exciting challenge to live on less than $1600/mo, and still build up my savings. G’night people!
hellslittlestangel
@gene108: By that reasoning, they should be proud of Joe McCarthy and Ed Gein.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I’ve only used Priceline, after doing comparisons with sites like Travelocity and Kayak and several others. Priceline has always beaten the others for the things I want, but I still check. I’m so silly in that I agonize over airfares of $50 difference on a trip to Europe, and I know it’s silly but I have trouble letting go of that many nickels that could go for a nice meal somewhere.
gene108
From the OP. There were two (maybe three) Republicans quoted in article, who brought up the courts.
Republicans are really locked into maintaining control of the federal courts and the Supreme Court, in a way I just do not see from Democrats.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack (phone): FYWP updates between 3-4am now, right? Alain changed the timing for us, since this is the slowest time of day for commenting.
If it makes you feel any better, I frequently run into WP problems trying to read the site, much less add new posts, during the Dead Zone…
gene108
@hellslittlestangel:
Huh?
Harley-Davidson is a company. They make product readily identifiable to many people; even those who are not motorcycle enthusiasts.
Ed Gein was a murderer.
Joe McCarthy became disgraced.
I fail to see the similarities.
opiejeanne
@gene108: You don’t see it in Democrats? It’s what we keep telling disaffected/undecided voters, that it’s about the courts.
Bruce K
@opiejeanne: That Walker tweet should be framed and pictured in articles on false-consensus bias. (I was going to say “epistemic closure”, but a quick wiki walk showed me that might not be quite the right term…)
Citizen Alan
@opiejeanne:
I have told people that if Hillary Clinton puts two or three liberal justices on the court, I honestly don’t care if she spends the next four years lounging around the pool at Camp David working on her tan.
Gravenstone
@hellslittlestangel: They’re also a local institution, being based in Milwaukee and all. I’d love to see those class divisions deepen and fester here.
sherparick
@md S Oregon: You probably need to start chipping in on the bail money because he is entering true tribal war. I know folks from the Dakotas, and the antagonism to the American Indians, particularly the Lakota people, was palpable. The Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee could have happen yesterday and they see this very much within the 19th century of ideology of “progress of civilization” versus “savages.” And the outsiders coming in are especially resented, hence them going ballistic the press coverage (which ironically draws more press coverage – until Amy Goodman was indicted and Deia Schlossberg was arrested. Now they got the world covering these protests. Great job prosecutors.
Matt McIrvin
@sherparick: My dad tells stories about growing up in Nebraska and feeling morally superior about segregation in the South while finding it perfectly natural that American Indians were treated exactly the same way in his town, down to the separate restrooms.
Matt McIrvin
@Bruce K: I think that the Trumpists who were crowing a while back about the need to repeal woman suffrage don’t even understand that that isn’t a popular position.
Chris
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Yet another reason why I loathe the NeverTrumpists just about as much as the Trump Republicans. It’s pretty blatant that their objection to the Trumpists has at least as much to do with a patrician’s horror at his party being taken over by a rabble of “Not Our Kind, Dear” voters as it does with any actual concern with the harm he might do.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
As a dual citizen, I noticed this phenomenon a long time ago.
One of my French elders spent a few years in the U.S. in the 1950s, and came away understandably repelled by the open and legally enforced racism, the Red Scare era hysteria, and the generally xenophobic atmosphere. … the same elder who also thought Marshall Petain was a nice guy who just did what he had to do.
Compare and contrast my American wingnut uncle, who can’t shut the fuck up about how despicable the antisemitism is in France these days, but is also convinced that BLM is a cop-killer organization making a mountain out of a mole hill and that “we need a national conversation about whether Islam is compatible with our democracy.”
I actually do think there’s value in having outsiders weigh in on your culture because they catch onto its defects more quickly than the people who’ve been socialized to take them as normal. Unfortunately, the general trend that leads to is often that the people who are the most smug and scolding about other cultures’ problems are invariably the same ones who think you’re a commie rat if you point to any problems in theirs.
Barbara
@Chris: My Harley riding brother in law isn’t voting for Trump either. Not sure why Harleys would be singled out here as an example of what is wrong with Trump. For one thing, they are made mostly in Wisconsin, so I would imagine they are even more popular there than they are in other places.
laura
@Mnemosyne: check out the Joye de Vivre Sf website! Oodles of lovely boutique hotels!
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Meh. Too many quality control issues. I ride a V-Star 1300. My husband used to ride a Harley, but he got sick of spending all day working on it while I was out riding. He rides a Kawasaki now.
(Speaking of classism, though, I’m sure there are people on our side of the aisle who would take issue with his beer drinking, Ford F150-driving, sports jersey wearing lifestyle. Fortunately he doesn’t vote based on tribal identity or social acceptance, but on who’s actually better for the country. He wouldn’t vote Republican even if you threatened to take away his truck, his bike and his beer.)
Librarian
@hellslittlestangel: Yes, they apparently have. Remember Joni Ernst and her gathering? Wingnuts love Harleys because they love to portray themselves as “rebels” fighting valiantly against the evil liberals who control everything.
O. Felix Culpa
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Are you kidding me? Harleys are expensive and mostly owned by middled-aged dentists and lawyers who dress up as bikers on weekends. (I did a study on Harley-Davidson a few years ago.)
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@O. Felix Culpa: You’re right, but plenty of people don’t know that, and still buy into the whole filthy criminal biker gang stereotype.
Tripod
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
They were big with Reagan era “Made in the USA” sunshine patriots, though in recent years they’ve off-shored supply chain and spun up assembly plants overseas.
Tripod
Walker and his Trumpvolk constituency are fucking idiots – he cancelled the Madison rail service, even though the trains were being assembled in Milwaukee. The state took a mult-million dollar hit on the contract with manufacturer Talgo, while the ARRA funds went off to Illinois. The brand new train sets have been sitting in limbo for years now.
Spare me the economic insecurity line of bullshit. When Obama offered them state funding for useful infrastructure, and a sustained rail manufacturing presence, the Trumpvolk of Wisconsin freaked the fuck out.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@O. Felix Culpa: This. We live just a few miles from a favorite gathering place for Harley riders, and in good weather, they drive by our country place in mobs on weekends. They’re clearly white collar professionals getting their Anarchy on.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Tripod: Back in the late 80s/early 90s I made fun of guys who thought riding their used, beat up, barely running Harleys made them badasses. “Oh, a Harley Davidson — like the cafe, right?” “Did you see the one Malcolm Forbes gave Liz Taylor for her birthday?”
The older bikers liked me. The younger ones, not so much.
Death Panel Truck
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
I thought about buying a Harley, but ended up with a Suzuki Boulevard cruiser. One day I was at a rest stop outside Boardman, Oregon. I was waiting for my wife when an older gentleman came up to me and said, “That’s the most beautiful bike I’ve ever seen!” I said, “Thanks!” He proceeded to tell me about the bikes he’d owned going back to his first one, a 1937 Harley. His next bike was an Indian, “which I hated.” Over the years he’d owned several Harleys until the 1970s, when he bought his first Honda Gold Wing. He went through two in 30 years before health issues forced him to stop riding. I told him I’d thought about getting a Harley.
He said to me, “Son, don’t you ever get a Harley. When you buy a Harley-Davidson, you’re only buying a name. Stick to the Japanese bikes. They’re better designed, better engineered, better all around.” I promised him I wouldn’t get a Harley, although after owning a Japanese bike, I’d never get one anyway. I haven’t had to make a major repair to my bike in six years of ownership.