This is depressing as all hell:
This city exemplifies the economic recovery the country has experienced since the Great Recession ended. Elkhart’s unemployment rate, which had reached a high of 22 percent in March of 2009, is now at 3.9 percent. Hiring signs dot the doors of the Wal-Mart, the McDonald’s, and the Long John Silver’s. The RV industry makes 65 percent of its vehicles in Elkhart, and the industry is producing a record number of vehicles, which is creating a lot of jobs in this frosty town in northern Indiana.
“America’s economy is not just better than it was eight years ago–it is the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” President Obama said during a visit to Elkhart in June, in which he touted the economic recovery. (Elkhart was also the first place outside Washington he visited as president, in 2009.) “Elkhart would not have come this far–if we hadn’t made a series of smart decisions, my administration, a cooperative Congress–decisions we made together early on.”
But despite the decisions that the Obama administration made that might have helped Elkhart, many people here have a strong dislike of Obama, who presided over an economic recovery in which the unemployment rate fell nationally to 4.6 percent from a high of 10 percent in October 2009. They say it’s not Obama who is responsible for the city or the country’s economic progress, and furthermore, that the economy won’t truly start to improve until President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
“He didn’t help us here, but he took credit for what happened,” Chris Corbin, 47, who works for a dispatch company in Elkhart, told me. Corbin thinks it will be Trump who improves the economy. “It’s going to take two terms, but he’ll fix things,” he said.
This is priceless:
Andi Ermes, 39, offered a number of reasons for disliking Obama. She said Obama didn’t attend the Army-Navy football game, even though other presidents had. Obama has actually attended more Army-Navy games than George H.W. Bush. She said that he had taken too many vacations. He has taken fewer vacation days that George W. Bush. She also said that he refused to wear a flag pin on his lapel. While it is true that Obama did not wear a flag on his lapel at points during the 2007 campaign, it was back on his suit by 2008. Ermes told me the news sources she consumes most are Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and a local conservative radio show hosted by Casey Hendrickson.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ermes sees the biggest signs for hope in the economy in Carrier deal struck by Donald Trump, which will keep 1,000 jobs in the U.S. “He’s not even president yet and already he’s helping the economy,” she said.
I’m sure it was because he didn’t attend enough Army/Navy games and not because he’s BLACK.
How long do we have to keep pretending this is about economic anxiety?
Trentrunner
I read stories like this, and it turns me into them: A selfish, vengeful asshole who momentarily thinks: “I myself and mine will mostly be fine (short of nuclear war), but idiots like that will get fucked good and hard by the Trump presidency. Couldn’t happen to nicer group of fuckwits.”
I’m gonna need a large supply of the better angels of my nature over the next 4 years…
albertZ
In 2008 conservatives similarly blamed the economic downturn on Obama before he even took office. Obama will serve as the scapegoat for stupid for the next 20 years.
Thanks Obama!
Kristin D
Yes, but the NYT tells us that we can’t be worried about ignorance or gullibility or racism in the voting public. We can’t even mention it, because it hurts their fee fees.
FlyingToaster
Look, there is not a single reporter in the US who will ever ask the question: “Do you hate this guy because he’s black?”
So you’ll never get an honest answer.
schrodingers_cat
Does the Atlantic article place the blame where it belongs, at the feet of the Republican party and their enabling media. If not, then the article is yet another installment of endless navel gazing by the so-called liberal media.
Yarrow
@FlyingToaster: Even if they did, the answer would be, “No! I’m not racist!”
Ksmiami
I’ll say it again. Fuck these people I hope they lose everything.
Elizabelle
Need to read the article. It looks good.
I am not comfortable snarking at people about “economic anxiety” because, even if your current status is positive, it’s so easy to fall through the floor with a devastating illness to you or family, and automation/robots/even more outsourcing is right around the corner.
How easy is it to get a good job if you fall off the merry-go-round after your 20s or early 30s?
I feel we don’t get it, here.
I realize “economic anxiety” is the coverall media uses so it does not have to look at harder to solve and less “appealing” motives. Despair. Racism. Sexism. Nationalism.
Having your course chosen by your pastor and church, a lot of whose doctrines would be news to the actual Jesus. It’s the gospel of selfishness.
Although neither do I commend the Trump voters. They’re mean and/or partisan or delusional. I wish they’d stuck to blowing up their own damn houses first. For surely mansions will spring in their place. With that level of thinking.
Pogonip
Richard Adams has gone to Inle at age 96.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah. That’s the question I will be reading with.
rikyrah
But…economic anxiety though…..
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: @Elizabelle: Some people seem to think that calling T cutesy names and then curling up in a fetal position is an effective form of protest.
rikyrah
But…we’re supposed to try and reach out to these people….
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE!!
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Man, I’m so fucking ANGRY at American white people anymore… whenever I’m out and about, I now assume that at least 8 in 10 of white men I see are delusional, white supremacist assholes.
And I fucking *hate* them.
The thing that’s keeping me sane is the same thing that those sorry sonabitches have done the last 8 years… stockpiling guns and ammo.
I hope I never get to do more with them than poke holes in paper a few meters away; but history tells me to expect angry white men with guns to come calling sooner or later.
I’ll be ready.
The Pale Scot
@Ksmiami:
Slowly… Very Very Slowly, like untreated diabetic gangrene slowly
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@rikyrah: Reach out to them my hairy fat black ass. I for one am absolutely DONE coddling these sorry sonsabitches.
I ain’t reaching out for shit anymore. Y’all better come get yo’ people.
Waldo
The economy will be a charred, smoking ruin before Trump is finished with it, and these same morons will applaud his every move, even as their factories are shuttered and their unemployment benefits are slashed.
ruemara
Never. They will never call it what it is, a virulent, toxic racism that has warped the hearts and minds of supposed patriotic people. They’d rather believe lies over truth and steep in hate. I know people like to blame Fox News for propagandizing these folks, but your heart has to be fertile for the seed to take root.
EBT
@Ksmiami: I don’t see a lot of new RVs being sold in the next four years.
PsiFighter37
Hope they like it when the rich orange turd is going to take their health care away and raise their taxes. Hell, I’m probably going to get a tax cut out of this…which means that these morons are (kind of) lining my pockets.
Stupid, stupid people who cannot see past their racism. As long as they feel like they are sticking it to minorities, it makes wallowing in their own pitiful existence just better enough.
schrodingers_cat
You know what, I don’t want to read one more article about WWC or MSM’s precious undecided voters. They can wallow in their small mindedness and/or stupid. I don’t want to waste my life giving them the time of day.
Kay
The economy now in places like Elkhart is better than it ever was under Bush, and they thought Bush was great on the economy, until it crashed and Obama took over.
The “help wanted” signs anecdote is true. There are BILLBOARDS here, and not just for crap employers. They’re all working a ton of overtime, too. My son is working Sunday’s, which is double time in his job.
I don’t even buy the immigration excuse. Trump’s voters’ skew “older”. No immigrant is taking their job because they’re not working- they’re retired.
Binkles
Those of us who are thinking people in places like Elkhart will be the most screwed by the Trump presidency are correct—but dead wrong if you think this will make one iota of difference in 2020. These people are already being schooled to blame ALL of the disasters of Trump’s presidency on Obama, and to believe without question that Trump NEEDS eight years in office to really fix things. In fact, I’m convinced that the worse Trump is for them, the more likely they are to re-elect him. That is of course, assuming that we even survive the next four years, which is looking more unlikely all the time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this, and the rest of the thread from Jamelle Bouie, are worth reading. Peters’ lazy, Cokie Roberts-esque tweet was inspired by the NTY op/ed that a couple of people have mentioned above
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I have always enjoyed your comments, even when I didn’t agree with them (the short time when you supported BS in the primaries). I will miss you the most. I am thinking of adding Balloon Juice to my news fast.
Kay
@Waldo:
They won’t though. They turned on Bush. They all forgot how much they adored Bush (and they did- they LOVED Bush) and blamed Democrats for putting up John Kerry who was “too liberal”.
Elkhart is the wrong place for Democrats to reach out to WWC. It just isn’t going to work. It’s a waste of time in places like that.
Kryptik
How the hell do you even fight something like this, where you could literally cure cancer and get blamed for causing it instead?
The people in this literally blame Obama for everything bad, never give him credit for anything good, and then turn around and love on Trump for everything Obama did, or things Trump completely overblown and shit. How do you fight against a tide where literally everything you try and do to help people gets you hated more, simply because to them, your very existence is ‘wrong’?
Shalimar
Having never watched an Army/Navy game for more than 5 minutes without changing the channel, I have no idea which presidents have attended the game and how often.
edit: I do remember watching some Navy basketball games when David Robinson was there, which is the only time in the last 40 years when Army or Navy has been relevant in any college sport.
Chris
@rikyrah:
I’ve thought for a while that the truth is the exact opposite of the media narrative. “Economic anxiety” didn’t frighten people into Trump’s arms; “economic anxiety,” the real kind, slapped enough people into paying attention to the world around them to get Obama elected in 2008. What drove some of these people into Trump’s arms wasn’t economic anxiety; on the contrary, it was the fact that the economy was picking up again and they now felt like they could afford to indulge their prejudices and hobbyhorses at the voting booth again.
Mary G
It all comes down to the sparrow on the curtain rod – Obama could personally come to their house and hand them a briefcase with $1 million in cash in it and they’d fret because those people have Obamaphones (initiated by a Republican president.)
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks. I enjoyed our conversations too, especially on immigration. I would say “don’t go” but a news fast may be a good thing right now.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Keep on telling the truth, Kay.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
I hope all these people lose the SS, their ACA, their Medicare, and Medicaid. I want them to get every thing they voted for, ALL OF IT. I am checking the fuck out. You cannot reason we these motherfuckers, they have created a reality that we all have to live in now and it bears no resemblance to the facts. And fuck the goddamn “liberals” and Democrats who sat on their hands and watch the right build a 24x7x365 propaganda operation that would now take decades to replicate for the left.
Waldo
@Kay: Yeah, you’re probably right. But they still annoy me. ;)
Grung_e_Gene
@Waldo: Even worse they will deny it’s wrecked or that Trump stole Trillions even as his fleet of planes barely manage to lift off with the stolen loot.
rikyrah
Unless she has a child at one of the Academies…why is this important?
He’s taken fewer than any President since Reagan.
Yet, I don’t see one on Cheeto Benito.
What could be the difference…
Hmmmmm…
oh yeahh..
PHUCK HER.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Phuck her is right.
She is a picture child of the low information/rightwing disinformation world. They be nasty.
Downpuppy
@Kryptik: You fight it one or 10 at a time, with an active local party socially engaged in the community, constantly telling the story & attempting to reanimate a civic life.
People sitting at home watching TeeVee or listening to moron radio are not going to understand. A better media is not going to happen. Ground level organizing is where we need to be.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Okay, so let’s day 27% of the American people are simply irretrievably stupid, intellectually incurious, bigoted, racist, homophobic god-botherers. Just over one out of four. They would “like” their own slow-rot Hell on Facebook as long as a white daddy figure was running it.
Do we ignore them? Talk around and over them? They aren’t going away. Full stop. They. Aren’t. Going. Away.
How do you wrest back the country from them and the other 25% who CAN be reached? We need to figure this out.
FlipYrWhig
@Kryptik:
You don’t. They are horrible and hateful and like it that way. You write them off and piece together a coalition of other people instead.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
But how do they explain it? It simply isn’t true that the WWC are doing worse under Obama than they were under Bush. You have to go back 25 years to find them thriving with rising wages. So why would they blame Obama and Hillary Clinton? For younger WWC – under 30- this is the best economy they have had in their adult lives in places like Elkhart. I know. I live in it too.
The unemployment rate where I live is 3.9% That’s full employment. People with felony convictions are working- it’s reached “anyone with a pulse” levels. I can tell just by the automobiles. They’re borrowing for cars again. They’re borrowing too much for cars, actually. When the overtime stops, and it will, it’s cyclical, there’s going to be a lot of repos.
catclub
@Chris: The desire for a strongman and hitting the ‘other’ seems to be evergreen.
Some say that when times are tough, we strike out at the other and have no charity left.
Others say as you do, that
Other people are fundamentally mysterious.
FlipYrWhig
More to the point: if the people being interviewed are accustomed to voting for Republicans, what they think doesn’t matter to the way forward. They’re Republicans who vote for Republicans because they’re Republicans, and they fit these ad hoc explanations of “reality” around what they already think they know in their hearts. The only people interesting to talk to are the ones who voted for the Republican _this time_ and hadn’t before, and the ones who voted for Democrats _before_ but didn’t this time. Otherwise we’re just finding out that foul, ignorant, resentful jerkwads are the same way they’ve always been.
weaselone
@Chris:
Yeah. I believe this may be a big factor as well. When the economy was in the crapper and the country was losing 1/2 million jobs a month reality managed to break through these peoples bubbles and outweigh their prejudices enough to get them to vote for the black democrat. Now that the economy is strong, they feel free to indulge in their fantasies and prejudices again so they gave him a finger by voting for the orange shitgibbon.
EBT
@Downpuppy: Exactly, our institutions will not save us. The only thing that can save us is us.
Chat Noir
@rikyrah: Bingo. Everything you said.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
It’s an article of the faith.
ruemara
@West of the Rockies (been a while): This election was lost due to voter suppression and voter removal. We have to act on registration and organization NOW. Not in 2018, now. We also have to put a stop to “move to a blue state”, because that is no solution. Doing that creates the unbalanced demographics that flipped the EC to not follow the PV. That’s how we win. These twats will never want the truth so we have to reach out to those who already want to vote and have been disenfranchised. We also have to stop supporting lefty media that traffics in narratives of constant disappointment and ennui. Too many of them became famous and wealthy by harping on every leftist conspiracy that no one in power could be trusted nor was a vote for the Dems a good thing that increased the likelihood of positive changes. They don’t talk about how to improve results; the bread and butter is outrage at EVERYONE who doesn’t do liberal like you do. We have our own echo chamber of stupid, we need to stop making it profitable.
catclub
@weaselone: Doesn’t explain 2012. I am coming around to the ‘charisma wins’ theory. Obama was not running this time, so they never rejected his charisma – as he just said, he would have won if he could have run again.
Botsplainer
So today has been generally shitty. I couldn’t install DirecTV because neighbor’s trees obstruct the satellite sight line and Uverse isn’t available in my area, and I gave up an entire morning to an AT&T install I can’t use because I’m not going to do unbundled services. Then, my daughter’s slack jawed boyfriend’s battery died, and they have no money, so I have to buy one. A prescription wasn’t called in.
But I did go to work. Once here, I heard an even greater story than the previous one I told about the Christmas party. Seems that after I left, the kids were kicking into high gear. Several of them eventually wound up bar hopping. One lawyer in his early 30s wound up inviting a girl who used to work here back to his place(his friends proclaimed him super hammered and had stopped buying him shots). Apparently, he got sick mid-coitus and blew chunks into the trash can (he admits this). The girl (she’s really cute and sweet natured) told the receptionist that (and I quote, because I saw the text that she authorized could be passed around):
She was a bit perturbed, it seems.
