Thanks to sky-high political polarization and geographic distribution combined with the anti-democratic slaver vestige known as the Electoral College, a dwindling voter bloc comprising the least-informed and most noncommittal motherfuckers on the continent increasingly determine the outcome of U.S. presidential elections: swing voters.
Is that assessment harsh? Yes. But I stand by the description for anyone who would vote for President Obama in 2012 and then turnaround and vote for Donald Fucking Trump in 2016.
Trump’s nutso base gets all the attention because they are loud and stupid, make ghastly fashion choices and dabble in armed insurrection on behalf of an angry, bloated Circus Peanut. That rabble grew in number between 2016 and 2020, which is worrisome for all kinds of reasons.
But so did the share of Democratic voters who participated in the 2020 election, giving President Biden an enormous popular vote victory. Still, it wouldn’t have mattered if swing voters in key states hadn’t swung Biden’s way, according to analysis from the UVA Center for Politics.
So, why did those voters swing? Because Trump went hard-right in office after running as an angry, bloated Circus Peanut of less definitive political provenance:
Many political observers have argued that Donald Trump transformed the Republican Party during his four years in the White House. That is clearly true. Trump moved issues that he cared about — especially xenophobia — from the periphery to the center of the party.
What is not recognized nearly as often is that during his four years in office, the Republican Party transformed Donald Trump. The Donald Trump of 2016 lacked a clear ideological identity. While he was generally seen as some sort of conservative, he frequently took positions at odds with conservative orthodoxy including pledging to oppose cuts to Medicare and Social Security and to replace the Affordable Care Act with something providing more generous benefits at lower cost…
A variety of factors undoubtedly contributed to Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020, including his gross mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the growing perception of Trump as a far-right president, along with the nomination of the relatively moderate Joe Biden by the Democrats, very likely cost him enough support among swing voters in key states such as Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona to shift those states and their crucial electoral votes into the Democratic column.
I’ve sort of viewed Trump as a Frankenstein’s monster who escaped the Republican Party lab and rampaged beyond their control, but if this theory is true, politically speaking, it was the monster who was ill-served by the mad scientists. They drove him further right than the tiny portion of the electorate that counts in America could bear.
Interesting theory, and if true, it might have implications for a certain goobernatorial person here in Florida who aspires to be the next angry Circus Peanut. What do y’all think?
misterpuff
So what snack item is DeathSantis?
I’m thinking Rancid Twinkie.
Jerzy Russian
Well, there goes another food I won’t eat (being unhealthy with too much sugar and probably also fat is not a big enough obstacle for me).
Another Scott
That analysis is too “normalizing” for my taste.
TFG blew up the economy. He put RWNJs on the courts. He put babies in cages and “lost” them as far as the paperwork was concerned. He was impeached by House. He intentionally killed 500k+ Americans, while hoping for similar outcomes in PR, CA, and anywhere else he thought that he – personally – wasn’t getting enough fealty. After the election, he tried to overthrow the results and was impeached by the House again. And the GQP party has been with him the entire time.
Maybe the number of people who recognized all that didn’t actually change. Maybe, instead, the intentional roadblocks to voting were sufficiently fought-against to over come them starting in January 2017.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
It ain’t Mitch you’ve got a beef with. The guy who drove American politics to the right with a vengeance (and made a Mitch McConnell possible) was Newton Leroy Gingrich.
Benw
Seems like a reasonable theory: remember when Trump was “loveable” enough for Fallon to muss his mop? Now only the racist hard-right loves him. Also, actual voters who still “swing” between R and D are fucking idiots.
I think the current R hopefuls’ strat is to ditch the swings entirely, and via gerrymandering and EC nullification (which yes, would require control of Congress) win with just the hard-right.
cain
@misterpuff:
I don’t think you can even find a rancid twinkie – those things can be measured in half-life. When all of us are gone – the twinkie will be our legacy.
Ruckus
Both sides are definitely pissed off.
Rethugs because they wanted to get their racism and money grubbing on.
Dems because the rethugs want to remake the country in their own image of hate and theft.
Will SFB run? Too late, he’s already on it. Will SFB II run? Too late he’s already on it.
