Someone's about to link the "Blame everything" or is it "fuck everything"? diatribe.
Someone's about to link the "Blame everything" or is it "fuck everything"? diatribe.
Already linked in the "Everything" post (both the OP and the thread).
FWIW, I didn't think of the linked article as blaming Democrats; rather as astutely recognizing some of the things that Trump did well and some of the practical constraints that make it difficult for Democrats (speaking broadly) to make the same sort of appeals that Trump did.
There are, obviously, important topics, and I thought his essay managed to clarify some points which we had just argued around in the various comment threads.
That's fair. I just used this opportunity to rant about some things that I've been bottling up ranting incessantly about.
Emerson has not tired of pointing out that there are plenty of e.g. infrastructure projects that could do with a workforce. (Regarding the disappearance of manufacturing jobs.)
FWIW, while it maybe is true that the D position is that manufacturing jobs have gone so we need to make other jobs better, that isn't something that I think they've managed to articulate well.
I do agree with 5 and with tons of criticisms of the DNC. They should be doing more downticket. They should not be beholden to centrists. I don't think they're a great party. I just don't think it's fair to blame them for the horrendous destruction that choosing the RNC brings.
You don't blame pizza once you get killed and eaten by the three people in your group who voted that way.
"Pizza really is pretty boring, and we have it all the time! Why weren't we offering something more nutritious?"
"No! It was the carbs!"
"No! We should have offered really fucking great pizza in plain terms!"
"Oh dread, he's eaten my hea-drumph."
FWIW, while it maybe is true that the D position is that manufacturing jobs have gone so we need to make other jobs better, that isn't something that I think they've managed to articulate well.
It's a question of tradeoffs. It's often said that politicians should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time (be able to make more than one argument simultaneously), it's still takes work to finesse tension between different constituencies and different policy goals.
The question that the quoted paragraph raises for me is whether Democrats can talk up industrial-style jobs without distracting/taking away from a commitment to:
"Family leave, child allowances, and universal pre-K .... Fight for $15 .... Efforts to try to disentangle commodities like health care and retirement from employment"
Most of those, for example, impose costs on businesses which the Right are happy to use to say, "Democrats aren't trying to attract new jobs; look at how expensive they make it to hire people."
In other words, I wonder if part of the reason that Democrats often fall into a fairly abstract, technical language when talking about trade and manufacturing jobs* is that the abstraction does serve as a way to obscure some underlying conflict.
* other than the fact that they spend too much time talking with economists
Sailors love hearing about whaling ship jobs coming back, absolutely. Partly because it means that someone is listening to them, that they're not completely forgotten. I think that's as important as a message that must be dubious to most, that the past will return.
But the advice economists have for declining places is basically depopulation, which is pretty appalling. Much of Europe struggles with keeping population from draining into the profitable capital. Partly it's a consequence of transfers, but CZ looks a lot better than it did in 1992. East Germany less so.
Obviously I'll be sitting this one out, but good luck and let me know if this analysis ever shows any sign of being translated into one single office won, or one insurgent grassroots campaign a la Tea Party, or anything except that "insight" that sacrifices motion for vision I'm glad to see heebie has it under control.
7 is good and see also this cartoon on the same subject.
6 & 7: The Democrats' problem is that they fail to take a stand against child molestation rings run from pizzerias.
5: Yes, if only the Democrats had run a candidate who favored infrastructure investment. $250B over 5 years, plus $25B into a national infrastructure bank that would leverage another $225B. All of which adds up to 1.3M jobs in the first year, sustained over 5 years.
And she talked about this constantly; I knew she had the plan without a moment's thought.
Oh, there's a publisher in Cleveland, Belt, that has a bunch of city anthologies from the midwest.
Most of those, for example, impose costs on businesses which the Right are happy to use to say, "Democrats aren't trying to attract new jobs; look at how expensive they make it to hire people."
Yeah but I mean you know what else makes it hard (i.e. comparatively expensive) to hire people? Having the factories in America (especially the non-South America) and paying wages on the same scale as what factory jobs used to pay. So…
it's like, Trump says to these voters "I'm gonna give you your dicks back!"; the Democratic Party says "Fill out these online forms and submit as indicated; after your eligibility is confirmed you will receive monthly samples of semen..."
17: dem's meassage is "We're so sorry, but you'll never have your dicks back. But there so many other ways to enjoy life! We're offering everyone free basket-weaving classes!"
Whereas Trump promises them thirty goddam dicks.
For what it's worth CNN seems to have gotten the memo that Trump needs lots of fact-checking. This morning they had a segment on Trumps "3 million illegal immigrants voted" claim and got the various guests to agree that the real figure was likely 1% of that. The host repeatedly simply stated that Trump was wrong. It was refreshing, but I wish more places were doing that and before the election, please.
The incredibly scientific process of arguing with Trump voters on the Internet has convinced me that a key factor in Trump winning was Republican obstruction in Congress. From their point of view, Obama just mysteriously did nothing for six years, because he doesn't care about them.
21: It struck me right after the election that one of the most damaging long term consequences of Trump's win is that it will be taken as proof the the total-obstruction-sabatoge-everything approach works. Which means that we can look forward to more of it, even if we survive Trump.
It's not industrial jobs its descent paying jobs for people without collage degrees. This shouldn't be hard the county is massively more productive and wealthier than in the 1979s jobs all along the pay scale should be paying more money in real terms. The fact they are not and whole demographics have lowering wages is an indictment of the political system that has impoverished 10s of millions of people, most of which are in demographics the democrats are supposed to be representing. This isn't something that is going to be fixed with a few tweeks to the system, Trump convinced people he was willing to make big changes.
17 / 18 are great.
Yeah but I mean you know what else makes it hard (i.e. comparatively expensive) to hire people? Having the factories in America (especially the non-South America) and paying wages on the same scale as what factory jobs used to pay.
I'm not quite sure which part of my point you're responding to; it feels like we're talking past each other (which probably means that we're making correct but separate arguments).
But if we're talking about manufacturing jobs (a) it should matter than Obama saved the US auto industry. (b) As Kevin Drum noted this morning Obama consistently proposed policies which would encourage companies to keep manufacturing jobs in the US and (c) wage scale isn't the only think that maters; there are business reasons to produce in the US.
This shouldn't be hard the county is massively more productive and wealthier than in the 1979s jobs all along the pay scale should be paying more money in real terms. The fact they are not and whole demographics have lowering wages is an indictment of the political system that has impoverished 10s of millions of people, most of which are in demographics the democrats are supposed to be representing.
I'm genuinely confused; every single policy mentioned in 8.3 is a response to that concern, and every single one is bitterly opposed by Republicans.
At that point 6/7/21 seem like responses to 23.
Also 23 is just not true - they don't want some bullshit job flipping burgers or stocking shelves or answering a phone, they want a real job. (In likelihood a "flipping burger" job would eventually become respected if it came with a living wage but that's just me the urban egghead theorizing).
25: ball that stuff except minimum wage increases which are popular with everyone except politicians are not policies to increase wages, their policies to increase public devices, which are good, but not the same thing.
Absolutely blame the voters. My sainted mother has hated Hillary Clinton for twenty five years. Not just regular hate, but spiteful, grievance-collecting, conspiracy-repeating hate. The words "Lady Macbeth" have become common. Yet when it came time to vote, she swallowed her pride and did the right thing. Of course she blames Hillary for the loss (via the DNC), but if my mom can vote Clinton, fucking anyone can.