Like I said, it was a great party.
weaselone
@Kay:
The auto industry is borrowing too. I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s a good chance they’re going to need a bailout again in the next recession and I’m not so certain they’ll get it from the Republican dominated House and Senate that will be in place for at least 4 years. Once that industry is gone from the Midwest, It isn’t going to come back and I’m not certain anything replaces it.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Fox News and Rush.
Disinformation, on purpose, to destabilize the government and make actual democracy far more difficult.
By removing from the field any of the successes of government which is — after all — us.
The First Amendment was not meant to protect this.
FlipYrWhig
@weaselone:
How many Bush-voting people changed their minds to vote for Obama rather than for McCain or Romney? I have serious doubts it amounts to very many. Obama got new and infrequent voters to vote for him. Trump, anecdotally — have we seen data on this? — did that too. It’s not the same people changing their minds, it’s different people showing up.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Fixed that for you.
LAC
@rikyrah: Yeah, here’s my reach out – two middle fingers. That heiffa Ermes is not even tethered in reality. Btich can drown in shit for all I care. Some other Pollyanna go reach out to her and her “economic anxiety”
FlipYrWhig
@catclub:
I think this is true, but it’s not because many Obama-voting people voted for Trump instead of Clinton, but rather because (too) many Obama-voting people stayed home.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig:
More fuel for the ‘charisma wins’ theory of elections.
weaselone
@catclub:
1. The recovery was still happening and still spotty in many states. Things were good, but not so good in many places like the rust belt that everyone felt safe voting for the venture capitalist.
2. It’s strange, but it almost seems like 4 years is a little bit short of what you would need to develop this type of backlash. The bad times have to be a bit in the rearview mirror and resentment at being bailed out has to fester a bit.
Elizabelle
Indiana is a state where their young people go elsewhere, for the future. It’s a backwater.
That likely predated Obama.
Kay
Not to get too far into the weeds, but Democrats can’t talk about “Americans”- it’s too broad. So in northern Indiana, it’s perfectly worthwhile to “reach out” to WWC in places like South Bend or Mishawaka, but a waste of time in places like Elkhart. These places are really different. They’re not all exactly the same. Fort Wayne, Indiana is actually good for Democrats. If they want to do this “reaching out” they have to get better at figuring these places out and be smart about it. So forget Elkhart but don’t give up on all of Indiana, or the “rust belt” or any giant region or group. LOOK at these places and figure them out, one at a time. Toledo has a big WWC population. Trump got 39% there. He cleaned up in unincorporated areas outside Toledo. Be specific.
schrodingers_cat
Why do I only see the interviews of people who vote for Republicans in the media? Why do these reporters never bother to interview people who vote for Democrats. There are WWC who vote for Dems. Hillary won close to 70% of the vote in my county which is overwhelmingly white. But do we ever see that reflected in the media. No. Never.
What do we do here, we just amplify the POV of the MSM, that the Republican voters are the ones that matter. The ones that vote for Dems are chopped liver.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Thank you. That is true.
Bias confirmation, I guess.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
To build on this: they don’t think about it. They want to blame Obama and the Democrats, and they want to believe what the White People’s Party is selling them, so they do, no matter how flimsy the explanation or rationalization. And when anyone tries to point out to them the logical inconsistencies in what they’re doing, they get frustrated, get angry, get defensive, blame the someone for being an elitist snob who thinks he’s so much smarter than them, then go and seek shelter in the corner with their likeminded friends who’ll all grouse about you together for the next four or five hours until whatever point you made has been safely forgotten.
EBT
@schrodingers_cat: Because it helps the narrative that deadbeat donnie won a broad consensus across a multitude of demographics.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Then maybe they should support the party that’s actually trying to get people health care instead of the one that’s trying to take it away. Even accepting that economic anxiety is real, the response to it is nonsense.
Kristin D
@schrodingers_cat: This is so true. This happened all during the election – these loving tributes to Trump supporters, with nary a nod to anyone else.
FlipYrWhig
@catclub: I’m a skeptic when it comes to Bill Clinton’s supposed charisma. IMHO charisma only really explains Reagan and Obama. Trump to me is a different case, because we’ve never had anyone try to run for president _on_ being a giant asshole. Celebrity, yes; charisma, no. I’d call George W. and Clinton more “relatable” (to use a word all English teachers hate) than charismatic.
weaselone
@catclub:
Sorry. I implied that these were necessarily the same people. It could just a easily be one group doesn’t both to show up to vote because times are good and there’s no need, while a 2nd group of people are now secure enough that they decide to vote their social issues
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Agreed! Be specific. I agree with your prescription. Painting in broad brush strokes is useless, White voters, working class or otherwise are not a monolith.
hellslittlestangel
And when the economy tanks under Little Gloves it will be because of some magical sabotage that Obama performs just before leaving office.
p.a.
@Kay: This points to, once again, Dems’ weakness at the state level. Vibrant state parties will know where the resources should be used, and an intelligent national party will listen to them. Also too, of course, the states are petri dishes and training grounds for successful ideas and people.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Seriously, how does one even begin to talk about goverment with an idiot like this? None of this is about policy. One wouldn’t be surprised if Ermes also belives in bigfoot, space aliens, creationsim, lepercuans and a flat earth. I think the problem isn’t the hurt fees fees with the WWC, it’s we’re not hurting them enough if they aren’t ashamed to publicaly say something this stupid.
Patricia Kayden
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Out vote their behinds. That’s about it. Create a winning coalition which doesn’t need racists to win. That’s about it.
Kay
@weaselone:
I disagree just because the “auto industry” in the US isn’t just US manufacturers and it isn’t just the midwest. The biggest auto employer here makes interior sections for Honda. It’s integrated and it’s international. The lines are much more blurred than people make it out to be. They’re all relying on components from all over the place. Media doesn’t understand it. Ford didn’t “need” a direct bail out in 2009 but Ford relies on the larger (worldwide) system running. They’re interdependent. Look at where your car “came from” sometime. Take it apart. It’s a complex worldwide system. My son worked at a place where they made JUST wiring set ups – those went all over the world.
The best place to read about what was really happening with the auto bailout was the WSJ. They did a wonderful series on it.
LAC
@ruemara: Thank you! Exactly! If you got in your mind already, all that noise is just fodder to keep it there. Some of these pollyanna whites better realize that some of their folks already come fully loaded with that racist shit and just need a sounding board to bounce off of. If you are truly economically anxious, you look at what is being done by your elected representatives to address this in the local, state, and federal levels. You don’t look at some black or hispanic person struggling along side of you and zero in on that person as the fault here. Unless you already think that you are supposed to be on top always.
p.a.
@Chris: That is their rhetorical trick: when they spew their racist, sexist etc etc filth at others and get called on it, they claim they’re just not ‘politically correct’. When others call accurately describe their racism etc, they claim they are victims of elitism. Fuckem.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Pre-Murdoch.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
@weaselone:
Thirded. History seems to show us that, contrary to what certain former presidential candidates believe, white Americans actually become more racist when they’re feeling economically secure. Jim Crow laws didn’t get passed In large numbers until Plessy v Ferguson was decided in 1898. The heyday of the Klu Klux Klan was the early 1920s when the economy was in an enormous bubble that seemed like it could never end, until it did.
When white Americans feel economically secure, they look around to see who they can oppress. And I say this as a white American myself.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, aren’t there other things we could talk about?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Definitely this! I think it’s frustrating to hear a bunch of wannabe lefties come up with these “but does it work in theory?” arguments about class consciousness and the Democratic Party. Start with actually-existing Democratic politicians who connect with working-class people in states that went for Trump and emulate what they do. Like, and I think you pointed this out earlier, it seems foolish to drag a certain disheveled Vermonter to Wisconsin to talk about how hypothetically to appeal to people, when Tammy Baldwin (among others) is already there doing it for real.
Patricia Kayden
@LAC: Not sure how I as a Black immigrant woman could “reach out” to these out and out racists anyways. Not my job. I’d rather focus on helping potential voters register to vote if they live in a state where they have to jump over hurdles to do so. That seems like more of a winning strategy for Democrats.
Michael Bersin
In September 2007 I covered the 2007 Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. Right wingnut pearl clutchers went ballistic over Obama standing respectfully for the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, without putting his hand over his heart. West Virginia Board of Education v Barnette (1943) notwithstanding.
In July 2012 I covered an Obama campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:
Iowa – full circle, of sorts
It will never end.
JPL
Why give the credit to the black president, when you can give credit to the white guy.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: That has been my theory, but I suppose an exception could be made for the 50s and 60s, when white Americans were pretty secure but we made progress on race.
Ksmiami
@The Pale Scot: the only thing they will understand is being punched over and over. I want them gone and I want their spawn re-educated. The good news is without social security etc these people will starve. I am so angry at the stupidity and hatred; well theyve done fucked themselves and I will only help the people who did not do this.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Agree. My favorite people in the world right now are Democrats who found a way to get themselves elected.
HeleninEire
I’m tired and bored with reading about how fucking stupid these people are. They will be fucked beyond belief by Trump and Ryan. And they will blame Obama. Just like 9/11 was Clinton’s fault cuz Bora Bora. Just like the 2009 crash was Clintons fault cuz the community Investment act. Just like the killing of OBL can be credited to bush cuz Bush Ok’d torture.
Whatevs. I hope they all die starving screaming E-MAILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BENGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kay
@weaselone:
Another thing that Democrats need to understand is you can’t tell manufacturing people to go into service work because some of them will be bad at service work. Dealing with people personally is a specific skill. A lot of people aren’t any good at it. They won’t get better at it with a certificate or training. One of the reasons they end up in factories is they’re dealing with inanimate objects. That’s deliberate on their part. These are people who are better with machines than with other people. That’s a real thing! They’re not suited to nursing or whatever. They will be bad at it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Back when the WSJ did some of the best business reporting ever.
Before Rupert bought it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: the TV and the internet have been blah-blah-blah-ing all day about why Obama said this? what did he mean? and seem mostly on obsessing over a sign of Democratic infighting and a shot at Hillary Clinton. I would suggest there is some value in pointing out that, while everyone gnashes teeth and rends garments over how the Democratic message is faiiiiling!, it required a whole lot of weaknesses pretty much unique to Hillary Clinton, mostly not her fault, and the quirks of the electoral college, for that message to fail
ruemara
@FlipYrWhig: actually, turnout was high. As high as 2012. End this narrative. Trump got many new voters who finally had the white supremacist of their dreams to vote for. Each drew out new voters, just that one had more positive reasons than the other.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
IMHO the biggest sticking point is that talk radio and other alternative media sources make people like this feel like they are “high-information,” because they know things that they never hear outside the loop. My Trumpiest friend is a sucker for all kinds of stories like this _because they make him feel smart_. And if you say, “that’s just not true,” he’ll never concede it, because the fact you don’t believe it is _what proves that it’s actually true_. We will never find a way to appeal to this sort of mentality. The good news is, it doesn’t really matter, because they were already Republicans, so it’s not like we’re leaking votes that we used to get. Just stomp them into the dust, politically of course.
Mike in Pasadena
About a year ago I received an email from from a retired military guy with whom I served that was sent to thirty comrades in arms. The message was one sentence long, “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen scenes like these.” Attached were about thirty pictures of GWB speaking to troops, visiting wounded soldiers, chest bumping with soldiers,, laying ceremonial wreaths. I replied to all with about fifty of the same kind of pictures with President Obama doing the same things except no chest bumping. Only one person replied to me and it was a positive response. You must not challenge the Fox news factoids because Obama is guilty of an unforgivable sin — presidenting while black.
germy
Spanky
@schrodingers_cat: I had the same thought, and went to check on the original Atlantic article. I think (going from an hour-old memory here) that the author interviewed 12 Elkhart residents, and 11 of them claimed Obama or his administration had nothing to do with the economy improving.
The reason for going to Elkhart, of course, was to follow up on Obama’s trip there. But the answer to your question, I think, is that that kind of a story is a dog-bites-man, so-what story. Nobody’s going to be compelled to read it. Or worse, not link to it on social media (see Cole, John).
Mnemosyne
@weaselone:
There is some evidence in the polling that the exurban whites who turned out for Trump were the out and proud white supremacists — the actual neo-Nazis and other deplorables. None of the recent Republicans like McCain and Romney spoke directly to them like Trump did, so they didn’t bother to show up.
It turns out that there really was an untapped segment of the white electorate that was being overlooked. Unfortunately, they’re stone cold racists who want to take us back to 1860, if not earlier.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Agree. They trust their information sources more than they trust you.
Ksmiami
@ruemara: My SOs plan – get 200k people from california to move to Montana and Wyoming and flip those senate seats. AIM FOR A BLUE SENATE and more governorships; then we can play aggrieved defenders
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: They were shamed into doing so by the images they saw on their TV’s, like firehoses being directed at small children and little girls being blown up in church. But that only lasted 2 years and the backlash started in 1966 and gave us Nixon 2 years later.
ETA: Did I mention that you should read Nixonland?
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s not just that. Why does the entire structure of the Democratic Party have to officially endorse Sanders’ ideas?
That’s ridiculous overkill. Go test it out in Wisconsin. Win a race there. Then it’s proven in Wisconsin but Virginia doesn’t have to adopt it! Why isn’t Michael Moore grooming a winning Democrat for the governor’s race in MI? God, if he wins he can crow like crazy. There’s no reason to apply what might be effective in these states to California or New York.
Spanky
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: These kinds of articles are published for the same reason Maury Povitch had a TV show: showing stupid people attracts an audience. Seriously, how many people in Elkhart read or even give a shit about what’s published in the Atlantic?
schrodingers_cat
@Spanky: Fine, but we are making a choice to amplify this bullshit and enabling the media. I don’t think T’s supporters or Elkhart residents read the Atlantic.
weaselone
@Kay:
One of the reasons a bailout was necessary was that a failure of GM could have led to a failure of many of the companies that produce components for GM vehicles. This in turn would have impacted the other auto manufacturers who also purchased vehicle components from those firms as well as the firms’ suppliers. It had the potential to be a massive cluster of a negative feedback loop. The issue for the Midwest, is that these jobs don’t necessarily come back to the region when the economy recovers and either a trimmed GM reemerges from bankruptcy or other car manufacturers pick up their market share. Those jobs may end up in Kentucky, Canada, Mexico, etc.
rikyrah
Chris Christie Doesn’t Understand His Fate
by Martin Longman
December 27, 2016 1:55 PM
Chris Christie is back in New Jersey and badly wounded. He just failed to convince the legislature to relax ethics laws to allow him to profit from writing a book. Gonorrhea and chlamydia are more popular than he is in the Garden State, and the series of public humiliations he’s endured from the Trump camp since the election have been enough to make the Cleveland Browns blush.