Will either of them win? It is looking more doubtful by the day. Either will get a not insignificant number of voters, but it seems when their policy (or lack thereof) hits the ground it is less satisfying for a not insignificant percentage of the voters in 2016. It can be fun to try the new guy and see what’s what, but the engine broke, the wheels came off and then hit a power pole. SFB lost last time, while I see working hard to not let that happen again and being cocksure has never been a winning position I feel the blinders are off of enough people to realize what can’t happen again.
Low Key Swagger
TFG just attracts broken people of every stripe. Can’t explain it, don’t care to analyze it beyond that. We have to work harder that they do with respect to turnout. Every. Damn. Time.
The Moar You Know
Bullshit. Trump just lied his ass off about what he was going to do. That’s been the modus operandi of his entire life. The Trump we got in 2016 was no different than the Trump we booted out in 2020.
bjacques
I’d have gone with *circusized* peanut.
UncleEbeneezer
@misterpuff: Answer
Elizabelle
@Benw: A belated happy anniversary.
Baud
Who knew it would be so complicated?
Mike in NC
A hundred years from now maybe some historians will be able to explain how an illiterate, racist snake oil salesman who hosted a really shitty TV game show landed his fat ass in the White House.
Also, too: recently learned that there is a Donald J. Trump III. Given his lineage, the kid is bound to be a major league fuckup.
sab
That peanut reminds me of microsoft’s clippy after a lifetime of bad food choices.
FlyingToaster
I’d predict that losing more citizens than his margin of victory is going to hurt #DeathSantis.
MisterForkbeard
@Another Scott: The thing is, Trump didn’t really “blow up the economy” for a lot of people, particularly the rich. It was humming along with good metrics for rich people (and high employment) until covid hit, at which point his house of cards collapsed.
Likewise, the media doesn’t really want to cover or explicitly name the bad things Trump did in stark terms. They want Dems to accuse him so they can “some say” it.
LGM has a theory that the media can’t accurately describe the Republican Party because it really does sound insane, greedy and partisan – so it can’t be correct. I think that’s what happened around Trump. He was preternaturally awful, but accurately describing that awfulness just doesn’t sound realistic.
feebog
New name for TFG on twitter; Dorito Gambino.
Baud
I don’t think Trump ran on a more conservative policy platform in 2020 than in 2016. He just was no longer a celebrity but instead someone with a record. That changed voter perception more than anything Trump did.
ant
TFG zeroed in on what actually matters to the Republican base: That white men are in charge, and that everybody else know their place on the graduated inequality chart.
He called it MAGA.
The difference is that he showed that Republicans don’t give a fuck about anything else: tax cuts, healthcare costs, deregulation, globalization, small government, abortion, disease control…… none of it, unless it could be applied to maintaining white male supremacy.
He also captured the attention of people with antisocial personality disorders – who are inherently really bad at collective action problem solving, which includes voting. It remains to be seen how using utilizing psychopaths/sociopaths/narcissists as a keystone voting block works out for contemporary Republicans.
Chetan Murthy
BC, I don’t buy the thesis. During the 2016 campaign, TFG did three things consistently:
So for instance, he threw out pitches for health insurance that would cost $10/mo — stuff like that. Nonsense. Sure enough, #1, #2 stayed the same when he got in office. And then (shocker) #3 turned into “standard stuff that favors rich guys”.
Re-reading
I feel like shaking this guy by his shoulders and saying “dude, we were there, we *heard* him: he was promising great housing developments built on swampland!!”
He’s giving TFG way, way, way too much credit.
StringOnAStick
@Another Scott: I agree, it is too normalizing. It makes TFG look like a guy with popular ideas who got his head turned by some amorphous “party”, thus no blame can be assigned to any actual individual. How convenient. No blame for anyone, nothing to see here, move along, etc.
Chetan Murthy
@feebog: Surely “
DoritoCheeto Gambino” ?Elizabelle
Trump and the Republicans [richly] deserve each other. Trump actually revealed the GQP for what it was, even while “some” don’t want to see that.
I wonder if we are approaching peak wingnut. The craziness is unsustainable. One would hope.
Perhaps they will collapse as quickly as Afghanistan. Lot more money propping them up, but once enough people see the situation …. who knows?
mrmoshpotato
Have some music over here too.
