Harry Reid isn’t ready to make nice with the shit-gibbon. An excerpt from a statement Senator Reid released today:
“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them. Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces.
“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.
“If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”
Of course, Reid knows the shit-gibbon doesn’t intend to roll back the tide that carried him to victory. And I’m sure he realizes the useless-as-teats-on-a-boar news media won’t stop working overtime to normalize Trump.
It’s been fun the last few days, arguing about what went wrong during this election. And if we’d experienced a normal election, it might be a perfectly good use of our time to consider the merits of guys like brave little Zach herding the Clintonistas onto ice floes.
But friends, I’m haunted by a feeling that we may be putting the institutional cart before the authoritarian horse here. Who’s to say there’s going to be a real election in 2018 and beyond rather than the kind of dog-and-pony show conducted to periodically “legitimize” the authoritarian kleptocracy of Vladimir Putin?
Does that sound hysterical to you? Well, consider that the Republican director of the FBI brazenly sandbagged one party’s candidate just 11 days before a national election. Over nothing.
Consider that the Russians hacked one party and colluded with an albino rat* hiding from rape charges in Ecuador’s basement to publish emails in serial fashion to maximize damage to one party.
And consider that no one is even talking about that anymore, even as the candidate who openly encouraged these actions and the party that benefited directly from them prepares to seize all three branches of the government.
Did we lose an election, or have we experienced an authoritarian putsch? Because the appropriate responses would vary in those scenarios, wouldn’t they?
I’m still processing what happened, to be honest. But so far, what Alain is doing as described in an earlier post here — reaching out to people who are afraid — feels like a better response right now than arguing about who is going to take over the DNC shit-show. It feels more constructive than talking about how to repackage the party’s message to appeal to people who voted to elevate an utter scumbag to the presidency.
Anyhoo, that’s where I’m going to focus for now. If you have any ideas to share on that score, I’d love to hear it.
* Thanks, Sam Bee
Trentrunner
Just pointing out that Harry Reid is leaving office in Jan 2017. No one in national office is taking such a rhetorically strong stance.
jo6pac
Did demodog win HR seat?
socraticsilence
Harry Reid deals with successful Casino Owners, not shitty wannabes
Chris
Thank you to Harry Reid for this. The narrative of “this is a rejection of Washington elites by the masses offended by arrogant liberalism” has gone fucking viral. Good on this Democratic leader for not bowing to it, not helping to normalize Trump, and putting the responsibility for this squarely where it belongs.
Mathguy
It’s incredible that we now have a president that (A) lost the popular vote by 2 freaking million, (B) will start with record low approval ratings which will only go lower, (C) have some the most vulgar (and well-deserved) nicknames I’ve seen, (D) is involved in a fraud trial for a scam, and (E) probably colluding with a foreign power. I can’t wrap my brain around all that insanity.
geg6
I love Harry Reid with all my heart. I love him madly. He’s been the only ray of hope in this dark, dark, dark time. But let’s talk about how much Bill and Hillary Clinton suck, mkay?
More productively, we must fight with everything we have. We may fail, but we have to give it all we have. I am scared as hell but this cannot stand.
Davis X. Machina
The same shambolic, decentralized, disseminated nature of our voting system that makes it hard to work in the cause of good makes it hard to work in the cause of evil.
The first thing LePage bulled through the Maine state legislature when he began his first term was a a law repealing our same-day, walk-up voter registration.
It was immediately re-instated by a citizens’ veto referendum, one that gained the requisite number of signatures in record time.
There’ll be a hundred little tugs-of-war going on like this. In Florida, maybe not. But it’s a big country.
Woodrowfan
I have exactly the same fear. That we’ve seen out last free real election. But I’m a pessimist politically and in a very bad mood still from Tuesday.
Timurid
Balls right there.
Speaking of balls, I wonder if anyone in the CIA and/or NSA has the nuts to seed President-elect Trump’s intel briefings with markers that might later show up in Russian correspondence. You flag that, you leak that, and the Donald’s got big problems…
Does Mr. Silverman have any thoughts on that?
laura
Kris Kobach is going to ramp up voter supression starting yesterday. The assault on voting rights will be so swift and merciless that the midterms will be a lock by spring of 2017.
And the Roberts Court will likely finish off the VRA *and a book -which destroys my career) in the first session with a new 9th justice.
Matt McIrvin
@Davis X. Machina: I noticed that Maine just passed ranked-choice voting, which seems to me to be the Don’t Elect Another Paul LePage Act. I don’t know if it applies to presidential elections–that would be interesting if it did.
Nevertheless, it may not matter how fair the voting systems are if Trumpists can bully opposition candidates out of the running, and control the media narratives, and suppress the vote through enough sympathetic state governments.
Van Buren
Serious question: How many people think that the next 4 years will pass without US troops in combat?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the enemy is everywhere, normalizing racism as fast as it can
Weismann is the deputy political editor of the New York Times. I remember him from the live chats they used to do at the Washington Post– where I first encountered a regular take-no-bullshit poster from Rochester who turned out to be DougJ– and he’s an abrasive, combative personality, at least on the internets.
Miss Bianca
Damn, and I thought I felt bad enough already.
Baud
@Chris:
Privatizing Medicare will teach the Establishment a thing or two.
Bailey
Both. We had a shitty candidate that ignored certain segments of her base and took their votes for granted while at the same time had authoritarian forces, both foreign and domestic, weighing in on this election. Both are frightening, both are tragic. I have some ideas about how to get better candidates, no idea how to deal with foreign interference.
matryoshka
It does me so much good to hear Reid and our Betty say these things. This is why I have been uninterested in autopsying the election.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Van Buren: Tweety assures me Trump is against dumb wars so I’m sure the fact that his closest advisors are MEK lobbyist Newt Gingrich and Rudi “there’s no such thing as a war crime” Giuliani means nothing.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Shorter Wiesman: Dems will keep losing unless they fight for whites exclusively.
Fuck him.
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is there a typo in there?
It’s usually “MEK lobbyist Howard Dean”.
kindness
Betty you are funny. We should borrow a regular column Wonkette has. Every weekend they have a Deleted Comments of the Week column where they post the person and their horrible posts and then mock them. Usually these people are already 86’d by this point so the mockery is payback free. I know we don’t 86 people as much as other sites, but it is a very fun piece for the weekends.
Aimai
@Bailey: fuck yoy.
Davis X. Machina
@Bailey:
This, x 63,000,000
D58826
i’M still trying to get my head around why
1. millions of women, who probably would not want Trump within a mile of their teenage daughters, still voted for the p**y grabber
2. millions of Latinos, who may well see relatives deported, still voted for Trump
3. 59 million people voted for Trump, in part because of the terrible e-mails, w/o any idea if Putin has Trump by the financial balls.,
Cermet
Well, Reid leaves at a good time; more dems in Mich come out and remind everyone they were calling for a Hillary lost there and she only paid attention the week before the election. Too bad, not that that would have saved her (she had zero room for any blue state losses) but proves she was both ignoring reality and wasn’t the pro we all thought. Live and learn.
Next, we need to primary any dem that cooperates with the thugs – believe it or not, the small handed dick head may be the only hope to save both ACA and Medicare. Those will be granny starving snake eyed ryan’s targets and the dems had better decide that they will NEVER cooperate even for trade-offs and fuck the budget if they try to go that route. This is war just as the thugs played.
For the delicate ones out there -again, I supported Hillary and donated; not anti-woman (the the opposite) but she totally fuck up; her election strategy, her management group, her responsibility for the loss; she is to blame. It was her job to keep all blue states (her fire wall) intact and not ignore all the red flags. Now we are in deep unless the small handed dick head realizes he shouldn’t screw his base. We will see.
trollhattan
@Van Buren:
My hands are in my pockets to indicate my vote (making it tough to type).
For a gustotory draft-dodger Trump now fetishes the military as though he were a neocon. And he seems perplexed that a Republican has never dropped a nuke. He’s very nuke-curious.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Bailey: Motherfucker if the “base” can’t be arsed on their own to stop a real right wing fascist what does that say irrespective of the candidate.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What rust belt populist?
Fuck outta here
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@rikyrah: We must always, always, always, take white Republicans feelings into consideration on ALL matters.
trollhattan
@D58826:
Stunned that it happened but I’m also not confused as to why: the Republican anti-Hillary jihad was ultimately successful, making it their strategy going forward against other key enemies. They won the long game, selling the remnants of their souls happily.
kindness
@Bailey: I think you need to define ‘her base’. Anyone who listened to Fox News to get their opinions was not our base. Anyone who gave one iota of credence to any of the falsehoods pouring out of Trumps mouth isn’t our base.
Hillary had certain baggage that the press, republicans & the FBI did everything they could to exacerbate, but I for one really like Hillary and she deserves more respect than you give her.
Bailey
@Aimai:
I’m sorry that this sort of animosity is your riposte.
If you really think that the Clinton campaign did good work in the rust belt states, please show me how. Because it sure looks like they got smug and complacent and had no message to voters. If you don’t believe me, perhaps the elected Dems in Michigan State may convince you otherwise:
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/11/michigan-democrat-slams-hillary-clintons-terrible-campaign-strategy-how-would-any-sane-person-not-predict-how-this-one-would-go/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Gravenstone
Fair or not, I’ve had the sense that this was more of a slow motion putsch as well. Starting with the Republican long game of targeted voter disenfranchisement, and building layer by layer with the serial Congressional obstruction and abuse of power (Benghazi to the nth power, for example). The media inflated Wikileaks impact along with Comey tossing has ample ass on the scales was just the rotten cherry atop the whole sundae. So, we deal with the hand we have and work to unwind all the various layers to get our country back.
gene108
@geg6:
I was thinking about gun control and the fact it’s gone. Guns, guns, guns will be everywhere now.
But if gun control were a serious issue for liberals, and not some abstraction, they would be proudly behind Bill Clinton. He got passed the last two major gun control laws in our history, which may have hurt him politically.
The Assault Weapons Ban is gone, but background checks via the Brady Bill are still around in some manner.
Another Holocene Human
@Aimai: Thanks for elevating the discussion, Aimai.
Bailey
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
It says that voters of every variety need to be reached. That is all. Our candidate did not do that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
just got two posts et. Are we having a problem with links? In any case, it looks like Sweet Paulie Blue Eyes has no idea how to repeal ObamaCare. Posted unlinked just to see what happens
Daulnay
Here’s a suggestion. Declare war, and take the gloves off. Not guns, but butter.
Organize a blue-state/blue city boycott of the financial enablers of the Republican and Trump shitshows. Drive them into bankruptcy if possible, and make them at least a lot poorer and economically viable only in rural red-state areas. Details next.
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
1. Misogynist forced birthers and racists.
2. Misogynist forced birthers.
3. Racists.
I am not willing to throw in the towel on 2018 yet. It’s three days after the election, FFS!
Cain
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I will say that I object to Ellison on the grounds that he will only put half time into the DNC. Why does the establishment believe that the DNC chair is only a half time position? I mentioned this again in another thread but it was kind of winding down, so I’m going to repeat it here again. We need a full time watcher, and we need to have our own set of allies and organizations that watch what the Republican state legislatures do like a hawk.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Davis X. Machina: Like Micahel Steele and Lanny Davis, they come together to form a beautiful shade interior designers call “Broder Purple”. All of Sally Quinn’s entertaining linens are in this shade.
Lit3Bolt
Consider that his own legacy has been destroyed by his own appointee. I will always love President Obama, but good god that man was a child when it came to DC politics.
@Davis X. Machina:
We had a shitty candidate who deployed a shitty strategy who was facing electoral headwinds. They had a shitty candidate who had a lot of help deploy decent strategy.
But still, I’m glad that globlization and neoliberalism are dead for all time because Hillary Clinton was finally defeated.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Don’t strain yourself. You could flog that Pew thing a few more times.
Another Holocene Human
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Category error. We don’t win national elections with “the base”. We win with “the base” + infrequent voters. Infrequent voters are the bottom 40% of the income scale. They need to (usually) sacrifice to vote. We have to find them, in time, to get them registered in the correct precinct and remind them to vote on election day or early AND they have to be arsed to vote.
So no, it’s not rustbelt males making $50K plus who hate Muslims and Mexicans but it is POOR WORKING CLASS AND POOR NON WORKING who do need to have a “hook”. Obama the community organizer realized this and they came out to vote for him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tragedy he wasn’t as smart as you.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Yes, please pretend that voter suppression didn’t happen. Ignoring reality will totally fix the problem.
SatanicPanic
@D58826: Not all Latinos have relatives who will be deported. I’m third generation, there’s no one even in my very large extended family who wasn’t born here.
GregB
I really do think this is not an exagerration.
As I said before, the foundations of our democracy are now rooted in sand.
The oppostion party to the one party state is in shambles.
A press that is no longer an arbiter of reasoned discussion but a cog in the muliti national entertainment industrial complex. Not to mention the non Fox/Drudge/Breitbart media is loathed, yet they are galloping forward to be a seat at the sycophantic table of Trump.
Most of the world powers that could offer a challenge are authortariam states. Perhaps it will be up to Germany to try and save the world from fascism this time?
There isn’t a single person within the Republican Party that would challenge the direction of where we are headed.
trollhattan
@Bailey:
Listen up, asshole, voter suppression cost the Dems vastly more votes than the winning margins in the key rust belt states and also preserved the Senate. You are simply unequipped to comprehend the world as it exists. Now go away.
CaseyL
I have no idea how to help people in other states, short of contributing what I can to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, etc. Maybe the Sanctuary City movement can re-start, now that DREAM is gone and the deportations will resume.
At the moment, I have no particular interest in national elections, either. Look, we can talk all day about how the MSM normalized Trump, how the FBI sandbagged Clinton, how certain states were able to suppress voters…
But this election should never have been close enough to steal. Trump is as blatantly unfit and unqualified a candidate as the GOP has ever horked up. He should never have polled above 27%. But he won. He won because enough voters looked at him and liked what they saw. Period.
Trump is going to be President because he truly represents America. Period.
Not all of America. A lot of America is terrific, a lot of Americans are terrific. But not enough of it. Majority America is Trump’s America: ignorant, stupid, and meaner than a junkyard dog to anyone they deem “Other.” (However much they might be nice to their friends and families.)
They can’t be reached, they can’t be reasoned with, they ignore facts that don’t fit their beliefs even when those facts smack them in the face. I don’t know how to deal with that.
Bailey
@kindness:
When people are thirsty, they will drink anything. Better to at least acknowledge they’re thirsty, right?
8 years after Obama saved Michigan, Clinton couldn’t be bothered to articulate what was next for them or to offer any sort of a blueprint.
I feel for Hillary, I do. I do respect her. She is really smart and works hard. She often doesn’t work smart, though. And I agree she had a lot of opponents that were unique to her and this campaign that worked against her. It wasn’t fair, but her team did not do well in countering them.
Overall I wish I felt at any point during this campaign that she was running for America and not for herself and breaking glass ceilings but that didn’t come across to me and, apparently, to millions of voters that stayed home.
JMG
The leftist purity fetish of the white “working class” (which actually means “didn’t go to college”) used by trolls here would be more convincing if Clinton had not, you know, won the most votes of all people. It is vital to learn why people who voted for Obama chose Trump. But what if the answer just turns out to be sexism, or even more, that vague desire for “change” so many people have every election? What was Clinton supposed to do about those things?
geg6
I’m out again. Fuck this shit.
Kryptik
@SatanicPanic:
You assume actual citizenship status will save you from threat of deportation.
I was born here. My parents are long naturalized. We’re not even fucking hispanic, we’re Filipino. That’s not any comfort when the knives come out looking for all the ‘illegals’, because a hispanic last name and non-white skin is gonna be enough for some of these fuckers.
EDIT: I will add, this is why it galled me when polling leading up to the election showed Filipinos as the biggest Asian group for Trump by percentage, along with several family friends who I know for sure were voting straight GOP. They’re not going to be spared either, and they live in straight bum-fuck West Virginia still where I was born.
debbie
Also Elizabeth Warren:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m usually a “post whatever you want kind of guy”, but I have a hunch Bailey and Daulnay will go away if they’re not fed.
Okay, back to my thread-libertarianism
gogol's wife
@CaseyL:
This is how I’m feeling right now.
drylake
There has been serious speculation that John Bolton will be the next SoS, in which case the question about whether US troops will be engaged in foreign wars in the four years to come is more than answered. But Trump wanting to get along with Putin with Bolton in his cabinet? Something will have to give, and I do suspect the Shit-gibbon’s resolve and/or attention span. Perhaps Putin putting his money on Trump will end up have been suckered like every other investor who has ever bet on DT
debbie
Please put all the bickering aside and instead focus on what needs to be focused on today: That people like Omarosa will be in positions of power.
WereBear
Preach it, Betty! We was railroaded and robbed. They CHEATED. That’s how they won.
And Trump voters were only what, 27% of the registered voters. (That number is eerie, that is.) So it is far from hopeless. Only a quarter of our adult population are sick assholes, and I am trying to be cheerful about that.
Short term is going to be really awful, though, and the suspense is almost as bad as whatever hairball our new pResident horks up for his amusement.
In the meantime, I am hearing heartening talk of Resistance. We will keep our principles, and just not consume Mass Media.
They are dead to me.
Joe Falco
I’m not sure where to begin on fighting back against this hateful tide (Apologies to ‘Bama fans who voted for Hillary, but the blowup on my Facebook after the election resembled that of a deafening roar of “Roll Tide!” except for Trump). It’s not like that there aren’t Democrats running for local and state offices in Georgia, except perhaps not enough of us to run for every elected office here. I’m not sure it’s even a matter of better tactics, better candidates and better funding, but all three wouldn’t hurt. What I’ve seen of the exit polls tells me Hillary would have won it if it was just us lazy, good-for-nothing, ungrateful millennials voting (too bad far fewer of us didn’t or couldn’t vote than in the last election). I voted for Bernie in the primary, but I took his primary defeat as best as I could and supported my candidate. My red-as-clay district didn’t change a single bit purple with my vote, but it did help to say Trump is not my president.
I got friends back in Atlanta and Athens that are distraught about the whole thing. I’m going to try and help them while doing what I can for my local and state party.
gene108
@laura:
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is just a law. It usually comes up for renewal every 20-25 years. I think the last time it was renewed was 2006.
But I don’t know, if there’s any provision that prevents Congress from tinkering with the law in the meantime. And if there was, couldn’t Congress just change the rules governing the law, as they have that kind of power?
Anyway, where I’m going with this is you do not need the VRA to be killed off by the Roberts court. The Republicans in Congress and President Trump can do it all by their own damn selves.
What I look for are literacy tests to make a come back. These are banned solely by the VRA and not a Constitutional Amendment, like poll taxes are.
Start passing laws that require new voters to pass a literacy test. It doesn’t have to be anything more complicated than a high school civics exam. The idea is to create another barrier to being able to vote. And as the youths and newly naturalized immigrants lean Democratic, you discourage their participation, further driving down participation and increasing the power of your right-wing base.
As Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Moral Majority, explains in this video from a meeting of right-wingers in 1980.
Brachiator
I feel as though we are waiting for a shoe to drop, to see exactly which direction Trump and the Republicans will take. I still find it hard to believe that so many (primarily) white Americans seemed to have decided that we have had too much democracy. And it is dispiriting to watch those Republicans who took baby steps to move away from the Orange Demagogue now rush to see what advantage they can seek for themselves by bending a knee to him.
Meanwhile, in the tribute thread to Leonard Cohen, poster Omnes Omnibus posted a link to Leonard Cohen’s magnificent The Partisan. I take solace in that song, even as I ask, has it really come to this?
Emma
@Bailey: go to hell. you keep on trying to convince us, against the evidence of our eyes, that this was Hillary’s fault. You’re more interested in thrashing her than in making common cause with us. You’re as much the enemy as the Trumpists.
trollhattan
@gene108:
From California I’m quite concerned about the NRA getting their dream of states being forced to honor concealed carry permits from other states. We just passed background checks for ammo.
Another Holocene Human
@Daulnay:
I’m down with this. Smartphone app. Take it to the store. I want these motherfuckers to feel the pinch.
D. Mason
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: It says nothing irrespective of the candidate. It was her only job to convince them and she chose not to bother.
mai naem mobile
I went on Twitter and saw the Reid statement. And then the nasty replies. I stopped quickly. I did however notice one from Michelle Malkin who somehow thinks that her new storm front masters are going to want to even grab a Filipinas p$#&! forget about being friends with her. Sorry to be crude but,jeezus, I can’t deal with this crap totally rationally. I wish my dad had picked Canada to move to and not the U.S.