538 was impressively right on this election, so if you want to blame the statisticians don't include 538. I was pretty skeptical of several of the decisions they made prior to the election, but they were completely vindicated.
24: Obama couldn't have possibly saved that many jobs, because if he did so over the objections of the Republicans, that would mean that the Republicans were okay with eliminating those jobs -- and that can't be true, because Obama never got visibly angry off about it. He didn't call for elected officials to be put in jail; he didn't call for waterboarding; he didn't even ask anybody for a birth certificate.
If the Republicans were really that awful, Democrats would be more pissed off about it.
How much of the idolization of farming/manufacturing/construction jobs as opposed to service jobs has to do with whether you are forced to make other schlubs happy as a part of your job requirements. Seems like service is inherently emasculating to the types of people who care about that kind of thing.
32--Yep. Before she became a troll, Arlie Hochschild [sp?] basically invented the idea of "emotional labor": ethnography of Pan Am stews in the 70s, iirc....
31, 32: Less than 100 since those jobs have been historically less well-paid and less well-paid jobs are also less prestigious and that has to figure in to it as well.
31. The funny thing is that mechanics and contractors who do actual blue collar work that I come in contact with are IME usually super friendly and interested in making sure that I know the job is getting done right.
There are dishonest guys who are not like that, and some guys who are maybe a little surly, but as long as they're not overscheduled, they're IME much more proactive about being helpful and informative than white collar support people, but without obsequiousness.
35: This is because people's private personality and people's political personality have virtually no correlation whatsoever.
I mean, you're claiming an inverse correlation but I stand by my point, more or less. It's why it's tolerable to live in red states.
In the future, nursing degrees will come with 30-godamm dicks and we'll have full-employment with no gendered job anxieties.
nursing degrees will come with 30-godamm dicks
If my research of internet videos is correct, they already do.
Blame the voters. You can't con an honest man person.
35: I think there's a real dynamic where it's easier to be friendly and helpful when you don't feel as if anyone has the right to demand it of you. Blue collar guys you interact with are, maybe, helpful and friendly because they think they could tell you to fuck off if you were a jerk.
Also, unless I've gotten confused, lw isn't a woman. From what I've heard, plenty of those guys get really squirrely if a woman complains about their work or tries to ask for something.
Having just spent the better part of the last two days visiting someone hospitalized who received largely nursing care, I probably have thoughts on the emotional costs of doing that labor. But mostly I'm just really tired.
. . . helpful and friendly because they think they could tell you to fuck off if you were a jerk.
This is definitely a thing.
I spend a lot of energy in my job being helpful and informative to customers, and that's partially my personality* but it really matters that I've spent a lot of time doing contract programming so I think that, (a) customer service is an expression of the pride that I take in my work and (b) the relationship isn't purely hierarchical; they are my customers not my boss.
* I am, perhaps, temperamentally suited to being kind and helpful 10% of the time as long a I can avoid personal interactions the other 90% of the time.
41,42. Sexism is a good point. Mostly I was trying to say that being helpful to a client can be done while holding a wrench or drill, the possible opposition in 31 is optional rather than necessary in my lived experience. The mindset need not exist, and doesn't at least for some people.
I am reasonable and polite in all things, so maybe someone more difficult should chime in, like possibly my flaky mom. But she really likes her super and has a mechanic that she trusts deeply also, an actual Assyrian by Ogged's Assyrian community hall.
One of my closest friends is a 5'1" tall woman who used to work as a supervisor making shampoo for $INDUSTRIALCONGLOMERATE. She said that getting the basic respect of the men working under her in order to get them to do their jobs was the hardest part of it.
Also my ex once said to me (she had been a volunteer firefighter) "A pretty woman can get anything she wants in a firehouse, except respect."
The upshot is that macho guys are dicks and need to be crushed. Or reformed into nice milquetoast lapdogs such as myself. Laydeez...
. . . helpful and friendly because they think they could tell you to fuck off if you were a jerk.
There is definitely something to that, and I'd guess that some kind of change in this direction is probably necessary in the (rest of the) service sector as well, if those jobs are ever to become 'respectable' in the same way (and, more importantly, emotionally tolerable and sustainable for the workers).
Consider the traditional food service industry in e.g., France. Or at least the idyllic version that's been related to me, where something like that obtains. Jobs like serving tables or cheesemongering are more or less respectable careers, with dedicated practitioners who are generally very professional and knowledgeable. And very helpful, provided you respect them and their time and don't act like an idiot. Otherwise, they might make it clear that you can...fuck off.
There's definitely a gendered element to it as well. I don't think it's coincidental that tradesman and doctors tend to wield a much greater degree of respect and authority in interactions with their clients than, say, waitresses and nurses. It's dicks all the way down.
Also: tipping culture.
OT: Pat Sajack is now Donald Trump-Orange.
I guess what I'm getting at is that there's a fundamental limitation there. Over 80% of jobs are now service jobs, and productivity differentials will probably force that percentage even higher. Even if we magically made service wages the same as manufacturing wages (by unionization, high minimum wage, magic fairy dust), it's likely that REAL MEN will still be pissed about having to take those jobs. There is no real solution short of cultural change that can fix that.
And entitlement runs both ways of course. The same dicks who don't want to have to deal with people in their service jobs are the same dicks who act like entitled assholes to their servers.
And I'm hoping that the high minimum wages with no tip exemptions are slowly but surely finally killing tipping culture. A fairly large percentage of restaurants in Seattle have now done away with it and I couldn't be happier.
Trump talked about jobs. All the time. This gets lost in the coverage, which focused on the inflammatory scandals.
I'm repeating comments I've made before (I think), but this is a very real point and I think was underestimated in the election. Trump's complaints that the media covered him "unfairly" were valid--that criticism rang very true for Trump supporters, and not just those who were blinded by fake news. I didn't appreciate this during most of the campaign. I thought he was just whining that the press was accurately quoting the things he was saying. But the media really did focus on his inflammatory remarks. They generally didn't cover those remarks unfairly, but they covered them almost to the exclusion of everything else, to the extent that it was easy to get the impression that his rallies were all racism, lock her up, etc. (That was in fact the impression I had.) They weren't. They were mostly about jobs and economic issues. Every Trump voter I know either watched YouTube videos of Trump speeches or attended rallies. They knew this impression was false. They knew his speeches weren't "mostly" racism, which is part of why they bristled at the idea that his campaign was "mostly" racism. The media thought that was all they needed to report because it would be disqualifying. And when it didn't seem to be disqualifying, they thought they weren't reporting enough of it. There was very little reporting actually taking seriously Trump's economic proposals, comparing them to Clinton's, etc.
I do regret that the media focused on so much on the racism that it neglected coverage of his batshit policy ideas.
It was just so obvious that he had neither intention nor ability to fulfill his economic promises.
I forget who it was who observed that Trumps supporters take him seriously but not literally, while the media took him literally but not seriously.
We'll see what happens when he's not able to do much on the middle-class-union-manufacturing-jobs-in-Michigan angle, even if he does have some success with non-union mostly automated factories in the South.
I forget who it was who observed that Trumps supporters take him seriously but not literally, while the media took him literally but not seriously.