Another Scott
@MisterForkbeard: Yeahbut, it’s always the case that some people do fine in a depression. 75% of the workforce was working in the Great Depression… ;-)
He (and the GQP) blew up the economy by not attacking the pandemic head-on early – even before it became a pandemic, as Obama did with Ebola and various influenzas. He intentionally made it worse (calling Americans home in a rush before closing the airports, having people jammed together cheek-by-jowl; his superspreader events; etc.). He was malicious because (as he said during the Great Recession) he expected that he’d be able to make a bundle buying stuff for pennies on the dollar; they hoped to throw out the health-and-safety rules, unemployment rules, minimum wage rules, etc. “Work or starve – your choice.”
Nope, no quarter here.
Cheers,
Scott.
Redshift
@MisterForkbeard:
I don’t think it’s that it can’t be correct. I think it’s that there’s no way describe it accurately without sounding partisan, which they’ve been trained to avoid.
WhatsMyNym
@MisterForkbeard:
Or it’s because their interests lie in supporting the republicans, no matter what.
mrmoshpotato
Nope! Too nice!
“I love the poorly educated!” once bellowed a traitorous, orange, fascist manchild.
Sadly, the “poorly educated” were too stupid to know they were being called stupid to their stupid, stupid faces.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
My impression that when Trump pushed Judge Mc Rapy-Crybaby for SCOTUS that was when the majority stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt. Coworkers were mutter about how “That shit it totally out of control”.
mrmoshpotato
@Benw: Fuck Jimmy Fallon. That fucking sack of shit.
Hoodie
@Chetan Murthy: You can probably fold #2 into #3. Trump basically told his supporters they could do anything they want, including hate anyone they want to hate, without guilt or consequences. He was the Pied Piper of oppositional defiant disorder.
ant
also, obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnu8FOTwM2U
Redshift
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, I agree. It’s not that he believed these hard-right policies (except for the racism and xenophobia) and lied about it, it’s that he didn’t believe anything. On the campaign trail, he threw out lines that were all over the map and kept what worked. In office, of course he followed the GOP line, because it was the least effort. They didn’t “change” him.
Mousebumples
In happier news, at least 1000 Afghan refugees have arrived at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, according to reports. The Last Guy wouldn’t have let a single non white refugee cross the border, if he had his way, so we either would have left them in Afghanistan or tried to get an ally to take them all. (and i think allies are helping with some?)
Biden and his team have been doing good with the airlift, my non expert self thinks?
smith
@Elizabelle: I really don’t think peak wingnut is possible. The problem is, the whole movement is as much about grifting as it is about ideology. In order for an aspiring politician (or pundit, or “influencer”) to successfully position himself or herself in the marketplace of RW ideas, they need to out-radical their competitors — be louder, more outrageous, more dismissive of any norms whatsoever. This results in a ratchet, with each trying to leapfrog the others into the position that attracts the most attention and the most power/money. You see this happening pretty much daily with Empty Greene. She continually tries out new routines to see which will draw the most gasps from her audience — an audience that includes the MSM as well as the goobers.
Unfortunately, this ratchet has already reached as far as blatant fascism, and I don’t know where they can go from there — maybe advocating genocide? — but go there they will.
Benw
@Elizabelle: thanks!
Major Major Major Major
I don’t think Trump was driven too many places, but he definitely benefited from the (unearned) impression of not being an extremist in 2016–Donald the populist dove!–and by 2020 that veneer was definitely gone.
On things he didn’t give a shit about, like the judiciary, yeah, he just eenie-meenie-minie-moe’d a list of FedSoc judges.
I do wonder how much worse off we would have been with Generic Republican at the helm in 2020. President Republican might have been better on masking, but that’s maybe a 10% effective intervention; President Republican would not have signed the CARES Act, which was surely more than 10% effective at reducing spread.
Chetan Murthy
@Hoodie: Well, I meant more that #3 was how Trump could appear to people like Caitlyn Jenner [spit] as being somehow trans-friendly. What people didn’t understand back then (and clearly this yutz *today*) is that he’s first and foremost a salesman-as-grifter, and that means he’ll tell you whatever you need to hear, to sign on the dotted line. People just didn’t get that: the ascribed all sorts of positions to him, b/c last they’d heard of him, he’d supported those positions. Not knowing that he’d support anything if it got him a vote.