Mnemosyne
@Lit3Bolt:
Yes, because fascism will be so much better for everyone!
Major Major Major Major
@Van Buren: Zero.
SatanicPanic
@Kryptik: I’m not assuming anything, I’m just pointing out that a lot of us have no connection to people who were in imminent danger of deportation at the time they were going to the polling booth. I don’t mean it to be an excuse for anything.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Well, the campaign that I gave money to and millions of Americans gave money to and celebrities of all stripes gave millions to and fucking Wall Street gave millions to apparently didn’t see this as a problem worth fixing despite ample lead time. There was precious little in voter outreach and apparently nothing in the voter outreach + let’s help get you an ID solutions.
So again, it seems we had a pretty shitty candidate with no sense of strategy or how to beat the forces against her by any other means than deploying some feel good videos with a Katy Perry track.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Emma: It was just as much the drafters of the Constitution as Hillary’s fault.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Voter suppression is a fraction of the story. It doesn’t explain the loss on its own. We need to make a reckoning here.
debbie
The best thing SNL can do for this country is to have Alec Baldwin on every single show for the next four years.
trollhattan
@Kryptik:
Is it possible that having once lived under a dictatorship (Marcos) some cohort is actually drawn to a dictator-type candidate? Duterte seems to indicate a residual fondness there today.
Local Observer
@Another Holocene Human: Mnemosyne is a two trick pony – the only possible explanations are misogyny and voter suppression. Lather rinse repeat……
trollhattan
@debbie:
God yes, make it so! NBC owes us for obvious reasons.
Jeffro
Betty, we barely lost an election – one where the party was running for a third straight presidential term, with a great person but not quite as great candidate at the top, and where we won the popular vote anyway. Trump’s appalling, his supporters are appalling, and the FBI, KKK, and KGB all played roles here. But it was still close.
Let’s start next week re-committed to our values and our party and work to undo this damage in 2017, 2018, and 2020. I’m not quite ready to head for the hills
Davis X. Machina
@trollhattan:
…would fill the University of Michigan football stadium, what, twice?
Blowout, I tells ya!
Bailey
@Emma:
The evidence of your eyes? I can’t imagine what evidence your eyes are seeing. We lost solid blue states. Not losses in North Carolina or Florida that can, frankly, go either way but the very electoral base of our electoral strategy. Lost.
But apparently there’s some evidence out there that shows how amazing a candidate Hillary Clinton was. Yes, yes, I know that California is going to continue to run up the popular vote count, but she fucking failed in states that were necessary. She failed in states that Black, Muslim, Kenyan, Socialist Barack Hussein Obama easily carried. There is no way around this.
gene108
@Lit3Bolt:
Globalization ain’t dead. It’s a motherfucking off-the-chain Party, and either we can participate and have a blast or sit at home and binge watch shit, while stuffing our face full of a two pints of ice cream.
The world will get along fine without us participating.
Davis X. Machina
@Local Observer: I like my theories to save the phenomenon, and be parsimonious. Hers are parsimonious, and save the phenomenon.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
I traveled to Nevada with Hillary’s campaign to register voters. Hillary won Nevada, plus a Democrat won the Senate seat, plus turned their state legislature blue. And you did … ?
WaterGirl
Harry Reid just spoke for me. Thank you, Harry. More of that, please from some courageous leaders.
Another Holocene Human
@Jeffro: Agreed. Although my wife wants to make sure our passports are up to date anyway. Can’t hurt.
Seriously, though, fuck the Trumpers. We need to beat them. We need to beat them again and again.
JPL
Wait until AT&T and Comcast decide that some services should be in a slow lane. Netflix won’t survive and Amazon will be damaged.
Net Neutrality will be gone.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108:
I more or less like, and participate in, globalization and let me tell you, the two are not mutually exclusive!
gene108
@Another Holocene Human:
I thought Team Hillary was using Obama’s crew from 08 and 12 and so would have that voter outreach stuff together.
JordanRules
@Bailey: That’s all it says huh? Yeah, okay.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
We’ve got your back, don’t feel obliged to engage the differently abled.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
Have you seen the numbers? Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in states that were lost by tens of thousands.
Sorry, but Bailey’s “shitty candidate” story doesn’t explain those numbers away. People who voted for Obama in 2012 were specifically blocked from voting this year. It’s hard to turn out voters who aren’t allowed to vote.
Mary G
I get a weekly newsletter, the only one I have continued to subscribe to, from artist/writer Austin Kleon. One of the items this week was:
I am not a poetry person, but the two I linked to hit me like a hammer between the eyes. They are short. Read them if you have time.
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Gave her money, made phone calls. I’m sorry that travel was not an option for me. And, frankly, HRC needed to be able to win without every single citizen in every blue state picking up and going to another state to live to get her elected.
Instead of you going to Nevada, Clinton would have been better served by herself going to Michigan.
Percysowner
I too think there is a fair chance that there will never be another election. Or at least an election where People of Color and women can vote. Pack the Supreme Court and have them declare a Constitutional Crisis. Find a reason why the 14th and 19th Amendments weren’t properly passed (the old Ohio isn’t really a state could work). Heck that could dump the Income Tax Amendment as well. It could get nasty and I kind of expect it.
Elie
Yes.
What to do about it? Have no idea. We still do not know anything about Trump and the stinkin media don’t seem in a hurry to find anything out. He could be in debt up to his eyeballs to the Russians. We may never know — no taxes, no nothing. Yes this was all HIllary’s fault. Fuck me.
Shalimar
I do worry about that too. The more I think about it, though, the more it seems like the next 4 years is going to be George W. Bush’s 2005-2008 on steroids. No one would even mention his name in public at the end of that period. I seriously doubt Trump will still have the legitimacy to rig a dog and pony show.
D58826
As to the Zach link and the related post
1. our system is designed against ‘political revolution’ type changes
2. I keep harping on this (and to put a face to it even though I don’t mean to put him down) there are not enough Bernie voters to win a national general election outside of Vermont.
Now I’m all for the revolution if you can get the votes, otherwise you might as well join the Whig party. I’ve read the comments/analysis pieces about how the democrats have forgotten the WWC. Maybe they have but:
1. Brownbeck tanked the economy in Kansas and was reelected
2. Walker destroyed the public sector unions is Wisc. and was reelected
3. Obama saved the auto industry and all of those WWC jobs in MI and Ohio but the WWC voted for Trump
4. the d’s passed Obamacare that directly helps 20 million people, many WWC I’m sure, get health insurance and indirectly all the rest of us with the ban on pre-existing conditions, the requirement that 85% of premiums go to actual insurance, and by slowing the rate of healthcare inflation added 13 years to the solvency of Medicare.
5. While dodd-frank might not be perfect it has reduced the chances of another 2008 collapse which certainly hurt all of the special WWC snowflakes.
Fareed Z had a piece at WAPO, and I can’t find the link, about how rural America feels left out and disrespected by the urban elite. All of the news, sports, music, etc, in this view is controlled by the big city elites and traditional rural values are being ignored. Well there is some truth to that. The coastal elites tend to look down on rural/small town America as they fly over but the real reason the big cities drive the agenda is because that is where most of us live and work. Rural life has been dying for centuries as the industrial age kicked in. At the beginning of the 20th century something like 80% of the population was still tied to agriculture in some way. Now it’s what maybe 4%. Kids don’t leave the big city to find fame and fortune in Ottumwa Iowa. Years ago I worked with a young woman who lived in Greenevile Tenn. Very nice friendly little town. She could not wait to move to the big city, in her case Nashville. There is another piece on WAPO that argues small town America opposed big government because they don’t see it helping them. Never mind the interstates, the farm subsidies, Obamacare, flood control projects on the Mississippi and the cheap electricity that the TVA brought to the rural south.
I don’t know how you solve that kind of a problem
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio all have Republican governors and Republican legislatures. So does Florida. So does North Carolina. What, exactly makes them “solid blue”?
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
Can you link to something that demonstrates the final count of how many voters definitively were blocked from voting?
She lost the vast majority of his white voters, too, people that were not even remotely blocked from voting. They chose not to. Many interviews are coming out as to why–perhaps you should read one or two of them.
DCrefugee
A quick control-F tells me no one responding to BC’s post has used the c-word, yet, so I’m going to:
What happened Tuesday was the culmination of a slow-moving coup, brought to you by:
— James Comey and the FBI
— Putin
— Various state legislatures, which suppressed the vote
— Unwittingly, the mass media, which concentrated on EMAILGHAZI! to the exclusion of the realities we are about to face.
— And much, much more.
This piece discusses the normalization of Trumpism, by someone who should know.
It was nice while it lasted…
Elie
@gene108:
You have that absolutely right…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Undecided and usually white voter: I’m tired of all the bickering. I want to hear about policy.
Democrats: Here’s fifty-seven position papers illustrating how Hillary Clinton wants to help the working and middle classes with everything from making childcare more affordable for working parents, reducing college debt, preserving and expanding retirement programs, and an infrastructure program that will create jobs for blue collar workers.
UAUWV: I just don’t feel like she understands my life
tobie
@kindness: Thank you. I don’t recall liberal voters turning against John Kerry with this kind of fury after 2004, nor do I remember Howard Dean supporters holding onto to Dean paraphernalia until well after the primaries. (In my Baltimore street of 20 houses, there are still 4 Bernie yard signs up.) We’ve got a very tough road ahead of us. Can’t you see the bigger picture? It’s so depressing and ultimately damaging to re-litigate the primaries. You know who the enemy is? It’s not Debbie Wasserman Schultz or even the DNC. It’s Trump, his advisors, his cabinet picks, the GOP-controlled House, the GOP-controlled Senate, and soon to be the GOP-controlled Supreme Court. Oh, and not to forget, our supine media.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@D58826:
Does this guy watch TV? WT ever loving Fuck. I see nothing but fucking southern and rural related programming on my DVR schedule, Duck Dynasty, cooking shows, fucking car shows with people wearing “lock her up” t-shirts, college fucking football from every goddamn region of the country, country music channels, the list is fucking endless. Good goddamn these fucking pundits will be the death of all of us.
WereBear
This situation reminds me of how our system of laws is based on deterrents; social stigma and what a person has to lose as much as it is fines and punishments.
And it is totally useless against the most dangerous people: the psychopaths, the violently damaged, the abusive control freaks. They don’t care. They just do what they want and dare society to stop them.
We are in this situation now. Our institutions all completely failed. We had a Civilization Chernobyl.
We cannot work with the tools we have now. We must build new tools: new ways of blocking these traitors, these seditionists, these anarchic terrorists who want to loot and pillage and destroy.
We must suss out all of their weak points and press our thumbs into these nerve centers without mercy.
It’s a big job. But there are plenty of us, and we cover the nation.
Major Major Major Major
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Yeah, but Breaking Bad looked down on rural folks or something. (SPOILER ALERT: it didn’t there really are meth-cooking Nazis)
celticdragonchick
@Another Holocene Human:
When Obamacare and medicare are gone…stop paying your medical bills.
Go use the ER and…refuse to pay. Get other people to start doing this, even if you have insurance (don’t show the insurance at the time)
Start getting hospitals to go into the red. Make them demand the government pays them back for the loss. Have days where you and your friends show up in slack times where a lot of actual patients are not going to need treatment, and demand to be seen (they cannot refuse you) and refuse to pay the bill.
Can we spread this around? Other ideas for resistance that don’t involve violence but do fuck with the system and force the feds to notice?
Eric U.
@SatanicPanic: the anti-illegal immigrant policies aimed at Latinos have never been primarily about the illegal immigrants. It’s a fig leaf for cops to harass Latinos, always has been. Not hard to understand.
kindness
@Bailey: You are annoying. You’ve repeated yourself what, 4 or 5 times on this one thread?
We get it. You are way purer than we (some of us) are and you want everyone to know it.
SatanicPanic
@D58826: Rural America has its own media- FOX, talk radio. And it even has its own genre of music- country is non-stop angry propaganda about how they’re real Americans and the rest of us are jerks. They’re not being ignored, they’re being fed a bunch of lines about how we’re all sitting around in the city mocking them and plotting ways to make them miserable. Like you I don’t know what to do about that.
Mary G
@Bailey: Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, No. Carolina and other states we lost are not solid blue states. They have Republican governors and legislatures. She won the truly solid blue states. You are victim-blaming Hillary when there is plenty of blame to go around. There are more purple states and shameless corruption in the Republican Party than we realized.
Major Major Major Major
@tobie:
There’s something to be said for the millennilals-are-awful theory when it comes to this, if my cohort is any indication. (Mostly the white ones TBH.)
Kryptik
@trollhattan:
Ugh. Perhaps. Duterte’s popularity certainly speaks to it. I’m honestly feeling lucky my parents, their fervent Catholicism and all, are as liberal as they are, since they’re feeling more and more like outliers.
I mean, for Christ’s sake, he just wrote off on giving Marcos a fucking hero’s burial.
SatanicPanic
@Eric U.: I agree, but “they’re not talking about me” is a real thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Brian Beutler has Sean Trende, the guy who first talked about the missing white voters, and IIRC also the coiner of “unskew the polls” in 2012, on his podcast and he is obsessed with Sam Bee, John Oliver and Lena Dunham as fuel (I deleted “the cause of”) for Trumpism. I know who Lena Dunham is because of the internet, I know enough about her TV show to have mostly understood Tina Fey’s parody of it, but I have no idea why she excites such hysterical reactions from people
Bailey
@Mary G:
Okay, correction. We’ve been losing the solid blue states.
That does not change the fact that the candidate’s messaging was non-existent, the outreach inadequate, and the GOTV apparently useless.
There are many factors in this loss, but the candidate is one of them.
Emma
@Local Observer: and you’re a misogynist one trick mule: the eeeeevil Hiiiilllary made it bad for meeee!
I am beginning to think the Democratic party doesn’t want us either.
Peale
@gene108: I’m guessing it will look something like this. National Voter ID, mailed directly to registered voters by SSA with records indicating that they were born in the US. For those not born in the US, there will be a long process that will look a lot like having to reapply for naturalized citizenship again.
Cermet
@Mnemosyne: Impressive; excellent work – too bad there are more like you in WI or PA.
Local Observer
@trollhattan: the differently abled see that BO got ~300000 more votes in NY state in 2012 than HRC did in 2016 and Jill Stein got 70000 more votes in 2016 in NY than she did in 2012. I don’t see how either voter suppression or misogyny explain those numbers. I don’t want to get in a pizzing match with anyone, just saying that there are more complex explanations for what happened than the two fall back positions.
catclub
@WereBear:
This seems like the wrong set of descriptions to deal with people who could not be bothered to vote.
Major Major Major Major
@celticdragonchick: I think I’m going to buy a domain (I thought of toolsforradicals.com earlier today but it and .org are both taken by some Irish guy) and maybe put up a site detailing with this stuff, secure communication, a hate crimes/atrocity tracker, and so forth before January. If anybody has any URL ideas.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
You can start with this Raw Story article. Among other things, there is no evidence that whites who voted for Obama switched to Trump. None. In fact, Hillary won the white working class.
celticdragonchick
@Bailey:
Possibly worse than useless. Saw something at the NYT that our GOTV may well have been turning out Trump voters who had previously been marginal democrats.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Hurting ‘real Americans” fee-fees trumps (sorry not sorry for the pun) the actual fucking safety and security of aggrieved and minority citizens. If only we were nicer to white working-class Americans, they wouldn’t have to scream about kicking us out for the good of the country.
JMG
This election was about social psychology and nothing else. White people in areas that are declining in population and prosperity for reasons no government can control resented that multiracial, multicultural regions of the country are prospering and in fact are all around better places to live. Their itch cannot be scratched by Clinton, Trump or anyone else. You could round up every undocumented immigrant (there aren’t that many) in Scranton, Pa., and it’ll still be a shithole. In fact, it’ll get worse, because immigration due to cheap housing is one of the only economic lifelines places like that have.
I’m damned if I want a party saying to white people “yeah, you’re right, You’re more special than everyone else.” The only thing to say is, “we can and will help you, but you have to accept we are trying to help everybody else, too.” If they can’t, I’d rather lose than kowtow to them.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Van Buren: Zero.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT Schadenfreude silver lining of the day: The ShitGibbon has given the Bully Boy the gate.
NYT:Vice President-elect Mike Pence will take over the job of leading Donald J. Trump’s transition effort from Gov. Chris Christie.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
The NAACP knows what happened, but obviously they don’t have their fingers on the pulse of the real voters like you do.
Terry chay
@Bailey: you are a moron and are rightly being panned. Even Michael Moore who talked about Michigan more than anyone made wrong claims about all these latent Trump voters. No, it was not Trump voters there, he didn’t even beat Romney. It was liberals like you and him depressing Hillary’s turnout by talking how flawed she was because Bernie couldn’t get enough of us to vote for him in the Primary.
Where were you telling Mook or Kreigel or Podesta, COME TO MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN BECAUSE I AM UNDERMINING HER SUPPORT! Or DO SOMETHING BECAUSE I CONVINCED MY FRIENDS TO LIE ABOUT THEIR INTENTION TO VOTE?
No, we are ALL to blame. Stop casting it on the Democratic establishment, Hillary, or her team (mostly Obama people). The Democrats didn’t give us Trump, they didn’t vote for Trump, they just didn’t turn out in Obama numbers, and, more importantly, they undermined her campaign by lieing to all the pollsters about their intent to vote.
Just a week ago you were applauding her having Obama campaign in SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIA and bitching why she wasn’t lending Obama to a Florida senate challenger.
Garbage in, garbage out. All the effort in the world wasn’t going to change the fact that the entire country (not just her campaign, but the pollsters, the statisticians, the Bernie or busters, the Michael Mooers and the Stephen Colberts as well as the republican and Trump people) were operating on bad data.
D58826
@Bailey: I suspect that by the time all of the votes are analyzed it will be a multitude of factors. Different factors in different places. This is beginning to sound like the 6 blind men and the elephant (sorry no pun intended). Look at the big picture, isolate the pieces and build a plan from there. In other words run a Liz Warren progressive in MA and a blue dog in N. Dakota. Once you have taken the senate back the Liz wing and the blue dog wing can get together and make some progress towards a better America. The Liz/Bernie wing didn’t have the votes to pass any kind of healthcare bill. They had to compromise with the bluedogs to get Obamacare passed. The left argues that the stimulus was to small and to weighted toward tax cuts. They are right but without the changed demanded by the blue dogs the stimulus bill would not have passed.
Local Observer
@Emma: get over yourself emma
Bailey
@tobie:
Bush was terrible, but he was no Trump. The stakes are so much higher.
Do you remember the website: http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com ? At the time, it highlighted the uninspirational candidate that Kerry was and how voters were resigned to voting for him without any real enthusiasm. I know that some segments of the base don’t understand this, but Hillary could have had this same URL. And, like Kerry, it was never going to be enough.
Beyond that, here in Seattle, people definitely kept their Dean paraphenalia around. Signs were up forever. In fact, I wore my Dean for America shirt (the first time I’ve ever worn it, actually, it’s been in a drawer for years) to watch the election returns on Tuesday.
Daulnay
What do we want to accomplish with a boycott?
1) Trump’s resignation
2) Paul Ryan’s resignation, with a replacment speaker who is unanimously acceptable to both sides, or nearly so.
3) Mike Pence’s resignation.
4) Financial disarmament. A constitutional amendment fixing Citizen’s United, banning contributions by corporate for-profit entities and corporate mask entities, as well as limiting their owners’ and executives’ contributions to $2500 in total to all candidates. Felony with mandatory prison for violations by giver and knowing recipient. (Separate business from our politics like we do religion – no institutional interference.)
5) A ban on corporate ownership of media, including corporations for protection-from-lawsuit reasons.
We want no violence, it is a completely legal and peaceful response. It’s also a huge rip in the social fabric, an ending of the norm that we keep business separate from political life. The Nazis and others on the hate right don’t accept this norm anyway, and complain when we object to them violating it – remember the flap over the homophobic baker?
How would it work?
Boycott an additional Republican financial backer and a new Trump financial backer each month, starting with the largest. Boycott each business for a year and a day, whether or not it gets sold in the meantime. Do the research to find out where their financial interests are, and put pressure on the businesses that support them. For businesses that mostly supply other businesses, find out who they supply and put pressure on those businesses. For the ones that rely on selling to the public, picket and leaflet them every day. Give the people who come to shop a list of alternative businesses.
Put pressure on the other side, too. If someone you know works for a business under the boycott, help them find another job. Get their resume and pass it around. If you run a business that sells to one under the boycott, don’t sell to it if you possibly can.
Why two per month? Because it allows us to focus, gives time to gather the necessary data, and organize. It also puts pressure on businesses who are next up on the list, to force an end. It gives them an incentive to pressure the Republicans into a settlement.