At one time, he was in charge of the Trump transition team, but that plum position was yanked and his loyalists were largely purged from the lists. It was a predictable end if you knew that Christie had gone out of his way to humiliate the father of Trump’s son-in-law when he prosecuted him in 2005. The experience was traumatic enough for Jared Kushner, who was then working in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, that he gave up his aspirations to become a prosecutor himself.
………………………….
Yet, Christie is still in deep denial about what has happened to him, and why.
It could very well be that Trump’s first team is a disaster and that he’ll be looking to bring in some savior to rescue his presidency, but his son-in-law is not going to get dumped for the guy who put his father in prison and held a press conference to make it as brutal as he could make it.
I would not be shocked in the least to see Attorney General Jeff Sessions overseeing the prosecution of Christie for Bridgegate or some other transgression. I definitely see it as more likely than Christie ever getting invited into Trump’s inner circle or to become his chief of staff.
FlipYrWhig
@ruemara: IIRC top-line turnout was up ~5-6% (I was using the ticker on Cook Political Report) but turnout among Obama-leaning constituencies was marginally down in key places, the minor-party vote was up, and there were more than usual blank lines on presidential ballots. But I haven’t seen all those later claims in a definitive place, and I’ll concede I could be mentally stitching together dissimilar or erroneous things.
FlyingToaster
@Yarrow: Don’t count on it.
My mom asked her idiot brother this question in early 2009, and the answer was “Of Course.” Which is the last time she spoke to that nutcase.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Did young people turn out? Initial reports were that turnout was down, but I’m not sure if that data have been revised.
FlipYrWhig
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Can you imagine anyone on the right feeling shamed by these things today? I cannot.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
I think that was the aftereffects of WWII and seeing exactly how rhetoric about race took us to the gates of Dachau. There’s a reason that Jewish Americans were very active in the Civil Rights Movement.
Now that that history is in the past, our original sin of race-based oppression is coming back to haunt us.
rikyrah
@Kay:
That’s actual WORK Kay.
Actual ORGANIZING.
ruemara
@FlipYrWhig: There was very good turnout, but suppression and our lack of control over country clerk seats where Republicans have decided party over country has really been the death knell to Dems.
Mike in NC
Learned way back in junior high school that the KKK became yooouge in rural Indiana in the 1920s. Some things don’t change that much, even nearly 100 years later.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Preach it Kay.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: There was some shame after Dylan Roof.
Kay
@weaselone:
They’re past that, though. The dislocations in the auto industry already happened. It’s really efficient now. If they’re making parts in Coldwater Michigan they’re doing it because there’s a base of skilled labor there and it’s cost effective to ship out of there. It’s not like it can get cheaper and cheaper forever. It reaches a point where moving to Alabama doesn’t save them more than they lose. They’re pretty much there. There isn’t all this “slack” to bleed out of that industry. They know exactly how cheap they can make them, and where to put suppliers.
One of the reasons they like the rural rustbelt is people show up for work. It’s really that simply. They have better attendance than southerners and they work faster. People in the industry will say this flat-out. The k-12 education system is better too. They come in knowing more.
BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah:
In fairness, it is New Jersey and that’s always been the case.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Yeah, I don’t get that either. You’re much closer to the ground than I’ve ever been, but to the best of my recollection the dreaded DLC started by picking off governorships in the Sun Belt, and then the standard-bearers of the DLC approach became sought-after consultants, campaign managers, and candidates. I remember the “netroots” being instrumental in getting Jim Webb into the general election for Virginia senator, instead of a more Mark Warner-ish Democrat. The Moore-Reich-Sanders vanguard can do something similar. Yes, other people with other views will run other candidates against their people. They can, ya know, BEAT THEM!
Democrats are copycats. Give them a winning playbook and they will run it.
Kay
@rikyrah:
There’s some kind of former Clintonite making noise about the Dem governor’s race in MI. I don’t want to hear one fucking word out of Michael Moore if that person wins, because no one was stopping Moore or Sanders from running someone. No one. It’s wide open. They should have a candidate in MI, WI and OH for Dem primaries. They better get going.
ruckus
John, this is about financial nervousness. The racists are nervous that the others may get ahead and of course that would be a bad thing according to them. That lessens them. You don’t believe me just ask them.
LAC
@Patricia Kayden: I am with you on the strategy. That is the way I am going. Sure up our base and strengthen it.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
My douchebag wingnut relative reposted an interview of Niall Ferguson today where he several times made the point that it’s not necessarily about economics. He’s very definitely approving of the Trump/Brexit phenomenon, and he still frames it as “working class whites against sissy elites,” but he admits that things like econ have very little to do with it and that it’s a rejection of “things that liberal elites like,” like multiculturalism and those kinds of things.
For all the inevitable bullshit that comes from being Niall Ferguson, it’s still more honest than the media horsecrap about how it’s the economy, stupid.
Baud
@Kay:
@FlipYrWhig:
Agree. It’s a race now between various factions to see who can win the most.
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: And you can’t refute a theology.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: I suppose when it came to the confederate flag. But Sandy Hook and Michael Brown… just denial, shrugs, or blaming the victims. Turn fire hoses on black protesters today and you’ll probably be a senator next year.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Wasn’t Feingold the test case for this? Didn’t he do worse that HRC in WI?
Kay
@rikyrah:
If Bernie Sanders finds and funds a Left/Labor candidate for the Ohio governor I would probably back that person. I would welcome him or her. These state parties aren’t run by genius masterminds. They could basically take one over with not too much effort.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
This is a very good question. They rarely seemed to talk to confirmed Democratic voters before the election, as well. If they found a Hillary voter it would be a reluctant Hillary voter.
Perhaps highlighting positive media articles about Democrats, Democratic elected officials, and/or Democratic voters should be a goal. Maybe at least once a week here. There have to be a few articles out there. Get them some clicks to encourage more like them.
Along those lines, how expensive would it be to put up a billboard in a place like Elkhart with some unemployment comparison data? Something like 2008 vs 2016 or something. Perhaps a chart with the unemployment rate going down, down, down. Something people have to see when they drive to work in the factory that Obama saved.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t think I ever saw, in the endless interviews with Trump supporters, any of the earnest young correspondents ask them what they meant by “political correctness”, which was so pervasive and oppressive in their lives they were voting for Turmp.
ETA:
Even the LiberalMSNBC, at the Dem convention, only seemed interested in talking to wounded Bernie voters who just…. couldn’t! bring themselves to support That Woman.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Whatever happened to onetime prog-o-sphere darling Virg Bernero?
Kay
@BillinGlendaleCA:
He did, which is never explained.
Teachout in NY is maybe the better question, because she IS basically Bernie Sanders. She should have won according to the Sandernista theory and she didn’t.
Feingold was always complicated. He’s hard to pigeonhole. He doesn’t fit “populist” exactly.
FlipYrWhig
@BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve been told by my progressive betters that Feingold was a retread, hence “establishment.” Speaking of refuting a theology.
Mary G
@rikyrah: Trump is judging his hires about whether they “look the part” and when Christie was one of a very few big-time Republicans to support him he was welcome on team Trump, if humiliated by fetching the fast food. But now that the entire elected Republican party is kissing his ass, Trump doesn’t want to look at the big fat loser.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t know but I expect Nina Turner will run for something. Maybe she will be their entry into the Dem governor’s primary in Ohio.
germy
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m trying to understand the point of your joke. Is it that STDs are more prevalent in the Garden State?
LAC
@LAC: Shore up our base – gosh darn it, old eyes!
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I’m only half-joking when I say that’s the reason liberals keep telling them to learn how to code — not only are social skills not required for coders, they can sometimes be a point against you.
But that’s why I keep pointing out how much (manual) infrastructure work needs to be done and that new industries like high-speed rail and solar power will need people who can stand on an assembly line and run the machines. Democrats are basically trying to create new jobs for these people that will fit their requirements, and those same people are rejecting them because they’re not the exact same industries that they used to work in.
Add in Republicans like Scott Walker telling people that these new industries are bad so he’s killing the factory that a high-speed rail company wanted to build in Wisconsin, and I’m not sure how you overcome the rhetoric.
schrodingers_cat
@Mary G: May be he is looking at himself in a convex lens but the person you speak of is hardly svelte himself.
HeleninEire
OK so I told you all about “Witness For the Prosecution” on BBC last night. Part 2 tonight. Skip it when it comes to Masterpiece. It sucked.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: I think of Feingold as a bit more like Glenn Greenwald: styling himself as a clean and righteous voice against the filth and corruption of government. That’s more like — and this is more Davis X. Machina’s beat than mine — a classical (small-r) republican. Or maybe an easier way to put it is more Progressive than Populist.
schrodingers_cat
We can’t control what others do but we can control what we do. Amplifying MSM memes is a choice. Regurgitating endless media ruminations of why WWC won’t vote for Democrats is a choice.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Good call. She’d certainly be another test case for the value of fiery rhetoric, a la Alan Grayson.
Lizzy L
@Yarrow:
Waste of time and money. It won’t make a bit of difference, because they won’t believe it. If you asked them, they would tell you it’s all lies.
BillinGlendaleCA
@germy: The joke was that STD’s are popular there, so they’d be more popular than any politician(they’re certainly more fun to get than listening to any politician).
Yarrow
@Lizzy L: Has it been done? Do we know that for sure? People are susceptible to what they see and hear. It’s part of why Fox News and the rest of the vast rightwing conspiracy is successful – they repeat the same talking points over and over and then people believe them.
Put a billboard in front of them so they have to see it every day and who knows, maybe some of them would take a second look or ask a question.
notoriousJRT
Happy to say I don’t have to stop because I never started. What I want to know is how long we have to be “treated” to interviews with fuckwits such as Andi Eames that don’t include the interviewer saying, “Really, Andi? You expect me to believe those excuses you gave for not liking Obama? Why can’t you just come out and admit that its his blackety blackness that you cannot stomach?”
FlipYrWhig
@Yarrow: They’d carp to the local talk radio host, who’d get listeners to harass the billboard company, who’d take it down, citing risks to public safety from distracted driving and road rage.
gene108
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
The Right had (has) conservative billionaires, who were willing to lose millions of dollars a year to fund loss making media outlets, because those media outlets pushed their political agenda.
THERE ARE NO LIBERAL BILLIONAIRES!!!
There are billionaires, who have causes they like that overlap with liberal goals, like Bloomberg and gun control of Warren Buffet and a fairer tax code, but they aren’t going set millions of their dollars on fire to turn America into a bigger version of Sweden.
We aren’t going to win the media battle, by setting up competing liberal stations. We don’t have the money and liberals are not slavish devotees to central authority figures, whether they be news outlets or organizations, which is a big difference versus conservatives, who have an authoritarian streak in them and so they naturally respond to central points of information dissemination such as Fox News or their church.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s not building a liberal version of the MSM.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Also that handpicked Sandersite who flamed out vs. the Dread Pirate DWS in the primary.
Chip Daniels
“How’s that Trumpey-Changey thing workin’ out for ya?”
Is something I have posted, and will continue to post for the next 4 years.
BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108:
True, it’s already been tried and failed(Air America).
zhena gogolia
@gene108:
This.
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire:
I was skeptical about Toby Jones stepping into Laughton’s shoes. Thanks for the heads-up! (although I’ll probably watch it anyway)
Another Scott
Obama’s 2016 speech in Elkhart is very good and worth reviewing:
(Emphasis added.)
It’s a great read.
He addressed all these “economic” arguments right there. The problem isn’t that he or Democrats didn’t take the male WWC seriously, it’s that he couldn’t get them to listen. They weren’t interested in hearing anything he had to say – they already made up their minds.
And people who helped him win the state in 2008 either didn’t or couldn’t turn out in similar numbers for Hillary.
That is all.
Cheers,
Scott.
Van Buren
@Shalimar: I believe the Annapolis sailing team is pretty good.
Chip Daniels
One ray of hope I have is that conservatives aren’t actually, y’know, conservative about much of anything.
They don’t actually give a crap about the “free market”, or “fiscal conservatism” or “Burkean restraint” or any of the crap that NRO and the Federalist Society shovels.
Anything they like is deemed “conservative”. Medicare is not liberalism, its what they worked for; Kynect is better than that fucking Obamacare, and the F-35 is a stimulus program that works by pumping money from the Treasury into the private sector. Not like liberalism, which involves Keynsian economics.
And they like, they really, really like, a muscular government that will visibly intervene to protect their jobs, and build something.
There is an opening here for us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BillinGlendaleCA: and the Martin Bashir-era MSNBC
ETA:
well, two of the people who helped him win IN in ’08 were George W Bush and Sarah Palin
gene108
@Baud:
I think the Cold War had something to do with it, along with Independence movements in Africa and Asia. You can’t really be the leader of the “Free World”, when your seen on T.V. attacking your own people with dogs and fire hoses, because they want to vote.
D58826
There are a number of opinion pieces on my twitter feed ab out the UN resolution last week. Almost all of them are backing the Bibi line. Obama is trying to destroy Israel (since he is the one building the settlements), he has done nothing for Israel (except that 38 billion dollar arms deal), Bibi will give Trump the details of the betrayal so he can share them with the American people, etc. The left didn’t like Bush (43) or Reagan but I don’t remember them ever being so willing to believe that the president was a traitor. Or willing to believe anything negative that a foreign leader (take your choice Bibi or Vald) says about the president. And the political pundits/Congress critters falling all over themselves to go along with it.
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: But Donald Trump is kind of like a dumber version of 2008 Sarah Palin. And she wasn’t at the top of the ticket. And she was Governor of a state, so at least she’d been elected to something. How did they go from not voting for her to voting for him? Was more of it about George W. Bush?
gene108
@gene108:
Also you can’t appeal to the black and brown people of Asia to keep them from allying with the USSR, when you are seen attacking your own black people.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: Yup, that’s my theory too — it was embarrassing to look over-the-top villainous in front of the nonaligned world with the Soviets watching. That’s also why there’s that all-in-this-together New Deal ethos in mid-century films like Frank Capra’s.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: C.f. Fanon, comma Frantz, Wretched of the Earth, comma The.
germy
@Chip Daniels: True. Here’s what the winning candidate had to say about Wall Street:
That wasn’t Bernie talking, that was the republican nominee.
That’s what they bought. Of course, he’s appointing Goldman CEOs to his cabinet, so that’s all out the window. But that quote is what they thought they were getting.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Of course not. That would mean ultimately pushing them into saying something racist, especially if you correct the falsehoods that’re sure to come gushing out of their mouths, and most earnest young correspondents, much less the pundits at the top, simply don’t do that. Do it enough times, and it’ll break the cherished myth that Joe Q. White Citizen doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.
tpherald
And yet we all have to keep getting lectured about how not all Republicans are racists … Fuck em
Botsplainer
@Baud:
The legal community of the 50s and early 60s was a far better group than the folks now. Those at the pinnacles of the legal world had been through career privation in the Depression and had honed their skills as young lawyers while battling on behalf of labor and reds. They were tough and disciplined, and once at a career point when in positions of authority, recognized that challenges to existing norms weren’t the end of the world. As trial judges, senior partners, administrators, appellate judges and regulators, they weren’t so deferential.