According to Yglesias that was Salena Zito and Peter Thiel respectively.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on Hulk Hogan's bare ass - forever."
I do regret that the media focused on so much on the racism that it neglected coverage of his batshit policy ideas.
On twitter, I've read that the model for defeating Berlusconi was to stop harping on his outrageousness, and treat him like a normal politician, by taking his proposals seriously (and watching him flame out).
It also didn't hurt that he hired underage prostitutes.
That was a very attractive under age prostitute.
His decision to walk up to China and attempt to kick them in the balls seems like one of those questionable policy ideas.
That one was apparently Bob Dole's fault, though.
So, is it worse that Bob Dole talked Trump into doing this strategically questionable thing, or that he got paid $170,000 by the Taiwanese government to do it?
65 is the sort of question that I honestly never imagined we as a nation would ever have to face.
I actually wasn't even sure Bob Dole was still alive.
Neither was I, until I jiggled the cord of the EKG machine.
Send me soup dumplings then.
Seriously, the dude's 93. It's impressive that he's still healthy and active enough to be fomenting diplomatic crises.
So that Doctor really deserves some dumplings.
(Autocorrect automatically capitalizes "Doctor"? Huh.)
Even if we magically made service wages the same as manufacturing wages (by unionization, high minimum wage, magic fairy dust), it's likely that REAL MEN will still be pissed about having to take those jobs. There is no real solution short of cultural change that can fix that.
Yeah. ultimately, even if the service industry starts to shape up into something decent, there are entire generations - likely including some pretty recent ones - that that still isn't going to fly with. The change has to be more like, "No dad, I told you, I don't need a job at the fire extinguisher factor. I'm a mixologist in the city. I'm good at it, and I get a pension plan. "
And that can take a lot of time.
I'm relieved that high wages might actually work to undermine tipping culture though. It otherwise seems so locked in from multiple angles of perverse incentives.
The same dicks who don't want to have to deal with people in their service jobs are the same dicks who act like entitled assholes to their servers.
False.
52 is incredibly interesting. Perhaps a well meaning deception that backfired.
62: That one was apparently Bob Dole's fault, though.
Clearly far more to that one than just the Dole factor.
Looking forward to the day coming soon when every Government pronouncement or statistic will be Trumpublican political rhetoric.
Dynamic scoring is just the start.
I just spent the weekend in Georgia with my sister and her family. She and my BIL are conservative evangelical Christians--he's a Youth Minister, and she was as well until they had their two sons. It's been interesting to watch my sister navigate this path, given our upbringing as left-wing Catholic SJWs. I know she's felt for many years now that churches needed to retreat from politics and get back to their original purposes. She's banned her church friends from discussing politics with her for now because she doesn't want to know for sure that their votes were motivated by hate, selfishness, and fear.* From the comments said friends leave on her wall, I can see where she's coming from. In the meanwhile, she's looking into joining a local organization that supports refugees.
*They both voted for McMullen
77: Absolutely, and I'm sure there's more to it that we don't know yet (and may never). I'm just amazed at the major role that appears to have been played by Dole, of all people.
81: I read this and thought you were joking. Reading back through the thread and it's only becoming more clear that we have collectively entered some awful fantasy remix of the mid-90s, without the relative peace and stability. Bob Dole! Bob Dole Bob Dole Bob Dole.
Trump himself is more of a callback to the 80s.
In (slightly) more positive news, there's been a lot of pushback to the local Assemblywoman who spread an Islamophobic fake-news story about a local Muslim activist. On my FB feed I see a lot of discussion of a recall effort, though I doubt it's likely to succeed. She represents a very conservative part of the city, because of course she does.
17/18 are as great as everyone says.
The problem with 13 is that OF COURSE you could look up HRC's complicated plan for a whatever thingy on the computernets if you got around to it - and if you were at all likely to do that you'd vote Democratic.
If you were at all likely to do that. If you weren't, though, JOBS JOBS JOBS. Or DICKS?
It's also interesting that a strategy based on JOBS/DICKS JOBS/DICKS JOBS/DICKS happened to coincide pretty much exactly with the distribution of EVs Trump needed to win. If you were talking DICKS/JOBS from a protectionist perspective you pretty much had to talk it to big midwestern states with lots of medium-sized manufacturing....and if you did that you were by definition addressing a big concentration of EVs with do-able margins.
I suspect the much ballyhooed Cambridge Analytica data bods' insight may just have been that there are a lot of EVs around the great lakes and they aren't blue by much so why not.
It's also interesting that a strategy based on JOBS/DICKS JOBS/DICKS JOBS/DICKS happened to coincide pretty much exactly with the distribution of EVs Trump needed to win. If you were talking DICKS/JOBS from a protectionist perspective you pretty much had to talk it to big midwestern states with lots of medium-sized manufacturing....and if you did that you were by definition addressing a big concentration of EVs with do-able margins.
Sure, and Trump did exactly that and managed to eke a narrow win out of it. And now the circular firing squad is in full force about how the Dems could have prevented that. (Which, okay, they probably could have. I've been talking up the "unwinnable" theory a lot lately, but I don't actually think it's likely to be true.)
But there's lots of other parts of the country where none of this matters, and that's where the demographic trends point to the future being. There was lots of talk about this in the runup to the election. The actual election results seem to have shown that those trends weren't enough to win this time, but that doesn't mean they're not real. Making some inroads with the DICKS/JOBS crowd by being more tolerant of sexism and racism (which, let's be honest, is what we're really talking about here) might well have been enough for the Dems to have won this election. But I'm highly skeptical that it's a winning formula for the future.
And further to heebie's comments in the OP about the Democratic Party, it's worth noting that the Dems did fairly well in downballot races this cycle, picking up at least two seats in the Senate (maybe three!) and six seats in the House, plus a net of one state legislative chamber. This was a rough election for Democrats at the national level, but we can win elections in this country. Our chances improve immensely if we work at it all the time and don't just check in once every four years.
the Dems did fairly well in downballot races this cycle, picking up at least two seats in the Senate (maybe three!) and six seats in the House, plus a net of one state legislative chamber.
That's one way to look at it. The other way is to say that the Democrats faced an electoral map with lots of opportunities, and didn't come away with much.
Teo: I really don't understand why it is assumed you can only appeal to JOBS! by being more tolerant of sexism or racism.
This is something Bob has been going on about for about a decade, but a hell of a lot of Ds (and centrist Labour types in the UK) do actually seem to think appealing to workers as such actually requires it - that it's a price that has to be paid if you want to do economic populism - while a subset of them takes this further and seems to think appealing to workers as such constitutes sexism and/or racism and can therefore be shut down, which is of course convenient.
A variant of this in the UK is the idea that being nasty to immigrants is an appeal to workers as such in itself with the considerable advantage that it doesn't involve giving them actual money, offending their bosses, or admitting past errors. (Come to think of it this is Thomas Frank's answer to everything, too.)
But this is bullshit. There's no reason why objecting to NAFTA or arguing for a further Keynesian stimulus should require greater tolerance of racism and/or sexism, except that it's become a cliché through repetition. And - JOBS! DICKS! JOBS! DICKS! - repetition works.
Shorter me: you don't have to be a dick to need a job.