I also agree with you, that he really did believe in White Supremacy, and that White People should be allowed to do whatever they wanted: and that that was part of his hating on immigrants.
Let me try again: #1 is his allegiance to his master. #2 is his allegiance to his base. #3 is his sales patter, the grift he pulled on a large part of America, lulling them into a false sense of security.
Bill Arnold
I think all anti-RonDeSantis people should be absolutely ruthless about working to destroy him politically. That fucker is vile. I can Smell him up here in NYState. In particular, he kills and maims (long COVID) humans deliberately for personal/political gain.
Rubio needs to go too. (Not as vile, but that’s due to insufficient talent.)
mrmoshpotato
@FlyingToaster:
Let’s be accurate.
Benw
@mrmoshpotato: for sure. Fallon knows which side of his white-ass man bread the butter’s on, and is going to do his best to normalize the next fascist…
Betty Cracker
@Redshift: That sounds right to me. What changed were voter perceptions, not Trump himself. Also what Baud said at #19 — instead of being the bomb-throwing celebrity he was in 2016, Trump was a politician with a record in 2020. A bad record.
Dan B
@misterpuff: Twinkies don’t go rancid. It is unpossible!
firstfourth class cattle car.Redshift
@Mousebumples: Also heartening – Afghans have started arriving in Fairfax in Northern Virginia, where I live. One of the temporary processing centers is near Dulles Airport. Our county government has had to ask people not to bring donations to the processing center, because so many people want to help, promising that there will be opportunities to help later. (They’re just at the center for a few hours on their way to the military base, and later long-term housing.)
Dan B
@The Moar You Know: Sinema wants Dems to play nice with Gingrich’s heartless spawn. Maybe it’s Newt’s lesbian sister who gives Kyrsten hope. She should ask the nit-too-pleased sister about that.
RandomMonster
Bernie Bros take note.
Mousebumples
@Redshift: thanks for sharing the great news! ?
DCrefugee
“angry, bloated Circus Peanut” somehow has to make it into the rotating taglines…
Redshift
@cain:
They do go stale, though. A friend over found a Twinkie in the trunk of his car that had fallen out of a bag years earlier. The Twinkie was rock-hard, but when they cracked it open, the filling was unchanged!
Hoodie
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, I guess it goes without saying that Trump meant that the right people could do whatever they want. Sure, it would be great if everyone could find it in his or her heart not to harbor any prejudices, but it’s pretty unrealistic to expect that. A lot of, if not most, people have to be told that racist shit is not acceptable, kind of like you train your dog not to take a dump on the living room carpet just because she wants to. Eventually that training turns into your dog’s psychological wiring to wanting to go outside because she wants to take a dump (and oh, by the way, there’s a lot of other interesting stuff out there). Trump is the candidate for the dog who still wants to shit on the carpet.
trollhattan
@misterpuff:
Objection: Twinkies cannot technically go rancid.
Or what Dan B said.
The Dangerman
@Ruckus: OK, I’m either slow or distracted today. SFB? SFB II? I’ve been distracted ever since hearing about the Johnson booster shot. What? Oh. OK, never mind.
TFG cared about two things only. Ok, three if you count Ivanka. Getting paid and getting laid. I’m convince if you dig deep enough, you’d discover the kickbacks he was getting from building the wall. Probably in cash slipped in with home cooked pies.
/shawshank
Chetan Murthy
@The Dangerman: Stupid Fucking Bastard.
trollhattan
An LGM commenter found this nugget (think coprolite) opinion piece by the Trumpiest Trumpster in the history of Trumpism. I mean, it’s so over the top I’m questioning my conception of what top even means.
Bill Arnold
@FlyingToaster:
Somebody needs to do a genuine COVID-19 deaths by political party affiliation study. (That would be a straightforward way for a scholar to gain attention(+). )
Something crude could be done with death notices for voting-age people and voter registration party information. Both are public information. There would be many deaths where political affiliation could not be determined with public records.
https://www.findlaw.com/voting/how-u-s–elections-work/what-information-is-public-from-your-voting-record.html
trollhattan
@The Dangerman:
Yeah, there’s zero chance Trump did not get his beak wet amidst all the frantic wall-building. With all the shell companies, offshore entanglements, etc. I’m sure it’s quite well buried. Fred Sr. taught him that much.