Most current trial judges demand authority before being willing to upend precedent against institutional power – I think that is the current difference. If our modern bench had been around during the 50s, schools would still be segregated.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A whole lot of people voted for him because he’s a business man and therefore knows how to fix the economy. And he’s tough and he’s gonna destroy ISIS. You and I think that’s a lot of nonsense, but the people who believe those things, and that Saddam did 9/11, and government spending caused the ’08 financial collapse, they don’t think he’s dumb
Citizen Alan
At this moment, more than anything else, I want Elkhart, Indiana to turn into a fucking ghost town with long lines of surly bitter white people standing in long lines at the unemployment office during the cold Indiana winter. No wait, Trump will probably abolish unemployment. Let the fuckers stand in line in front of some private charity food pantry.
schrodingers_cat
@tpherald: I just don’t want to read about Republicans, racist or not. I am not interested.
Calouste
@gene108:
FTFY. If you are a billionaire, you only need a small cut in your tax rates to recoup one million spend on hate radio.
FlipYrWhig
@germy:
Meh. They thought they were getting an asshole who’d be mean to the people they hate, the wussies and the do-gooders and the coddled college kids in their safe spaces and Those People. The rest, like what you quoted, was just a ham-handed attempt to pull votes from disaffected Sandernistas.
JordanRules
@Another Scott: Awesome read and reminder. Thanks for posting it.
You can find damn near a perfect example like this when folks start off with “but Obama or Hillary or Dems didnt say this or address that”. We have always had the message and done the work.
Those people in Elkhart have to listen and do better as citizens. The media would also need to highlight much of this too.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I still wish that Team Hillary had tried harder to demolish the myth of Trump the business genius, regardless of what the focus groups were saying about how effective it was as a line of argument.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott:
Or for Obama in 2012.
germy
@FlipYrWhig:
And that’s what they got. The anti wall street stuff was all bullshit. But when they heard the anti wall street stuff, they didn’t run away screaming about the free market. They cheered.
FlipYrWhig
@JordanRules: And the media has to remember that it’s not much of a story that Republican assholes voted for the Republican and cite a bunch of disingenuous and/or ignorant and/or outright false bullshit for the reasons why. That’s true everywhere all the time.
Chris
@gene108:
I think a lot of it had to do with both the values of the people who became dominant in U.S. politics during the New Deal years and the electoral calculus of the times.
The people who dominated politics in the mid-20th century were liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans who were if nothing else at least more open to values of tolerance and diversity than other political factions (as you would have to be when managing cities and states as diverse as those in the Northeastern U.S), so there’s that.
There’s also the fact that from the 1930s to the 1960s, you had a moment when the black vote was actually up for grabs while the white Southern vote was still solidly Democratic – which meant both parties had an unusual electoral incentive to care about the ultimate “civil rights” demographic and ignore the ultimate “anti civil rights” demographic.
goblue72
Indiana has only voted Democratic for President TWICE since 1940, fer chrissakes. Once in 1964 with the JBJ landslide and once in 2008 as part of the Obama wave backlash against the Bush fiasco. Reading tea leaves about WWC voters in Indiana is mostly a complete waste of times, outside of certain discrete areas in Indiana.
If journalist want to read tea leaves about WWC voting trends, you want to be looking at states that either always vote Blue before this (PA, WI, MI) or vote Blue with at least some periodic frequency (OH & IA), as well as in Minnesota, a Midwest state with sizable WWC that votes Blue. (I recognize that Illinois is also Midwest Blue state, but the outsized role that Chicago plays both demographically and voter trend-wise might not make it very illustratively useful.)
Democrats can’t win without the WWC. They just can’t. There have been numerous articles since BEFORE the election making the exact point that observed that Democrats were MORE reliant on the WWC vote than GOP, and thus a shift in that vote would be a death knell. The largest single voting group for Democrats before this year’s election was white voters without a high school degree. That voting block for Democrats was LARGER than African-Americans OR Latinos.
PIGL
@ruemara: exactly this. They want to believe those lies.
FlipYrWhig
@germy: They would have screamed about the free market if the idiots on talk radio had motivated them to scream about the free market. They don’t actually care about Wall Street unless they’re led by the nose to care about Wall Street opportunistically. They don’t believe in anything other than hurting people who they don’t like. That’s what the Republican Party stands for.
rikyrah
hat tip-TPV
Some good news and human kindness! Secret Santa Donates 3,500 Pounds of Steak For Homeless Christmas Dinners.
Thanks to an anonymous Secret Santa, hundreds of homeless men, women, and children were able to eat a hardy meal for the holidays. A mystery donor gave 3,500 pounds of rib-eye steak to Union Gospel Mission shelter in Seattle, Washington.
“Thanks to our generous donors, we were able to serve 1,350 children and adults a Christmas feast that included steak, shrimp, a loaded baked potato and some herb roasted carrots!” wrote the organization. “It was quite the merry night at all of our shelters!” Union Gospel Mission has been providing emergency care and services to the homeless community since 1932. Though they reportedly serve about 1,000 meals a week to people living in property, the steak was a rare treat. “This meal means a lot – it’s the first Christmas I’m sitting down having a sober meal with my kids and new sisters and making new memories,” said one of the guests.
JordanRules
@FlipYrWhig: Yup!
PIGL
@Binkles: yes, I think this is true. The implication is that the left must abandon focus on national politics. These places (like the RV city) must simply be written off. The only strategy that I can see is to work on keeping blue states blue, isolating them politically and financially as much as possible from the fetishes and delusions of the red states, and trying to increase the number of blue states at the margins. these achievements will prove difficult enough and may prove impossible given the forces is about to be marshslled against you.
Don’t bother trying to save your neighbours house from the fire they started while they’re trying to put yours to the torch. Let them burn.
Another Scott
@Chris:
But not in Elkhart. Obama didn’t win Elkhart in 2008 – see the transcript of Obama’s speech above (#152 at the moment).
Elkhart is deep red GOP. Even a depression in their town’s industry couldn’t get a majority to vote for a Democrat.
This Atlantic piece is more of a “water is wet” story than a great insight about economic anxiety.
Cheers,
Scott.
Turgidson
@Kay:
He was also old news, an also-ran who used to be part of the hated Corrupt Duopoly, as Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier or Matthew “Saying Both Parties Suck Means I’m Always Right” Dowd might say. So even though Feingold’s most famous trait as Senator was probably his ability to piss just about anyone off, regardless of party affiliation, he was more easily typecast as a discredited “establishment” candidate than expected, in the year of the Trumpocalypse.
Baud
@Another Scott: Good point.
japa21
Just watched Obama’s speech at Pearl Harbor. I turned to my wife and started saying, “I can’t picture…” and she said, “Neither can I.” There is just no way Trump can give that kind of speech and sound sincere.
Mike J
Tweetstorm (condensed from tweets to paras by me)
Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid
Fred Clark @SlacktivistFred 40 minutes ago
ruemara
@D58826: Well, Obama is black and that is pretty traitorous. But don’t you dare be all McCarthyite and smear Russia by saying hacking was wrong!
HeleninEire
Watching a George Michael special on BBC. Unbelievable he was.
randy khan
@FlyingToaster:
In fairness, it’s not like they’d get an honest answer if they did ask the question, either. This stuff about the Army-Navy game(!!!), etc. is enough to tell you that.
MomSense
So much stupid, so little time. How the hell do you fight back against this level of stupidity and prejudice?
I’ve tried patiently explaining/debunking with limited and not lasting success. In my personal life I try to focus on creating beauty and modeling kindness and compassion but that doesn’t seem to break through. The Elkhart voter profiled above must have responded to Trump’s meanness (many people see that as strength) so maybe that’s what I should try. If someone says something stupid shoukd I tell them that only idiots fall for that __________ and ask them how they manage to put their pants on without assistance?
D58826
FROM HUFFINGTON
Judaical Watch will still be suing about those e-mails when Chelsea Clinton is a grand mother.
goblue72
@Kay: Agreed. Feingold always was a bit more “goo-goo” reformer than economic populist, even though more often than not he was on the “right” side of the issues.
More critically, the Democratic STILL hasn’t figured out how to unscrew Wisconsin. Nobody should be shocked at this. The WI State Senate and Assembly both flipped from Dem control to GOP control in 2010. Ditto for the Governor’s office. GOP screwed the playing field to their advantage when control flipped in 2010 and Dems have been ineffectual in the state in unscrewing it. (This is not to say unscrewing partisan advantage via gerrymandering is easy – just that when you’ve boxed out from it, you need to switch your strategies in order to bullnose your way back to power so you can screw it your advantage.)
That said, US Senate seats and Governor’s offices are NOT gerrymander-able. And in WI, GOP has held onto Governor’s office since 2010, and one of 2 Senate seats. So this is about more than gerrymandering. And Dem party doesn’t have an answer.
Tammy Baldwin MIGHT – or she might not. She beat Tommy Thompson in 2012. But she is up for her 1st re-election in 2018. We shall see.
Davis X. Machina
@Van Buren: And croquet. The big homecoming weekend game at St. John’s is against the Naval Academy.
FlipYrWhig
@Another Scott: Evan Bayh seems to have fared well statewide in Indiana… until this past election, at least. If Evan Bayh were to be more popular than Barack Obama in Elkhart, Indiana, what lessons would that yield about how to appeal to the White Working Class? Probably not ones that lefties-come-lately will like to hear.
Baud
@D58826: It doesn’t really matter anymore.
Chip Daniels
@germy:
And the fact that millions of Republican voters could hear a message that sounds straight out of Saul Alinsky and still vote happily for its speaker, legitimizes that sort of talk; I troll across Gateway Pundit and Powerline, and hear them talk like this all the time.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
So are you ever going to accept the fact that Wisconsin turned because of massive and deliberate voter suppression, or are you just going to keep pretending it didn’t happen from your ivory tower in San Francisco?
FlipYrWhig
@MomSense: Just say that Donald Trump’s whole life is one big con game, and you hope one day they’ll see through the scam too.
Baud
@Mike J: Problem is it will be bad but they will say it’s great.
debbie
@D58826:
I just listened to an interview on NPR with Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. What a horribly rude (insert your favorite stereotype). It’s not up yet, but when it is, you’ll see what’s in store for the Middle East over the next four years.
Calouste
@Mike J: Uhm, Fred? Your friends and family voted for Trump exactly because of what he said and promised, calling Mexicans rapists, building a wall, excluding Muslims from the US, calling the President’s birthplace into question. Even if Trump turns out to be a cross between FDR and BHO, your friends and family were still totally onboard with voting for an explicit racist. Trump not doing what he promised doesn’t change what you friends and family want and voted for.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They can do what they like and we can stop giving a damn and wasting so much time rending our garments about the voters like the ones in the article who are unlikely to vote Dem no matter what.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
I think you kind of missed his point.
Chris
@Mike J:
I doubt it, on my end.
Another Scott
@Ksmiami: IIRC, some Randians or Libertarians talked about doing the same thing to flip Vermont or NH. Of course, those seem to usually be scammy – Honduras Shrugged.
The problem with getting masses of people to move is – How do they earn a living? Where will they live? Presumably there aren’t 100k extra stable jobs and apartments just begging for people in Montana…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I agree. We need to focus on who’s gettable.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Whory Woodruff was lobbing soft ball over soft ball when she interviewed him during the ongoing talks about the Iran deal. The only person I saw hold Dermer’s feet to the fire was Laura Trevelyan of BBC America.
schrodingers_cat
@Ksmiami: Are you volunteering to go to Montana? Because I am not.
germy
@Chip Daniels: You’re trolling them? Any amusing anecdotes to share?
I need a laugh.
Mike J
@Van Buren: Yale and St Mary’s are my picks in dinghies, but Navy is better than most in offshore.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
It never ceases to amaze me that the people who scream loudest about out-of-touch coastal elites failing to connect with the wholesome small-town folksy people are, themselves, invariably coastal elites that the wholesome small-town folksy people would loathe and despise for their attempts to sympathize with them.
The Thin Black Duke
@Mnemosyne: No, he won’t.
germy
@schrodingers_cat: It’s always fun to see these guys go on BBC America (expecting to be treated like they’re talking to fucking Matt Lauer) and see their irritation and surprise when they get tough followup questions.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Robert Siegel called him on several untruths and distortions, but the Dermer interrupted and responded very rudely.
debbie
@germy:
Also on the BBC overnight broadcasts. I think it’s the plummy accents that let the reporters get away with much more than would be the case over here.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
It’s always amusing when I get lectured about how my (mostly white) friends and family in the Rust Belt don’t really exist, and even if they do, they don’t really say the racist shit they’ve said right in front of me (or had said in front of them and reported back to me).
@The Thin Black Duke:
Sometimes a futile gesture is required. ?
Baud
@Chris: The out-of-touch coastal elites they hate are those that value racial and gender equality.
Turgidson
@Another Scott:
As someone who grew up in neighboring Illinois, had oft-visited relatives in Indiana growing up, and has spent enough time in and seen enough of that state to have a moderately well-informed opinion of it, I can say that Obama winning there in 2008 was a big fat fucking fluke, made possible by a perfect storm of anti-Republican/Bush sentiment depressing GOP turnout, Obama being a popular neighboring-state Senator whose campaign HQ was less than an hour’s drive from the state border, the never-ending Democratic primary forcing Obama and Clinton to organize and contest the state (while McCain didn’t need to in the GOP primaries and was spread too thin to defend it in the general), Obama’s (particularly in 2008) unprecedented ability to mobilize young and black voters to the polls, and the GOP candidate being someone who was distrusted by the Bible humper segment of the GOP base. And even with all of those factors working in his favor, he won it by an eyelash, only to get stomped in 2012 by Willard Mitt “Mittens” Romney, a similarly distrusted Mormon vulture capitalist asshole.
Indiana is a Deep South state that somehow got lost and wandered into the Rust Belt. Indianans even speak with a mild Southern drawl in many areas of the state.
EZSmirkzz
ROTFLMAO This your semi weekly what Atrios said. (Cuase I haven’t made it to Digby’s place yet, I suppose,
Trumpsters yelling fake news at the journalists!!! Ye gads, I’m so old I can remember when the cable and network news wasn’t all the way up the conservatives arses. But I do recall the last ten years of it, and the liberal blogs were still trying to distinquish between the “Traditional media” and the MSM, while the traditional MSM was calling FOX news journalism. Chickens, meet roost.
Anyway, first drafts worth the read.
PsiFighter37
Dumbshits, all of them. Hope they build enough RVs to live in to survive a nuclear winter or a recession.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: They’re not going to fucking do it. They’re just going to sit there and bitch and moan about how much worse “neoliberal” Democrats are than Republicans. They’re just like the Communists were in 1932 in Germany – down to taking marching orders from Russia/Wikileaks.