Why even if the business sells? Because we’re trying to render their business worthless. If they can just sell it to avoid responsibility, a boycott will be toothless.
We are at war, we are fighting actual Nazis now. We are fighting for our democracy, and for our freedom. We’re fighting for the lives of our friends, our families, ourselves. No American citizens can sit this out and not take a side (except conscientious objectors): but remember, the sides are not Democrat and Republican. They are people who want a free society, with liberty and justice for all vs. the hate-fueled bigots who want an authoritarian state. Some of our the people on our side foolishly, very foolishly, voted Trump. Others stayed home. We’re going to have to get them into the fight.
Elie
@D58826:
There is a reason for all that dissonance and it goes back to our central wound: race. The urban areas are dens of iniquity serving black welfare mothers who have thousands of kiids on the government dole. Hell no, we don’t want ANY social programs that benefit THOSE people so sure, take them all away — I would rather starve and do without healthcare altogether if even one black or brown person benefits from it. In Europe, they are aghast when they look at us compared to their social safety net, but up until just recently, they were homogenous white people so there wasn’t that “problem” about paying for THOSE people. But that is changing pretty quickly as we say in Brexit where folks in UK think that immigrants just take those social benefits and give nothing back to their countries. Its sick white tribalism that has to be fought hard both politically AND morally. Our party has the morality but the other party is actually amoral and exploitive so those white folks ran to papa and didn’t even think about it hard. So yeah, I dunno what that does for what we do, except to keep trying and talking. I also believe that the power of markets and globalization (yes, I know, bad words to some), will force change. There can be no economic island like Bernie, Trump and others want, unless we are gonna sit out being a world class economy. If you didn’t like our jobs situation now, you would really hate it then. And I guess some of y’all think China is gonna run something we can just jump on in without paying a stiff price? Okay then.
I am old and near retirement. I have no children. My heart breaks for those of you and all of us who have to figure out what life is gonna be like and how to deal. I am not certain at all that our major institutions will recover from this and that we have the means to communicate with the people to effect the change that lines up with humanism, morality and justice. When push comes to shove, those white people up in Michigan showed us that White comes first when times are bad. Maybe even when times are not so bad.
Peale
First, I’m not sure Bernie wins by spending his time in the rural areas and neglecting the cities. But if rural voters need more direct contact from a candidate to get out and vote, well then next time, give them that. I’m just not certain why it is such a difficult concept to grasp. She may have “made her numbers” and had a perfect campaign, but the numbers she wanted were too low. There ARE democratic voters outside of Philadelphia, for instance. There may not be many, but if it is true that her campaign focused in the state only on Philly and the surrounding areas, it wasn’t enough. Pointing that out and saying that she needed a different strategy isn’t throwing anyone under the bus. Of course she ran a bad campaign – she lost.
Steve Crickmore
One simple reason why she may have lost a close election? From a November 2nd Atlantic article. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trump-clinton-electoral-college/506306/ “Hillary Clinton’s easiest path to an Electoral College majority does not include Ohio, Florida, or North Carolina. (states she all ended up losing). Yet those three states all rank at the very top of the list of locales where she has invested the most time and advertising spending, especially in the campaign’s critical closing weeks. By contrast, the campaign has devoted very little advertising or time from Clinton and her top surrogates in several of the states that are part of her core strategy for reaching 270 Electoral College votes—among them Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, and New Mexico.” Where does Clinton find these genius campaign strategists both in 2008, (for the primary season) and once again in 2016 (for the Presidential election)?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Exactly, just like with Gore, there were a lot of little things that led to this loss-by-electoral-college, some the candidate’s fault, probably more not. Bailey has been wanking contrary-troll since his/her first manifestation, and has no interest in good faith discussion.
CarolDuhart2
@gene108: Globalisation is not dead. America will still have factories in China in the rest of the world simply because the whole world is now a consumer world, and wages are cheaper than here.
Major Major Major Major
@Peale: This is an example of a well-written, measured, and helpful critical comment, in case anybody else *ahem* might need a clue. Thank you, Peale.
D. Mason
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: That’s part of the problem. Certain segments of the population think all working class people want is NASCAR and Budweiser but what they really want is a stable life. You see TV for dummies as being enough to keep the rubes happy. The quote you cited says it. Rural life, their way of life, is dying. You can say their blame is misplaced and probably be right but you can’t really say that their concerns are invalid because everyone wants a stable life. Those folks didn’t vote for your vision of stability, they voted for theirs and you hate them for it. Both sides were grotesquely wrong but someone had to come out on top.
Kay
I just think the craziness of this has to be dealt with:
The President is going on trial for fraud immediately after an election where the sole media focus was on locking up his opponent. We’ve just left the realm of ordinary lying here. These are jumbo-level Big Lies.
This whole thing was a fraud, start to finish but it isn’t finished. This will continue for the next 4 years. It will get worse.
I can’t help but think we’re already into banana republic territory. That already happened. Now we’re just seeing the first wave.
ruemara
I saw it as a coup facilitated by a foreign government. And I sincerely cannot see what the end is if we don’t take back Congress and more state legislatures in 2018. And I don’t know if the modern progressive can focus long enough and not be condescending long enough, to win.
Mary G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Jared Kushner’s revenge is sweet!
HeidiMom
@gene108: If my experience means anything (and bearing in mind that anecdotes are not data), they did. I volunteered in Carlisle, PA (small college town in south-central PA, Republican area), doing mostly phone banking and some voter registration, and our team was incredibly enthusiastic and totally data-driven. IMO, the candidate didn’t fail and neither did her voter outreach effort.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G: I feel like this is the fifth person this week I’ve seen being mentioned as “in charge of the transition.” Is this one of those things where everybody looks under their seat and gets the keys to a brand-new transition team?
Mnemosyne
@JMG:
Slight correction: from what I’ve seen, Trump voters are comfortable middle-class people living in the exurbs who are pissed off that nobody is forced to listen to them anymore. They are now just one voice among many, and they’re angry about it, so they lashed out.
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: I like what you’ve said there and had hoped the thread would go more in that direction rather than kicking off another rousing chorus of the “Let’s Relitigate the Primary Polka,” but I take responsibility for that. Maybe later we’ll be ready to put that bullshit aside and discuss real-world tactics to resist. I like Alain’s outreach concept. I’ve got some stuff percolating in real life in my own little neck of the woods to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
celticdragonchick
This circular firing squad shit is not helping, gang.
BTW…most people do not give a shit about policy. Trump never articulated a single coherent detailed policy. Ever.
Trump articulated (If you can call it that) ATTITUDE and that is what sells a president.
People vote on image and feeling. Bernie was never going to sell his acerbic socialist schtick outside of his lane that already existed. Clinton already had an image that the GOP crafted over 25 years and with hundreds of millions of our tax dollars spent in investigations.
The definitive book on this was written back in 19 fucking 68:
https://www.amazon.com/Selling-President-Classical-Packaging-Candidate/dp/0140112405
Emma
@Local Observer: oh no, sweetie. I’m not getting over myself. I’m not letting the uber-liberal white boys toss women, POC , and LGBTs under the bus. No way in hell.
D58826
@Kryptik: Sikhs have been murdered because they wear head gear that looks a lot like the ISIS/Iranian mullahs. Did Malmut in the Fixer have a bit about Jewish noses, or did the Nazi’s drag that out also.
Won’t matter how long you have been and American, all that counts is that you have the wrong type of dress or nose or accent. Your family isn’t safe even if your kid has made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, just ask the Khan family. Or ask George Takei about the interment camps despite the fact that a Japanese-American army unit was fighting in Italy and racking up medals. or the Tuskegee airmen.
Kay
He is right now plugging his properties on his transition website and they STILL are insisting this is business as usual.
They are going to run Trump Inc out of the White House because there are no laws that cover this. We’re just wholly unprepared for this and no one cares. By the time he leaves this too will be normalized. It’s just rolling downhill at breakneck speed.
Major Major Major Major
@celticdragonchick: The hack gap strikes again.
pamelabrown53
@Bailey: #14
Bailey, go fuck yourself with a chainsaw. There are multitudes of millions not only grieving but trying to figure out how we can fight back. Still, all you can do is assert a belief. You!!! and your cohorts were the reason I finally went Hillary: in the face of total annihilation and narcissistic nihilism, you just can’t help yourself.
I’m gay and married: thank you for your support.
Joe Falco
@celticdragonchick: The failed state of the healthcare system for those of us that live in Republican-controlled areas where Medicaid was not expanded is already having that effect on hospitals in our area. It’s a slow-moving disaster that will eventually make everything collapse, but a lot of my fellow Georgians caught in this mess apparently have no problem electing and re-electing these Morlocks into power to devour us.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@D. Mason:
I said no such thing, I was criticizing the idiot pundit that claims there are no TV, sportsball, etc. entertainment for rural folks.
That’s all.
WereBear
They are miserable. We don’t make them miserable, they just blame us.
I don’t know why, because I drive around farm country as part of my job, and see lots of Trump signs. Why are they miserable?
They have four car garages and riding lawnmowers the size of parade floats and dear lord they have invested the price of a college education in flagpoles and resin statues and and wooden cutouts of ladies bending over to show their bloomers and little boys peeing a stream of plastic into the marigolds.
They do all this stuff because they don’t leave home. They sit in their living rooms watching Fox on the giant flat screen and culture deep ugly resentments the way forgotten leftovers grow mold.
What have they got to be so angry about? Damned if I know.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: Even Dick Cheney had the common courtesy not to cash out until he was done.
ruemara
@Lit3Bolt: hey, fuck you. Obama did more with less. Fuck you for calling him a naive child.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Kryptik: THANK YOU! This is what I have been saying, and will say, until I am blue in the damn face.
When racist, red state Americans think “Latino” they think Mexican. They think all Latinos are Mexican. They WILL NOT CARE if you “have papers.” The Nazis didn’t either, and these people are their grandchildren. For fuck’s sake.
Even being light as fuck and Latino will not save you. Latin last name? You’re at risk. Anglo name but of obvious Latin heritage? You are at risk. Don’t fool yourself. Have a plan ready.
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: The probability that no one is actually in charge of the transition is screamingly high. Just think how many campaign managers there were.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
UAUWV: BUT SPEAK TO MY FEELS!
Another Holocene Human
@gene108: I thought so too but for some reason we didn’t repeat 12 in 16 in my county and I feel based on what I saw on election day that we underperformed.
JPL
@Joe Falco: GA will turn, just not now. I found this in the AJC
Fulton has been blue for a long time, but the shift in Cobb County is a pretty big deal.
celticdragonchick
@Major Major Major Major: You lost me on that one. Sorry?
D58826
@Kay:
Trump is an insult even to a banana republic.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: What do you think the chances are the trial will be delayed?
hovercraft
I would have said you were being hysterical, but after the last year, anything is possible, and the media will normalize it. Remember how the media attacked Obama for being critical of FOX news and refused to give them any interviews? Remember how they did the same to Shitgibbon when he blacklisted media outlets, and threatened to restrict the first amendment? Yeah, me neither. They will roll over like the useless pieces of shit they are, at whatever it decides to do. The voter suppression tactics of the GOP over the last 4 years were barely mentioned by the MSM, there were a few journalists who consistently talked about it, Ari Berman being the leading one. The fact that one can name the journalists who did any real investigative journalism into the Shitgibbon is telling, Farenthold, Issikof, and Eichenwald come to mind, but how many others do? We have to completely shun the cable enablers to send them a message.
NotMax
Fits better in this thread than where first mentioned it; link to the original in another thread.
Redshift
I think this needs to get a lot wider notice. Pass it on:
Autocracy: Rules for Survival, by Masha Gessen
Scares the hell out of me, but it’s a reality check.
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
Great, another day and another chance for Mnemosyne to make 70 or 80 more posts explaining that Hillary would have won except for voter suppression and votor ID laws.
Obama got 10 million more votes in 2008 and 5 million more in 2012 than Clinton did.
Only a very, very stupid person would think that votor ID laws cost Clinton 10 million votes.
But you keep on beating the shit out of your dead little hobby horse.
Kryptik
@D58826:
Yyyyyyep. This is something I’ve gone hoarse trying to explain to others, how it doesn’t matter how legal you actually are, how many generations your family has existed here, what creed, political party, etc. you are. Hell, from some of the anecdotes we’ve heard just in the past few days, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve known your neighbors. If you look like one of the hated groups, good money says you’re going to get treated like one of those hated groups. It’s why Islamophobia has the inescapable racial aspect that I continually have to underscore to idiots time and time again who say ‘but Muslim isn’t a race!’ as if it’s a grand epiphany.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: We’re missing 6 MILLION voters. That’s the relevant #.
It’s worse than you think because an interesting %age of GOPers actually voted for Hilary. (The rest went to Johnson). These are the ones who were replaced by deplorables (who didn’t show up in the polls). So take the topline #s and add those GOPers who were with her, and that’s how many voters we are MISSING.
NOT explained fully by voter suppression.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Amaranthine RBG: She got more than Trump, just not on the right places and those margins were very small. So, you could stop comparing apples and pumpkins, but whatever.
D58826
@Corner Stone: And since no one wants to put a major league team in flyspeck Iowa. you are insulting my traditional rural values.
I was going to say Flyspeck Wisc. but I guess that are all Packer fans.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone:
Dems: Look, I know Americans are hurting. Crushed under medical debt and student loans. It’s why we have to get together as a country and get Americans back to work with high-quality, good-paying American jobs, rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, and making us the green energy superpower of the 21–
UAUWV: NO NOT THOSE FEELS SAY SOMETHING ABOUT MEXICANS
Mnemosyne
Here’s what drives me nuts about the whole she was just a bad candidate! claim: it means we don’t actually have to look at anything else. We don’t have to look at voter suppression, or the complicity of the media, or figure out how to better reach voters, or decide how to strengthen weak state parties in places like Florida.
If we just sit back and say, “Bad candidate!” this is going to happen again in 2018, because we didn’t look at what actually happened.
“Bad candidate!” is a cop-out that lets people feel like smug insiders, but it does jack shit to prevent this from happening again.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Personally, I think the GOP went nuts trying to rig the election for !Jeb! and instead got the election they stole inturn stolen from them by Trump. So way to go idiots, sell your soul to the devil and end up getting a joker.
I suppose the real test will the moderate conservatives be willing to give a machine that produced a cheesy conman yet another chance in 2018 and 2020. My suspicion is that “lost the popular vote”, “massive voter suppression” and “Why did the polls never show this?” is going to leave a really bad, bad taste in a lot of conservative’s mouths. Yes, that 27% doesn’t give a shit about anything but tribalism, but do keep in mind a lot of people who consider themselves conservatives believe in our democracy too.
Robert Paehlke
Thank you for that. I feel the same way. The other thing worth doing is to focus on state and local governments to get them to protect the vulnerable within their borders as best they can when the New Deal safety net is destroyed in the first hundred days of the new regime.
Major Major Major Major
@celticdragonchick: The hack gap
Kryptik
@Mnemosyne:
Nothing extra to add really, just requoting it because it bears repeating.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@ruemara: Especially amusing coming from someone who apparently is too dumb to understand that schoolhouse rock video about how a bill becomes a law, which I’m pretty sure was geared to nine and ten years old
SatanicPanic
@WereBear: Right? I grew up in farm country and there are plenty of miserable people there, but the loudest voices are from people who are doing just fine. I honestly don’t think anything will make them happy except maybe personally allowing them to drive the bus that deports Mexicans. Which is obviously a non-starter. But those who really are in depressed situations? I suggest we do try to help them, but only because it’s the right thing to do. I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting any of them to thank us.
Davis X. Machina
@WereBear:
The fact that some day they will die. Some folks deal with it better than others.
A lot of the enthusiasm in movement politics is a seeking after a Cause. A glorious Cause that will allow you to not admit to yourself that your life is just a bunch of little circles of gaining and getting and spending, and all too short.
Making America Great Again! is a splendid distraction. If you can jump up and down and shout loud enough you might just not hear the Reaper’s footsteps.
(This is not a phenomenon restricted to the political right, btw.)
Another Holocene Human
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Because she’s fat and a woman and on TV and she doesn’t care that they call her fatty. Don’t. Care. It drives these bullies apeshit.
D58826
@hovercraft:
and a loaf of bread has a longer shelf life than those stories had.
Norm Ornstein has written a lot about this and after his book about the GOP came out in 2012 he was dropped by the TV talk shows. Phil Donahue got canned for his opposition to the Iraq war.
celticdragonchick
@Joe Falco:
This is fucked up….but help it fail. Really. Help the hospitals and providers file for bankruptcy and demand intervention for the government when people no longer have insurance.
People voted for this pain, and pain needs to spread around. Lots of pain. If elections have consequences, then let the consequences be dire enough that every WWC voter who supported this monster have nightmares for the rest of their lives when they find they cannot get their medical supplies or get medicine.
That means many of will have the same pain. Me included. I have degenerative disc disease and I am on SSDI and medicare. I am a substitute teacher since I cannot teach full time.
I am going to suffer, and I am going to share it as widely as possible.
Shut the medical industry down. Start bankrupting the hospitals. Have clinics in rural areas close their doors.
Bailey
@pamelabrown53:
I am too. I choose to start with candidates that understand what we’re actually fighting for and how to achieve that. I didn’t see that this year.
I am asserting electoral math and results.
I don’t even understand what you’re saying here. You went Hillary….from where? I think everyone on this blog eventually went Hillary to varying degrees. The problem are all the people that did not and examining their reasons.
Great, congratulations. I live and voted in the first state to vote in gay marriage.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s not fully explained by voter suppression, but given the numbers coming out about hundreds of thousands of people being blocked in each state, I think it could easily be half.
Hang on, coworker dragging me to lunch. Back soon.
Kryptik
@SatanicPanic:
The ones with the most to lose are rarely the ones rocking the boat because…hey, surprise, surprise, they’re more interested in fucking surviving check to check. Meanwhile many of the comfortable are told they’re losing out because Fox blares about ‘HOLY SHIT ALL THESE TAKERS MOOCHING OFF YOUR GODDAMN WORK, THEY HAVE REFRIDGERATORS FOR GOD’S SAKE!’
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
Amen, sister.
Another Holocene Human
@JMG: I wish I could upvote comments so I could upvote yours.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Matt Yglesias has blond son named José, named after his grandfather, he posts a few pictures on twitter. Some alt-right genius accused MY (don’t know if he’s related to the singing Yglesii) of giving his son a Hispanic name so he’d qualify for affirmative action.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amaranthine RBG: It did not need to be 10,000,000 votes. All they needed was enough to take a few key states like, for example, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG:
That is not the point being made you math illiterate fuck.
Another Holocene Human
Remember folks, Air America is gone but you can listen to WCPT live online. Stephanie Miller (my favorite) in the morning, Thom Hartmann (can’t listen to him) midday, and I think Randi Rhodes in the afternoon.
http://tunein.com/radio/WCPT-820-s27032/
just click to listen and it opens a player window
Eljai
@Betty Cracker: I thought Elizabeth Warren made some very solid points on Rachel Maddow last night. The transcript is not up yet, but she talked about being in your community, taking care of each other. I think that’s a good first step. I live in a big metro area and tend to keep to myself. But I’m going to get out more — maybe volunteer for those things I believe in. It’s not the end. It’s a first step.
dww44
@Cain: One of the leaders of our local democratic party is having a conference call on Monday afternoon and called me today as I won’t be able to be part of it. He believes that the DNC chair should NOT be filled by a person holding office. Rather, he says, it needs to be filled by someone who can work full time for the party.
IMO, there was a lot of difference between Dean and Schultz in terms of visibility and effectiveness. Dean is the only chair of the DNC that ever visited our small city in this red state in the 40 years I’ve lived here. That was 2006 I believe.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
But remember, that kind of person is the person we need to reassure, coddle, and hug and tell them ‘we feel your pain’ in order to win America. Until we put the last dagger into things like Affirmative Action, they’ll never be comfortable knowing his country is safe from the Joses!
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: What is the point, because your contingent is conflating potential votes suppressed with actual voters turned away, and trying to argue this is the one true cause of the loss when an order of magnitude greater of voters just never showed up.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@JMG: I would upvote this comment as well.
Major Major Major Major
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: This is a very good point.
DCrefugee
@WereBear:
It’s not anger, it’s hate.
Another Holocene Human
@dww44: I agree we should not have a current officeholder. I want Barack but I guess he has other plans.
D58826
@Kay: And when the privatize Soc. Security/medicare and sell the national parks to the lowest bidder who do you think will be first in line?