Right, but a lot of the people we're talking about think that when Dems say they'll do something about jobs, they mean jobs for people of color. What they want to hear from politicians, at least implicitly, is that there will be jobs for white people without college educations. Democrats are never going to say 'we're going to get white people jobs' rather than 'we're going to get people jobs.' That's the problem in a nutshell, at least that's the part of the problem that has WWC voters going Republican . . .
Democrats have no remedy, and cannot have any remedy, for displacement or displacement anxiety. We're not going to assure you that you're not going to be overtaken by women or minorities.
86/91: But the point is, we're told that Dems failed by appealing to the WWC. Well, what appeals to the WWC? Sexism, racism, and JOBS. And, per 13, Dems were offering jobs*, just not JOBS, because JOBS don't actually exist.
So the choices are for Dems to pander to racism, sexism, or bullshit about jobs that don't exist. And mind you, it's not as if they don't pander some about jobs anyway; pretty much every mention of "advanced manufacturing" is bullshit (it's a tiny number of well-paying jobs; probably every "advanced manufacturing" job in the western world** doesn't add up to the steel jobs we had in 1969), and high profile Dems have been awfully friendly towards environmentally awful ideas like fracking and pipeline-building because they represent, yes, JOBS.
Mind, you, I'm not saying that HRC, and Dems in general, wouldn't have done better if they'd recognized the appeal noted in the OP; the Drum article linked below concludes that HRC should have emphasized Obama's frustrated efforts, and that's surely correct. But there's only so much bandwidth in an election, and when the press literally refuses to cover any of your policies, or statements in general, it's hard for a tweak of messaging to make a huge difference. If HRC had adjusted her messaging so much that the JOBS message came through loud and clear enough to swing those 80k votes, maybe her margins drop elsewhere and Trump wins through some other path.
*and, as Drum noted yesterday, Obama had a pro-manufacturing agenda from practically Day One that was stymied by Republicans. For which the WWC rewarded... Republicans! Good job, WWC!
**excluding East Asia because the threshold for profitable advanced manufacturing there is higher: FoxConn's iPhone plants are now 50% automated, but if you brought them here, they'd be 75% or 90% automated
People who need a job, if they're voting, are pretty likely vote blue. Retirees who aren't looking for a job, but are consumed with worry about their grandchildren being strangers in their own country vote red.
This is the central problem: we're battling myths and chimerae. (Or whatever the proper plural is!) A very difficult proposition for the reality based community.
Would that Fox News saw scaring the oldsters about climate change affecting their grandchildren more important than scaring them about (a) the immigrant family down the block or (b) the gay couple next door. We'd live in a different world.
Not that it wouldn't still be close. People who complain that the 2016 presidential election should not have been close are, imo, underestimating the number of single issue voters on (1) abortion and (2) tax cuts. Those people will never be available to us, and are always motivated to come out and vote for the other guys.
A variant of this in the UK is the idea that being nasty to immigrants is an appeal to workers as such in itself with the considerable advantage that it doesn't involve giving them actual money, offending their bosses, or admitting past errors. (Come to think of it this is Thomas Frank's answer to everything, too.)
But this is bullshit
It may be bullshit, but it seems to have worked electorally for both the Tories/UKIP.
...and the Tea Party/Trump in the US.
My translator had a difficult time really getting across the meaning of bad hombre yesterday. A translated recording of B-Movie might have been helpful, at least the line ' we would rather had John Wayne . . .
Anecdotally, being nasty to immigrants seems to have been an appeal to immigrants. Pretty much every Brexit voter I've talked to cited "controlling immigration" as their main reason for voting Leave, and every single one of those was either an immigrant themselves or was the child of immigrants.
And here's a look at the closing numbers: racism's up, human rights are down, peace is shaky, war items are hot. The House claims all ties. Jobs are down, money is scarce, and common sense is at an all-time low on heavy trading. Movies were looking better than ever, and now no one is looking, because we're starring in a "B" movie. And we would rather had...John Wayne. We would rather had...John Wayne.
Democrats are never going to say 'we're going to get white people jobs' rather than 'we're going to get people jobs.'
A better formulation than either of these is "we will bring jobs to your community," which you can say with a clear conscience in both white and black communities. But you have to be in those communities when you say it, and saying it is the easy part. Actually bringing jobs is a whole other thing.
Since I was mentioned, a couple links
1) Jobs For All ...Mike Beggs at Jacobin
This wasn't the one I was looking for, the other one just mentioned that 30% of steel union workers in the mid 1970s were African-American. Elsewhere I have read that by the early eighties, 40% of all union jobs were held by blacks. (Is this where I have to gain credibility by mentioning the lack of blacks in leadership positions blah blah blah racism racism)
Exactly who the fuck do you think have the lower educational levels and weaker family support to need good high pay blue collar jobs? What the fuck was that great migration 1940s-1970s from Dixie to the Rust Belt about? Did you visit Gary or Dearborn in the 70s and 80s?
Oh, and fucking forget unions unless you provide the jobs. You don't organize the unemployed.
2) Shakezula at LGM mocks the Pizza shooter. How?
""Unable to claim interest in a career," mesdames et messieurs. For when you want to do violence to the language and skitter around the fact that the subject of the story didn't have a steady job."
What, she, black woman, would have respected him if he had been slinging burgers for 15 years? How many laydeez here are married to the unemployed and unemployable, or men with much less education and a lower income than them.
3) Can we do something about it? I almost wrote a long comment last night, while reading a short book by a Japanese economist on Keynes General Theory. Keynes was absolutely about keeping wages low and steady. The idea of some economics including Marxism is to eventually make commodities free, so high wages or capital profits aren't necessary. No fucking mainstream economist likes high or accelerating wages.
It's hard. Hard not necessarily to create $30 blue collar jobs, but to get my mind into a space free of neoliberalism and neoclassical economics.
But I do think it is possible to focus on good jobs, and look for the tradeoffs, expensive commodities or high taxes, that will be necessary to get there. Tariffs etc are a plan, always have been.
No, those jobs are not gone. We can make all our own steel and computers. It will be inefficient and costly, but most profit is going to the top 20% anyway.
PS: This is not my favoured plan. I am a Marxist, and advocate a fucking borderless denationalized globalism. Labour should cross any border.
Dilemma For Humanity:Stark Inequality or Total War ..NYT
Science! Science says Burn Shit Down!
Anecdotally, being nasty to immigrants seems to have been an appeal to immigrants. Pretty much every Brexit voter I've talked to cited "controlling immigration" as their main reason for voting Leave, and every single one of those was either an immigrant themselves or was the child of immigrants.
On the other hand, I know one Brexit voter (hi, I'm Pauline Kael), and they're not an immigrant. I know a shit-ton of immigrants, and they're all anti-Brexit. I'm not sure what our anecdata are supposed to show.
It is still true that the majority of immigrants I know are anti-Brexit. But then the majority of people I know are anti-Brexit.
"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."
Keynes is criticized in the Masayuki Otaki book for his program of reducing the desire for consumption, for convincing people to dig poetry instead of competitive commodity consumption. "Economic Prospects for Our Grandchildren."
Leftism has never been about filling workers' houses with tons of really neat expensive stuff. $500 telephones and $2000 bicycles
I feel the need to push back against the drift of this thread. "The only way to win was to be racist, therefore we had to lose" is an awfully...convenient conclusion to reach, as it nicely exonerates the Democrats of failing to do their job, which includes winning elections.