Kay
@goblue72:
Why doesn’t Sanders talk to Sherrod Brown? Ohio is further Right than Wisconsin and Brown wins statewide.
He sort of defies stereotypes. He’s the son of a physician and he went to Ivy League schools and both educated liberals and labor love him. He manages to be an environmentalist in Ohio which is quite the feat. HOWEVER, he along with every other upper midwest Dem didn’t back Obama on the climate change bill. It would have hurt agriculture, manufacturing and home heating costs. They couldn’t have survived a hit from all three.
Right now Cordray is fighting to stay head of Obama’s consumer financial protection board. He just lost a court case on it. The question is whether he was appointed for a term or appointed at the pleasure of the President. Trump won Round One. IF Cordray loses that job he will be the Dem nominee for governor in Ohio.
FlipYrWhig
@Turgidson:
Is that why the Indianapolis Colts are in the AFC South? :P
Lee
@Trentrunner:
Same here. I’ll probably get a tax cut while they get a tax increase. I don’t feel sorry for them one bit.
I’m already making plans to increase my number of rent homes as the economy tanks and they start losing their homes again.
Baud
@Miss Bianca: We’ll see. I’m supporting Dem nominees, whether they be progressive or centrists. It’s my own 50-state strategy.
Yarrow
@Turgidson:
This is definitely true. I remember meeting a couple who were both from southern Indiana, born and raised and lived there all their lives. They had a distinct southern drawl. They told me that southern Indiana was “very southern” (their words).
germy
https://newrepublic.com/article/139487/washington-governed-fear-now
Kay
@Turgidson:
I feel like it’s in the Missouri group of states- more southern than upper midwest. That’s not true of the northern part of the state though. The part along the Great Lakes is (generally ) more Democratic (although not Elkhart- I’m familiar with Elkhart).
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Are you even going to pay attention to anything except Presidential election results and stop conveniently ignoring electoral results in Wisconsin for the Governors office, the state assembly and state senate that pre-date this year’s election? (As well as various state legislature and state governors offices in various Midwestern states that pre-date this election)?
I realize that voter suppression (which was A factor) is the silver bullet you like to suck on because it obviates the need to hold up a mirror and acknowledge precisely how FUCKING WRONG you were, but hey, whatever floats your fantasy boat.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: I had forgotten that Nina Turner ran statewide in 2014 and lost 60%-35%. So, unless something dramatic has happened to her credit since then, it doesn’t seem likely that she represents a viable way forward in OH.
Turgidson
@Chip Daniels:
There’s an opening for the GOP, too, but they may be too dogmatic in their bullshit devotion to braindead crackpot bullshit “economics” to seize it. They were fucking rewarded for blocking any post-2010 attempt by Obama to inject fiscal stimulus into the economy via infrastructure spending – they managed to duck their fair share (100%, as it were) of the blame for the slow job growth of those years and pin some of it on Obama, falsely claiming he hates the economy or whatever fucking lies they used. If they were politically savvy, they’d do some real, effective infrastructure spending, brag nonstop about it, and contrast it with do-nothing Obama.
But I think the braindead dipshit caucus in the House and Paul Ryan (but I repeat myself) are too drunk on their Rand/Norquist dumbassery to do it. If they do consider an “infrastructure” bill, it will almost undoubtedly be a corrupt giveaway to a bunch of well-connected, lifelong GOP donor crony capitalist asshats who won’t actually build anything useful. Which would give the Democrats a chance to run against the GOP as the party of corruption, as they did in 2006. But we’ll probably be too busy arguing about some Democratic primary between a “neoliberal Clinton shill” and a “true progressive in the Bernie mold” to mount a coherent opposition to the ongoing Trumpocalypse. Yeehaw.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: CS made fun of me in the other thread but we are seeing a profusion of new commenters spreading doom and gloom and getting heh indeedy from many of the regulars.
ETA: This Chris is not chris who has been a blog regular for years. Then there is someone who goes by Yarrow. Of course, we have the BS acolytes.
LesGS
@Turgidson: I call Indiana the South’s middle finger.
germy
@Turgidson:
They’ll blame democrats. They’ll say “They wouldn’t let us build anything useful! Vote for us again!”
FlipYrWhig
@germy: I’m assuming that what Trump is fixin’ to do is find a few noisy ways to differentiate himself from REPUBLICANS IN WASHINGTON, which will help build his personal brand as Mr. Takes No Shit _and_ will avoid putting him on the hook for anything that Republicans do that worsens people’s lives, which is most of what they have every intention of doing. And the sad reality is that that’s pretty much the only good outcome liberals and other human(e) beings can hope to see.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
Not possible.
CarolDuhart2
@BillinGlendaleCA: Air America failed not because it was unpopular-it had high ratings, but it’s business plan was a combination of graft and poor strategy. It was overleveraged financially and insisted on too many stations and too much of the programming was mandatory. WCPT and Free Speech TV are doing fine. They are not over-leveraged in the least. Sirius XM has a liberal channel. Liberal stuff does work-but it needs to be entertaining and financed propertly.
What’s wrong with starting at the bottom, anyway? Alex Jones isn’t a billionaire, but he has an audience. Why can’t we do the same, work out of our basements and attics, gain a following and then the billionaires show up?
Turgidson
@Citizen Alan:
Trump would say he’s “abolishing unemployment” and his voters will think he’s abolishing the possibility of not having a job if you want one. When in fact he meant he’s abolishing unemployment assistance. When this difference is discovered, it’ll be Obama’s fault when the unemployment checks they “earned” stop coming, and they will assume some shiftless minority with an 80-inch flat screen and a tricked-out Dodge Challenger just saw their “unearned” check double in size. And talk radio will tell them how patriotic they are to believe this.
FlipYrWhig
@germy: Or they’ll say “Trump is building amazing new bridges everywhere! I saw them on TV! No, none of them are around here, but that’s because of Obama.”
germy
@FlipYrWhig:
The buck stops… there.
Chris
@schrodingers_cat:
Eh?
SiubhanDuinne
@HeleninEire:
Sorry to hear that, but thanks for the heads-up. I’ll stick with Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power and Charles Laughton, TYVM.
(Also, Elsa Lanchester!)
germy
@SiubhanDuinne: I love that movie. I love how he arranges his pills on his desk, and the way Elsa fusses over him. And Marlene is great, as usual.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Voter suppression in Wisconsin pre-dates this election.
Hmmm, I wonder if the massive electoral dominance of Republicans in the state could be in any way related to the massive voter suppression of minority voters there that’s been ongoing since at least 2010? Nah, I’m sure it’s a total coincidence. Not related at all. Nothing to see here, amirite?
germy
@Chris: What have you done with Chris?
schrodingers_cat
@CarolDuhart2: You have to admit that it is not as much fun as calling a certain someone Shitgibbon and then rending garments about the end of America.
PIGL
@Mnemosyne: you cheer as the factory opens somewhere else.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
No, I don’t think she does either. I know people here don’t like her but she’s actually extremely charismatic and fascinating, as a person. You can’t take your eyes off her when she’s in a room. She has a kind of magnetism in person. My husband adores her.
But I’d be really surprised if she won a Dem primary in Ohio.
They have a female candidate the state Party likes- Connie Pillich. She’s very industrious and smart, like Hillary Clinton! :)
I actually like Pillich too. She seems like a genuinely decent person. This is complicated but there’s a faction of Ohio Democrats who have thought for a long time that they were being “kept down”- I suspect Nina Turner is one of them. It creates a lot of resentment and it predates Bernie Sanders. Some of it is legit. It IS kind of ‘ol boys clubby. Lotta white men around :)
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Well, natch. How not? But somehow we have to communicate the notion of party discipline to Democrats and would-be Democrats – “you vote for the Democratic candidate *because* s/he is the Democratic candidate, and ipso facto, therefore, better than the Republican *whatever* you think of the candidate personally, and for Christ’s sake, you don’t vote for third-party candidates for President!” – and I just, somehow, don’t see that happening. Too many people too attached to their notion of purity. It’s funny – you have self-identified Republicans and self-identified “Democrats” who claim to hate and distrust “government” – but only the Republicans seem willing to make sure they actually, consistently vote *Republican*, if only to try to destroy it.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: That’s a different person, chris.
bmoak
The New York Times did a piece on Elkhart County earlier in the year (April 2), that had me a little concerned, so I went back and bookmarked it after the election. Leading up to President Obama’s fifth visit, the article finds that not only did locals not credit Obama for improving the economy or keeping jobs in the area they actually have a lot of antipathy towards him. He visited the Elkhart area five times as a candidate and as President, and came in 2009 to unveil one of the very first stimulus projects.
And the jobs Obama was able to save or create aren’t McJobs, either. Almost half of the county’s jobs are manufacturing jobs, one of the highest per capita rates in the nation. There’s such a demand in the factories that employers are hitting up the homeless shelter and putting up billboards promising up to $23/hour. The Chamber of Commerce is touting that industrial incomes can reach up to $75K a year, in an area with low education levels. Nearby plants making parts for Chrysler only had 100 workers but now employ 5,000. The auto bailout alone saved about 150,000 jobs in Indiana, most of them in northern or central Indiana. And every single Indiana Republican with a national profile opposed the bailout.
And the better Elkhart County does economically, the redder it gets. Obama lost by 9 points in 2008. He lost by 26 in 2012. in 2008 and 2009, he was introduced by local Democratic politicians on his visits. They are all gone now. Even local Republican politicians were surprised by the lack of support for Obama, although they hint it has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with “other stuff”: guns, gays, abortion, religion, and racial relations.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chip Daniels:
Has Shepard Fairey, or any of his imitators, done Trump posters yet?
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I think Yarrow is generally okay but s/he is in a bad funk right now. Hopefully s/he will pull out of it once we can all start taking action instead of sitting around with our relatives at the holidays.
Felonius Monk
@Kay:
Whoever made that statement is an idiot and doesn’t know anything about NY politics. She never had a chance and anybody who thought she did is a fool. She was a carpetbagger running in a heavy Repub district — not a winning combo.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne: I saw a Shepard Fairey parody; an image of Trump (in the style of Obama hope) and it says “NOPE” underneath.
goblue72
@Kay: Oh I don’t disagree. I believe I had agreed with you repeatedly in the past that national Dems should be talking with Sherrod Brown, a lumpy frumpy Ivy League liberal who manages to squeeze out every union vote he can.
I don’t think the answer lies in running a Sander’s style Scandinavian social democrat platform. Sanders wasn’t going to be President. That was never the point. The point was the fact that he managed to speak for a significant portion of the electorate – and a far larger portion than anyone with his hard left old Socialist Jew from Vermont by way of ethnic Brooklyn schtick should ever gotten – was what we would call a “clue”. The answer for which was not adding a couple points form his platform to a 41 point plan.
Brown manages to get Ohio voters to trust him and a majority to vote for him, even though, if you wrote his platform down and presented it to Ohio votes, a majority might vote against it.
And there are probably others the Dems should be talking to. Bob Casey Jr may have first gotten elected on the back of his old man’s name, but he’s managed to secure an nigh impenetrable hold on his office ever since. He’s no far lefty, but on economic issues and labor issues, he’s definitely on the left side of the spectrum while maintaining a more center position on a number of other issues AND is pro-life. (The snubbing of his dad at the 1992 convention is Exhibit A of how the party has managed to start going off-track for so long.) Amy Klobuchar is fairly bog-standard liberal and Minnesota is blue, but she wins even better than blog favorite Al Franken, yet nobody seems to talk to her about why she wins.
gratuitous
@rikyrah: The nauseating thing for me is that when you take these so-called concerns seriously, there will be no shortage of people (many of them allegedly liberals) jumping up to say that we shouldn’t get bogged down in minutiae. What are we supposed to say about Andi Ermes and her litany of grievances, none of which are, you know, real? What we supposed to say when Trump actually does the things that Ermes is complaining about (missing the holy Army-Navy game, not wearing a sufficient number of lapel pins, indulging a never-ending vacation and so forth)?
I’m happy to point these things out to Trump supporters (“Remember how concerned you were about this, once upon a time?”), but then the liberal scolds come out to admonish me about how voters don’t give a shit about these things. Even Atrios today was going on about liberals noticing how hand-in-glove Trump is with Putin, and how it’s not going to win any votes for Democrats. To a degree, I don’t care; I really want to shove these people’s hypocrisy in their insipid faces.
Ella in New Mexico
@gene108:
How about someone finding a way to build an actual TV news organization again, like CNN was in it’s early years? Something that reports actual events happening in all parts of the world, plus micro stuff that effects the dumbshits in Elkhart, Indiana. Stories on topics like healthcare and Social Security and science news without the continuous droning on and on about the political horse race implications? An organization that the brainwashed righties who only trust Fox won’t associate with “librul conspiracies”?
Because it would end up benefitting liberal causes far, far more than anything else we’ve done to try and convince people we’re the good guys. If someone can do this, then maybe we get in under the radar with the dimwits out there.
I’m not the only one who has watched this country’s political decline in direct proportion to the total takeover by 100% “commentary” on all easily accessible info sources, am I?
We don’t need them all, just enough to tip the scales back to sanity. Just the ones many of us know who are still salvageable, or who are young enough to have not been completely ruined by RW propaganda media. People out there who vote for idiots because they don’t have any truthful, factual, recognizable reasons NOT to.
Chris
@germy:
So who’s on first?
@schrodingers_cat:
There is a different chris that I’ve seen (capital letter seems to be the difference) on this blog multiple times. This one, however, has been posting here since sometime in the fall of 2010. Both have been here for some time.
Baud
@Miss Bianca: Right. I’m there, but you can’t force it on obstinate people. I don’t know enough about manipulation to get people to sign on to the system even if it can’t give everyone their unicorns right away.
Slaughter
@albertZ: Why not? Many Republicans blamed Obama for the bad Katrina response. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/obama-hurricane-katrina_n_3790612.html
Gin & Tonic
@Chris:
Obligatory.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Well, Baud, you’re going to have to figure it out before the Baud!2020! campaign!
Baud
@Miss Bianca: I was going to promise everyone instant unicorns.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I think the new Chris (or chris) has added an initial to his nym to reduce confusion. Or maybe I’m confused.
Kay
@bmoak:
Oh, it’s booming, by any measure. I go thru Butler Indiana all the time. They’re ALL hiring, including steel mills. They also make manufactured housing which is not as cyclical as the auto industry. It’s hugely profitable. They put those things together in one day on standard frames. They knock them out with teams of 20 workers swarming over the frame.. With overtime they can make 50,000 a year and it’s traditional building skills- carpentry, setting drywall panels, etc.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
I do too. It’s on, or very close to making, my Top Ten movie list. Just a wonderful piece of film-making.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Keep sucking on the excuses. It will surely change things.
Chris
@Gin & Tonic:
Oh my God, that is awesome.