Ifthey are going to sell the grand Canyon at least get top dollar for it. (snark)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t have any idea. It’s a really good dodge for Trump because it puts the burden of possibly harming the country on the judge.
If I were him or her I would stick to the rules and the hell with the screeching because that’s always the safest place to be. It’s what Comey should have done. The judge will have to defend a decision based on “special pleading” much more than an ordinary decision that follows norms and rules. In a very real way that’s the point of the norms and the rules- to protect the individual who has to make tough decisions from accusations of bias.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You would think Yglesias’s being primarily Jewish would be more of a target, but nobody ever said the alt-reich was smart.
EBT
Oh ahah that Trump transition team. Everything looks pretty well fucked. Pam fucking Bondi even. I guess she DOES have dirt on him after all.
Shalimar
@gene108: A lot of the Obama 2012 team were at the heart of Hillary 2016, and I can’t think of more than a few Hillary 2008 people who were involved. That said, Hillary 2016 did not allocate the same resources for GOTV. They had roughly 80% of the offices and paid employees. There was an Obama office 3 miles from me in 2012. The closest Hillary office this year was 30 miles away and there was no campaign activity in my Florida county.
matryoshka
@CaseyL: Seconded.
celticdragonchick
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, okay.
yes, it really does help that the RWNJ’s have a 24 hour propaganda network, radio and hundreds of full times pundits, bloggers (and troll farms in Russia!) spreading their shit and it’s all being funded by billionaires and Regnery Publishing.
It the end, it didn’t matter that Trump literally lied more than any other POTUS candidate in American history, contradicted himself continuously and bragged about sexual assaulting women, perving on teenage beauty contestants, constructed the most openly racist campaign in the last 150 years and mocked disabled people and war veterans.
He projected attitude and
Honestly, I am at a loss to see who we had who might have defeated that message. Racist populism sells, and the GOP had set this up with 8 years of obstructing any help getting to the people in rural American who needed it (which is also why the other 16 or so GOP candidates got clobbered in the primary)
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human:
AAARRGGHHH!! STFU. SHUTTHEFUCKUP!
People not choosing to vote happens every god damn election you stupid POS. Get this through your fucking ignorant facehole, you fuck. If HRC lost WI by some number, let’s call it 30K. And some number of registered voters, let’s call it 300K, were denied the restrictive qualified Voter ID that was accepted. THAT IS THE RELEVANT FUCKING NUMBER. Not 10fuckingmillion.
Now, given that not all 100% of the supposed 300K registered voters may have decided to turn out, and further granted that not all that did would have definitely chose HRC instead of anyone else.
The margin still stands as THE FUCKING POINT.
Another Holocene Human
@Kryptik: I completely disagree. Any winning Dem team is going to have to address voter suppression. I think Hilary’s campaign actually DID try to address it. But what they did didn’t work. So we have to try again and do better this time.
It’s not treason against the Democratic party to acknowledge we failed and try to dissect why.
It’s also intellectually dishonest to try to latch onto One True Cause because Hilary alone didn’t lose the election, and neither did voter suppression. Hilary was a mixed bag, we lost. We have to figure out how to reproduce Obama. We have to.
Iowa Old Lady
Overheard two middle-aged women talking in B&N today while I was writing.
First woman: If they get rid of Obamacare, will the prices come down again?
Second woman: I don’t know.
Since Obamacare was actually bending the cost curve, I do know.
Miss Bianca
@Mary G: to say nothing of the fact that in purple CO, with mail-in ballots and no ID necessary to vote, HRC took the state – even with all the troglodytes and libertarians we have here. Funny, huh? But let’s hear again from all the white boyz how it was Hillary Clinton’s failures as a candidate, and not voter suppression, not a smear campaign against her, and, ultimately, not white voters voting for Whieness, that’s the REAL problem.
How ironic. Everyone flapping about Donald Trump screaming that the system was rigged against him. Actually, you could make quite a case for the system being rigged FOR him.
Sly
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire), @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My paternal ancestors come from Spain, so my last name is Spanish. It’s led to a few “interesting” moments over the years, like potential employers (pleasantly) surprised when I walk into a job interview, assumptions about my fluency in Spanish when I barely speak a word and the few phrases I do know are in the dialect of my Andalusian distant cousins, appeals to “my deep Catholic beliefs” when my family hasn’t been a Church going lot for three generations and the few of us who are religious are Methodists, etc.
EBT
@Another Holocene Human: How many people are on California’s MMJ registry? Expect them all to get felony charges and lose voting rights.
Bailey
@Terry chay:
I’m sorry, how did I depress turnout? By not clapping loudly enough? The Tinkerbell philosophy of electoral strategy is not terribly helpful here.
So what does this mean? Even the talents of Obama and his people are not enough to convince America to purchase an underwhelming product.
Uhhh…I definitely think you have me confused with someone else.
Sure, a bit of GIGO. But it appears that with bad data or no, the candidate did not put the time in where she needed to most. That Atlantic article posted above that published a week before the election is harrowing in its implied predictions.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, no.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Kryptik: legit question: is there a liberation theology type movement in Filipino history? There is one in Latin American history, and that drives my Catholicism- love and support for social justice for the ostracized. Maybe that’s why your parents are as liberal as they are.
JordanRules
Our worst candidate, which we didn’t put up by any stretch of the imagination, should be able to beat a damned fascist with the type of scampaign he had.
Unless….gasp, people are actually okay with it. They are. They voted for this and wanted this. I don’t know why some people keep trying to make excuses for people who behaved deplorably and elected a deplorable person who advocated in word and deed some disgusting and deplorable shit.
I will not ever normalize this.
amygdala
Has anyone asked Harry if he wants to run the DNC?
Corner Stone
@Kay: Hey Kay,
Remember when we fondly discussed education policy and job retraining scams? And spoke about how laughable “Ladders of Opportunity” was to people who had no margin or tolerance for risk?
Do we think those same people voted for Trump? For change? What do we think those people did this election?
Just asking because I am honestly curious.
debit
Yeah, you know what? I’m outta here for a while too. I would love to talk about what to next, how to recover and attempt to mitigate the damage that’s coming, but I’m not seeing that. I’m sick of the Hillary hate. Everyone trying to pick up the pieces, peace to you. To everyone else, fuck off and die.
HinTN
@D58826: The solution used to be called education.
gogol's wife
@JMG:
Excellent comment.
Sly
@Iowa Old Lady:
I got a cousin with a permanent disability who had the chance at a comfortable life because of the Medicaid Expansion. The relatives who voted to take that away from him are going to have a fun time at Thanksgiving.
Bobby Thomson
Great post, Betty.
Iowa Old Lady
I was remembering today how during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Rs claimed the Clintons would do anything to get elected, and the counterargument was that the Rs would do anything except get more votes. So overturn an election through impeachment, and then have their next two presidents lose the popular vote.
Kryptik
@Another Holocene Human:
I….didn’t say anything about not reflecting?
I echoed Mnem because they were addressing the impetus to lay the blame totally and utterly at Hillary’s feet and screaming ‘bad candidate’ in a way that sucked up all the oxygen in the room, leaving nothing to actually address the problems you listed.
I’m wondering if you completely read their post in the exact opposite way of their intention.
Another Holocene Human
@Miss Bianca: It appears that Hilary played really well in Western states.
Trump overperformed in the Northeast. We knew this from polls, btw, even if the polls didn’t make it clear he was going to win.
To some extent this is just Trump being sui generis, I think.
But Hilary failed to do what Obama was able to do. I think WI would have been lost anyway. Scott Walker won what, three times? Forget them. But MI and PA? Something went wrong. We will find out more in the weeks to come. But Hilary and her campaign people made some mistakes. I think it’s fair to tease out what those might be.
gogol's wife
@debit:
I think as time goes on we’re going to get beyond the Hillary hate. Not responding to those commenters would help. Not arguing with them about voter suppression. Etc.
Shalimar
@Another Holocene Human: The only way I can think of to address voter suppression is to turn it around on them. Accept that everyone is going to need an ID, and push for a free Federal voting ID for everyone. Make that the centerpiece of everything you propose until it passes. Then send around surveyors like you would for a Census and make sure every adult citizen who wants an ID has one.
Bonus win, it would drive the Alex Jones paranoia crowd and the Rapture enthusiasts insane.
Brachiator
@Bailey:
I know that a lot of people think you are just a troll. And maybe you are.
But for now, I just think you are wrong. And at this point, practically every opinion about this election is wrong, and the vacuous attempts to look for a single point or person to blame is typical, and a waste of time. But if it helps people to blow off steam, go for it.
pamelabrown53
@Mnemosyne:
Co frigging sign.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: Where is your proof that those 300K intended to vote. Show your receipts.
Major Major Major Major
Man, when you remove the ~18% of this thread that is a certain troll, people talking about a certain troll, and people responding to a certain troll, it’s a much better read. Thanks, troll-b-gone!
Corner Stone
Since no one in this thread has gone there yet, I guess I will. Anyone else remember the newspaper clip talking about how Centrists in Germany circa 1932 thought that bringing the Nazis into government would help control them? They would be busy trying to work hard to keep all the promises they made. Surely they would see that governance is hard work, and the people they represent, and their views, actually mean something.
Kryptik
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
Not sure about the theological movements. I know my family history draws back to the Alino brothers, who were fairly renowned figures in the Filipino resistance post Spanish-American war. So we have a long line of rebellion in our blood.
Van Buren
There are at least 5 HL Mencken quotes that are quite apropos today, but for now I’m going to start with- “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
This is way too multifaceted to be explicable by just blaming Hillary, Comey, the Media, stupid racism, etc., etc. I have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that evangelicals supported this man, but they twisted themselves into pretzels to explain why he was the moral choice. Worldwide, voters are turning to strongmen promising security. I think fear is feeding on itself, and as climate change makes life harder in the many ways that it inevitably must, things are only going to get worse.
And to conclude- ” On some great and glorious the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Another Holocene Human
@Shalimar: Hmmm.
I don’t understand why the 2012 people didn’t realize we needed MORE GOTV, not less, especially in Florida! After years of GOP obstruction, people were hurting, not hopeful. The press was shutting Hilary’s plans and policies out. We needed that GOTV machine.
PhoenixRising
@Bailey:
You have some valuable ideas but your grasp of facts is really impacting how seriously you should be taken. This is so far off based that an appropriate reply would be, The grownups are talking, dear.
That is nowhere close to what happened with registration, which was at an all time high in both budget and results. But GOP tinkering at the margins saved the day for white supremacy, as it was designed to. Further, the campaign made explicit and implicit live and digital appeals to whites in the Rust Belt, and they don’t want to be better off–they want to be better off than Those People. Until we grapple with both halves of that equation, we’re nowhere close to a solution.
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human:
Does that answer your stupid fucking weaksauce ass question, fucko?
Another Holocene Human
@Van Buren: I think ISIS fed the fear as well. Successfully.
That lady Bailey keeps linking to (who is not indicative of anything, no evidence lots of Obama voters went Trump–IMO she’s a wingnut who “went home” to the GOP) was motivated by fear and hatred of Islamic extremists (if not all Muslims–read her words).
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: You are simply wrong about Wisconsin. Trump won by 27,000. Around 300,000 registered voters were unable to get ID. People whose county of birth courthouse had burned down destroying their birth certificate and shit like that. Do the math.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Holocene Human: This is a helpful and reasoned comment. I agree about Wisconsin. It’s easy to look at Walker and say, oh, well he’s just a weird GOP governor, isolated incident. But three times, that’s enemy action.
@Another Holocene Human: This is also true, though it only would have taken, what, 10%? Voter suppression as currently praticable can only play with the margins but sometimes that’s all you need. Should we have won by a bigger, theft-proof margin? Sure, but we didn’t and perhaps more to the point we shouldn’t have to. Should we aim for that in the future? Of course. But it doesn’t make sense to deny it either (I am not saying you are denying it).
celticdragonchick
@JordanRules:
This.
America has had a long flirtation with authoritarianism and a desire to punish the hippies, the “uppity blacks” etc.
Now, white American rage has found a voice that actually encouraged it.
It s telling that Trump tweeted this morning about “paid protesters” and not said a thing about the growing wave of hate crimes and incidents committed in his name.
A British film from the Vietnam era explores what might happen when protesters are criminalized in a “national emergency”. It’s called “Punishment park”
You can watch it free online. Take 90 minutes and do it.http://putlockers.ch/watch-punishment-park-online-free-putlocker.html
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: So how does some small percentage of 300K become greater than 6 million missing voters?
This is not the One True Answer. It CANNOT explain the results on its own.
Elie
@Iowa Old Lady:
Aint that the truth. They’ll see …
I am still smarting from all this so still feel vindictive. I hope the old ladies get their Medicare and/or health insurance fucked up. I hope their social security gets privatize and they don’t have money to pay for their Medicare part B but oh shit, since the Republicans block granted Medicaid, there won’t be the ability to subsidize them. I hope they and their little white tribe die waiting for their food stamps that no longer exist.
Another Holocene Human
@Major Major Major Major: No, I’m not, and I completely agree with you.
I loathe voter suppression but we are losing the legal battle and losing the moral battle. We have to win the political battle. We have to.
Another Holocene Human
@Elie: Exit polls say the low income voted for Hilary more than they voted for Trump. The petty bourgeois will not the feel the pain the way the poor will. We have to scrape together the non-insane in this country into a super majority to put the GOP down.
Elie
@Another Holocene Human:
She was also very misinformed about Obamacare that she insisted she could not afford. She will really like her world without it and she has no idea what is coming… Now HER I wouldn’t mind deporting to somewhere.
Brachiator
@celticdragonchick:
This is just the old system, the situation that Republicans ignored for decades. You must be being snarky to suggest that this might serve as the foundation for protest.
Jeffro
SERIOUS NOTE: folks I know this has been an incredibly tough week, but be sure to go back and take a look at all your social media posts and tweets and what not since Tuesday night…would hate to see people get sideways at work should an extremely harsh or threatening-sounding post come to light.
(and yes, this is because a co-worker’s rather harsh post from earlier this week just came to HR’s attention here and while the co-worker might not get fired, he’s going to definitely get a reprimand and have to issue a public apology)
Mary G
Since the post is uncategorized, I’ve decided to treat it like an open thread and share another lovely read. Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America by Mira Jacob.
Long read but well worth reading the whole thing. I am still off most sites. I have added Buzzfeed to Balloon Juice, because I am a sucker for their silly quizzes (my imaginary dog would be sorted into Hufflepuff), but their news writers, like Rosie Gray, McKay Coppins, and Andy K, who got poached by CNN, are really good.
Bailey
@Brachiator:
Yes, yes, I’ve been labeled a “concern troll” far too many times to count. It just so happens that everything I was concerned about came to pass for pretty much all the reasons I was concerned about. Coincidence?
Here is some feedback from the multitudes of white voters that Obama won handily and Clinton lost. Look at their reasons for either going to Trump or just not voting at all. They pretty much hit every point I’ve been “concerned” about. And they absolutely point to the wrong candidate at the wrong time.
http://fortune.com/2016/11/11/hillary-clinton-election-white-voters/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE
PS- I should add that just because the strategy or the attention to detail was bad with respect to getting these voters does not mean that I suggest throwing women, minorities, LGBTQ, or anyone else in the Dem coalition under the bus. Read what these people say. They are not racists or, as far as I can tell, misogynists. They are people that voted Dem for half a century and couldn’t do it anymore. Why were they lost?
PPS – For all the people shouting “fuck you!” and “fuck them” here is a satirical view from abroad. Perhaps there is something of value here?
https://www.facebook.com/JonathanPieReporter/videos/1044777035645189/
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: We have no way of knowing if 300K registered voters without ID equals more than 27K vote spread for Hilary, though. Everyone keeps assuming it. Likely these are the least likely voters to vote, for one thing, since they skew poor and poor people don’t turn out.
I don’t like the way assumptions are being thrown around like crazy and I also don’t like how this is being framed as the one true answer. Like the “we wuz robbed” in 2000, 2004, we learn NOTHING. Obama taught us how to win elections; we should listen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: The six million figure does not matter. The margin of victory in several states does.
JordanRules
@Corner Stone: It’s time to go there damnet. Go there!
Some of my clearly traumatized friends are talking about how he’s a troll and he won’t do all that crazy stuff and I had to have a come to haysuess moment with them Wednesday. I told them, this is probably one of their defense mechanisms and I understand that, but we have to be real about what this is. They agreed and let out some very hard sighs.
phoebes from highland park
@Jeffro: Great points. I remember how in 2006 we “Moved On” and elected a wave of Democrats to the House. We couldn’t quite get it together in 2004, but two years later, we all voted together.
We need to articulate a vision for 2018. We Democrats need to reimpliment the 50-State policy. I say, put Howard Dean in again, and start promoting the stars of the future. Jason Kander of Missouri is one that comes to mind. Engage Democrats again.
And forget the fucking fact that political candidates have to “inspire” to be worth voting for. The thing we’re aiming for is a country that works for everyone. Maybe Hillary Clinton wasn’t the most “inspiring” candidate, but she was the best one, particularly compared to Donald Trump. Obama sort of spoiled the Democrats because he was so inspiring.
Elie
@Another Holocene Human:
Yeah and No. A lot of the middle class benefit greatly from government programs like expanded Medicaid, social security and regular Medicaid for long term care. Most of the middle class have shit savings so when they become senior citizens, those programs keep them afloat and off their children’s budgets. That will end. They will get it real quick but it may be too late. They should have saved more money instead of buying those flat screen tvs to watch Fox, I guess.
GrandJury
If it’s any consolation, Trump is not as smart, not as good an organizer, and not as charismatic a leader as Hilter. So we got that going for us…and not much more.
I think the key fight is to keep the media free. He’s going to go after the media. Anyone who is critical of him. That is where the fight needs to be imo.
Another Holocene Human
@Elie: That lady is a wingnut par excellence. She might like life better in the Netherlands, be the new anti-Muslim Muslim flavor of the month.
PhoenixRising
@JMG: Seconded.
I am FROM one of those places, and here’s the key fact: My great-grandfathers were 2 coal miners, 2 immigrant coal miners. I am 1/113th of the current adult ancestors of just one of those coal miners. We were not all going to have Grandpap Warnie’s job. The 75 who are still mired in the northern Appalachians voted for Trump because they’re pissed I don’t have to live there and get to run around being all gay and multiracial and paid for my ideas instead of running a forklift.
They’re not wrong to be mad at globalization, but the Mexican-Americans I met canvassing Maricopa County didn’t take their jobs. Each Mexican has the job of any 5 of my cousins, and s/he does it well and with hope and s/he knows we’re stronger together.
My people are lazy, ignorant bigots who voted to reverse the 20th century (part 2: they like TV) because they’re pissed. Let’s not reshape our ideals, goals or personnel to try to appeal to them. It won’t work and we will break our coalition, which is our strength.
Another Holocene Human
@phoebes from highland park:
Obama inspired, he won. I think we actually do need to inspire people–desperately. We have to turn out people in the bottom 40%. The proles. It is hard for them to vote. They feel like their vote won’t make a difference. Yes, we have to inspire them.
celticdragonchick
@Brachiator:
It got attention at the time. Governors were complaining.
Turn it up to 11. Refuse to pay the bills. Do it deliberately. Start shutting down the smaller clinics entirely.
It would take sustained action, but it would force some sort of response from the feds to keep medical treatment available.
Remember when Bush the Lesser said that if you can physically reach a hospital…you have medical coverage?
Major Major Major Major
@Bailey: Concern trolling is about attitude, not content. So is sea lioning. You are a concern troll.
Barbara
@Shalimar: It’s really ironic that the same people who see dystopian one world government nightmares with even the idea of a national ID somehow don’t understand that by requiring ID for everything and anything they are making it all but inevitable. It’s like an image that is one thing when you look at it when the white frame is the foreground and another when the black frame is the foreground.
As I understand Ryan’s prior proposals for Medicare in the past, they involve a kind of ACA type exchange with a public option that is priced like one of the private options. This was actually what the original Medicare Modernization Act was supposed to enact, but that particular provision was repealed. This would likely put many more people into private plans (approximately 33% of people are already in such plans, but it’s well above that in many places). The main thing it would do is likely force people to pay a premium for base benefits in keeping with their actuarial value. If the public option is better than MA at managing care and keeping costs down, it would continue to thrive. Right now, though of course Medicare has a traditional fee for service component, most people who have fee for service also have private coverage through some other means — Medigap, Medicaid, or employer provided benefits. So it’s wrong to think of it even now as purely public.
I know there are going to be some really baleful things coming down the pike, and the mental health bargain I have struck with myself is that I am not going to anticipate and agonize over the what ifs until I know exactly what they are.