Communism: We'll give you the phone if you sign up for a five-year plan.
106 I feel that way about the unwinnable narrative too. Better the circular firing squad and a bit of bloodletting before that sets in.
106: Ahem:
If you want to read "those who saw immigration or terrorism as most important" through a sense other than "racist, xenophobic fucks", you're welcome to.
In nearly every swing state, voters preferred Hillary Clinton on the economy[...]Exit polls show Hillary Clinton winning a majority of the vote from people who told pollsters that the economy was the most important issue facing the country. What's more, in each state, a majority of voters said that was the case.
In fact, if we extend that out to every state for which we have exit polling, in 22 of those 27 states a majority of people said that the economy was the most important issue. And in 20 of those states, voters who said so preferred Hillary Clinton. In 17, in fact, a majority of those voters backed Clinton.
Clinton was generally preferred by those who said foreign policy was the most important issue, too, but Trump was preferred by those who saw immigration or terrorism as most important.
Ah, but the magic of "It's the Dems' job to just win" is that literally nothing can counter that. The networks spent 35 minutes on policy in a 6 month election? Dems need to overcome that. Cable news views Trump as ratings bonanza, covers election accordingly? Dems need to overcome that. GOP voter suppression probably wins them NC? Dems need to overcome that. FBI breaks precedent and DOJ guidelines to throw election? Dems need to overcome that. Founders enact corrupt bargain to empower Southern racists? Dems need to overcome that.
Indeed, by the logic of the argument in 106, Putin could literally have hacked the election and thrown WI, MI, and PA to Trump, but it's still the Dems' fault.
It does simplify things, I suppose.
I don't think we have to be racist to win, and have never said it. I'm not seeing anyone else saying it either.
But see JRoth, if only the Dems would completely purge neoliberals and fully and openly embrace socialist revolution, none of those things would have happened. Or would have mattered. Or something.
Unsurprisingly I'm with JRoth here.
109 All that said, though, our side did get a bunch more votes than the other side, and if a (relatively) few more folks who already agree with us on the issues had voted in select locations, we'd have won despite everything. The WH, anyway.
Biden may well have won on the exact same policies.
Actually, the consistent HRC lead in Pennsylvania polling is probably explanation enough for the loss of turnout there and other places. If she's a lock, why bother standing in line etc.
Or, to use the vernacular of 109, the Dems are so incompetent, they can't overcome the near universal perception of impending victory.
It should not have been that close. Not nearly.
It should not have been that close. Not nearly.
It's pretty simple. Trump was willing to lie his ass off about bringing jobs back to the rust belt. Clinton was only willing to tell the truth about what the Democratic party could try to do in that pursuit, which sure, nibbled around the edges here and there but largely amounted to jack and shit because unless you're talking about fairly radical economic restructuring, there ain't but jack and shit to do. The Democratic party is, of course, famously allergic to radicalism in any form.
Unwinnable? Six weeks ago, the left was arguing about whether Clinton had a 65 percent chance of winning, or a 99 percent chance. I had never heard of Sam Wang a year ago, but six weeks ago he was very popular. He has eaten his words.
And, again, I find it pointless to dissect how Trump won or what the Democratic Party could have done better, not because it's unknowable or there are dozens of minor causes, but because it doesn't matter now and we're all doomed.
Say what you will about the Democratic Party and its various failings, it's really hard for me to see how Trump's election can be regarded as anything other than a failure attributable the United States as a whole.
Sure, that's not a politically correct thing to say -- that there is something putrescent at the core of America that gained expression (again) on a national level this year. But that's what happened.
There's a separate political question: How do we persuade the yahoos to vote for human decency? I suppose one ought not call them "deplorables," but let's not forget what Clinton's error was: telling the plain truth.
Copy/pasted from Rich Puchalsky's blog:
As one European country after another falls to right-wing populism, people in the U.S. should stop treating Trump as if he is a total outlier, or thinking that his supporters are a peculiarly American phenomenon. The election was very close, and I'm not writing that the result was preordained, but that something larger than U.S. politics is going on. If you accept that all of these elections are part of an international pattern, you have to explain them in large part as due to some international cause. And that brings us back to neoliberalism. I don't think it's credible that all of these countries turned more nativist at the same time as part of some cultural syndrome unrelated to a world system that features austerity and ever increasing capture of wealth by elites.
I know people seem to hate "neoliberalism" as an explanation for things, but this really is a pattern that's happening all over the Western world.
Remember when we thought the arc was long but bent towards justice? That was a comforting fantasy.
But there's lots of other parts of the country where none of this matters, and that's where the demographic trends point to the future being. There was lots of talk about this in the runup to the election. The actual election results seem to have shown that those trends weren't enough to win this time, but that doesn't mean they're not real.
There are more factors in operation than demographic trends alone though. In particular, we have many fairly anti-democratic institutions (electoral college, senate, gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, etc.), and the other side has demonstrated a frightening proficiency to use all of them to maximum effect. I don't know that they're going to be able to keep ahead of demographics forever, but they're definitely in the race.
If they can hold onto things long enough to radicalize and mobilize a whole new generation of gamergaters and trumpler youth (or whatever) to replace the older cohorts of WWC reactionaries, they can probably at least keep that race going a long long time -- much longer than we'd like to imagine -- even if they ultimately don't win it.
And I'm not sure we can rule out 'winning' -- in the sense of being able to maintain power indefinitely -- as an impossibility either. There are an uncomfortable number of global/historical examples of nations being controlled by relatively small groups against the better interests (and wishes) of a majority of their populations.
All of which is to say we can't just sit on our hands and wait for demographic trends to solve the problem for us (not that I think anyone here is suggesting that!).
I think in particular we should be mounting sustained attacks against some of the anti-democratic institutions themselves. Pushing the Interstate Popular Vote Compact through, for example. Statehood for DC (two more senators!). Advocate for restoring fixed ratio congressional apportionate, as well as a more historical ratio of representative/represented in the House (thousands of reps instead of hundreds - with much smaller districts that are easier to run for, easier to represent well, and harder to gerrymander). There are also longshots like getting some kind of minimum basic income legislation. That'd be a hard sell in this climate ("lazy welfare queens"), but historically it does have a certain constituency in conservative economic circles. And the economic/political/geographical effects could be profound.
Attack from the flanks, basically. (Though without neglecting work in the trenches. For one thing, we critically need to figure out how to get all those new demographically generated allies, as well as old ones, to actually turn out in midterms and state leg elections, for example.)
we critically need to figure out how to get all those new demographically generated allies, as well as old ones, to actually turn out in midterms and state leg elections, for example.
Turnout, turnout, turnout. If the Hispanic vote turned out at anywhere close to the rate that white and black voters turn out, it would be a very different election. But they don't! And the gap isn't even close - it's like 20 percentage points of difference, every time. So get the Latini voting like the rest of the population, and you're most of the way there, I would think.
119.1 bears remembering, a lot.
Unsurprisingly, I'm with 124.5 and 6. Don't forget, admit PR as a state.
Neoliberalism as the root cause would actually leave me somewhat hopeful, since there are at least some policy solutions available to us to address its major drawbacks. My fear is what we're seeing worldwide is something much worse than neoliberalism, something indicating that the core of humanity is rotten, that our base impulses are towards pernicious modern tribalism and very little else.