@Mnemosyne:
I haven’t changed anything since I started. Don’t know about anyone else? ::shrug::
Jeffro
I didn’t read the whole thread…did anyone bring up Obama’s tan suit that one time, and the other time when he put his feet up on the Oval Office desk?
That’s enough to make anyone “economically anxious”, I would think.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Powdered or granulated?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: You been takin’ to the streets, Malcom K Schrute?
goblue72
@Felonius Monk: Absolutely. Her TV ads were just awful – tone deaf with a whiff of condescension.
Zephyr Teachout was what happens when a TED Talk decides to run for Congress.
LongHairedWeirdo
Respectfully, this is a time when calling out possible racism bugs me. *NONE* of the complaints listed had anything to do with “he just doesn’t understand normal folks” or “he isn’t like us” or “he doesn’t share out values”.
They were all right-wing talking points that might have been made about Al Gore, had he gained the presidency in 2000.
NB: It’s an unfair, and unjust, and an at least minimally-hateful, standard to use to evaluate President Obama. It may be that she’d be more skeptical if the same crap was flung at Al Gore. I dunno. But: I wouldn’t call this out as “because he’s black”.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Frozen.
goblue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You been doing anything in politics besides commenting on the Internet?
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris:
Isn’t there also someone who goes by Cris (without the H) or something like that?
For a short while I thought that ravenonthill was our own “fuck LBJ” raven, but the style is completely different. Funny how you can identify quite a few regular commenters by the way they format, their choice of words, the way they punctuate, etc., before even glancing at their nyms.
Debbie1
@FlipYrWhig: We mustn’t forget that this was the 1st national election since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. The Dept. of Justice has done a lot to fight back on some of these new state laws restricting certain people from voting but, you know, it’s like trying to hold back the tide. When you throw in stuff like 89 voting machines which “mysteriously” broke in Detroit, James Comey’s emails, the media, Russian hacking & selective leaking, and protest voting for Jill Stein & Johnson (which were at a higher amount in swing states this year). Basically, for such an important election (I mean, reality show host Trump vs. Anybody, as president), it’s remarkable how few people voted, and when not enough people vote it tends to help Republicans.
EBT
@goblue72: I guess being honest with people is condescension.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: waiting for you to go into detail about your honest and for true real life and very successful community organizing and grass rooting and revolutionizing, so I have a heroic model to follow!
If only you weren’t so timid about your triumphs, Malcolm.
Chris
@SiubhanDuinne:
And just the topics of conversation and things we’re likely to bring out.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Slaughter:
No surprise, I’ve seen Conservatives try to blame Bill Clinton for the ’91 Gulf War. Like I said the problem isn’t people believe in nonsense, the problem is everyone is to polite to mock idiots like this for because clearly they are being idiots. The whole it’s impolite to challenge “deeply held personal beliefs” enables climate denial, anti vaccer and creationists. Public policy, science and medicine aren’t religion were the facts can be hand waved away.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Is that like instant coffee? “Just pour water on them and wait for their little horns to sprout!”?
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Scott Walker signed Wisconsin’s voter ID law in 2011, but it didn’t have any effect on statewide elections until 2016?
I’m not the one clinging to dogma in the face of the facts here. You are.
liberal
@schrodingers_cat: Missoula’s beautiful.
Shakti
@Elizabelle:
Please. If “economic anxiety” is a problem for you, you don’t vote for the dude and party who promise to cut the social safety net away.
If you are mad you haven’t gotten a pay raise in years you don’t vote for the dude who says wages are too high.
You also don’t vote for the more anti union of the two candidates and parties if you’re nostalgic for the era in which factory workers got paid 90k in 2012 dollars and benefits for possessing a high school degree.
You don’t vote for the rich man with a habit of stiffing contractors and demanding that everyone within a five foot radius sign an NDA and a noncompete for volunteer work.
Black, Latino and Asian “economically anxious” people didn’t vote for him, so I don’t think “economic anxiety” is what drives these “real Americans”.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
From what I’ve seen over the past few days, EVERYBODY is in a bad funk right now. No one’s immune, and quite frankly, no one person here has the “right” answers yet.
I would hope we all don’t go back to beating EACH OTHER up-like we did during the Primaries- as a way to get all this miserable sadness and anger out of our systems, because THAT will certainly not help us find a way to fight back starting in January.
Turgidson
@Kay:
Yes, the northern strip of the state where the I-80/90 Toll Road passes through is more like a southern appendage of Michigan than it is like most of the rest of the state. But most of it fits my description, from my experience. In my somewhat hipster-ish 20s, I’d feel like an alien passing through central and south/central Indiana, other than Bloomington to some extent.
Miss Bianca
@goblue72:
OK, every once in a while you say something that truly amuses me.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m still laughing about the guy I saw on IMDB ten years ago tearing into the movie “Three Kings.” Stupid liberals were making a movie that was full of anti George Bush propaganda. But they don’t even realize that the FIRST Gulf War was in nineteen-ninety-ONE, and George Bush wasn’t even president until THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND! Ha! Stupid libz, amirite?
Mnemosyne
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Really? Because that’s exactly what all of the complaints were: Obama isn’t like her and didn’t do X, Y and Z things she thinks he should have (except that he did).
And, yes, there would have been the same complaints about any Democrat, but that doesn’t make them less racialized since the Democrats are (in these people’s eyes) the party of race traitors who are giving their hard-earned money to Those People.
Paul in KY
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: I hate them too, and you’ll probably be hard-pressd to find a more white-lookin dude than me.
Paul in KY
@ruemara: I personally think Fox ‘News’ is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@LongHairedWeirdo: really ?
Lazy, unpatriotic and not a real-American doesn’t hit any buzzwords in your mind?
goblue72
@Kay: I have long wanted to see Democrats make a hard push for a German-style wage subsidy program, even if initially in pilot form. Rather than handing out tax credits to employers or UE benefits to displaced factory workers, provide direct wage subsidies to manufacturing and other industries with high-value add.
The Democratic Party does NOT – and has NOT for quite some time – give anything close to a fig about labor issues. It NEVER gets the focus that other issues do, and when push comes to shove, its almost always the first thing dumped on the floor. Getting something like card-check passed IS more important than something like the DREAM Act – both in terms of delivering something meaningful for AMERICAN workers and in terms of straight politics. If Democrats ever want to achieve power in a meaningful way again, the labor issues – and providing political support for rebuilding unions – needs to be at the very top of the agenda.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think Tim Russert, who was the media BMOC from the mid-90s to his death, was at least as bad, with obsessive hatred of Bill Clinton, his simplistic notions of “faith” and a knee-jerk deference to authority, religious, military and political. he could have been designed as a perfect courtier for the Bush Cheney regime
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: One of my idiot right wing friends says the difference is that Batshit McChimpy stayed at his own properties & Pres Islamobama stays at fancy shamcy places that cost the taxpayer more.
I kid you not…
ruemara
@LongHairedWeirdo: If that makes you feel better about things, ok. It won’t change the fact that race plays more into it than these people will ever come out and say on camera, but whatever gets you through the day.
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
The only people I still want to beat up are the ones who keep insisting that the person who got 2.8 million more votes overall was a “bad candidate,” and we should have run the guy who couldn’t even get a majority of Democrats to vote for him.
There was a perfect storm of weird shit that happened in this election, and anyone who tells you it was all the fault of a single person or that a single person would have changed the outcome is lying to you. I think the Electoral College loss was primarily due to voter suppression and voter ID since it came down to something like 80,000 votes in 4 crucial states, but Russian meddling, Comey, and the MSM all contributed their special little share as well.
As I’ve said before, I think Karl Rove set this scheme up back in 2012 and was surprised on live TV when it didn’t execute properly, so they made a few tweaks, and here we are. I quite frankly don’t know that any Democrat could have won given the booby trap that Rove set.
Paul in KY
@catclub: Charisma sure helps. No doubt about it.
bmoak
The post-Citizens United landscape has been absolutely brutal for Democrats at the local and state levels. How much money is flowing into these races can’t even be accurately measured because a lot of the lack of transparency in donations.
The Koch Brothers organizations alone had sixteen hundred PAID political staffers working to elect Republican candidates this election cycle, and that’s almost all concentrated in the South, the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Mountain States. They’re assumed to have spent about $750 million this cycle without spending a nickel in support of The Donald. And that’s just their personal money, not counting anything the organizations they control are anteing in. Koch Industries alone put in $37 million, almost all in statewide and local elections in states important to their operations, such as Kansas and Wisconsin.
It’s not just Presidents, Senators, Governors, and Congressmen. It’s pretty much every statewide and now even countywide office (judges, clerks, sheriffs, etc.) that is seeing races absolutely flooded with outside money and influence. A local election that you could campaign for with a four figure warchest now takes five, six, or even seven figures to keep up with the Republican, who doesn’t even need much support from the party if they have a few billionaires on their side, whether national actors like the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Mercers, etc or local boys like Art Pope in North Carolina .
EBT
@goblue72: Nice Dixicrat dogwhistle.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I do think GWB had some ‘charisma’ or was really good a playing someone he totally was not. More so than VP Gore, anyway.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
No one here disagrees with you about the need to strengthen labor. We disagree with your horrifying indifference to the fact that hundreds of thousands of minority voters are being denied their civil rights.
crawdad
Woo-hoo!
Barry
@Elizabelle: “How easy is it to get a good job if you fall off the merry-go-round after your 20s or early 30s?
I feel we don’t get it, here.”
We do get it, here. Some of us have been hit by it, and some (such as myself) have dodged at least one bullet, and are painfully aware that we did dodge catastrophe.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris:
Of course, absolutely, but that often comes second for me after the formatting/vocabulary/etc.
And I’m wrong a lot of the time, anyhow. But it’s surprising how often it does work!
Это курам на смех
The RV industry runs on cheap gas. Raise the price of a gallon back to $4 and RV orders will plummet. Elkhart’s unemployment rate will go right back up to 22 percent. Making oil cost more is a key goal of the Rump administration, as a reward to his oil bidness backers as well as his bosses in Moscow. Getting the price to soar is easy — just make an even bigger mess of the Middle East. This goal is why Tillerson is getting State.
Of course when Elkhart craters the people there will blame Obama.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Scott Walker won re-election in 2012 by SIX points. If you think he won because of voter suppression, I’d like some of what you are smoking. There are roughly 350,000 African Americans in Wisconsin, all ages. 35% are under age 18, leaving 227,500 (roughly) eligible to vote.
Walkers margin of victory was 137,000 votes in 2012. Even if every single African American in Wisconsin tried to vote and every single one voted for Mary Burke, that would mean 60% of those attempted voters were suppressed. Which is just stupid.
Which is exactly what your magic bullet theory of Wisconsin is – stupid.
And while you are busy exploring your Wisconsin stupidity, you might try wandering over to the border into Minnesota, a state entirely controlled by the DFL party – with NO voter suppression, where Clinton managed to win by a mere 45,000 vote margin. Obama’s margin in 2012 – which was not nearly as good as 2008 – was 226,000 votes over Romney.
D58826
@Baud: only to Judicial watch and the restg of the CDS victims
Paul in KY
@Kay: See, that’s one of the ways Hillary was screwed by the Cheeto Benito (like that). That fucker was the only Republican who would slag NAFTA (the Repubs loved it) & here we have a candidate whose husband passed it.
She couldn’t/wouldn’t critique it & she had the bad fortune to run against the 1 Repub who brayed about how bad it was.
Goddammit…
Paul in KY
@Spanky: 31
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Minnesota’s senate is Republican, dummy. Dayton won the governorship by the skin of his teeth. Look these things up before you type.
But you keep telling yourself that voter suppression doesn’t matter and all of the minority voters telling you that they were not allowed to vote are lying to you. It’s easier to do that than to actually look at the facts and realize what we’re really up against, and it ain’t the hurt fee-fees of the honest white workingman.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Go find where I said voter suppression didn’t happen and that something shouldn’t be done about it. Please, go look. You won’t find it.
It did happen and it IS a problem, even if only on purely civil rights grounds. NO ONE should have their voting rights disenfranchised.
What I DID say is that its not the sole reason – or even the driving reason – for the wholesale collapse of the Democratic Party NATIONALLY – which trendline has been going on for a LONG time, going back to 1994, which was only temporarily interrupted between 2006 – 2010 as a consequence of the Democratic Party lucking into the twin Bush fiasco of Iraq & Great Recession. And for which focusing the argument and the analysis on the White House – as opposed to state legislatures, governorships and Congressional seats – is fucking retarded.
Barry
@Chris: “I’ve thought for a while that the truth is the exact opposite of the media narrative. “Economic anxiety” didn’t frighten people into Trump’s arms; “economic anxiety,” the real kind, slapped enough people into paying attention to the world around them to get Obama elected in 2008. What drove some of these people into Trump’s arms wasn’t economic anxiety; on the contrary, it was the fact that the economy was picking up again and they now felt like they could afford to indulge their prejudices and hobbyhorses at the voting booth again.”
This makes so much sense.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I wish she’d hit Trump ‘University’ alot harder than she did.
Baud
If they want to win again, Democrats need to put up a new thread.
Another Scott
@Ella in New Mexico: VOA exists and seems fairly reality-based (but I haven’t looked at it in detail).
There are lots and lots of good media outlets out there, and easier to find and support than at any time in history.
But most of our fellow Americans are much happier reading and watching the things that their tribe reads and watches. I don’t know how one solves that problem.
Cheers,
Scott.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: There have been NO voter suppression laws passed in Minnesota. None. Zero. Zilch. Why – because the GOP doesn’t control both houses and Governor’s office in Minnesota. Also, Minnesota’s state senate is DFL controlled. Its the Minnesota Housewhich has flipped back and forth between GOP and DFL. But please, explain to us all how the Minnesota House has managed to unilaterally pass voter suppression laws without the Senate also doing so and the Governor signing said invisible legislation.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
The Brennan Center published its first comprehensive report in 2012 about how voter ID laws were making it difficult for people to vote, and it’s only gotten worse since then.
Republicans aren’t winning state-level offices because voters hate the Democrats. They’re winning them because they’re cheating. They’re preventing Democrats from voting.
Again, your clinging to your personal dogma is preventing you from seeing what actually happened here, and you are going to be unable to solve the problem if you’re incorrectly identifying the cause. You’re never going to win the game of three-card monte because it’s rigged before it begins.
Paul in KY
@Turgidson: They go up to Indiana when Kentucky isn’t racist enough for them.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: This is the guy who a few posts before said that democrats should focus more on white people and less on brown people, just with fancy wording. He is a lost cause.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
So, just to be clear, I have to explain why Hillary won a state by fewer votes than Obama did? And the point of doing that would be … ?
But, sure, I’ll give you two reasons, but you’re going to immediately claim I’m wrong, because you think there are no racist white people in Minnesota: Black Lives Matter and misogyny.
Barry
@weaselone: “Once that industry is gone from the Midwest, It isn’t going to come back and I’m not certain anything replaces it.”
It wouldn’t just be the Midwest, especially when taking into account Tier 1-3 suppliers.