Gravenstone
@Kay: So the shitweasel (or more appropriately, his more competent staff) want the courts to bail him out for his laziness of not actually assembling a transition team during the campaign? Ya know, the very thing he railed about as being unnecessary and a waste of time and resources? Suffer, ya ignorant bitch.
Brachiator
This is the stupidest thing that I have read all week.
You want a unicorn or a flying horse to go with this?
Major Major Major Major
@JordanRules: Autocracy: Rules for Survival
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human:
Hopefully the last time I respond to you in this thread because you are a fucking moron.
HRC did not lose WI by 6M. She did not lose WI, MI, PA by 6M.
HRC WON THE POPULAR VOTE BY A MARGIN THAT CONTINUES TO CLIMB.
HRC lost WI by some 30K votes. She did not lose it by 6M. The 300K registered voters that actually exist and were denied Voter ID matter. I have already said that I do not believe all 300K would have voted if they had that ID. And even that they may have chosen Stein or Ra The Sun God!
But using actual fucking maths, voter turnout, and LV. It is simply impossibly to dismiss the loss of WI as due in some large part to voter suppression.
We have elected R officials keep admitting this!
“I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up,” Grothman said, before volunteering the following: “And now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.”
And so again, dear friend, FUCK YOU AND GO FUCK YOURSELF
“Republicans keep admitting that voter ID helps them win, for some reason”
EBT
@Elie: The old people get grandfathered in, everyone else is fucked.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: BLM demands reparations, we like them. Activists gonna activist.
Kryptik
@Major Major Major Major:
More succinctly put: “When people tell you what they are, believe them the first time” That quote’s been making plenty of rounds at LGF the last few weeks, and especially the last few days.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: It sure as hell does! Where are our voters? The Electoral College isn’t “fair” but we need those 6 million to win the legislature and the Oval Office.
If we know where they went we can figure out how to get (some of) them back.
Voter suppression is an obvious PORTION. We have to figure out the other 9/10’s of it.
celticdragonchick
@Jeffro:
I now keep politics off my FB completely and my twitter is under an assumed name (and even then I am careful)
Angry parents in my school district came after me hard when they found out I am a trans women and they went trawling through FB, twitter, my academic papers up on academia.com* etc. Some Bill Maher type humor directed at the Bundy idiots in Oregon was lifted from my twitter feed as proof that I was unfit to teach, and I had to can that twitter profile completely and cleanse FB as well as years of material under my name across the web.
I had to write a letter to the district apologizing for violating policy on social media (I was a brand new substitute and I had no idea what the policy even was. We had a two briefing when we were hired and…off to the classrooms!) and wait for the investigation.
I came out okay…but that was a close thing and I take no chances now.
* I have no idea what the hell they thought they would find there…I got a lot of notifications that all of a sudden, people in (deleted)NC were looking at my papers on the French Revolution and English Renaissance history.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Holocene Human: COME ON GUYS
The figures BOTH matter
Jesus christ
ETA: looks like i wrote that before your edit
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: No, we can’t know. But we can apply logic and reason. While I think that voter suppression in a few states cost Hillary the election, I think the fact that it was so close that voter suppression on the margins could do it means that we need to take a good look at a lot of things.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: Great. You solved 1/10 of a 10 part problem. That’s not even a D grade, still an F on your unfinished homework.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: I think the fact that it was so close that voter suppression on the margins could do it means that we need to take a good look at a lot of things
This.
Barbara
@Another Holocene Human: I agree with this. In deconstructing not just this election, but prior ones, I see a few patterns:
1. Every Dem elected from 1976 forward was some kind of fresh or new outsider (although that term is exaggerated since anyone who runs has to have a base of institutional support).
2. Every candidate with the exception of Ronald Reagan who ran again as the “also ran” from the prior election cycle lost — Dole, McCain, Romney, and now, Clinton. I think that this trend is stronger now because mass media rules us in a way that it did not in prior generations. Nonetheless, repeat candidates have usually lost even before the last 50 years (Nixon is one who did not). Maybe the reasons for the first loss are not accidental. We have to consider this in nominating anyone.
3. With the exception of Carter — a cycle that has to be viewed as unique — Dem “managerial” nominees have not won. E.g., Dukakis.
4. Primaries should be a boxing match. Every time. People nominate the candidate. The DNC should encourage as many credible candidates to run as possible. The person who might have run this year but probably will not now is one of my favorite elected officials, Al Franken. He has neither Clinton’s nor Sanders’ baggage.
laura
@gene108: every County a Shelby County.
phoebes from highland park
@Another Holocene Human: But we have to inspire them to see their part in the greater good world and that they have to vote to have it. If you use a single person as inspiration, you run into real trouble after his term ends!
goblue72
You were wrong during the primary. You were wrong during the general election. And you are wrong now. Again. People who were wrong should be listening to the critics who were right.
Will there be an election in 2018? Of course. Jesus H. Christ, go open an American history textbook. The 19th century in this country was an entire shitshow for most of that century. We have an entire stretch between the end of the Civil War until somewhere around Teddy Roosevelt with a string of no-name bench warmers in the White House as robber barons, Eastern banking elites, urban machine goons, varying clumps of xenophobic pissants and other deplorables ran the country from a back-filled room. Of the 4 Presidents assassinated in this country, 3 of them were from that period (Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley).
So yes. A cold eyed, long hard long at the institutional structure of the Democratic Party and its decades long failed electoral strategies is exactly what we should be doing right now. Liberals love to panic, start pointing fingers at the team that whipped their ass, and then comfort themselves in their self-righteous sense of moral superiority. We lost a fucking election. We have lost a lot of elections since 1994. Our only significant victory since the Gingrich Revolution was winning the White House. Temporarily lucking into the House for a mere 4 years (and slightly longer the Senate due to the 6 year term advantage) was a GOP own-goal from melting down the entire global economy. And it didn’t bleed down to the states, which remain a vast sea of GOP controlled Governor’s office and state legislatures.
So yes, party politics is exactly where our focus should be.
Jeffro
@phoebes from highland park: @Another Holocene Human:
Here’s inspiring (adding a name to my rants from earlier posts yesterday and today): Gillibrand, Booker, Castro, Harris: pick any two and there’s our ticket in 2020…but in the meantime…”inspiring” also needs muscle and strategy:
– 50 state strategy: a must
– constantly beat on the media to keep them beating on Trump & Co
– boycott all known R businesses and enterprises, the Kochs and Mercers especially
– promote the D’s multiple plans to aid American workers and growth here at home (massive infrastructure spending; retraining coal/oil workers to work in clean energy; great P-12 education; low cost higher ed and vocational training; drug treatment plans, etc) Everybody knows we are the party of inclusivity and diversity; let’s show them we can walk AND chew gum here.
– above all else: START NOW. 2017 is almost here, 2018 will be here before you know it, and we need some serious momentum heading into 2020.
I am already heartened at the thought of casting my vote for Harris/Castro or Gillibrand/Booker in four years. Let’s finish out this awful week, and get re-committed, starting Monday, to rolling these bastards right on out of office and onto the dustbin of history.
I know we can do this folks!
Corner Stone
@goblue72: Critics like you that advocated for shooting police officers?
Major Major Major Major
@goblue72:
We must be reading different blogs, because there’s been no shortage of threads devoted to just that this week.
EBT
@celticdragonchick: This is why I decided I had to pick teaching or transition.
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human: You are too fucking stupid to even bother with any further. GFY.
Corner Stone
I mean, there must be no reason why Kris Kobach is joining Trump’s administration, right? The king of voter suppression?
Yeah, guess no coinkydink there.
GregB
Has Julian Assange and Wikileaks ever leaked materials that were damaging to places other than Western democracies?
NoraLenderbee
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you for posting this link. Pie really makes everything better.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: Oh, she (IIRC) knew he was Jewish, that’s how she found him. She didn’t recognize Yglesias as hispanic
@goblue72: How goes the Revolution in your cubicle, Dwight?
celticdragonchick
@EBT: My school district in one of the only in the the state that has a written GLBT inclusion policy for students and staff.
Corner Stone
If you do not have a fair playing field, a fair chance at an election, then there are no other parts. That’s the part. 1:1
goblue72
@Brachiator: The reason people can go to the ER without health insurance and not be refused treatment is because of Federal law. Its part of COBRA, from the 1980s, during the budget negotiations that year. Hospitals that received Medicare reimbursements can’t discharge/transfer patients needing treatment even if they don’t have health insurance. It was an unfunded mandate included in COBRA. I don’t recall why, but I’d assume Republicans refused to pay for it.
What can be done by Federal fiat, can be undone by Federal fiat.
Jeffro
@Brachiator:(per someone’s boycott post)
In all fairness, it’s probably tied with worrying about what office Chelsea Clinton’s going to run for…ar-ar-ar…
In all seriousness, a boycott would of course accomplish none of these things but it’s a rallying point, it sure as heck would feel good, and to whatever extent it hits the Kochs and Mercers of the world in the wallet, I dig that. I’m for it, but I’d never kid myself that it was going to get Trump, Pence, or Ryan to resign, or somehow get CU overturned.
EBT
@celticdragonchick: Expect a federal consciousness law to come around and strip that out.
Kay
The leader of the banana republic appointed his children and son in law to the transition team today.
But let’s keep arguing whether white working class voters are racist and poor or poor and racist.
goblue72
@Bailey: In BJ land, when you bring up these criticisms, you are a “Concern troll”. When you are proven right, you are still a concern troll.
Meanwhile, those who spew the echo chamber are right. And when they keep losing elections, they are still right.
JordanRules
@Major Major Major Major: Yes!! I saw you post this in a thread yesterday I think and it made quite the initial impression. Thank you for this!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Corner Stone: advocated for other people committing acts of violence. Dwight is a “let’s you and him fight!” Revolutionary. They also serve who sit and type.
goblue72
@Major Major Major Major: I’ve also seen a lot of counter-arguments and front page posts attempting to lay the blame on “those voters”.
Timurid
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
I’m not sure what my plan might be.
1.Leave the country? I don’t have the dual citizenship options, investment capital or marketable skills to qualify for immigration to anywhere remotely reasonable.
2. Move to a blue state/enclave? The simple fact is that one reason I’m living in the South is that I’m not good enough at my job to live somewhere better. Most supposed liberal havens are already tremendously competitive places, and they are going to become absolute snakepits as they overflow with red state refugees competing for jobs and housing. Also, I’m an academic. I can’t just decide to pick a city, a state or even a region and expect to find a job there. The academic job market has never worked that way, even in the best of times.
3. There’s always deception, right? I’m light enough to pass for white. So I’ll change my name… But in academia, the only profession in which I’m marginally employable, my name is literally my bond. My name, with all those extra foreign syllables, is on my book, my articles, all the transcripts of my public talks… all the things that make up my CV. I can’t just discard it and expect continued gainful employment.
If there’s something I’m missing, I’m all ears.
goblue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No one cares what you think.
Corner Stone
@JordanRules:
I spoke with my mom earlier today, who has been basically crying the whole time since the election and can’t muster the energy to leave her house, and told her we have no idea who Trump is, what he believes. But we know very clearly what Ryan and McConnell believe and what they have believed for 20+ years. And we know what the groups that supported Trump and put him in office believe.
Trump is a cypher but there is no mystery here. We all know what’s coming.
And when it does, we also know the damaged white people will find a way to blame Obama, blacks, liberals, anyone but themselves for what the outcome is. Anybody else.
celticdragonchick
@EBT:
Quite possible.
If that is the case, we are off to Canada.
We don’t own property so we don’t have to worry about selling a house or some such. I have already been looking at the requirements for entry as a permanent worker resident.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: but you are a fascinating, insightful, inspiring and accomplished activist!
(because I know you’re kind of thick, let me make it clear: I’m laughing at you, not with you)
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw that. It’s like these people refuse to believe people like Christina Aguilera exist- in all her blonde haired blue eyed glory.
And still half-Ecuadorian.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
Look: there were four states that made up the “firewall”: Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Suppressing the vote in those four states meant that the Republican would beat the Democrat in the Electoral College even if the Democrat won the popular vote. And that’s exactly what happened. Hillary won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College.
There were never 10 million votes to be had in those 4 states. The 10 million votes were NATIONWIDE.
This is really going to come down to looking at the numbers state by state to see where the missing voters are. You can’t look at the 4 firewall states and say, “BUT WHERE ARE THE 10 MILLION!”
demz taters
@celticdragonchick: I’m afraid the intervention would be changes in the law that make it easier to garnish wages.
Major Major Major Major
@goblue72: What, minorities? I’ve seen little but pushback on those commenters.
@Timurid: I don’t know, learn self defense? LGB and especially T folks are kind of used to being under siege I guess.
tobie
@Bailey: The only people I know who engage in Schadenfreude like you are all members of the GOP. You’re not helping anyone with your repeated comments that all boil down to the same thing: “I told you so, I told you so.” You know what–Bernie would have lost this election, too, since small town, white Americans, who have done quite well under Obama, were never going to identify with a Jewish socialist. But frankly this stuff is besides the point. The real question is how to organize, how to help protect the people who need protecting, the rights that need protecting, the environment that needs protecting, etc. Care to join us, or would you prefer to march triumphant in your supposed Cassandra-like prescience? You’ll be marching alone or with a bunch of middle-aged farts. The young know there’s too much at stake now to rehash old fights.
(N.B. I’m middle-aged but not middle-aged enough to qualify for Medicare under Ryan’s proposal, which is for people 55 and over.)
tobie
As for Betty Cracker’s original query about what we can do in the face of the GOP take-over, here’s one small suggestion: push for divestment from fossil fuels in whatever organizations you’re a member of.
JordanRules
@Brachiator: They want to try to do something. Maybe try helping them.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
Economic insecurity in action!
celticdragonchick
@demz taters: Possible. Still expensive, slow and doesn’t really get to paying the hospitals when they need the money.
Also, those 20 million that got care and didn’t have it before will be using hospitals again and many have little to no income to garnish. I was one of them for a long, long time and tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills all went up in smoke in my bankruptcy.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
NC has had a lot of ugly shit happening over the past few days.
I have been expecting a gun incident of some sort for 2 years now.
Major Major Major Major
@celticdragonchick: Garnishment follows you. For these deadbeats it can be a punishment. How dare they!
JordanRules
@Corner Stone:
QFT
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I love the use of “Judeo-Christian.”
Jeffro
@celticdragonchick:
Smart, seriously.
I keep things pretty neutral on FB with friends and even more so on Twitter (which I mostly use for work-related stuff).
Republikkklowns should remember that it works both ways: if they’re going to spend time looking up folks’ FB pages, their own better be pretty clean.
celticdragonchick
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, that is possible that garnishment laws could be changed. It would certainly by the Paul Ryan solution.
If you used an assumed ID or fake name, it could also be fraud.
This is subversive kind of stuff we are discussing. We are fighting a proto fascist and an authoritarian racist nightmare administration and I want to explore options that don’t include going down like the Weathermen or the SLA.
Keith G
So here we/you are….arguing over numbers from earlier in the week, strategic “if only’s”, and don’t forget my favorite rhetorical one-two punch: “What did you do…?” and “If you are so smart….?” Has anyone mentioned Bernie Bros yet?
We gotta get out of the past, dudes. We lost control of the government. Threads like this will not help get it back. As far as
No. There will be future elections and they will be run in similar style to this last one and we have to get ready to win them. Our republic will survive, though there will be extra scratches and dents
In just a few headlines from this morning, I can see the seeds of the GOP’s comeuppance being sewn. We just have to get back on our feet with a better mindset and begin returning our opponent’s serve and let’s start smashing a few into our opponent’s backhand. Their game not that strong, in that, the things they did to win are not scalable. They can not satisfy all of their promises. A lot of folks who voted for them to shake things up are about to be stiffed.
InternetDragons
Betty, I don’t think you sound crazy at all. In terms of looking ahead and being solution-focused, I am following Al Giordano’s very good advice at the moment. He has made a list of good points on Twitter, including:
“My only advice right now is clean your own houses, lay low, gather information, find others doing the same…Marching around in the streets to protest a president-elect is a fool’s game that will have zero effect on the big picture & risk for us.”
“You cannot defeat a petulant child-tyrant by behaving as petulant children yourselves. That’s the battleground he already knows. ‘But we must do something now’ does not mean doing public things. It’s only an effort by some to appoint themselves as leaders.”
I feel like he’s right. In my anger and worry, I want to DO something, but the still, small voice at my center tells me that this is a time to get into listening mode and make sure my physical, mental, and spiritual environments are as orderly as I can make them. Re-hashing the election is utterly useless.
And there are people right around me who need basic human support right now. I was up half the night with a beautiful transgender kid who wants to die, and it’s because she’s terrified thanks to this election. I know many of you are in similar circumstances.
There’s a lot of work to be done, but unlike Trump, we need to be thoughtful. It doesn’t feel like we have time, but we do have time, and we’ve got to take it.
Betty Cracker
@goblue72: Your track record of clear-eyed reason and serenity has long been oil on troubled waters here at Balloon Juice. But I must admit, you really do seem more comfortable in your all-knowing, middle-aged millennial cosplay character than you were with your Symbionese Liberation Army shtick back in the day.
EBT
Seeing how little protection ER visits for everyone has, that one is going up in smoke too now yes? Or I guess maybe they will let you buy an aspirin with your voucher.
bemused
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ll second that. Randi Rhodes just started.
MomSense
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’m starting to think you are a little slow. She didn’t need 10 million more votes to win. If you can’t look at the margins and then read about the numbers of disenfranchised then Mnem or anyone else can’t help you understand.
Clinton campaign’s internal polling showed that the Comey FBI/Giuliani collusion cost a lot of votes. Late undecideds broke Trump and soft Clinton supporters stayed home.
Bailey
@Major Major Major Major:
Guess what? Winning elections is about attitude, too. Spelled out over and over and over again in exit polling and voter interviews. Would be nice for the party to start understanding this.
Consider me concerned about that.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Baud:
One of the few silver linings I had this week was the thought that I’ll be moving from Obamacare to Medicare in 2017.
Now it feels like I was on the Titanic and I just found out the rescue ship is the Lusitania.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major:
Dems: We understand that the recovery hasn’t brought everyone along the way we hoped for. We’re going to do something about Pre-K so your children are nourished both physically and mentally. We have a plan to make college affordable and if you think college is not for you we also have vocational and tech training plans for good jobs that can’t be outsourced. We’re going to tax the rich and use that money to put into rebuilding infrastruc-
UAUWV:BUT WHY IS THAT WELFARE QUEEN BUYING CRAB LEGS AND STEAK WITH HER FOOD STAMPS WHILE I ONLY HAVE MY MARLBORO REDS, HO-HOS AND BOONE’S FARM?!
Kay
We’ll just stand by and chronicle the looting in real time. It’ll start rolling downhill fast now.
I’m still grappling with the fact that I didn’t know it was so fragile, that there were no real defenses in place other than “norms”.
Major Major Major Major
@Bailey: Is this an election? You fucking putz. This is a comment thread on a blog.
GrandJury
I’m kind of pissed off at a lot of Dems for the first time. All this bullshit that it’s time to kiss and make up and “we will work with Republicans to help the middle class” or whatever makes me mad
Al Gore even came out saying he wants to work with President Elect Shitstain to combat climate change. WTF? Fuck them.
You never hear Repubs say that after they win. All you hear them say is that this is what we are doing and if you don’t like it too bad. When they lose they say “we are going to block everything”.
Fuck them. I don’t want to be hearing this kiss and make up bullshit. Time to heal and bring the country back together blah blah. No it isnt time to do that. Not by a long shot. This is normalizing Trumps disgusting behaviour as Harry Reid said and I don’t want any part of it. Fuck any Democrat who came out with these kiss and makeup statements.
celticdragonchick
@EBT:
That would be another thing if the requirement hospitals had to treat everyone was also lifted.
I could see Ryan doing that. Would Trump or McConnel be stupid enough to bite for that fly?
Beats me.
My idea of forcing hospitals to treat without pay would be useless in that event since they could go back to demanding pay up front or die outside.
Trump specifically said he was not down with that…but who can believe him?
Keith G
@GrandJury: Including Obama?
Bailey
@Mnemosyne:
If your every assumption that every white voter is racist, we are going to lose a whole lot of elections in the future. Brace yourself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
That’s all it has ever been. Norms that we were taught before kindergarten.
Lynn Dee
@Woodrowfan:
Betty’s question about whether we lost an election or is this an authoritarian putsch struck a chord with me too. If the latter, it’s worth reading what Al Giordano has to say. You can follow him on twitter — @algiordano — or have a look at the following piece he wrote just before the election: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/5159/what-happens-now-president-elect-trump
Baud
@GrandJury:
Not true. Publicly they say we want to work with the President in good faith, but he’ll negotiate with the Iranians but not with us.