Should this be true, then it seems like we are doomed to forever repeat a cycle of devolution towards widespread xenophobia and illiberalism that leads to some massive worldwide event (depression, world war, ethnic cleansing) that is shocking enough to stop us from romanticizing our worst impulses. Something terrible enough that a majority of people are once again willing to accept the democratic socialist leadership that we apparently need because we're all children who cannot yet be left home alone since we'll most certainly set the house on fire just to see what happens. This will be followed by a few decades of relative peace, prosperity, and progress that will be begin to decay once collective memory of the terrible events begins to fade as an immediate concern. Progressives will then grow complacent and fall from power while conservatives rally the masses who have started to blanch at the strictures of their moral scolds telling to behave. Then another decades-long decline, followed by more terrible events, and so on.
While this is happening, we'll continue to see progress in certain areas, like technology, that will trick us into thinking that things are getting better and that humanity is not quite as terrible as it might seem. This will just be a gloss over the same old hatred that's always been there, but it might speed up the devolution cycle such that we grow accustomed to regularity of horrible events.
130: One of the things that stand out in that Eco fascism piece are just this, that tribalism is basic to human nature and critical thinking isn't. The bullshit is never going to end, and can be held in check only by constant effort.
Just for the record, Kevin Drum posts updated vote totals today.
Clinton: 65,516,951 - 48.2%
Trump: 62,844,908 - 46.2%
Other: 7,639,968 - 5.6%
While this is happening, we'll continue to see progress in certain areas, like technology, that will trick us into thinking that things are getting better and that humanity is not quite as terrible as it might seem.
Alternatively, there is the more hopeful science fiction trope that maybe all we need is for our social science and technology to catch up to the rest of it. Maybe there is social or psychological technology yet to be discovered that could eventually make us all collectively saner.
I don't think that's a totally incoherent or implausible perspective either. One can think of irrational authoritarian tendencies, say, as a sort of pandemic mental illness. And from that viewpoint, it's a short hop to imagining that maybe there are epidemiological interventions that could work as either prophylaxis or cures.
One can view the spread of fake news and so forth through this lens as well. It's a new kind of virus (or maybe more like a new transmission vector for an existing one) that we just don't have the right kind of immunity for yet. That doesn't mean we can't build it.
One can think of irrational authoritarian tendencies, say, as a sort of pandemic mental illness.
A hopeful analogy might be to vitamin deficiencies, like rickets, beriberi or scurvy. In just a few decades we went from millennia of accepting them as a fact of life, to sciencing out the essentials of essential vitamins, to fortifying foods and taking other practical steps that virtually eliminated these diseases overnight.
It's not hard to think of authoritarianism or racism as a sort of mental nutritional deficiency. Maybe we just need to learn more about the vitamins.
It's a new kind of virus (or maybe more like a new transmission vector for an existing one) that we just don't have the right kind of immunity for yet. That doesn't mean we can't build it.
See the origin of the word meme.
A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.
Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.
The discussion yesterday about kids hating on Trump reminded me of growing up in the Reagan era, and it is depressing to think about the similarities.
Perhaps cyberpunk fiction will make a comeback.
See the origin of the word meme.
Yeah. I'm intrigued right now by the idea of 'mutating' fake news memes until they twist around on the would-be masters.
There are some stories circulating on the fake news org Disinfomedia which claim the founder originally wanted to help - his idea being to craft ridiculous stories which could later be easily discredited.
Obviously, that doesn't work out so well in practice. If people want to believe enough, the discrediting step just doesn't take, no matter how easy and obvious. Consider, e.g., Pizzagate.
But what if someone were to try something more subtle, where you take the right wing memes and add progressive elements, or just twist them around to cut their wielders with the other edge. Like, say, "Top Trump aide implicated in Pizzagate scandal", or "Trump allows Obama to pick new cabinet members in secret meetings", or "Liberal business leaders conspire to reduce working class wages".
I don't think trust for Trump or the Republican party establishment is so implicit that it can't be undermined in this way. I think in some ways it's actually paper thin. It's just a matter of playing to the right biases and buzzwords. And throwing some hated Dem establishment figures under the bus.
Loathsome and dishonest? Hell yes. Would it work or be helpful? I dunno.
"Top Trump aide implicated in Pizzagate scandal", or "Trump allows Obama to pick new cabinet members in secret meetings", or "Liberal business leaders conspire to reduce working class wages".
I think it would be difficult to get something like this to go viral. The reason fake news memes work is that they reinforce pre-existing prejudices, and therefore people are willing to spread them. But the pre-existing prejudices depend on what side you are on. People on the Trump side aren't going to spread bad negative things about Trump. Anti-Trump folks can send them over the wall, but, once they get there, there is no traction.
The one exception might be if an issue can be found that splits Trump people against each other. But I don't know what that might be.
The message behind conservative media is: Conservatives are trustworthy and liberals are untrustworthy cheats and liars. There is no way to outplay this (to my knowledge, but I'm a terrible gamer). If we're honest, they don't believe us; if we're dishonest, they REALLY don't believe us, they find out, and the dynamic is reinforced. It's pretty ironclad.
Here is a Storify that briefly notes something I wondered about in an earlier thread, namely the absence of references to the "manosphere" in discussions of Trump and the alt-right.
I think it would be worthwhile to run commercials for the whole four years that celebrated Democratic achievements. I'm not thinking of something overproduced, but something entirely factual.
Local person, who looks local in a local setting: I kept my kid on my health care, which saved our house when my kid got into a car accident. That's because of Obamacare. (End)
Local person, who looks local in a local setting: I stopped getting infections in my arms when the Democrats gave our town a needle exchange. (End)
Joss Whedon did all those fancypants ads at the end, which I well and truly loved, but where's the sustained effort? Why can't Democrats champion their work or fight for themselves? Also, that Verdict ad is now too sad to watch.
Speaking of fight for themselves, when Clinton's vote lead hits three million votes, I'd be ready to storm the barricades, but it feels pretty pointless considering that she isn't fighting for herself right now.
An online database of user generated responses to specific memes would be helpful. Automate that shit. They're probably predictable enough that one could generate a tree of likely responses.
People on the Trump side aren't going to spread bad negative things about Trump. Anti-Trump folks can send them over the wall, but, once they get there, there is no traction.
Well, that's the question, isn't it? Are there really a lot of pro-Trump folks, as such? It seems like much of that sentiment isn't so much "pro-Trump" as it is "anti-liberal-bogeyman-of-the-week".
Plus I think there's probably already a lot of implicit recognition that Trump is kind of a slimy guy. They're just really hoping he's going to be their slimy guy. But that hope isn't necessarily iron-clad. They're used to being betrayed by politicians.
And remember that these are the same people primed to see conspiracies inside every pizza parlor, and "false flag" inside false flag inside false flag. If their entire world view is already a thin tissue of lies and imaginary conspiracies, how hard can it really be to gently fold some of that tissue into a new shape?
So, it would have to be super subtle, but given those assumptions I don't think it'd be impossible to at least sow some FUD, maybe plant the idea that Trump et al are yet more political insiders who don't care, at least.
And then I don't know that there's necessarily a limit to how far you can keep on folding and twisting, if you do it in small enough fractional degree increments.