Mnemosyne
@EBT:
Oh, I know. It just pisses me off to have a (purportedly) high-paid consultant in San Francisco claiming he knows the Rust Belt better than people who have actually lived there and still have family that lives there.
But I fully realize at this point that he only cares about white male voters and would be perfectly happy if the rest of us lost our voting rights so he could concentrate on winning the important voters.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That POS Russert was a slimey scumbag, but these dipwhacks didn’t watch him, cause he wasn’t on Fox. Russert (on Fox) would have been the house liberal.
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72: Bob Casey’s dad was not giving a speaking role at the 1992 because he refused to endorse the party’s nominee, that’s not a snub.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Again, Minnesota is a perfect control case. There are NO voter suppression laws in Minnesota. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH. If you are registered to vote in Minnesota, you do NOT need an ID to vote, unless you are registering to vote ON Election Day itself. And yet, despite all this, you saw the Clinton wining by a mere 45,000 votes in contrast to Obama’s 226,000 vote margin against Romney, an election in which Obama did not do nearly as well as he did in 2008.
The Brenna Center identifies 10 states with extreme voter suppression. 8 of those states are deep Red states where Democrats didn’t win BEFORE that happened. The only 2 Blue states on that list are Wisconsin and PA. As I noted above, you can’t account for Walker’s victory in 2012 from voter suppressions – despite him being a complete tool and douchebag of a candidate. PA’s vote ID law from 2012 was OVERTURNED by the courts in 2014. PA currently has no voter ID law in place. And beyond that, Trump’s margin of victory in PA was far too large to account for any informal suppression that may have occurred at the polls from individual attempts at intimidation.
Mary G
@goblue72: @Mnemosyne: I am very uncomfortable when I read commenters calling each other “stupid” and “dummy.” Please to knock it off.
And yes, I don’t usually let it get to me. I’ve never felt the need of a pie filter. Most of the time I just skip past certain commenters or just stop reading an entire post (almost all the Bernie ones lost me) when arguing happens. But your interaction is turning into the classic circular firing squad, now with gratuitous insults. The election’s over. Neither of you will change the other’s mind at this point. At least find some better names to call each other.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That. Just. Might. Work.
bmoak
Are we going for the T-Bogg Unit this evening?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Miss Bianca: Broken clock is right twice a day.
goblue72
@BillinGlendaleCA: That myth has long since been refuted as merely the claimed formal reason by the Clinton bridge for Casey not being allowed to speak at the Convention. His slot was taken by a REPUBLICAN pro-choice activists who had worked for his opponent in a prior gubernatorial election. There were also other speakers at the convention who did not endorse the Clinton-Gore ticket, given truth to the lie about the real reasons Casey was snubbed and shoved into the far corner’s of the arena.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Newsflash bozo – I grew up in the Rust Belt and the entirely of my family still lives there, whom I see frequently.
You really do not know shit.
Another Scott
@BillinGlendaleCA: You know, one can argue that (due to bent spacetime and all that that entails) only a broken clock is ever right. Other clocks are effectively impossible to perfectly synchronize.
Fun fact!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
(But of course in practical terms one can get close enough to the “correct” time.)
Yarrow
@goblue72: Minnesota elected Jesse Ventura in 1998. There’s an oddball streak in the state and it didn’t start this century.
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72:
Please show your work.
ETA: Paul Begala, who was actually “in the room”, said it was because Gov. Casey refused to endorse the Clinton/Gore ticket.
Davis X. Machina
@Another Scott: With the new year, VOA passes under direct Executive Branch control pursuant to new legislation. I wouldn’t expect its decades-long reputation for balance to last past Valentine’s day.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
Or the fault of a single “thing”, I’d add. It’s going to be hard, but it just might be that we’ll have to figure out the weighted ratios of the things that caused this shit storm, not necessarily the simple, controllable ones.
A variation on the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant is what comes to mind here.
And, no matter how painful, we all will have to be a little more honest with ourselves over the next few weeks, months and years about how the Democrats conducted this Primary and Election, and determine if we could have done anything differently, including recruiting candidates with less negative baggage than Hillary (who I still think would have been elected and have made an outstanding President, had she been anyone else but Hillary Clinton).
We need to go beyond the micro to the meta on this, if we’re to save the Union and get our country back. Picking on fellow soldiers for our perceived “major” but really minor differences might be a lower priority in 2017.
bmoak
Author Richard Adams also passed away today.
Watership Down, Tales From Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, Shardik, Maia, Traveller, The Iron Wolf & Other Stories, and The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. There aren’t too many non-series writers that I’ve read more books by.
If I put the DVD of Watership Down in tonight, I’ll be almost certain to bawl.
schrodingers_cat
@liberal: I will take your word for it.
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She left out ‘shiftless’, and ‘no-account’.
Another Scott
@Davis X. Machina: Indeed. And that’s a big problem. :-(
But the general point stands, I think. It’s easy for people to get better news sources if they take the time to look. The really, really hard problem is getting people to take the time to look.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike in DC
We should nominate Ilhan Omar for president in 2020, with the slogan “Because FUCK YOU, okay?”
Ksmiami
@EBT: my New Years resolution I’ll only support the people and causes that will be hurt by the GOP that are on my side… if some christfascist in tn gets screwed over boo friggin hoo- no sympathy and let the market save them
goblue72
@EBT: Democrats lost the WWC vote. Leading up to the 2016 election, Democrats were MORE dependent on the WWC vote than the GOP. This was well reported PRIOR to the election. Various wonks were pointing this out. The SINGLE, LARGEST voting bloc of the Democratic party prior to this election cycle has been white voters without a college degree – that voting bloc was LARGER than the African-American Democratic voting block or the Latino voting bloc. 34% of Obama voters in 2012 were whites without a college degree. And what was also well observed prior to the election, was that Democratic dependence on this section of the electorate was SIGNIFICANTLY concentrated in the Rust Belt states.
Ergo, if your largest single voting block abandons you, and that block is a critical component of certain critical states, and as a result you suffer catastrophic defeat on election day, you might just spend some time figuring out how you fucking lost that voting block and how to get it back.
Elections, how the fuck to they work?
There are more white people in the U.S. than everyone else combined. And they are more spread out over all 50 states than non-white voters. Most states will be majority white even after the country as a WHOLE is majority-minority. If you make your elections where whites PERCEIVE being put a certain identity box, and that shoves them all into the other party, you will LOSE. Every. Single. Time.
Newsflash – majority of whites – AT BEST – don’t give a fig about racial discrimination issues. They just mostly don’t. And many are actively antagonistic about it. Its entirely shitty that for the most part, your best hope is they don’t care one way or another. No argument – its shitty. Its a shite sandwich made of shit cheese between two pieces of shit bread. But its the reality. And you either put your fee-fees in a box & run on the landscape that exists, or you lose.
Because Trump is going to be President – in spite of running a KKK campaign, and he just rolled out a white nationalist roadmap for the GOP that with a few tweaks that make it slightly less nasty could kill Democratic Party prospects for another generation if Democrats don’t wake up.
Baud
@goblue72: You should join another party. We’ll likely stay in the minority due to white nationalism. We’re not changing our core values.
Miss Bianca
@bmoak: Adam posted the clip of Hazel’s death scene in an earlier thread and I admit, I wept a little.
People slag that movie for its “graphic death scenes” and the like, but I personally found it very true to the spirit of the book. The problem is, people think a story that features talking bunnies is, ipso facto, a children’s story. Even when I was a child I never thought “Watership Down” was a children’s story.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay:
It’s cyclical as hell. There are three plants up the road in Oxford that shuttered in the 2001-2 recession. One never re-opened. Two re-opened — one of them closed again in 2008-9. the other one just filed for bankruptcy this year. There’s one manufacturer in the state left — when I moved up here in ’85 there were nine,
goblue72
@BillinGlendaleCA: Begala is a Clinton whore.
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2005/03/06/the-curious-incident-of-the-governor-who-didnt-speak-at-the-convention/
Kathleen Brown, CA Sec of Treasurer spoke at the convention and did NOT endorse Clinton-Gore. And its a fact that Casey’s potential slot on the floor to speak was taken by a REPUBLICAN operative from PA who worked on his opponent’s campaign.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/no-violence/civil/hentoff_casey.html
Ella in New Mexico
@Another Scott:
Something they don’t expect? Or better, something “foreign, but positve” like a “BBC News America”-type addition to the cable news line up. Maybe some philanthropic expansion of C-Span/PBS or a currently respected “non-political” news source that’s more widely known than VOA?
My Repubican in-laws will read “USA Today” or watch “National Geographic Channel” because they’re perceived as neutral, factual or educational. They went to Fox News years ago because it pretended it was the only ‘fair and balanced” network and now they’re stuck there for no better options and because it commits ongoing brainwashing to keep them from trusting any other news sources.
But I do think people are ripe for a better, less politicized way to get information right now. How to get the word out to the few wealthy “liberals” who could fund it is the question…
Oh for the days of Walter Cronkite’s nightly news. You got more real information out of 30 minutes a day than you get out of the entire MSNBC lineup in 12 hours.
Miss Bianca
@goblue72: Gosh, it’s almost as if Democrats cared about abortion rights, or something.
goblue72
@Baud: And THAT right there is part of the problem here. You self-righteous fools just cannot get past your own thin-skins. You absolutely refuse to see things any less black-and-white than Republicans. You automatically assume that arguments in favor of figuring out how to appeal to WWC voters WHO USED TO VOTE FOR YOU automatically means advocating for the running of some sort of white nationalist campaign.
As opposed to figuring out the ordering of priorities on various topics and possibly changing how issues are discussed and handled. It DOES mean changing things. It DOES mean some groups issues get re-configured and possibly re-ordered. Because you can’t do everything and everyone’s issues don’t get to be #1. Sucks, but thats politics. However, that does NOT necessarily mean throwing everyone under the bus or completely abandoning certain voting groups and their issues.
goblue72
@Miss Bianca: There’s a difference between caring about abortion rights and insisting that no dissenting opinions be allowed. And that those dissenting opinions will not only not be allowed, but be crushed.
But good luck with your purity jihad. It will surely win you many elections to come. So many. BIGLY even.
JPL
What if this is the last post on Balloon Juice? How many TBoggs are enough.
Baud
@goblue72: If you can prove it can be done, I’m happy to look at the evidence. You have none. And I predict that years from now, you’ll be making the same arguments and still have no evidence to back it up.
It’s fine. I’d rather go out fighting for good than accommodating evil. I’m self righteous that way.
EBT
@goblue72: I get it you want white people to win at the cost of brown people. We understand you are a racist. Could you just not bring it here? I don’t go to stormfront wishing them a happy Hanukkah after all.
Ella in New Mexico
@goblue72:
@Baud:
I think you’re both off on this. if there are not enough whites who care about racial issues so that the Democratic party doesn’t have to compromise it’s core values, then why did so many of them vote for Obama in 2008 and 2012 who this year voted for Trump or someone else? They thought the party was in their interests then. Why did so many stay home or go rogue in 2016?
The racist whites were the Republicans and have been for a long time. Potential voters for the Democratic ticket are not those people. It was something else besides just racism, at least in terms of Democratic votes, and we don’t need to pander to racists.
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72: Begala is an unabashed Clinton supporter, this is true, you’ve provided speculation. He was IN THE ROOM when the decision was made.
Baud
@Ella in New Mexico: Hard to say. I don’t think we’ve had a thorough and vetted analysis of this election yet.
goblue72
@Ella in New Mexico: Fox News was also entertaining, if in a screaming-at-the-TV kind of way. If one takes a step back from the partisan view – CNN is boring (save for when its on the ground during a war). MSNBC is sometimes fun, sometimes annoying, often schizophrenic. Fox News is fun – they yell at stuff, get you angry at shit and they got pretty newscasters – from a sheer showmanship perspective, its genius.
Cable TV eliminated that ability of having boring straight-laced evening news shows from the 3 majors be the main means by which Americans consumed TV news. News needs to make money now, and boring don’t sell.
No clue what the liberal antidote is. Not really sure if there is one. Is there a market for a cable news version of the UK’s Guardian? Is there a market for something like Larry Wilmore’s Night Show, but not a failed comedy fake news show but an actual talking heads show? MSNBC used to have a more diverse lineup but then whitewashed itself – so hard to tell. (Did their ratings improve after the whitewashing and turn to the right?)
Maybe there’s no market for that sort of thing. Maybe liberals don’t like to listen to AM talk radio style shows or Fox News style cable TV – at least not in large enough numbers to support a network. Maybe same reason that liberals have better taste in pop music, film and comedy is same reason they don’t watch yell-at-the-TV stuff enough.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ella in New Mexico:
Pure speculation on my part, but I think many didn’t vote. I’ve yet to see any evidence of widespread Obama to Trump voting. When I see numbers showing this is the case, I’ll believe it then.
goblue72
@BillinGlendaleCA: Being IN THE ROOM doesn’t mean shit, if the people IN THE ROOM, are all IN THE ROOM, to figure out how to spin THE ROOM outside THE ROOM to your story about why you are dumping on the PA Governor over his abortion views but you don’t really want to say that out loud.
goblue72
@EBT: Fuck you.
Aleta
I went looking for a quote I had seen about ignorance and democracy, maybe by Jefferson, but found it is probably some mangled thing that Reagan said and attributed to Jefferson. So, forget it. Fitting for me to spout some thing I thought was true but was just words made up in service of a faked morning in America.
Sincerely,
Mourning in America
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72: I’ll take the testimony of someone that was there as opposed to speculation 13 years later.
EBT
@goblue72: You couldn’t afford me. Now take your racist bbbbbbut white voters shit elsewhere.
Woodrowfan
@Это курам на смех: Is it just me, or does every RV dealer have a HUGE ASS American flag?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Woodrowfan: All of them Katie.
gene108
@goblue72:
It is not our fee-fees that will be put in a box. It’ll be some black kid, like Tamir Rice or Trayvon Martin, who did nothing wrong. And there will be no hope for making things better, because Democrats need to not scare off whites, because pointing out gunning down unarmed kids, who were minding their own damned business and doing nothing wrong, is apparently a topic white America is just not comfortable having right now.
Sorry parents of the next kid, who gets executed. We need to win back white working class voters, so we cannot make any statements about the murderer of your kid getting off free and clear.
Also, too Trump won because he ran a KKK campaign. Saying he’d ban Muslims, deport Mexicans, etc. is what got him where he is today.
EBT
@Woodrowfan: When I lived in Arkansas, I would have to drive by the largest American flag in the state. It was just sinfully huge.
raven
You seriously talk to this fucking moron?
Woodrowfan
Ordered Man-Kzin Wars XI and they sent Man-Kzin Wars IX. Roman Numbers, how do they f-ing work?
goblue72
@Ella in New Mexico: I never argued that Democrats should pander to racists. Not once. Actually the opposite. But a large number of folks here cannot get their heads around nuance.