Betty Cracker
@InternetDragons:
I’m glad she has you to look out for her. I’ve been dealing with some similar fallout IRL, and I think you’re right that focusing on basic human support is the way forward right now. Doing what’s possible to make people feel safer and loved.
celticdragonchick
@Kay:
Yeah, that is why the Founders tried to put so many biases in the system to keep it moored to stability. In the end, a law is simply a “norm” and it takes force to make some people comply. There is no force to make the leader comply if he or she decides to do something else.
Hobbes had a lot to say on that subject.
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human:
She lost Wisconsin by just shy of 14,000 votes. 300,000 were stolen by the Republican anti American Voter Restrictions.
celticdragonchick
@Betty Cracker:
This.
Baud
@Bailey:
No. White voters who voted for Clinton are treated as family.
EBT
@celticdragonchick: As it’s mandated in COBRA, but left unfunded there and actually funded from Medicare seems like privatizing that would effectively kill off the mandate.
Bailey
@Major Major Major Major:
No, Majorx4. It is not an election. We lost that. With the same magical denial thinking on display in this very echo chamber.
1. The echo chamber must be broken. It is not serving anyone well at all.
2. If there is voter suppression out there, candidate voter outreach MUST include guidance on acquiring the proper IDs and verification that the voter has everything they need. The money spent on travel expenses for Beyonce and Jay-Z would probably cover the cost of getting an ID to every disenfranchised voter in the Rust Belt.
3. The party must take a good hard look at itself and the kinds of candidates who are winning, how they are winning, and where they are winning.
4. The Dems simply must ween themselves off of Wall Street. They must. Dean, Obama, and Sanders have all shown how to raise money from the people such that big corporations and Wall Street are not the major benefactors. We cannot be the party of the people if we are operating nowhere near the people.
InternetDragons
@celticdragonchick:
Exactly. If there’s one thing I hope progressives can see right now, it’s that anything Trump SAYS is pretty much meaningless – because for him, there is no division between truth or lies, no thoughtfulness, no links between past, present, and future statements…nothing but an in-the-moment calculation of whether saying something “will make me look good/will cause people to notice me/will cause people to say good things about me”. That’s it.
The only way we can get a sense of what he may actually DO is to attend to the words and actions of those around him. Which paints a sickening picture, I know, but it’s what we’ve got.
I work in public health, and right now I can’t allow myself to think too hard about what’s going to happen to uninsured and under-insured persons because it pushes me into rage mode. And that won’t help me think through the strategies that need to be developed and the next steps I need to take in order to try to make this less of a fucking disaster.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
I see Trump’s canned Christi, put Pence in his place as transition team leader. So Trump Plan A barely lasted the election.
I think the real tragedy of the Trump presidency will be the utter confusion. It won’t be systematic persecution, it will be the worst elements running amok without any restrant what so ever.
Gravenstone
@Another Holocene Human: Are you being willfully obtuse? All 300k didn’t need to vote. But if 10% of them wished to and were denied that opportunity because of targeted voter ID laws, then that accounts for the 27k votes that Trump actually won WI by (the basis for this presumed hypothetical). It’s tinkering around the margins that explains the effectiveness of the suppression.
Gelfling 545
@kindness: Amen.
MomSense
@InternetDragons:
Yup. Clean your house, get affairs in order, meet with your family and/or support circle, start making plans for how to look out for each other, and gather information.
Sleep, exercise, prayer or reflection, music, and eating well are also important but I’m struggling with the sleep and eating right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bailey: .
Dude, the 300k voters in WI were not people who didn’t have ID. They were people who could not get it. There is a difference. A lot of people went to a lot of effort to help voters without an ID to get one. Some people simply could not, for a variety of reasons acquire the required papers.
goblue72
@GrandJury: You should be. Complete opposition is the only thing they should be standing for. Because when this shit blows up on the GOP – and it will eventually blow up – Democrats need to be able to stand there having opposed the fuckups.
glory b
@Bailey: Look, just shut up. The candidate we chose had something like a 70% approval rating when she was secretary of state. Then the repubs spent between $250 million and a half a billion trashing her.
Ignoring half the base? the phrases “The black vote in the south isn’t important” and “When whites are on better economic footing the race problem will be resolved (or something to that effect)?”
Seems like other candidates ignored half the base too. But you know what? We would have voted for him because WE ARE THE REAL BASE. The real base doesn’t need to be coddled and cajoled because we keep our eyes on the prize and we know the alternative. That leaves the candidate time and money to convince the people on the edges.
GrandJury
@Mnemosyne: What is your point? You keep going on about voter suppression but I don’t hear any solutions. You know why? Because there are none. We are fucked. You know why McConnell was so adamant about no SCOTUS nominee for Obama. Because SCOTUS was the key for voter suppression. That and all the federal judges they blocked through Obama’s 2 terms. The courts and the judges are the key to all of this and we lost. You are looking at 20 years and generations before that could (and only then in theory) be clawed back.
America is not a real 2 party democracy anymore and it’s gonna be another 20 years of that. There is only 1.5 politcal parties now. Dems are only going to be kept around to keep the illusion of demcracy. It’s game over for a generation at least. All the time being fed Reagan type bullshit about trickle down economics. They will rebrand it something else but it’s the same stuff. If you think there is inequality now you haven’t seen anything yet. And of course increasing voter suppression will continue mostly unopposed. As judges strike down laws they will just keep writing new ones. Eventually a judge will approve one of them. And then keep adding on to those laws.
JordanRules
@Kay: Me too Kay. I was asking during the campaign if there were no protections in place so we can figure out who and what we’re really dealing with. I couldn’t believe there weren’t more things in place, to protect the office and us.
Maybe the position was just always meant to be held by white male land holders, so no worries.
We know where these chickens are going.
Juju
@CaseyL: Secretary Clinton actually got a majority of votes cast. What we really need is a true democratic election method. We need direct vote rather than electing electors. This is the second time in 16 years that the majority didn’t rule.
gene108
@Bailey:
From the Fortune article in your link:
Why did Hillary have baggage?
Because the right-wing smear machine has been going at her non-stop for 25 years. Plus the media went into hyperdrive over e-mails.
And it didn’t help that Bernie Sanders spent months telling his supporters Hillary and the Democrats were totally corrupt.
So basically the only way a Democrat can win the White House is to be relatively young, like Bill and Obama, and therefore not have time to be in the GOP crosshairs much at all.
We’re basically surrendering to the GOP smear machine, and blaming ourselves for not picking someone they can accommodate.
Hell, the ran the similar playbook against Al Gore, who’d been in national politics for awhile.
A lot of Democrats like and admire Hillary. I was not enthusiastic on Hillary, when the campaign season started, but damn, I grew to be very enthusiastic about her candidacy.
A lot of us did.
Mayur
@Bailey: That Fortune article is a treat. Do you notice what the interviewed citizen’s stated rationale for staying home was?
The goddamn EMAILZ.
So whom is to blame for that, eh?
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/26/study-confirms-network-evening-newscasts-have-abandoned-policy-coverage-2016-campaign/214120
Yes. I’m sure there was a magical candidate out there who wouldn’t have had this problem. Let’s see, Bernie? We’ve got honeymooning in Moscow, we’ve got Jane’s (actually legit) university scandal, we’ve got the failure to release tax returns, AND we’ve got the “dirty pinko” angle. Governor Carcetti? Doubt that was working and if it had stood a chance he wouldn’t have dropped out of the race when it had barely started.
Mnemosyne
@Bailey:
I know, it’s so crazy to think that someone who wants Muslims and illegal immigrants kicked out is a racist. We need to talk to him further and find out the roots of his economic insecurity, and then he’ll stop hating Muslims.
Baud
@gene108: Seconded on everything.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
On that note! This is lovely, from a teacher.
Gravenstone
@Another Holocene Human: Jesus fuck, dude! it’s 300k in ONE STATE! Multiply that across all affected states and tell me the numbers don’t approach 6M. And again, if 10% of those affected in the ONE STATE had succeeded in voting Clinton, it would have TOTALLY offset the Trump margin of victory in that ONE STATE. Hence 10 EV move from Trump to Clinton. Repeat a couple more states and we have President elect Clinton.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108:
This is a fact of political life now. So is the necessity for that youngish person to be charismatic. Competence apparently does carry enough weight.
goblue72
@Bailey: A lot of folks don’t want to admit they were wrong despite the election results. They want to remain secure in their moral outrage and sense of superiority. Accepting that their team is a bunch of losers who lost is too hard and too dispiriting.
We’re like a professional sports team that mostly loses and occasionally backs into a winning season. We need a new game plan and that means changing what we focus on as a party. Turns out nobody gives a shit about bathrooms and a lot of people give a shit about the middle class life being either foreclosed to them or seriously at risk.
I look forward to Richard Mayhew lecturing us all how the Rube Goldberg device of the ACA was totally awesome incremental improvement despite nobody understanding it and there being real costs associated with it for middle class household and SHUT UP THATS WHY.
I see Keith Ellison is leading the list of people to take over the DNC. Wonderful. Double double down and clap louder.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne:
Hillary wasn’t inherently a bad candidate. She was **made** into a bad candidate by relentless criticism of a nothingburger plus resolutely ignoring her strengths (a lifetime of commitment, great work by the Clinton Foundation, and outstanding policy plans.) If we don’t figure out how to stop this, they’ll do the same to anybody we run.
EBT
@goblue72: You were wrong too and you are part of the reason Trump won. Just sayin’
Felanius Kootea
@Mnemosyne: Thank you!
Mayur
@goblue72: The last paragraph is not the right way to go, dude.
We need to have the DNC under the leadership of a white Christian guy, is that what you’re saying? That’s a great message and entirely confirms your statements that you’re really concerned about social justice and not about the feelings of rather racist white dudes.
SatanicPanic
@InternetDragons: i disagree. Protesting might not accomplish anything in the near term, but letting them know we won’t lay down for them is useful. It also signals to people who are scared that they aren’t alone.
MomSense
@Kay:
Tears. Beautiful.
waysel
@Woodrowfan: I am right with you and Betty Cracker on this fear of ‘will there be any elections in 2018’? These guys have no soul and all the levers. Greed and nihilism same to rule with them. Thankful to find I’m not alone.
Amaranthine RBG
I see the “relevant number” is not the 10 million people who voted for Obama and who did not vote for Clinton.
The relevant number is the, oh I don’t know, tens of thousands of people who did not vote because of suppression and voter ID laws. (Okay, let’s call it a hundred thousand or hell, 500,000.)
It is just stupid beyond belief that people think it is better to focus on capturing those 500,000 votes than capturing the 10,000,000 votes.
Look, I understand that everyone is upset by Trump and all, but please try to turn your fucking brains back on.
>>>> And, yes, obviously, its best to try to capture ALL the votes that didn’t show up that could have been expected to do so. But yammering that 500,000 is the real issue and forget about the 9,500,000 is idiotic.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: You like losing. Like, repeatedly all good and hard? Then keep that attitude.
White people show up and vote. Every. Fucking. Election. And then when the team that chased their vote wins, they rig it to make it even more so. Then they chase their vote. And win. And rig it more. Because that’s how politics worse. You get more votes. Then you rig it. Then you get more votes. Then you rig it.
If you don’t think the Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s were rigging things through gerrymandering and other avenues, then you don’t know your party history.
If you aren’t figuring out how to get THEIR vote, you are doing it wrong. Because even with Obama at the head of the ticket generating completely outsized nonwhite voter participation, we only won House seats ONCE, because Bush melted everything down. Only took 2 years before that ended.
This isn’t church and this isn’t about morality. This is politics which is about winning elections.
dogwood
@celticdragonchick:
Is that where the KKK held a rally?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@gene108: You’re ignoring the other side – Trump used books and TV to build himself up as some kind of comic book super hero businessman and get a lot of people to believe it as real.
Literally, everything we see as disqualifying in him – sexism, lazy, dishonest, his voters see as “depth to his character” Think Tony Stark from Ironman.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That is a beautiful thing.
Alain the site fixer
@Major Major Major Major: let’s talk. Great idea
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Then who is he going to waterboard if we’re not at
“war”?
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: Safety pins as well. (h/p MomSense IIRC)
GrandJury
I don’t buy any of it that it had anything to do with the candidate. Hillary had baggage but Jesus titty fucking christ Trump was the worst possible candidate imaginable. If we cannot win against that guy (Regardless of our candidate) how could that have even been the real problem. Seriously! There were some who were saying Trump could win well before all the mud slinging and emails. So I don’t buy it that friggin emails had anything to do with it. If it wasn’t emails then they would have found some other excuse.
Also this idea people are wanking about that people wanted change and Hillary was more of the same. Total nonsense. If that were the case why did all those cobwebed asshole Republican senators and congressmen win re-election? So this whole “people wanted change” media circle jerk is bullshit as well.
goblue72
@EBT: Because I voted for Sanders in the primary? I didn’t vote for him because I thought he’d win. I voted for him to send a message heading to the general. Clinton campaign ignored it. They saw Sanders as a brush fire they needed to put out and mollify just long enough to make it go away. I voted for her in the GE. Its not like I stayed home.
Mary G
@GrandJury: Uh, ever hear of lying?
SatanicPanic
@Omnes Omnibus: and here I was just wearing them to show how punk rock I am. Works for me!
Kathleen
@Gravenstone: It was slow motion but remember how President Obama was stonewalled by Congress to the drumbeat of a critical media? It was orchestrated flawlessly. Hatred for “The Others” is a powerful drug. I have another opinions about how Obama and Clinton were undermined but don’t want to offer those here.
Mnemosyne
@GrandJury:
It’s been THREE DAYS since the election.
Three. Days.
You may be ready to roll over and give up, but I’m not.
The Republicans are going to shit the bed continuously for the next two years. We need to start getting ready NOW to get Democratic candidates in place for 2018, and to find people to run at the state level in all of the places we just missed this year.
Amaranthine RBG
@MomSense:
Yes, she did not need 10,000,000 more votes to win. But it is better to worry about the gaping hole in the hull rather than the rain coming down on deck.
Once all the votes are in and the demographic data and exit polls are all meshed – the work will begin to try to find out why 10,000,000 voters turned out for Obama but not Clinton.
Yes, obviously, activists need to work against voter suppression. But attributing the loss to that and refusing to do the hard work of discerning a path towards victory next time is short-sighted, to say the least.
Bailey
@gene108: @gene108:
You know why they went into hyperdrive on her emails?
1. What she did was wrong. Yes, let’s just admit it. We can disagree to what shade of outrage one should have over it, but it was wrong.
2. After walking into that pretty obvious beartrap, the standard Clinton response was to deflect, ignore, and hope it will go away. That obviously didn’t work. (And, note, Bernie was the one candidate NOT talking about her damn emails.) When she did finally surface to address the issue, her answers were dissembling and in contradiction to both IG and FBI findings. In short, she helped turned a 2-3 month story into a 15-month one.
Meanwhile, everyone here shouted “nothingburger! nothingburger!,” completely oblivious as to how this was playing in the real world. Echo. Chamber.
It just so happened that Wikileaks reveals backed up some of his concerns. Obviously these concerns resonated with voters. Please just understand that. Clinton knowingly spent time chowing down at the Wall Street trough, sending messages to them she would never repeat to the electorate.
It just so happened that Wilileaks reveals showed the relationship between the foundation and the State Department did not have the closed door policy it needed to have, for appearances sake. In fact, we learn that some employees are concurrently employees of the State Department AND a consulting group for the Foundation. Please understand how this looks to people.
That might be a good approach overall. It’s not like GOP candidates that have been in play forever win national elections either. Can’t even think of who the last one was, going back to early 20th century.
They’re doing the same thing. This is truly a “both sides do it.” Question is, can Dems wise up and realize that candidates with decades of baggage—NO MATTER HOW THEY ACQUIRED IT—are not good candidates to push forward with?
Yes, a lot of Democrats do like and admire Hillary. I like and admire her, though was not enthusiastic about her campaign because I have long realized that while a lot of Democrats like and admire her, an equal amount, if not more, people neither like nor admire her and would not vote for her under any circumstance. Her unfavorables were disastrously high and her ceiling of support was always going to make this election a squeaker, if at all possible.
Not enough did.
Miss Bianca
@glory b: Can I get an a-fucking-men?
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: That is NOT what those exit polls show. I keep seeing this trotted about in progressive circles post-election. The voting breakdowns are by income only that I have seen. I have not seen income cross-tabulated by race. Clinton won a LOT of black and brown votes compare to Trump. And African-American and Latino households, statistically, are much poorer than white households. If you have lot more AA and Latino households voting Clinton than Trump, then you will get the result that Clinton’s voters were, on average, lower income than Trump voters.
That is not the same thing as saying that amongst the voting group for each candidate, that Clinton got the WHITE working class vote merely because her total voters en masse, were lower income than Trump.
Amaranthine RBG
@goblue72:
That’s the way grown ups look at this.
Unfortunately, some people think this is all some form of therapy where the goal is to just scream about how right they are and how evil the world is.
Assholes.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Timurid: well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a grad student, approaching 40, who will probably never find a job in my field and there is no point trying to get into academia for the reasons you’ve stated. And you are right, blue areas are competitive and expensive. It’s not gonna be easy.
But if it’s between that, and literally fearing for my life and the life of my kid, Canada looks pretty damn good, even if I have to apply for asylum afterward. It’s gonna suck and it’ll be hard, but it might just be worth it.
Either way, shit is gonna suck. In many ways, I’m in the same boat as you. I can also pass as completely white, but my husband (Anglo last name but very obviously Latino), father (looks Latino, Spanish last name) and brother (light but Spanish last name) will not. Mom is white, but has a Spanish last name so she’s at risk too (think “race traitor” label). My daughter might be okay, but Latin people know she is Latin right away. I’m the only one would could be okay, but that is not good enough. Safety will always be first to me. So first step, Canada. Even if I have to walk there.
Major Major Major Major
@Alain the site fixer: Email me :) it’s my real one
Kathleen
@geg6: I hear you.
Amaranthine RBG
Maybe this is the question people should ask themselves: Do you want Clinton to be the candidate in 2020?
Yes or no.
If she is a fine and dandy candidate the first time, then why not?
If the only problem here is a couple of hundred thousand votes that were suppressed by voter ID and intimidation, then surely 4 years is enough time to reach out to people and make sure they are properly registered and have photo IDs, right? Piece of cake.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amaranthine RBG:
But no one is doing that. Acknowledging voter suppression is key states is a part of figuring out what went wrong.
gene108
@goblue72:
And what is your constructive alternative? Bernie lost in the primaries by a good margin. When it was clear he was not going to win, instead of saying “Let’s all back the Democrats”, he spent months saying Hillary was corrupt and reinforcing lies about her.
Most people don’t give a shit about anything but themselves. They can’t think in the abstract. They can’t understand why some folks born in the USA do not have the required papers to get a state issued ID. To them it’s “WTF is wrong with these people, it shouldn’t be this hard for them. It isn’t hard for me”.
So where do we go?
We can say fuck those guys, without ID’s, and focus on the middle class and upper middle class, like Trump did, or keep pushing for the people most of us do not see in our daily lives.
I’m not sure what the happy middle is, because saving the auto industry didn’t get Obama and Democrats any damn love in Michigan and Ohio, as evidenced by the 2010 election results.
I’m really at a loss for what to do to help WWC voters. Saving the auto industry and millions of jobs wasn’t enough. Getting the economy out of the worst recession in 80 years was not enough.
What more do they want?
And what, people will fall in love with single-payer, because it’s soooooo much less intimidating a change than the ACA.
Republicans will decide single-payer is awesome and they won’t do everything in their power to destroy it?
Hell, they launched multiple lawsuits against the viability of the ACA and stonewalled it’s passage through Congress, as much as humanly possible.
No one is saying it’s a fucking perfect law, but damn, it’s done some good for millions of people.
Keith Ellison maybe one of the few people in politics to the Left of Bernie Sanders.
Why wouldn’t a true liberal automatically win over the heartland, that worries so much about economic issues and is just dying for a true liberal economic agenda?
Bailey
@Bailey:
Responding to myself:
Arguably, George HW Bush would be the exception to this. My bad.
Gelfling 545
@Local Observer: I feel that in NY, and some other places, there was a certain “Berxit” fallacy at work. In spite of having been warned explocitly against doing so by Bernie Sanders, people felt Trump was so sure to lose so they could safely make a protest vote or that their vote wasn’t needed. Surprise!