Kent
Trump and the current GOP are a horror show that is desperate to bring down the country around them in one last gasp of revanchist white supremacy with the gerrymandering, voter suppression, and everything else. And it is terrifying.
But nevertheless I think the long-term trends in this country are in the other direction. It is just going to be bumpy as hell to get there. For example, Boise, Salt Lake City, Omaha, and Des Moines are all blue cities within red states. But they are states in which the older red rural populations are rapidly declining and the blue urban populations are rapidly growing due to in-migration of young people, immigrants, and so forth. It may take another generation or two but at some point those states will reach a tipping point where they will be more like Oregon with most of the population living in blue urban areas surrounded by a sea of de-populated red.
My recent college-grad daughter is planning to re-locate to Charlestown SC this winter. I thought fucking SOUTH CAROLINA? Then I looked it up and it is a blue mecca in a red state. She won’t be enough to flip that state, but maybe some day.
James E Powell
Are there still people so fucking stupid that they don’t realize he was lying when he said these things?
Ruckus
@The Dangerman:
Yeah I’d bet he’s made more money from his presidential bullshit than he knows how to throw away in at least 5 years. And he’s good at that. He finally, after all those decades, has figured out how to successfully get paid. Of course he has no idea how to do that again.
cleek
my brain has had about all of the Trump it can handle
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Some of the freshest things I was served for midrats in the navy. They never go bad because it was never food in the first place.
Ruckus
@cleek:
You are just getting there?
Or did you get yourself placed in a coma to protect yourself from the never ending barrage of dump trucks full of bullshit that he delivers daily?
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
That’s pretty over the top. Trump the businessman was never accused of racism?[1] In what universe is that true?
If i ever met Bruce Bawer in person, I would insult him to his face as a delusional twit with a mind pickled by counterfactual propaganda, and if he tried to punch me, would physically humiliate him, with a possibility of damage depending on mood.
[1] “It never occurred to you to reflect on the fact that Trump the businessman had never been accused of racism…”
catclub
@Bill Arnold: For white people, who have died AFTER vaccines are available, you will get a big political bias toward trump followers.
For non-white people, especially before vaccines, not much political signal. Lots of un-registered voters. After vaccines very slight political signal. Thats my guess.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
Computer security people call such complexity “attack surface”. Trump’s attack surface is HUGE.
Lapassionara
Thanks for the art, Betty. It has been a while since you rewarded us with a visual.
Chetan Murthy
@Bill Arnold: It occurs to one, that this screed was never written for our consumption. It was written to reassure the base, and give them both backbone and fodder to attack us in our TFG-hatred, to go out there and make bafflegab to confuse swing voters [I know, I know, it seems difficult to imagine they exist, but still ….]
Bill Arnold
@catclub:
Agree (though it needs to be tested), and also that there is probably not much of a non-white signal.
However, white people are a big part of the R base.
trollhattan
My takeaway: don’t fuck with Hawaii.
Now somebody drop a dime and call CPS.
The Truffle
@Kent: Well, Texas is supposed to be getting more purple, and Georgia just flat out flipped in 2020. So let’s not rule out South Carolina. The fact is that COVID is going to kill off a lot of red state voters as well.
Florida would be interesting to watch, because it looks like Ron Death Sentence has overreached. Will that overreach cost the GOP?
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: What a nut job.
Bruce Bawer. Poet, novelist, and “intellectual.” Lives in Norway; moved to Europe in 1998 because, per wiki, he was disturbed by American fundamentalism.
And now: off the deep end. Into very cold water. Because: Norway.
American Greatness. LOL. They’ve got an article up about how HR 4 (the John Lewis voting rights bill) imperils free and fair elections. By a woman concerned about teachers bringing Marxism into the schools. Asshats.
Not gonna read any of it. Because. Asshats.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: What’s funniest to me about this episode is that they got caught because they tried to present a vaccination card for a five year old. Goes to show you the level of vaccine knowledge the fraudsters are working with.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy: With Ruckus, it’s Shit For Brains.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell:
Yes.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kent:
That’s a reason CO has turned blue. Still virulent strains of red on the Western Slopes and the godforsakeneasternplains and some deep rooted glibertarianism that provide some scary purple moments but it’s been the demographic shift here over the last 10 years that’s been a major cause.