It is entirely possible that the white voters who voted for Obama didn’t care about racial issues EITHER way and voted for Obama for other reasons. That is, its entirely possible that those voters thought that racism wasn’t a big issue in the U.S., or at least, not a hugely important one – and instead thought other issues were far more important and that Obama spoke to those issues they cared about MORE than his opponent did. And further, that Obama explicitly went of his way to make racism issues a central part of his campaign – and when those issues did arise, he was very careful about messaging in the context of “all of us” inclusiveness. And that he himself – based on his background – had a felicity with white voters from a working class due to his upbringing that made allowed him to campaign naturally with those folks.
You can also see, in terms of his popularity numbers over the course of his two terms, that when he made sharper stands – such as during the Henry Louis Gates thing or his statements about Trayvon Martin, that his popularity with those voters took a hit, even though his statements were only modestly critical about our institutionalized racism as a country.
The strategy is not pander to racists vs. stand firmly behind BLM. It may in fact be a third, which is universalize the issue where possible, avoid it where not.
liberal
@Woodrowfan: shit, didn’t know they were still writing those.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Jeremy W. Peters needs to be beaten to death with a baseball bat.
goblue72
@gene108: I believe I stated upthread that Trump ran a KKK campaign. I don’t deny that.
But countering that with a BLM campaign is not going to win. Its just not. Maybe in 2080. But not today, not tomorrow, not in 2018, or 2020 or 2022, or 2024…
Villago Delenda Est
@goblue72: When you talk of self-righteous fools, you’re projecting.
liberal
@goblue72: no, the problem is that right-wing news outlets often don’t even have to be profitable…they’re just political organs of their owners.
bmoak
The good news: A minimum wage referendum passed in Maine, raising the minimum wage to nine dollars.
The bad news: Governor LePage is telling businesses that the state government will not enforce the wag increase and that he would like the organizers who got the referendum on the ballot prosecuted for economic terrorism.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
While waiting (praying) for a new thread, I’ve gone through and reread your posts. I can relate to your attitude; I’m tired of the endless analyses. I’d rather look forward and figure out how to fix things so something like Trump doesn’t happen again.
liberal
@Aleta: “A popular government without popular information…” might be what you’re thinking of. That’s James Madison.
raven
@bmoak: Lil Bit is having a wag increase after her surgery!
Major Major Major Major
I checked the front page to see if there was anything new, saw the comment count, and was wondering what troll everybody was fighting.
And now I know! Back to Skyrim for me, carry on.
Baud
@raven: Yay!
liberal
@debbie: how can you fix things without analyzing what went wrong?
debbie
No racism? That chick in WV who was fired and then rehired after calling Michelle Obama an ape in heels has now been really fired, for good.
Some people just don’t get it.
raven
@Baud: The only bright side of this was that they were going to clean her teeth while she was under. They didn’t because of a mixup.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
LOL! Wag increase!
debbie
@liberal:
Don’t you think there’s been enough analysis yet? When will there be enough and how will you know it?
This reminds me of that line in It’s a Wonderful Life: “Why don’t you kiss her instead of talking her to death?”
Mary G
@raven: Good news!
Baud
@raven: Why is that a bright side?
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Good to hear.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Don’t you like clean teeth?
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Thanks, I was almost shouted down two threads ago for questioning the usefulness of the constant gloom and doom. There is analysis and there is chewing cud like a cow.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yes! But they didn’t do it.
Aleta
@liberal: The quote I remembered was a version of “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free and in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” said to be in a letter from Jefferson. Apparently that is in doubt, and a version of it appeared in a speech by Reagan. That version is still misattributed to J. Also, making up quotes and attributing them to the founders is apparently a thing now. Who knew.
mai naem mobile
@JPL: I saw some of this thread at around 200 comments and saw it had turned into yet another virtial autopsy of the election. Jeezus, HRC barely lost and she won the PV and nothing fucking new is said in these threads. Enough already.
BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: As I’ve pointed out earlier in this thread and in previous threads, I like to have data before I start the analysis. Otherwise you’re just spitballing(aka mental masturbation).
schrodingers_cat
@BillinGlendaleCA: You need data and you need to ask the right questions. Why did people in Elkhart, IN not vote for Hillary is a pointless question in my opinion.
That and the deification of Republican voters by the so-called liberal media.
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
I’m where Kay is — all of the white dudes telling us that a pro-life, anti-BLM, pro-labor Democrat can totally win office in the Rust Belt need to get off their asses and get ‘er done. Prove us all wrong. Until that happens, I’m sticking with my racially mixed, gender mixed, religiously mixed party no matter how many dudebros assure me that my vote is less important than theirs.
They think they can win office with no liberal white women, no African-Americans, no Latin@s, no LGBT votes? Great, go prove our votes are no longer necessary. We’ll wait here while you do that.
Miss Bianca
@goblue72: In other words, “don’t make white people uncomfortable with anything that reminds them of race.”
You accuse me of a purity jihad, which is pretty funny, considering…so you’ve said two amusing things this evening! That’s some kind of record for you. But you appear to on a sort of “impurity jihad”. There’s shrewd politicking, and then there’s just plain pandering to white racial anxiety, which *is* what you seem to be advocating, your protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Republicans are good at that. That’s not an area where I want to see Democrats emulating them.
Mnemosyne
@Aleta:
I was reminded the other day of a quote from Benjamin Franklin that was so awesome, they used it in 1776: “We must hang together, because otherwise we will most assuredly hang separately.”
Aleta
My cat was sneezing wetly for more than a week, so I looked it up on the net and took him in. Vet said he needed a tooth out, and because the roots of the tooth go up in his sinus it was making him sneeze. Apparently the infected tooth caused a sinus infection. Cost 700-800 dollars and he has kept sneezing more than another week.
I have to figure out the animal insurance thing. I think it would have been covered? I can’t figure out what is good co, and a good policy.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: There is no magic formula, we need to adopt regional strategies. That’s what Obama’s campaign did in 2012.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Miss Bianca: Wait, goblue said TWO amusing things? I only noticed one, but if it’s TWO the dude should take his act on the road. The Catskills are calling goblue72! The rubber chicken circuit is yours!
SiubhanDuinne
@mai naem mobile:
It’s not up to me, or any of us, of course, but it sure would be nice if one of the Front Pagers could put up a fresh shiny new thread. A topic unenticing to trolls would be a bonus. Four hundred and some comments in six hours kind of wears things out.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: There’s the presidential campaign and then there’s all the other elections we need to win.
Ruckus
@Davis X. Machina:
Isn’t that the entire basis of all theologies, that you can’t prove or disprove a theology because they are never based upon reality? They don’t have to be true or false, because you can’t prove it one way or another. All it has to do is be believable to some number of people.
Aleta
Elkhart was close to a sundown town, wasn’t it?
mai naem mobile
Here’s all the reasons discussed in each of these mofo threads: Voter suppression,Russian hacking,voting machines ducking up in Michigan,Koch/Adelson/Singer/Paulson/Munchkin/Pope/Devon etc money ,WWC feefees being hurt, Whitelash,History ,Misogyny,media,Benghazi,emails,Comey, enough blacks/latinos/women not showing up,Goldman Saxhs,NAFTA,WJC/Loretta Lynch,fake news,evangelicals,catholics,abortion,Bernie dissing HRC,Bernie not being Veep,HRC fallTim Kaine,HRC not doing enough campaigning,Lumpy sucking all O2. Have I missed anything?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Indeed! This endless navel gazing is self defeating.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Obviously, your wish is your command; fresh new thread just popped up.
schrodingers_cat
@BillinGlendaleCA: Its men vs. women in that thread.
Miss Bianca
@BillinGlendaleCA: Well, one of them was actually funny, and one of them was funny in that “LOL WHUT?” kind of way. So…amusing and a half?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BillinGlendaleCA: Good god, is that fucking dimwitted wannabe cubicle revolutionary GoBlow72Goats trying to fluff that Bob Casey crap back to life?
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
We should have made her ask sooner. ?
EBT
@mai naem mobile: Jovian lizard people! and the Spanish Inquisition.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I think the only person here who wouldn’t agree with that is our current troll. ?
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Can I bring the magic, or what?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: An oldie but a goodie, that Bob Casey stuff.
Another Scott
@Ella in New Mexico:
Our family didn’t watch Walter when I was a kid. We watched Huntley/Brinkley. Dunno if it was due to Cronkite’s “turn” on the war in Vietnam or something else, or if they’d always been NBC people.
Even back in the “good old days” there was polarization and complaints about various people in the media (but, yes, it certainly seems much worse now).
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@PsiFighter37:
I’ve had to have work done in Elkhart for a job I had. Those things won’t survive a slightly unreasonably strong wind, let alone nuclear weapons.
Most of the workers would move from one company to another, most of them being unskilled labor. Orders are slow, the companies lay off, orders come in they poach from other companies. When the economy is strong or even just robust they will always be short of workers and the locals will be doing relatively good. But they will never be a robust area. The state is just too rural, even the bigger cities feel like large rural towns. That said there are some decent companies located there or which have reasonable plants there. But also a lot of the older rust belt companies found that it was cheaper to just shut down old factories when other locals gave them tax breaks. The locals couldn’t do that because the local governments are as poor as the people who live there. Also the state was/is the home of the KKK. Having spent too much time there and having had old white guys who worked for me at said job, their racial attitudes are not good and very strong. I also know people who live in IN and they are as liberal as pretty much anyone I know. It’s a strange place.
Ruckus
@gratuitous:
Well it for sure won’t win any votes if no one points it out, which of course is the point of the MSM trying to get everyone not to point it out.
FlipYrWhig
It was great to come back to the thread and learn that goblue’s theory of unstoppable Democratic success is to cater to pro-life tradesmen who don’t care about race, gender, or ethnicity. We have a party like that already. It’s called Republicans.
schrodingers_cat
@BillinGlendaleCA: I had no idea what he was talking about, but that can be applied to most of what gb72 says.
Ruckus
@raven:
They do. I can not figure out why. Like trolls everywhere they keep coming back when you acknowledge them. Ignore them and at some time they go away. And ignoring them is OK because not one of them is going to learn anything or change their tiny little minds. It’s what makes them trolls, bullshit and stubbornness to anything resembling the truth.
Blueskies
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Totally misses how that happened. Money. Never underestimate the impact of money. The Right has always had it and now has ever so much more of it. I don’t mean the money spent on campaigns. I mean the money that absolutely soaks all levels of discourse. A good example is the influence of the Koch brothers. It’s amazing and insidious and it’s always there.
Ksmiami
@Another Scott: u recruit companies to move the internet makes it easier… I think the future for the dems is west
Anonymous patient
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
This, brother!
Practice and get better at using those, for when they come for us, we need to be prepared!
J R in WV
@FlipYrWhig:
I contributed a lot of money to Feingold’s campaign… now I don’t even want to look at the numbers in that election!
WJS
@goblue72:
Your logic is very poor. “Ordering” priorities doesn’t change the fact that Republicans hate Democrats because Democrats stand up to Republicans for hating minorities.
The basis of everything they stand for is hating blacks, browns, gays, the poor, and anyone who gives a shit about making it so kids don’t go hungry. Quit thinking that a simple “ordering” of priorities is going to magically realign the stars and make them forget that they hate those of us who self-identify as Democrats.
They hate us. They hate what we stand for. They bask in their hatred and scream “political correctness” when called out for their racism and their hate. Ain’t nothing gonna change that except making them pay dearly every time they go to the well.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, “really”. If you want to say she only believes he takes too many vacations because he’s black (rather than because it was a frequent talking point), I’d love to hear your evidence… no, forget that, you don’t have any. And “because he’s black” is not how you can justify flag pins or lack of Army-Navy attendance – that form of “not a real American” has been applied to Democrats for a long time.
@Mnemosyne: I think there’s plenty of mindless, angry lies being believed. And while I grant some of those lies may have been chosen as something to use to tag a black man (lazy, or, incompetent which was especially grating), I’m not seeing any of the direct linkage from the beliefs as stemming from race.
I agree that part of the attack against Democrats and Obama includes (at best) dog whistles on racism. But I don’t see any reason to assume that this particular woman’s concerns are motivated by race. She might be pretty darn race neutral, and to try to confront her prejudices, and still repeat a bunch of angry lies, simply because they’ve been spread so thoroughly.
Brachiator
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Bullshit.
Brachiator
@Davis X. Machina:
Sure you can; usually by coming up with a reform or new theology.
Ian
@goblue72:
You just gave yourself away there. The dream act is incredibly meaningful to millions of Americans, both documented and undocumented. The only way some obscure piece of legislation that few outside labor circles have heard of is if you define American as white. As to the politics of it, had HRC performed at the same rate among Latino’s as BO did we would not be saying president elect Trump.
LongHairedWeirdo
@ruemara: I’m not claiming race doesn’t play a role in these things. I’m claiming that the beliefs quoted, even if they *do* have some racial-charge to them, are from people repeating lies they’ve been told. Saying they believe it “because he’s black makes it trivially easy to dismiss any valid criticism as “oh, right, ANY criticism of Obama is RAAAACIIIIST!!!!!!!”
More importantly, a lot of these people who believe in the racist tropes thrown around aren’t explicitly racist. They try not to be racist; they just don’t understand the issues well enough to realize where real injustice lies. For these people, it’s far, far, better to ask “well, why do you think Fox News didn’t complain about George W Bush who took far more vacation time than Obama? Why don’t they admit that Obama kept us safe, when they said that about George W. Bush, who had 9/11 happen on his watch? Don’t you realize they’re deliberately slanting the news in favor of their buddies?” than “don’t you realize that they’re trying to play off the racial stereotype of laziness?
@Brachiator: With your *astounding* grasp of language and your well-worded, cogent argument, I almost hesitate to point out that you don’t know what’s in my head. So: you can choose not to believe that I don’t see a direct linkage – but the pure and simple fact is that I don’t. I think those same attacks could have been made about a white Democratic President.
Tell a lie often enough, and people will start to believe it, and repeat it. Once that happens, and enough people are repeating the lie, it doesn’t matter the original source of the lie (be it racism or other bigotry, or just plain slander). Some people will repeat the lie and think it’s true.
Not going to the Army-Navy game, not wearing a flag lapel pin, have nothing to do with race. “Taking too many vacation days” may have been inspired by a racist trope, or it might just have been part and parcel of the screaming the Repubs did early about how much it costs US taxpayers for the first family to travel. But repeating it as a reason one remembers, when asked to remember how they were taught to hate, doesn’t indicate racism. It merely indicates that she’s been taught to disrespect and dislike Obama.
It may be that some of you don’t remember the frothing hatred the right-wing had for Bill Clinton while he was in office, or the same directed at Al Gore. And, I grant, it may be that you think I’m ignoring the blatant racism (like “witch doctors”, and the subtle racism(“he’s just not like us, and doesn’t understand our concerns”). That’s not true. I’m pointing to one particular example, and only one, and saying “this one here? I don’t think it’s fair to tie that directly to race.”