NR
@Bailey:
You’d think that, after being proven so very wrong in such a shocking fashion, that might trigger some self-reflection among BJ commenters.
Nah, that’s probably too much to hope for.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amaranthine RBG: No. Because like Kerry and Gore before her she is now damaged goods in the eyes of the voting public.
EBT
@SatanicPanic: Protesting might not accomplish much on it’s own, but there is a thin hope an ultra violent drive the tanks over them crackdown on protests might. Or maybe no one will care.
Amaranthine RBG
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, about 1 or 2 percent of the problem. Why is that people’s focus?
Fair Economist
@Bailey:
She and her staff discussed how to respond to newspaper articles about drone attack. Absolutely not wrong in any way. The supposed “classified markings” were apparently bullet points in memos e.g. point (a), point (b), point (c) AAGH IT’S MARKED CLASSIFIED. Not wrong.
Our problem is that the smear machine is so effective it got leftists spewing the nonsense (not just the trolls, some real people too.) I suspect this is primarily behind most of the millions of missing voters. We’ll know in a few months.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Look: the Trumpers are never going to vote for the Democrats unless we agree to repeal the Civil Rights Act, make abortion illegal, and make white male supremacy the law of the land again.
You’re fine with legally removing civil rights from anyone who is not white in the name of winning elections. I am not.
We agree on the solution — winning back state legislatures and House seats — but your proposed strategy is fucking horrifying.
Bailey
@NR:
I’m sorry, how am I wrong on this when voter surveys are pointing to this as a very real factor in their decision making?
InternetDragons
@Betty Cracker:
Betty (and anyone else who’s interested): Again, in the spirit of your request for thoughts and suggestions as we move ahead – if you don’t already know of her, spend some time reading Sarah Kendzior. As I work through my reactions to the election, I am finding that her analysis is showing up more and more often as another touchstone in my thinking.
This essay would be a great start: https://thecorrespondent.com/5575/our-fate-was-sealed-long-before-november-8-and-not-because-the-elections-rigged/1576889402275-7591b019.
Her Twitter is here: https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior
If we had some sort of book club environment here, I’d love to talk through some of her work in the near future; I am looking for a place to do that where folks aren’t more interested in screeching about Bernie-versus-Hillary, which doesn’t interest me in the least right now.
Jeffro
And as a long, long week comes to a close, I see that
– Christie has already been thrown completely under the bus
– Pence is moving in, with Ryan & McConnell pushing Trump to accept Reince-frickin’-Priebus as his chief of staff
– Trump’s already talking about keeping parts of Obamacare
– Ryan is already talking about privatizing Medicare
and to top it all off
– there are already stories and op-eds out there about how eager the GOP is to impeach Trump and put Pence in place. Holeeeee shit.
I know why we’re worried about Trump being president, but…why are we worried about him being president, again? For all we know, he may decide the hell with Reince, Paulie Blue Eyes, and the Turtle and just give Obama a ring every week or so.
Tell me that doesn’t bring a smile to everyone’s weary face – you KNOW it could happen, too! =)
Keep a light heart and let’s get back in the fight on Monday. We might not have too long before a shell-shocked America comes looking for sanity & competent leadership again. I’m not holding my breath, but I most definitely am picturing Donnie calling up Barack…yet again…and Obama sighing.
“Hi Mr. President-elect, what’s up? No, no, I’m not busy…yeah, the reason we put that into Obamacare was to bend what’s called the ‘cost curve’ and it seems to be working. Over $2T in savings to the American people so far. You don’t mind keeping it in there? Great, just be prepared, those drug company lobbyists are something, aren’t they?! Well hang in there and stay off Twitter until breakfast, okay? Talk with you soon.”
(let’s be ready to fight anyway, though)
Bailey
@Fair Economist:
The content is almost irrelevant, the very set up was not only wrong and against stated policy but re-enforced voters suspicions about Clinton. Her reaction and public comments about it dug her down deeper.
Beyond that, has it really been published anywhere the exact content of all emails marked classified? Although, you know what, I don’t really care. Nothingburger! Nothingburger!
Amaranthine RBG
Gosh, with this highly nuanced understanding of electoral strategy, how did the Democrats ever lose?
NR
@Bailey: I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about all the people here who were wrong about the emails being nothing, among so many other things.
Tazj
@GrandJury: @GrandJury: This bothers me quite a bit as well. I know why they’re saying it for the good of the country, but Trump’s victory has made me feel like nothing matters. It doesn’t matter that he lies(yes all politicians lie we’re told but really?) he scammed people, he’s willfully ignorant and mean and unrepentant. Practically everything you were told as a child not to be and he’s president. However, he knows how to appeal to the wwc who feel anxious (good grief doesn’t everyone) so he’s fantastic.
Elie
@GrandJury:
I completely agree.. I am fine with laying low for a while and gathering info and strategy as Al Giordano recommends, but I like Harry Reid’s tone. NO — we are NOT going along with shit! We are gonna be in your fucking faces and bringing our opposition to your attempted coup d’état. NO — NO weak shit conciliation…
GrandJury
@Mnemosyne: I would say any midterm is hopeless. Obama kicked ass and Dems got absolutely hammered in the last 2 midterms.
I would have to be an epic epic fuck up. Like nuking Iran or N. Korea and starting another Korean war (a real possibility under Prez Shitstain).
Even then you know what Repubs will say? We should not be changing leadership in a time of war. Just like they said about Bush and sure enough the media went along and people bought it.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, yeah. They’ve got to “inspire” people. And apparently, the there’s no way to “inspire” people with hard work, commitment, care and consideration.Sparkle! That’s what we need! That’s all that matters!
Shit, maybe we deserve to lose our democracy, after all.
Bailey
@Jeffro:
This does not surprise me. In my travels around conservative social media, this is actually a reason that many evangelicals supported Trump. They were willing to look past his pussy-grabbing because Pence was the Godly one. We should actually lay odds on how long it takes to get Trump pushed out of office.
EBT
@goblue72: With how hard you are pushing the bernie would have won nonsense and she is an Odious Clinton line, I actually do not believe you when you tell me you voted for her.
Brachiator
@Bailey:
Yeah, I’m looking at the feedback. Earlier I posted some BBC news stories before the election of the attitudes of Pennsylvania and West Virginia voters.
Still, it is too early for these amateur analyses. Almost everyone, from reporters, to pundits, to pollsters, to posters here, missed the dynamics at play in this election.
By any measure, the winning margin of voters attached themselves early on to an unconventional candidate who is arrogant, ignorant, and entirely unqualified, one who was even rejected by many Republicans. Anyone who says right now that they know exactly how and why Trump had a relatively easy path to victory is simply whipping their own favorite debating points.
Hell, I could even point to some of my own early posts suggesting that Trump might prove to be like Governor Arnold of California, another celebrity who became imbued with a strange political invulnerability, and vanquished all his foes, but I would never in a million years have said that this was a stone cold lock.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I thought this was a good, if brief, read on what the Dems have done to make some gains in Kansas.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amaranthine RBG: For one thing, there is an easy fix. Repeal the laws. Here in Wisconsin, my primary goal is now to change the legislature back to blue.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Because it’s the part of the problem that will bite us in the ass in 2020 if we don’t take care of it now.
We can’t count on another once-in-lifetime candidate like Obama magically appearing to save us. If he or she did not speak at the DNC this year, it’s already too late for 2020.
To repeat myself: Karl Rove set this booby trap to go off in 2012. It’s been lurking there for 4 years and no one paid any attention to it. Now that we know it’s there, why are we supposed to ignore it? We need to disarm it, stat.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I don’t like it either.
Mary G
@Mnemosyne: @Omnes Omnibus: Yes. This.
And everyone who is saying “I told you so,” you were right, we were wrong. Now go away. This is not productive.
Miss Bianca
@goblue72: OK. Once more, for our men (not) in uniform: Bernie.Sanders.would.not.have.won. If Hillary Clinton could not win, Bernie Sanders could not win. I don’t know how you square that circle, but dogdamn if you don’t keep trying.
forgot
why did so many “white” people vote for him?
Mnemosyne
@GrandJury:
Luck favors the prepared, and I like the odds of an epic fuckup in the next two years. Would you rather be prepared and have a slate of candidates ready to go, or try to scramble to find them after the inevitable epic fuckup occurs?
InternetDragons
@Elie:
Giordano and Sarah Kendzior are my mental touchstones right now.
Giordano’s right in that this is a time to make sure our own houses are in order.
Kendzior: “This goes beyond two-party politics and you do not have the timeline of waiting for 2018. Make connections, strategize, and fight for others.”
“You need to take this much more seriously, because it is happening fast. Keep exposing. Keep resisting. Keep faith.”
NR
@Miss Bianca:
Fucking logic – how does it work?!?
Kathleen
@DCrefugee: I agree with everything but I don’t believe the media’s complicity was unwitting. Media were critical part of the plan.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
I’m sure the anti-Semitic white supremacist would never have mentioned that Sanders is Jewish, or that Sanders running was proof that the international Jewish conspiracy was real. That would have been unfair and untrue!
Tazj
@Miss Bianca: That’s funny when I think of Republicans.Scott Walker?, Rick Scott?Yes, we have to field intelligent photogenic inspiring candidates. They just need a good bully.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: And his literal honeymoon in the USSR or support for the Iranians during the hostage crisis wouldn’t have been an issue in the least.
frosty fred
Yeah, I’m done here. Will continue to monitor the front page, but no more looking at comments.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Trump ran as an openly anti-Semitic white supremacist. Explain how the Jewish Socialist wins.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Cain: I agree. The other problem with having a current office holder in the DNC chair position(as demonstrated in spades by DWS) is they don’t have total loyalty to the party position, they still have their constituents(and state delegations) to make nice with.
Brachiator
@JordanRules:
yeah, the people running on the LA freeways are doing something, too. Doesn’t mean that it is going to accomplish anything.
I understand the frustration. Right now, it is unfocused. But if you feel that you can jump in and help, feel free to do so.
Bailey
@Brachiator:
I don’t think he had an easy path to victory at all. That’s not at all what I’ve been saying. He definitely had to pull an inside flush and did. However, his path to victory was actually MADE easier by a Dem candidate who did not protect the states that she absolutely needed and counted on but for whatever reason (as supported by state Dems saying the same thing) did not put in the messaging, voter outreach, and ground game necessary to grind it out.
Possibly. However, I think it was an easier call to make in advance that Clinton was always going to be a heavy, heavy lift of a candidate rather than Trump was going to vanquish everyone and everything in his path while being wildly offensive and yet strangely well-targeted on the only economic issues that mattered to many voters.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Because people would have believed him when he said he cared about the working class.
gene108
@Bailey:
Then why did Powell and Rice do it? She did what her predecessors did. And they were not put through hell for it.
Unlike her predecessors she did not delete all her e-mails.
It’s like Whitewater, at some point Republicans screaming “fire” does not mean there’s actually a fire. They could be lying. But all people hear is “fire”.
It wasn’t an obvious beartrap. It was egged on by GOP investigations and the media giving disproportionate attention to it.
Your basically blaming the victim for getting raped.
I’m sorry, but our media favors Republicans. That is a problem and somehow needs to change. Saying every Democrat, who gets slimed by the GOP and the media is somehow at fault for “not fighting back harder or smarter” does not address the underlying systemic problem in our country.
A group of Anonymous or Russian hackers break into e-mails accounts of key Democrats, and the biggest take away from this for you is “Hilary gave speeches to Goldman Sachs”.
Also, Bernie did not let that point go. He fucking hammered her and Democrats on it for months. He ‘d lost. But damn, did he to a lot of damage to the Democrats on the way out, because a lot of would be Bernie voters are now turned off to both Democrats and Republicans. They may hold their nose at vote for Democrats, but there’s no love there. And lot of that damage is because Bernie decided his own personal glory was better for the country than getting behind the Democratic nominee.
And the Clintons did a bad job in explaining what their Foundation did. They should’ve proudly said how many people they’ve helped and bragged about it a lot more. I’m not sure, why they were so low-key about it.
Also, you do realize Democrats may well be running, in 2018 and 2020, against Russian hackers, as well as the GOP.
Text messages, e-mails, etc. can be hacked and reproduced on Wikileaks to take out opponents.
I’m sorry, but Wikileaks can go to hell. Fuck them. They are not straight shooters and aided and abetted attacks on our electoral process.
Why more people aren’t bothered by Wikileaks and hackers interfering in our elections is beyond me.
Baggage, i.e. an actual track record of service in office, should not be a disqualifier. You can’t be in public office for decades and not have a track record that can be researched against you.
I’m sorry, but I do not have a problem, with nominating someone, who has been in the public eye for awhile.
Betty Cracker
@InternetDragons: I’m interested in that discussion too. I guess it’s impossible, here and now. Maybe later.
EBT
@NR: You seem to be under the misconception that white nationalists think Jews are people.
gene108
@NR:
He couldn’t convince people in the South, during the primaries, he cared more about their interests than Hillary. And these are not rich people.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
And yet Ivanka is married to an Orthodox Jew, and many Orthodox Jews, especially in Israel, are big Trump supporters.
What no one can adequately explain, for now, is how Trump gained immunity from being called on his bigotry.
Also, oddly enough, even though Russia has a long history of anti-semitism, Putin has a personal reputation of being openly pro-Jewish and often speaks of Jewish people who helped and influenced him growing up.
Another Holocene Human
@phoebes from highland park: I don’t think Obama was trying to build a cult of personality. A lot of lefties did go for that but his message was “yes WE can”. Bernie was trying to inspire people the same way, problem was Obama’s policies behind it made freaking sense, Bernie’s were full of shit and people like me were turned off.
NR
@EBT: You seem to be under the misconception that everyone who voted for Trump is a white nationalist.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: ROFLMAO
BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: Omarosa also worked for HRC when she was FLOTUS.
NR
@gene108: Hillary rode near-unanimous support from the Democratic party establishment to victory in the primary. That would not have been an issue in the general.
I’m not saying Bernie would have won for sure, but to say “If Hillary couldn’t win, Bernie couldn’t win!” is sheer idiocy.
Another Holocene Human
@GregB: Well, Turkey is the gateway between East and West and he leaked stuff to screw pro democracy activists there which is currently an authoritarian state. Same game, different episode.
Davis X. Machina
@Fair Economist:
They already have. 12 years ago.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Can’t say the experience benefitted her as a human being. Did you watch Colbert last night? Toward the end, there’s a clip of Omarosa that is as close to pure evil as I’ve seen.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay:
White working class poor people voted for our guy. White petty bourgeois voted for Drumpf!
Daulnay
Evidently Hillary lost Michigan by 11,000 votes. Some 90,000 Michigan voters skipped the presidential vote and only voted in the downballot races. Tell me again why Hillary was not a mistake?
Kathleen
@ruemara: Yup. But I still have this nagging feeling that while Russia is a culprit there are other players. Feels almost like a shell game to me.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
Hey. Since you’re still here, let me articulate in a calm way why I’m riding the voter suppression hobbyhorse: because it’s something we can actually take action on right away. The nuts and bolts stuff you saw in Florida has to be dealt with, too, but the fact that different people in different states had different experiences makes me wonder if some of that was farmed out to the state parties, which led to the varying results.
And I think we both agree that the couldawouldashoulda Monday Morning quarterbacking about the candidate is just stupid, especially when people start bringing up the names of people who said they weren’t interested in the job.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne:
If we overthrow the prevailing mode of production-for-profit, and replace it with a new mode of production, production-for-use, all the social structures embedded in it, the systems of social relations that were created by and supported the prevailing mode of production, will also of necessity fade away.
It’s all in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
Davis X. Machina
@Juju: The people have spoken. But James Madison pre-stuffed a sock in their megaphone 230 years ago.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: I saw that. Man, it was like something straight out of North Korea. I had no idea who she was before she hopped on this election shit-show. I wish I still had that ignorant bliss.
Mnemosyne
@Kathleen:
You, too? I’m thinking China is pretty happy right now. We won’t be sticking out noses into Asia for quite a while, so they can do whatever they want.
And St. Snowden sits in Moscow after his detour to China … hmmm …
Kathleen
@HeidiMom: I canvassed in Hamilton County, which went for Hillary by about 37,000 votes. Hamilton County outperformed Cuyahoga & Franklin Counties. Dems also broke Rethuglican lock on County Commission and got a young P&G lawyer – first name Afab – elected to County Recorder. Even Rethug County chair commented on effectiveness of Clinton’s machine and how Repubs couldn’t match it.
The GOTV operation was very well organized and staffed with dedicated volunteers. I’m proud to have been a member of that team.
Another Holocene Human
@Gravenstone: So Hilary not knowing the VERY PUBLIC voter suppression was coming and not adjusting for it is not a failure by her campaign? It’s amazing how you’ve shifted the goalposts. Do we want to win elections, or cry about how we were robbed again, like in 2000 and 2004? Obama showed us a way out–we should take it.
Shalimar
@NR: The Democratic Party Establishment became the Democratic Party Establishment by showing up at organizational meetings and participating in party activities over the course of decades. They have earned the right to matter. Even then, it was ordinary primary voters who beat Bernie, not the DNC.
Brachiator
@Bailey:
Sorry, you keep wanting to put all the onus on Clinton, and this clearly reflects your own biases, not necessarily what happened with the actual campaign.
I noted in an earlier thread that the often derided LA Times poll indicated that Trump had at least a three point lead early on, and never lost this lead. The idea that Clinton could somehow protect any of the states she needed is not necessarily true.
And again, everyone, including almost everyone here, was wrong in their primary and general election theories. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still batting 1000. It makes for nice chit chat, but not much more than that. And even though some want to panic early and often, I don’t think that there are any necessary takeaways about what the Democrats need to do next time, except find a way to more clearly appeal to the Bernie People.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG:
Let’s say HRC got 5M more votes in both CA and NY. Great! There’s your 10M vote turnout!
Now say hello to President Elect Trump.
Miss Bianca
@Gelfling 545: “Protest vote”! I could spit on the notion. And here I was assuring my worried British friends that we couldn’t *possibly* do something as stupid as the Brexit vote this election, with the stakes so high. Silly me.
Another Holocene Human
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: Tony Stark isn’t even lazy and he occasionally has a genuine human feeling for somebody other than himself. (Then his ADD kicks in and it’s over.) So this is terribly unfair to Stark.
Another Holocene Human
@GrandJury:
Because the dedicated partisans vote downticket and there are more of them than there are of us. It’s the “unlikely voters” who won the presidency for Obama twice, and they didn’t vote this time.
Two completely different sets of voters.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG:
Maybe because she was not Obama? Find me Obama Jr.
If we can’t get those votes out that were not allowed to have the required ID, then it doesn’t matter. Obama beat the snot out of McCain thanks to him being a great candidate full of message, but also a lot due to Bush Stank and third termism. He did not demolish Romney. The people that voted for Obama in 2012 were targeted “like a laser” according to a federal court. For suppression.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG:
Maybe the stupidest fucking thing I have read on here today. Congratulations.
Bailey
@gene108:
For the last, and I hope to dog, final time: Powell and Rice did not do what she did. They did not set up servers in their own homes. In fact, it sounds to me like Rice didn’t even use email at all, but that’s a generational thing or a personal organization choice obviously.
And, again, we have no reporting that Powell deleted his emails while serving as SoS or immediately afterwards. We only know that after a decade had passed, his entire account was deleted. This is ridiculous. And the endless justification for HRC’s server is entirely why this blog was confounded by other people in the country not feeling the same way. They hear “rules” and “broke rules” and “classified information” and they draw their conclusions. HRC dissembling helped the matters not one bit.
What a grotesque analogy and not at all what I am doing. It was an “obvious beartrap” because even HRC’s staff knew they were operating outside of bounds and communicated as such.
So let me ask you a question — is it more important that she was called out on this or that she did it in the first place? Can Dems really be the party of the working people if the candidate is more engaged with fundraisers and Wall Street than her famous “listening tour?”
Because what I’m hearing from you is that it was peachy-keen what Clinton was doing, but it was the devil’s work that anyone should be upset by this. (And hey, if Clinton were just a private citizen, then I would officially not care who she gave paid speeches to and what she said. As a public servant, I take a different view on that.)
There are many reasons why Clinton came across as a poor candidate and you have highlighted one. I agree with you, she should have told her story to the American public and did not. For whatever reason.
I am very bothered by it. I consider it Watergate 2.0, at the very least, and certainly foreign influence by a geopolitical adversary in a US election.
Frankly, I wish Dems surrogates up and down would have gone a little more berserk over this. Instead they tepidly said, “we’re not going to comment on that.” That was some real weak tea, right there. Regardless, information heard could not be unheard by the public.