After all, issue-wise, right wing populism and left wing populism (of the sort that might actually be helpful) aren't even so far apart sometimes. Like on the need to rein in big banks, say. Or mercenary profit-seeking corporations offshoring jobs. Or even minimum wage, which is actually a fairly popular issue.
I can kind of blurrily see how you could get weird coalitions of the far right and far left out of that -- people disagreeing about everything, except both calling their congressman to support the same bill.
Thanks to Alex Jones and Michael Flynn and son, we now have pizza parlors all over America being terrorized by conspiracy theorists.
Are they in the payroll of Big Burger?
Or could it be an even more nefarious entity? BIG TACO????
I just read somewhere that states with legalized marijuana has seen beer sales drop, mostly the cheap kind of beer.
Not sure how persuasive it will be in converting Trump voters, but I do think Dems needed to quickly position themselves as the new Moral Majority. It's both a true statement -- with Trump, conservatives have now publicly and completely abandoned morality claims and the popular vote indicates that Dems more closely represent the values of the majority -- plus it steals any future positioning from Republicans that they have godly righteousness on their side.
I've heard very good things about the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina. Replicating that movement in each state would be a good grassroots way for Dems to stake out this position.
My real fear, as HRC's popular vote margin increases and Republicans everywhere rush to restrict voting and clog up institutions as much as possible, is that people loose patience and give up. I've read where the anti-apartheid opposition in South Africa won popular majorities that were diluted into losses by gerrymandering and so forth. After three elections winning the popular vote without getting the ability to govern, people gave up. Turnout dropped, and the paramilitary opposition picked up steam. It's so corrosive when a movement can no longer view convincing more of its fellow citizens as a path to victory.
Right-wing movements are on the rise in Europe for the same reason that Trump won, and it's not just economic growth. People in Europe fucking hate immigrants and Muslims just like Americans do.
(Interestingly, I don't think free trade is much of an issue, unlike the US. Even the Brexiters would like to keep access to the European common market. They just want the foreigners out.)
Hating foreigners makes sense. It's the liking of non-foreign white people that is fucking nuts.
There's a foreigner (an unemployed one) sitting next to Bush 2.0 and his wife at the SMU-TCU game.
146: True, but quibbles:
1. The National Party won the election but lost the popular vote twice, not thrice (1948, 1953); in 1958 they won the popular vote (after disenfranchising Cape Coloureds).
2. Talking about the 'anti-apartheid opposition' in 1948-58 is misleading. The major parties were different shades of white supremacy; when Smuts lost in 1948 he was pushing more segregation, not less. The ideological gap between parties wasn't as deep as in the US today.
3. The NP was a broadly competent government, and was actually left-wing economically (for whites only, obvs), where the Rs are seriously dedicated to making things worse for most of their constituents (unless Trump somehow produces some actual redistribution for his voters).
4. The NP was governing in the trente glorieuses, the Rs will (probably) be governing in a period of secular stagnation.
For one thing, we critically need to figure out how to get all those new demographically generated allies, as well as old ones, to actually turn out in midterms and state leg elections, for example.
Right, this is the crucial thing I think we need to be focusing on in the short term. Addressing the structural issues with the system is a good long-term goal, but to do any of that you need to win elections first. We might be able to expand the coalition with better candidates or messaging, but we definitely need to make sure the people who are already part of the coalition vote more consistently in lower-profile elections. I have some ideas for how to channel the strong emotions people have been feeling lately into productive efforts in that direction, and I'm going to try to develop them more fully over the next few months so we're better prepared for upcoming elections.
150: Thanks for the details. I was going off my memory of a reference in an electoral college/vote suppression article. Colonial Africa is a lacuna in my historical knowledge, and the example made an (overly simplistic) impression.
Right. My reading is increasingly that the election was structurally a normal one, and the Rs won in virtue of better organization.
153: One big factor was definitely the years of work that the GOP has put into controlling various parts of the system, especially at the state level in key states, which gave them a lot of subtle but important advantages even with a candidate as bizarre as Trump. They also have a built-in advantage in that a lot of their key demographics vote very consistently without the party needing to put much work into turning them out, which is a major contrast to the Dems. So even though it's true that the Trump campaign's "ground game" was a joke, it didn't matter because they didn't need it.
It may or may not have been possible for the Clinton campaign and the Dem party to overcome those advantages in this case, but it should be possible to overcome them in the future by focusing continual effort on gaining control of the key parts of the system that have benefited the Republicans so much.
Maybe, but every grocery store in America except for the Whole Foods I usually shop at (I'm trying to connect more deeply with white people by spending time in a deep red state) has a headline right now Muslim spies in the CIA.
That would probably make more sense if I said "has a newspaper with a headline". And also if I added "about."
WHAT ELSE ARE YOU KEEPING FROM US MOBY YOU UNGRATEFUL HICK
I made two bartenders look up how to make a Rusty Nail.
Yes, but apparently not very common.
I meant, couldn't you just have told them.
I don't know the ratio of the ingredients myself.
Given CIA counterintelligence history, they probably do contain Muslim spies. Along with all the Russian, Chinese, Israeli, French and Cuban ones.
This really resonates with me:
I go back and forth on whether or not I blame the voters. On one hand, I see them like a digestive system that just shits out whatever it's been fed. I blame the feed-designers. OTOH, that's paternalistic and they're fucking upscale suburban adults - learn to not be scammed already. OTTH, there is absolutely nothing productive about wishing the voters weren't so dumb. All you can do is blame the institutions that should have been informing them out of their dumbness. So I do. OTFH, if the standard for complaining is that it must be productive, then I'd never be able to say anything.
The only (known to me) Trump voters that I personally know (all four of them! [two married couples]) are upscale suburban homeowners, and yes, I damn well do blame them.
They voted Trump because they always vote GOP because tax breaks, and also and obviously because they aren't much bothered (not bothered at all, as it turns out) by nativist appeals to "us" versus "them," where "us" equals good, solid, white homeowners such as ourselves, and "them" equals all of those brown and black people, the unwashed hordes, the Latina cleaning lady, for example, who didn't show up on time [she relies on public transport, and the bus was late: it was not her fault, you clueless and callous arsehole]. So, yes, upscale, suburban homeowning supporters of Trump whose hearts are colder than charity: I do blame you, very much indeed, and I will probably never, ever forgive you.
I'm pretty sure upscale suburban and exurban white homeowners comprised the bulk of Trump's support, btw, all of those "the Democrats ignored the Rust Belt WWC and therefore deserved to lose" essays notwithstanding.
I certainly hope the CIA contains Muslim spies. They are, after all, supposed to be focussed on running operations in Muslim countries.
I swap out 'in' for 'contain' specifically to forestall that joke, and does it work? Of course not. Unfogged, never change.
Hating foreigners makes sense.
Right. I hate those fuckers almost as much as I hate Americans.
What disinformation could be created about Trump that is more damning than information about him?
He's controlled by Goldman-Sachs.
but it should be possible to overcome them in the future by focusing continual effort on gaining control of the key parts of the system that have benefited the Republicans so much.
It's hard to be very hopeful about this prospect, because this same refrain of "We need to start paying more attention to local elections/focus on nuts-and-bolts political machinery/look at how the Tea Party (or Christian Coalition or whoever) has succeeded and imitate that" is one that I've been hearing since about 1994. And somehow it never actually happens.