MoCaAce
Not to be too critical of the doodle but the mouth hole on that circus peanut needs to be more round and sphincter-like.
JMG
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: One of my son’s best friends from high school here in Mass. has lived in Charleston for almost a decade now and has nothing but nice things to say about it.
germy
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/conservative-lawyer-for-jan-6-defendants-who-formerly-represented-kyle-rittenhouse-is-reportedly-on-a-ventilator-due-to-covid-19/
Conservative Lawyer for Jan. 6 Defendants Who Formerly Represented Kyle Rittenhouse Is Reportedly on a Ventilator Due to COVID-19
Splitting Image
@germy:
Aww.
Elizabelle
@germy: I think one of my friends knows John Pierce, from before he was nutso. She used to like him. Will find out. She sent me something about him a month ago, but no discussion about his being ill then.
misterpuff
Yes but IMAGINE a rancid twinkie in all of its rotten glory. That would be DeSatantis.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Also, the label should be “swing” voters. Somebody, probably somebody here, called so-called undecided voters (another label for “swing” voters:
“…the main component in the Great Excusening. It’s a quadrennial exercise where millions of mostly white voters who do not consider themselves RWNJs search for excuses as to why they can’t vote for Democrats.”
They are Embarrassed Republicans hiding behind the swing/undecided moniker. They’re loyal Republicans who are sick of TFG and are likely to vote a straight GQP ticket except for maybe him. I wonder how those dumb asses who voted for Obama in 12, then the TFG in 16 voted down-ballot?
Ultimately, I see your (Betty’s) point in that that microscopic slice of geographically distributed Embarrassed Republicans had had enough at the top of the ticket, probably not because of the actual policies but because he uttered all the inside words.
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Antivaxxer lawyer on a ventilator; that will test the most saint-like among us.
Kent
Yes, we lived in Texas for 13 years and watched it flip to bright red in the aughts during the Tom Delay period and then creep back to more purple.
Florida seems a different case because its immigration patterns are different than most other western states. It gets the hordes of geriatric snowbirds and hordes of wealthy revanchist Latin American upper classes moving in. So I have given up trying to understand Florida and think it will be a race to blue up the state before climate change washes it away.
In terms of the Senate, flipping Nebraska gives you just as much bang for the buck as flipping Florida.
smith
@germy: Sounds like a man fully deserving of our tots and pears.
trollhattan
@Kent: Tom Delay. Is it well known he’s effectively Dale Gribble?
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Swingin’ voters have the bestest parties.
Ken
@Bill Arnold: I’m beginning to think there’s a serial killer. How else do you explain the number of antivax conservatives who keep dying?
Elizabelle
@Ken: LOL. Someone should investigate.
Eunicecycle
@Ken: I think some Rs were saying that at some point, when Ds were wearing masks and social distancing and Rs were not. Gee, why would Covid get more Rs than Ds. Can’t figure it out.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Who is SFB?
germy
@smith:
sab
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Steven Colbert is from Charleston.
Baud
@WaterGirl: SFB = TFG
Elizabelle
@germy: LOL. Only the best.
sab
@WaterGirl: Ruckus is absolutely committed to calling him Sh*t For Brains.
Dan
Owning the libs will be the only qualification for the R candidate. But I am worried that, as good as he’s been, who’s going to want to vote for a 120 year old Biden in 3 years? And Kamala has been most unimpressive.
StringOnAStick
@germy: He also has way more January 6 clients than he can represent, which is a legal ethics no-no. Emptywheel has a post about that today.
Brachiator
This is horseshit. Trump never had a coherent position on Medicare and Social Security.
And Trump hated the Affordable Care Act because he hated Obama. Trump didn’t have enough smarts or administrative skill to draft any new policy covering anything. With respect to health care he offered nothing but threats and empty promises.
catclub
The census report that texas has grown a lot over the past 10 years, ALL of it was growth of blue urban centers, should not be surprising, once you think about it. But texas always says it is beating california in the population race.