Okay. I am looking forward to 2020 and Hillary Clinton being our party’s nominee again. Whee!
Another Holocene Human
Caller on WCPT right now, Black guy, says that Obama cost Hilary the rust belt with Black voters by not going to Flint during the crisis and doing something.
He’s also going further and saying Obama should have gone to Wisconsin during the protests, but let’s face it, the organizers on the ground begged him to stay away. So I’m not willing to go that far.
IDK, it’s an interesting perspective.
Amaranthine RBG
@Corner Stone:
No, let’s say that anyone whose head hasn’t been crushed in a vice would assume that the 10 million votes came from more than two states. Let’s further say that someone who wasn’t eating an ice cream cone filled with poo, would further understand that the best approach over the coming weeks and months is to try to understand the demographics and motivations of those 10 million people and craft a strategy to get them to the polls next time while not frightening away the 49 or 50 million people who actually did show up and vote for Clinton.
Now say hello to the way a grown up looks at the world.
Now you can go back to what you were doing before.
Shalimar
@Brachiator: As a Bernie person, I thought the Clinton campaign did a hell of a job appealing to me. They drifted left over the course of the campaign from a starting position that was already to the left of President Obama, and adopted most of Bernie’s platform for the general election. The only thing they didn’t do was make Bernie the nominee after he lost.
Bailey
@Brachiator:
You should maybe change that last sentence around to “except find a way to more clearly appeal to the working class / middle class people.” Because frankly, in every voter interview I’ve read, there’s not been much indication who, if any, these voters preferred in the primary. Only that they did not grok with Clinton at all, some despite voting Dem for 50 years.
NR
@Another Holocene Human: Obama pushing for the TPP sure as hell didn’t help matters either.
Davis X. Machina
@Another Holocene Human: As you noted, and as IRC, the people actually running the anti-Walker protests asked Obama not to come, because it would have split the movement.
Hillary visited Flint in February when she should have been campaigning in New Hampshire.
Another Holocene Human
@Tazj: The white working class did not put Trump in power. Stop repeating this zombie lie.
White petty bourgeois fucks plus alt right white nationalists who never vote put him over the top!
Fair Economist
@Bailey:
Yes, this is key. The Wurlitzer bleated a nothingburger into the biggest scandal of this century in terms of airtime. How do we stop that? If they can get away with that on Clinton they can do it to anybody.
I do think Clinton erred in apologizing. She should have taken the Republican approach to a accusation, which is to insist it was absolutely the right thing to do and that there was nothing wrong with it. Which would have been correct, in this case, unlike most Republican scandals. Based on that, here’s my two suggestions for fighting back against this.
1) The accused has to stand up for themselves loudly and confidently, insisting they did the right thing, or at least that it was a trivial problem.
2) The rest of us have to stand up for them – no matter what.
I have to point out that approach got Trump into the Oval Office even though he’s probably got more scandals than all other major-party candidates since WWII put together.
Miss Bianca
@NR: Oh, you really think the Jewish atheist socialist guy who couldn’t even win a majority of *Democrats* to his side, running against an out-and-proud white supremacist, would have won the electoral vote? In *this* country? Fuck, he wouldn’t even have won the *popular* vote.
Oh, I’ve had friends tell me that “polls suggested he would have matched up better against Trump!” Well…polls also suggested that Trump wasn’t going to win the election against Clinton. I remain skeptical.
Explain, using fucking logic, how Bernie Sanders would have magically appealed to the latent leftist majority (which doesn’t exist) across the country, please. After the right-wing smear machine got its hooks into him. because he wasn’t pure, Bernie Sanders. All his little skeletons in the closet would have been rattling pretty hard by the time the media and Steve Bannon got done with him.
Hell, if Russ Feingold and Zephyr Teachout, who only had to appeal to their state/region’s lefties couldn’t pull it out against the Republicans, what fucking logic suggests to you that Bernie Sanders would have?
Kathleen
@GrandJury: The media are not free now. They are a propaganda arm. Period.
Liberal
@Shalimar: lol. Just random, modest folks who worked their way up the party ladder, not having anything to do with money or power.
Elizabeth
@SatanicPanic: that didn’t stop anyone back in the 30s and 40s.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
Except that was as wrong as the mainstream polls, because nationally Clinton won by 1-2 percent. Their poll was off 4-5 percent, which is a humdinger. Trump is president because of shifts in a couple of states, which wasn’t predicted by the Times poll.
NR
@Miss Bianca:
Russ Feingold and Zephyr Teachout had the drag of an absolutely horrible candidate at the top of the ticket bringing them down.
You are assuming that just because an attack is made, it automatically works.
In fact, you are assuming a great many things. The point is you don’t know what would have happened with Bernie as the candidate, and to claim you do is either dishonesty or stupidity. Or both.
Fair Economist
@Miss Bianca:
The real killer is that Bernie’s signature issue, single-payer, went down in blue-leaning Colorado by 80% to 20%. Yeah, Bernie would have been obliterated. They wouldn’t even had had to smear him – just tie his own plan around his neck and watch him go down. They even would have gotten to run an “issue” campaign in the process.
Bailey
@Fair Economist:
Maybe. I have no idea if HRC has the overall presence to pull something like that off since it is pretty off-brand for her. (On-brand being a tendency to just hunker down and let storm clouds pass.) I also don’t know how that would look when the FBI report says something entirely different.
You won’t get any argument from me regarding Trump. Of course he’s a horror. I just don’t know if what works for him would work for HRC and/or if what his voters will accept are what HRC’s voters would accept.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG: Actually, we do not have to assume that. HRC lost three states, MI, WI, PA by under 100K votes. All had restrictive voter laws in place. And even though PA’s were overturned by courts, people on the ground ignored that and enforced them anyway.
You do not seem to be getting it. HRC won the popular vote by a margin larger than Gore v Bush. If Trump wins TX or FL by 5M+ votes over HRC it does not get him any more EV’s.
HRC won the popular vote. Comparing her turnout total (while the total vote count is not yet out, BTW) to Obama is irrelvant. She needed those suppressed votes in those specific states.
HRC won the popular vote. I would prefer focusing on removing/repealing the voter suppression laws in place that were used to target the states above as well as NC and a few others.
We can’t help it if some number of voters decide to not vote that election. Making it possible for all the ones who do want to vote, but can’t, is important.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Okay, that’s fair, but all I’ve seen so far is that we’ve taken that issue on in the courts and we’ve lost. Even if we do win, we’ll lose at the Supreme Court. This is not an easy win. It’s a lot “easier” to get our voters to come out and vote for us. We will probably spend this GENERATION fighting for universal suffrage. I just don’t share your optimism that we can quickly fix this.
Brachiator
@Bailey:
Because, frankly, you’re reading this stuff with an anti-Clinton bias. You have a conclusion in mind, and interpret the evidence to support it. Of course, there is no way to run the election again to test it.
Another thing that I see clearly in voter interviews, especially those who were strongly pro-Trump is a sad bias against Obama. Some white voters, even some of those who said that they had voted for him before, saw it as a negative that Clinton was running on Obama’s record. There was not much that she could do to shake this, and it even made it negative to have the Obamas and Bill Clinton come out and campaign for her.
In short, there are multiple reasons for the Democrats loss. And my bias is that one of the biggest problems was bad data. The polling that the Democrats (and everyone else used) did not accurately reflect voter sentiment. And if your maps don’t identify the terrain accurately, and do not accurately show the forces against you, your entire enterprise is doomed from the start.
Elizabeth
@Bailey: Wisconsin wasn’t a solid blue state. Michigan isn’t either. PA was barely at that.
The people who used to live there and vote reliably blue either moved due to work or they died.
Fair Economist
@gene108:
Word, man! Well said!
El Caganer
@Fair Economist: I think this is also tied to the appalling way Our Liberal Media normalized Trump’s behavior. Here was a candidate whose known history and recorded remarks should have disqualified him from running for the local school board; instead, OLM took an ignorant, bullying, con-artist oaf and tried to turn him into some sort of political Dirty Harry: “He may not play by the rules, but he Gets The Job Done.” He does indeed not play by the rules, but the only job he gets done is putting his tiny fingers on women’s bodies and everybody’s wallet. I don’t know what the answer to that is.
Another Holocene Human
@NR: No, it didn’t help. I don’t think Obama thought he had a choice. Strategically he was doing the right thing, it just doesn’t play well domestically and his “just trust me” did not play well with organized labor. Cynically, Hilary should have just run loudly against it. She did come out against it but quietly. I doubt many college educated voters would have broken with her over that but it might have gotten some workers on her side. It’s what they wanted to hear.
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: I know Hilary visited Flint. The caller’s thesis was that OBAMA didn’t jump in the way he should have and depressed the AA vote in the rust belt as a result. I think the caller was from MI or WI? Anyway, it was an interesting take.
Davis X. Machina
@Brachiator: People who were pissed because Obama was president, and people who were pissed Obama wasn’t running — hey, I bet that coalition could win, albeit narrowly, a presidential election, given the way we do them.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
Modern elections are about turnout. If you run the mainstream polls with the actual turnout, I’ll bet you get the actual result. Preferences are probably measured pretty accurately. The problem is that turnout inclination isn’t something a poll can measure very well. Even the voters themselves normally don’t realize how motivated they are.
Another Holocene Human
@NR: Feingold losing is more underlining to the notion that WI is lost. Perhaps because of Walker’s dirty tricks, but lost all the same.
Davis X. Machina
@El Caganer: This is not new. I was told, repeatedly, that the best warrant for the Supreme Court handing the election to Bush was that “he wanted it bad enough to steal it, and you need that kind of determination in a president.”
Mnemosyne
FWIW, The NY Times is reporting that Hillary is on track to win the popular vote by 2 million.
So it’s more like 4 to 8 million “missing” votes. Definitely not 10 million.
Amaranthine RBG
@Corner Stone:
I guess then you think that smart campaigns don’t spend much time or effort on GOTV operations – I mean, heck, some people just decide not to vote, whatta ya gonna do? Right?
Fair Economist
@Another Holocene Human:
Based on her second autobiography, she should have. She said ISDS provisions were unacceptable. I agree it would have helped if she’d said that immediately. My assumption is that she didn’t want to piss off Obama, who was really invested in the TPP for reasons I don’t understand at all.
Miss Bianca
@Fair Economist: Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. And if Amendment 69 *had* passed? Well, without the federal subsidies provided by Obamacare, it would have been dead in the water. Finito before it began. That’s why I tore my hair out over all the Bernie-or-Buster and Stein voters in my cohort who were pushing this – it’s like, “fuck, people. You don’t get Hillary Clinton elected and it’s ALL over.”
How did NR put it? “Fucking logic, how does it work?”
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
Let’s see is 8 million greater than 300,000? We’ll have to thumb suck on that one for a while.
Kathleen
@Mnemosyne: Ah, yes. St. Snowden.
Elizabeth
Davis X. Machina
@Another Holocene Human: The people on the ground in Flint were split — some didn’t want O to show because it would have given Snyder license to write the whole shitshow off as a partisan circus.
Pretty much the same dynamic as the Madison occupations. Jesse Jackson faced it all the time in the 80’s and 90’s.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabeth:
This. A lot of those greatest gen Dem voters have passed away since 2008. The bitter, spiteful Silent Gen is in control now.
Obama took the GOP by surprise with his combo of Greatest Gen swing voters who were disgusted with W, and AA voters who registered for the first time, many of whom have now become regular midterm voters–the base–they just aren’t enough in numbers to outnumber old, angry whites. His other secret ingredient was unlikely voters. He had to work really hard to get them to vote. There is no easy button. You have to have the right candidate and work really hard to get them to vote. They are lower income. You have to get past the media or work the media to get out your message to them, but you can’t cheat and Bernie around because core Dem primary voters will reject you.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
As I said a little earlier, I am fully confident that this crew is going to shit the bed well before the 2018 election. If we can have candidates ready for a change election, we might be able to party like it’s 2006 or (God willing) 2010 in reverse.
Miss Bianca
@NR:
Same back at you, bud. Same back at you.
Davis X. Machina
@Fair Economist:
At that altitude, the false consciousness is something wicked.
Another Holocene Human
@Fair Economist: Obama didn’t want China in the driver’s seat on Pacific trade. He’s not wrong, either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: Jewish and Atheist would have been far down the list of reasons Bernie would lose. First would’ve been “Raise your taxes”. And the only idea I ever heard him express on foreign policy was that the US needs to stop favoring Israel so absurdly and get back to the role of honest broker. I agree, but that, combined with all the other shit* would’ve been fatal.
* and that’s without anyone ever having run an oppo campaign on him.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabeth: Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: I was a part of the Madison protests in 2011. We did not want Obama there. It would have made the fight Obama vs Walker. We wanted the fight to be the People vs Walker.
jah
regarding the 300k voters in Wisconsin without ID. The court that made this finding said it was 330k eligible voters without ID, not 330k registered voters. The Nation reported it as registered voters in an article, but go back and look at their source and its eligible voters. The counties that saw the most drop off in D votes were not Milwaukee (down 12%) or Dane (actually up), it was pretty much all the other counties in the state where Clinton was consistently 20% off 2012 numbers.
gene108
@Bailey:
Look, the reason I think e-mails are not a problem is (1) I do not want to fucking buy into right-wing smears and pull out a candidate, who is subject to those smears, and (2) she did not break any laws. The requirement that everyone at State use government e-mails was only adopted after she left.
The main reason e-mails became an issue is because the State Department modified its record keeping rules and requested e-mails be handed over from previous Sec.’s of State.
Turns out Hillary was the only Sec of State, in the e-mail era, to actually have saved her e-mails. But screw, let’s fuck with her for good record keeping.
It was a fair campaign issue, but damn, Bernie did not just use it as a campaign issue. He used it to disparage the entire Democratic Party and Hillary. He did a lot of lasting damage.
It costs money to run for office. How do you avoid fundraisers? And who has the money? $27 dollar donations only get you so far. I don’t see how you can run a campaign, the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, without engaging moneyed interests.
And yes, I think you can gladhand with Wall Street and still be for the working man. We are not a Communist revolutionary society, who is going to murder all the rich people.
Becoming rich or meeting rich people does not mean you cast aside your humanity.
If Democrats were the lapdogs of the rich, they would have spent decades pushing for universal healthcare or now raising the minimum wage to $12 or $15/hr or pushing for ways to reduce student loan debt and make college more affordable.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Which states are those 8 million voters in? List them. Are they evenly distributed among all 50 states? Are there more in some states than in others?
Omnes Omnibus
@jah: Correction noted. Should also note that WI has same day registration.
Betty Cracker
Attention anyone who wanted to discuss the actual topic of the post instead of participating in the shit-show that evolved (for which I apologize — totally my fault), stay tuned. I’m going to make another attempt in a new thread, probably in a day or two. I will post a warning in that post that comments will be a primary relitigation / election rehash-free zone. Thanks. And sorry.
Corner Stone
@Amaranthine RBG: God damn but you are willfully dumb.
Fair Economist
@Another Holocene Human:
Sidetracking, but I don’t agree. Half of the economy in the TPP is us. Half the rest is Japan, which isn’t going to get kissy with China. Half of what’s left over after that is Canada and Mexico. So the TPP is only keeping China from making deals from a couple of smaller Pacific Rim nations like Malaysia and Chile whose total economies are less than California’s. I don’t see how that’s even vaguely worth the massive sovereignty damage from the ISDS provisions, or spreading our kooky patent and copyright laws to the Pacific Rim.
Monala
@Bailey: Nixon and Reagan had all run for president before winning – Nixon in 1960 and Reagan in 1976. George W Bush, while not being a national politician before running for president, was the son of the previous Republican president. So basically, the only Republican president in the last 50 years who hadn’t played a part in national elections is Trump. And I’m not sure he counts – he flirted with running in 2012, and I think did run in an earlier cycle for some obscure political party.
Elizabeth
@gene108: it is like they forget what Miz Molly Ivins used to teach us: “if you can’t take their money, drink their liquor and screw their women then vote against them, you don’t belong in politics.”
Just because you take their money doesn’t mean you have to do whatever they tell you to do.
NR
@Miss Bianca:
I’m dealing in facts, not assumptions. The fact that you can’t tell the difference makes me lean a lot more toward you being on the “stupid” side of the scale.
Corner Stone
@Elizabeth: I have always hated that stupid fucking quote, and am thankful it is not attributal to Molly.
NR
@Elizabeth: Can you blame the voters for not believing that the ones writing six-figure checks were going to be the ones getting screwed?
Mnemosyne
Don’t forget to check out the thread above about Russia. Hopefully Russia’s support for Trump hasn’t already been flushed down the memory hole.
Bailey
@Brachiator:
Well, sure, we all have our biases. But let’s not pretend for a minute that I am the only one suggesting that the campaign was derelict in how they approached voters in WI, MI, and PA. And hey, another person who shares my point of view is none other than Bill Clinton. Take it away, Bill:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/hillary-clinton-loss/index.html
Until now I hadn’t realized how closely they were hewing to Obama’s coalition. I thought for certain they were really trying to grow a coalition of their own.
Bailey
@Monala:
I would give you Nixon, who actually served as VP at the national level.
I don’t think running for office in the primaries and losing really counts as accumulating a record of service at that level and, thus, baggage.
Still, he didn’t have the baggage of service himself. Relatives are fine, but not the same thing.
Again, it isn’t necessary “playing a part in national elections” but creating a record and a paper trail of service and familiarity with the public that is under discussion here.
Bailey
@gene108:
Again, this isn’t true and I’m not sure why you persist in suggesting that it is. The rules were in place as of 2005. She violated them pretty obviously. How much importance people attach to that is obviously variable, but the FBI placed some importance on it as did the American people. They did so in a far greater manner in which you are willing to accept. So be it.
Again, no, those rules had not been modified after she left. In fact, she was supposed to turn over all emails before she left. She didn’t. A very clear timeline has been produced on this. Please refer to the Politifact timeline before continuing on this line of discussion:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/19/politifact-sheet-hillary-clintons-email-controvers/
I don’t think this can be quantified, particularly since some 90% of Bernie voters eventually backed Clinton. That’s about as good as you can expect. You may see this as your particular bias though. Perhaps next time we should do away with primaries altogether?
You must appreciate how that looked to voters. Look, I have no qualms with ex-politicos cashing in and getting rich. Just make sure you’re an ex-politico when you do it—particularly if you were doing it in the way the Clintons were.
The very fact that some are still trying to say you can have it both ways is indicative of the Dem party losing it’s roots and, subsequently, a necessary portion of their base. The results show it.
Well, that’s what Bernie was pushing. Clinton did adopt his platforms this summer and I applaud her for that.
Another Holocene Human
@jah: How dare you wade into this fracas with facts!
Miss Bianca
@NR: Remind me…what “facts” are you dealing with, again?
Another Holocene Human
@Bailey: Then they misunderstood Obama. He won by getting a lot of whites to vote for him too and never forgot that.
Bailey
@Another Holocene Human:
True. I don’t think for a moment that if he could run for a third term that 1.) Obama would have neglected to campaign here or 2.) He wouldn’t have largely kept all of the white voters he had in ’08 and ’12.
NR
@Miss Bianca: The fact that it’s impossible to know for certain how a hypothetical election between Bernie and Trump would have gone, despite your claim to the contrary.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabeth: That ain’t Molly, that’s Big Daddy(Jesse Unruh).
BellyCat
@DCrefugee:
Thank you for this link. Spot on. We’re seeing the first signs already and that slope is mighty slippery — especially for the MSM, who have already slid into the pit. Let’s hope the Washington Post and Pro Publica remain aloft.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Bailey: You are right, the reason e-mails became an issue was not modification of the rules, but the fact that it seemed like a charge that might stick.
Whether she made some mistakes isn’t relevant. The defamation was in stating that she was subject to criminal charges, which was never a meaningful risk. What I found hilarious about your Politifact link is the OMG IT WAS VULNERABLE TO HACKING! which is ridiculous. Any and all publicly available systems are vulnerable to hacking. But her setup was likely more secure than Powell’s use of (was it AOL? Doesn’t matter, really) a private e-mail account. The entire issue was a nothingburger with a side of hate.
The e-mail nontroversy was a chance to update requirements and learn from mistakes and move forward – and that’s what it would have been, if it had been Condi Rice using an e-mail server her ex-President husband had available. But the media wanted to show they were fair and would attack Hillary, so they never bothered to point out that the notion of criminal charges existed only in the rectums of Republicans, from which they were pulled.
Tazj
@Another Holocene Human: I don’t believe that. I was expressing my anger over why I think the media believes Trump to be “fantastic”.Trying to be sarcastic.