The only time it came close was Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy which, if 2008 was anything to go by, actually worked. The Dem's response was to freeze Dean out of the leadership. Apparently they're just not that into winning.
What disinformation could be created about Trump that is more damning than information about him?
Mexican grandmother.
170: He isn't?
I think we should spread a story that Trump is a serial adulterer who has been married three times. The evangelical voters would be enraged!
172: Or maybe say he has a Jewish daughter and son-in-law.
Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy which, if 2008 was anything to go by, actually worked.
2006, also.
Actually, "paid for a girlfriend's abortion in [say] 1983".
Which has the advantage of being extremely plausible. Also, it makes him look:
immoral (because abortion)
easily browbeaten (because she made him pay for it)
What disinformation could be created about Trump that is more damning than information about him?
Isotoner, the official manufacturer of the Presidential Gloves, had to modify its leather cutting apparatus such that his tiny fingers could be accommodated.
176 is good. Better even if it takes place while he's married.
"Trump denies paying for abortion in 1983" makes for a good headline.
Better even if it takes place while he's married.
I doubt they'd mind that particularly. He's known to have cheated on at least two of his wives and none of his voters care very much. The point is that he was threatened or blackmailed or just browbeaten into paying by this woman, because he's weak.
179: "I told her I was going to pay for it . That's what I tell them all."
"Well, that one -- she was making a big fuss, so I got the Foundation to pay for it. It went in our books as a donation to Planned Parenthood."
One big factor was definitely the years of work that the GOP has put into controlling various parts of the system, especially at the state level in key states, which gave them a lot of subtle but important advantages even with a candidate as bizarre as Trump.
Exactly. And then there're the advantages state house control gives them in House redistricting. I think that's been a huge and fairly underreported factor in their continued control of Congress, despite waning overall popularity.
That's one of the most frustrating things about low midterm turnout, and infuriatingly, straight up down ballot falloff even when people do turn out. I've knocked on doors for union voters in midterms and heard people tell me they didn't know there was anyone to bother voting for (if they knew there was an election at all). Because Obama wasn't running, basically.
I don't know how to fix it, other than putting in more hard work than we have so far. AcademicLurker is right that we've known it's a problem for 20 or 30 years, and still haven't made much progress. Meanwhile, voter ignorance and indifference mean many statehouses are just fetid swamps of petty corporate influence and other corruption. Even worse than Congress.
I have been preparing myself for the anticipated odiousness of my Christmas visit home by imagining how much fun it will be to treat Samantha Bee's "joke" about Trump being secretly illiterate with total seriousness when I talk to my family. I'm going to see how long I can stick with it.
Following up on 109 (work intervened):
Where I really come down is that what decided the election--the most proximate/definitive/massive cause--was that Republicans came home. 90% of Republicans voted Trump and 90% of Dems voted HRC. That wasn't supposed to happen for Trump: his unpopularity was supposed to depress R turnout*, his policy unorthodoxy was supposed to turn off certain Rs, his obvious unfitness for the office was supposed to matter, his naked misogyny/racism was supposed to turn off at least a handful of Rs.... But no.
Vox had a running thing of the "Trump tax", the amount that he was running behind what the fundamentals said a generic Republican would be doing. Turned out there wasn't one.
Why not? Well, because the press gave him constant coverage, which normalized him. Because the press was (is) utterly unable to distinguish between an inappropriate tweet and criminal behavior, and so hoi polloi gathered that he wasn't really doing anything more outrageous than being rude on Twitter. Because Putin's fake news convinced some number of HRC-curious Rs that she was actually worse than they'd believed all these years (a vision of ASteele's "argument"). Because the FBI conspired with the press to convince late deciders that the two candidates were, literally, exactly as corrupt as each other.
I actually have a theory: Clinton would have beaten a normal Republican candidate. Why? Two reasons: First, Trump activated racism and sexism in a way that dog-whistles don't, and paid no price whatsoever. The 300k Pennsylvanians who turned out for Trump but not Romney wouldn't have showed up for a generic Republican. Second, no normal Republican would have gotten the wall-to-wall, fundamentally unquestioning media coverage Trump did. Instead, there would have been specific issues--policies, legislative record, gaffes--that the press would have talked about a bunch, and voters would have ended up with a more realistic idea of the policy differences between the two. Yes, they would still have savaged her over the stupid emails, but they would also have told people that she wanted to create 1.3M jobs in infrastructure, while her opponent wanted to offer tax breaks for... whatever. Point being, every minute spent discussing policy benefits HRC (and Dems generally); Trump ensured that there would be effectively zero such minutes.
*the same thing was supposed to be true of HRC, of course; she's on track to match Obama's 2012 tally. Yes, population growth, but c'mon: everyone who said, "People hate her, turnout will be down" were not trying to express that they expected her to match Obama's 2012, but fall short of the population growth of 4 years
So anyway, pursuant to providing real good jobs to the manly men of America, Trump is nominating a fast food guy as his secretary of Labor.
I think it's neat that the fast food guy he is nominating as Secretary of Labor is the most prominent opponent of the fight for $15.
I'm in Lincoln. Anybody's house you want egged while I'm in town?
No but get a deluxe burrito at the Taco Inn or a steak at Misty's for me.
I'd be ready to storm the barricades
I'd been tempted to ask Megan which barricades she was imagining -- a question which was somewhat snarky, but also sincere. I'm not sure what the best paths or venues for resistance will be.
So I was interested to see a headline today, "California Looks to Lead the Trump Resistance" This seems encouraging.
In immigrant-rich communities across America, there are more legitimate fears for the immigrants. Bills introduced this week in the California State Legislature confront them directly. One would create a program to finance legal services for immigrants fighting deportation. Another would provide training and advice on immigration law to public defenders' offices. Come the purge -- and Mr. Trump has said he is going after two million to three million people immediately -- many will need lawyers.
The third bill, potentially the most consequential, seeks to ensure that California will never be an accomplice to mass deportation. Its sponsor, Kevin de León, the California Senate president pro tempore, calls it the California Values Act, befitting a state that is nearly 40 percent Latino, and where one in four residents is foreign-born. It would bar state or local resources from being used for immigration enforcement, a strictly federal duty. No state or local law enforcement agency would be allowed to detain or transfer anyone for deportation without a judicial warrant.
Nothing in the bill would obstruct the federal government. This is not a nullification of federal laws or a rebellion against the Constitution. It's upholding the Fourth Amendment, preventing unreasonable search and seizure, so mothers and fathers can go to work and children go to school without fear of losing one another. It's upholding the First Amendment, so day laborers can solicit work on a sidewalk. It's allowing the local police to keep the trust and cooperation of crime victims and witnesses, who will not fear every encounter as a prelude to deportation.
Good for CA. Do any of the local commenters know how much support those bills have?
Yeah, that's my other problem, that I don't know what barricades are out there for storming. Or how to be more useful.
I suspect they have a lot of support, both from the public and from within the CA government. I have heard that Gov. Brown is lying low for now, but planning to fight the Trump administration fiercely.
I wonder if states could enact some sort of special income tax surcharge that would equal exactly the amount by which any taxpayer's federal tax in lowered by Trump. Obviously, they could spend that money on useful stuff, like medical care for the poor and the elderly. Public education. Tax credits for renewal energy.