Ken
@Dan: That’s such 2016 thinking. As we have now learned, in January 2025 Vice-President Harris will be able to declare anyone she chooses as the winner of the presidential election.
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
The wild thing is that many wealthy and upper income individuals continued to do well during the pandemic, especially those who could work remotely. Even many who chose to retire had substantial portfolios to retire on, and people who had to take Covid related pension distributions got a nice tax break.
Lower income groups suffered the greatest loss of jobs and wages.
Some states like California initially saw deficits but ended up with substantial surpluses.
What most upset Trump was a decline in GDP, which really did not mean much. But he is a stupid man who likes big, simple numbers.
The media is reluctant to acknowledge that a substantial chunk of white people want an angry, bigoted populist authoritarian to lead them. They are willing to toss away democracy because it is not giving them what they want.
Betty Cracker
@Dan: I worry about Biden’s age in 2024 too — hell, I worry about it NOW, despite thinking he’s doing a pretty good job so far. I don’t agree that Harris has been “most unimpressive,” but she has been mostly invisible unless you’re looking for news on her doings.
That’s understandable; she’s the VP, which is a lower-profile role, and there’s a lot going on. But her portfolio (fix immigration and safeguard voting rights) is rather daunting.
I don’t know whether Harris will be able to build an impressive list of accomplishments in the shitstorm that is Biden’s first term — enough to make her a shoo-in for the nomination if Biden doesn’t run again. But I do believe that under that circumstance, Harris will either be the nominee or the intraparty war that results in a different candidate will almost certainly doom us.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
We were at sea (unusual for building 16 — AS – 16) once when green salami was served for mid-rats. Everyone who ate that was sick, cooks were up for captains’ mast!
I didn’t care for salami sandwiches, didn’t often eat mid rats. Mostly did jerky, dried fruit, hot tea at sea.
Chris Johnson
@mrmoshpotato: Thank you! I reposted that over at a sound engineer forum I know, with folks who engineered albums for Cyndi Lauper, Motown, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top etc.
They’re all sad (so am I but I didn’t know the man) that we lost Charlie Watts. It might cheer folks up a bit. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen :)
Another Scott
@Elizabelle: Yup.
TFG personified all the things that they said were great about ‘merica – getting rich, “plain talk”, “not a politician”, etc. They couldn’t run against him without inviting uncomfortable questions.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dan B
@trollhattan: I was in a Hostess (Twinkies) Bakery. Nothing natural there. Vans of tasteless* materials.
*Don’t ask me how I know…
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
For him, either epitaph works.
WaterGirl
@sab: Ah yes. I confess that that description annoys me so much that I stop reading any comment that uses that name, and I just move on to the next comment. It’s inexplicable, but I have a visceral negative reaction to that phrase. So I guess it’s no wonder that I didn’t recognize the acronym.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I was a transit barracks master of arms in Long Beach for about 5 weeks after I got discharged from the hospital in 73.
Shift was 12 hrs on, 10 to 10, 72 hrs off. I had the pm to am shift, went home after a shift, didn’t even have to check in, just relieve the guy before me. Never saw the chief after the first day, my paycheck would be pinned to his bulletin board.
So every day on duty we had to put the midrats in the fridge behind the counter. A twinkie, a dry, american cheese sandwich on white bread and a hardly boiled egg. MMMMM good. One night I checked a guy into the barracks, he asked if he could put his meds into the fridge, I asked him his name, he had the same first and last name as me and same middle initial. He’s the second person I’ve met with that.
After that I did about 5 weeks in the Shore Patrol. Then about 4 weeks on a ship – early discharge. YEA!
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
I thought we’d discussed this before.
I can not type his name, my hands won’t hit the keys in that combination. I had to find something else to call him, I imagine I could come up with something else, except I don’t have to think of him very much any longer. And don’t want to.
Steeplejack
@The Dangerman:
SFB = Shit for Brains. Ruckus has been trying (unsuccessfully) to make it a thing.
persistentillusion
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I live in very red Colorado Springs. I’ve been here for nearly 30 years. Originally from Chicago, you bet I’m a D. Our democratic, progressive voices have gotten louder every year since I moved here. The rest of the Front Range is bluer than blue for the most part.